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Topic: mikeoldfieldlightandshade.com< Next Oldest | Next Newest >
Korgscrew Offline




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Posted: Sep. 28 2005, 07:20

On quoting - please try not to quote whole posts, unless they're very short (i.e. two or three sentences). People will have read the post you're referring to anyway, and probably won't want to read it again!

It's better to just pick a key point to quote, and if there is more than one, you can add others by copying them and pasting them, with the help of the 'quote' button that's at the top of every new post window (click it once, paste in the text you want to quote, then click it again).
Doing that helps to keep things concise and at least vaguely readable!
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Thomas Offline




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Posted: Sep. 28 2005, 11:29

Well, well. I bought the album about 2 hours ago and having listened to the album once I have to give a big thumbs up for Mike