Keef

Keith Richards---
acrylic on canvas 120 cm X 80 cm

I had huge problems with the hair. I thought the jacket would be hard to do, but it's nothing to Keef's hair. Arrrrr.
 This is a photography of the painting. The colour may differ a bit from the original painting. Tried to fix it with photoshop.

The original Photo is in black and white!120 cm X 80 cm

G+

I'm a big, big Google fan. I know most people are at Facebook, but I actually hat FB. I hope Google+ will become bigger as Facebook. I don't think so, but I hope! "The hope dies last!" Anyway. I hope there are a lot art and music fans who'd like to connect with me and share ideas or what ever.
My profile is stil quite empty and clean, but it'll change soon... I hope!

GOOGLE+

Don't be shy to add me to your circle.

I'm working on a painting since weeks, but I have not much motivation or stenght at the moment. But I will upload it overe here soon! Promised! I will also work on a new album. Back to the roots: Let's Rock N' Roll!
But I'm still open for any film/game or what ever scoring. I just don't have much Equipment anymore. My keyboard and mics are gone etc. But I work on it!
See you soon at G+!
 

Tim Burton T-shirt

Burton shirt from the back

my newest shirt creation. My fave t-shirt I ever made is still the Alice Cooper Shirt from 1991:

SHADOWNESS

A few weeks ago I created an account at Shadowness. A very nice artist page. Please check out my art over there, too.

shadowness.com 

Someone asked me for a print of one of my pictures. She also aked me if I'm going to open a gallery. This was quite flattering.
I'm wondering now wether it would be worthwhile to offer some of my best artworks as a print. Whatever "best" means. I'll look out for a cheap printing and shipping option. I'll let you know.

Nasty Mushroom

Short update

I removed my diary stuff from this blog. I think it's a bit annoying to have a diary mixed with music and other art stuff.
On the other hand, everyone wanted to know what I'm up too and what's going on here in London.
I still had my diary blog I rarely used before. Now it's time to rekindle that baby over here...

in a new look.

Monster Design Sketches

I thought I lost all my old sketches and drawings, but I found some of them today.
I've also found my old Monster Design sketch. monster design was my label in the mid 90's and this one here's the one I kept. The primarily airbrushing shop worked very well that time. I hope to find some originals not only sketches, but my hope wanes more and more.

©1996 Monster Designs® - Leah MacKay

I guess I'll redesign and coloure it again with photoshop later.

ravens-nest.ch

My good old homepage will be offline from February the 16th.

My first Raven's Nest page was at geocities. After my musical break I revive Raven's Nest with my own host in 2004 I think. It was really fun to work on it. I could live out my htlm knowlede, learn new things about designing, and writing my own html/CSS and php page without any stupid templates.

Now that we're moving to London I had to tell my host and my .ch page off. I'm a bit sad about it, but I am also a Blogger/Blogspot maniac. Nevertheless an own homepage with an own domaine is not the same.

Well, I'll keep the template, and you never know.

I'll look out for a good alternative to Raven's Nest and this blog!

Guitar Rack

When I was MUCH younger I had no money for a guitar rack. I was fortunate enough to own a guitar. But puting the guitar against a wall as is mostly in case not the best idea, I needed a guitar rack.
I was lways a creative kid, so let's make my own guitar rack of an old office chair and a piece of wood. And as I was, I had to paint everything.
Now that I move to London I cant take it with me, and it's already worn out and peeled off. I'll throw it away before I leave. But I'd like to keep it as a memory and would like to share my teenage foolish handcrafts. but I really liked it and it was quite solid.

Photoshop Graphic Design Resources

I make my homepage and blog backgrounds myself. I hate using other artist's backgrounds, textures, icons, or brushes.
I've started to share some of them with the public at my DeviantArt page.
Of course not everything, but why shouldn't anyone else use my stuff. That's how I started; using other peoples stuff. Of course there are brushes for example what you cannot make yourself. But I try to make as much as I can for not to using foreign possessions.

You may also recognised my new art gallery. I'm proud of it. It took me a while to find a solution to my gallery problem. Especially since I told my ravens-nest.ch website of.

Alright, check out my DeviantArt downloads out betweenwhile.
Feel free to use them but do not claim them as your own. Well, any other rules by the respective resource.

One of my brush sets

Recording Workshop II - Register your CD ID

Image via WikipediaAfter recording and mastering your songs, you shouldn't forget to register your CD. Old CDs have no ID's. Most amateur recordings have no ID. You have probably already put some CD's on your computer. You get mostly all infos in your music player: Name of the artist, name of the album, the titles of the songs, the genre, year of release etc. The record company put the infos on the CD's and register the infos to a data base.
It's not only annoying for the listener not to get the infos, it's necessary these days for the radio stations, for iTunes, song relising programmes etc.

If you're recording and mastering yourself you should register your songs. If there's a record company or a professional recording studio behind the recordings they will do it for you.
Windows (Media Player) has it's own register data base. And as I know you have to pay for the registrations but I'm not really sure. But it's really not very necessary to register to Windows.

With your mastering programme you have to give an ID to your songs.
Go to freedb.org and register your album for free. But that's not all, cause not every player will recognise your album or your songs. There are other data bases, but as I can see feedb.org is the most important, and biggest data base.

Go to quinnware.com and download their player for free. Burn your CD to a CD-R or a CD-RW. Open the "qmp" player, put your burned CD into the slot. qmp will ask: "Do you want to register the CD" push "yes"
all infos should be seen on most music player now. I tried 6 player and the Windows Media Player was the only one what couldn't read the infos.
New CD-player that show the track and album infos should read your CD infos, too.
But don't forget to burn the infos to your tracks.

WaveLab from Steinberg is the best known audio editing and mastering programme. It's often used with the Cubase studio programme. It's really professional and highly recommended. But very expensive.
Most musicians are anyway skint like I am. In this case I'd recommend to try out the much cheaper audio editing and mastering programme from Magix. The Music Cleaning Lab. I've got the 2007 deluxe edition but I guess the recent versions are a bit better. In my opinion the Cleaning Lab is the best substitute if you cannot afford the WaveLab.
Of course there are other great programmes out there, but I haven't try. So I ca't tell anything about these programmes. Your local dealer will help you out.

Recording Workshop I - Remove Lead

Image via Wikipedia
You have a song where you'd like to remove the vocals or the lead guitar. It doesn't work on every song. It depends on how it's recorded or mixed. It doesn't work mostly on old songs or amateur recordings. But you can try.
First download Audacity, it's a free audio engin. You also have to download ASIO4ALL. You need ASIO (Audio Stream Input Output) for all recording programs for your PC. ASIO is a professional audio standard that provides for a low-latency audio stream from the computer. ASIO bypasses the KMixer entirely. ASIO is used by the recording industry as a standard.

Follow the instructions and install your ASIO4ALL.

Open your song. Split the stereo line and reset both lines to mono! Mark the part where you'd like to remove the lead. Look under Effect: set -> intervene.
Now you only have to highlight the basses.

That's all. No magic. It should work on most newer songs. You can remove vocals or lead instruments.

Good luck, and have fun. And remember! Using songs of other artists without their permission is illegal! So stay clean!

GUITAR WORKSHOP II - Floyd Rose II: How to block

Image via WikipediaWell, actually I don't understand people who buy a guitar with a locking tremolo, and want to block the trem. Or a tremolo guitar anyway. That's bollocks! Or does it look cool? ...as you could use it...
Anyway, if you want to lock your Floyd-Rose-like tremolo you better follow this blog:

There are different ways to block your tremolo. You can bring your guitar to an expert, who's gonna put a black-box into your guitar, but you can't change it back afterwards.


Or you do it yourself:
Adjust your whammy to the exact position! The Tremolo should be parallel with the guitar body! It's very important! (see picture ^) Open your back of your guitar.

There are actually two options for you. If you'd still like to use the trem in one way, you can put a piece of a harder wood into the gap between the vibrato-lock and the body milling groove (under the springs). The wood's size should be around 4.5 cm long and 1-1.5 cm wide. Sand your wood to the perfect size. Test sometimes if it really fits. After you're shure it's perfect put the wood vertical in the gap. Put a bit glue into the gap, take out the springs and lay the wood down. The vibrato-block shouldn't move.

The other way is to put another harder-wood behind the vibrato lock, too. but you cannot uce the trem afterwards anymore!
You could also use a tremolo stabiliser from Tremol-No. They have dealers in the US, Japan, in most European countries, and some countries in South America. Check their page out. I think that's the best way to block your tremolo if you want to block it, for whatever reason...

If you don't have the money, try my version, but take care. If you destroy your guitar it costs you more as an expert or a Temol-No. ;)
Or at best: DO NOT BUY A LOCKING TREMOLO GUITAR IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT!

I found a good picture in the German guitar magazine: "Solo 3/98"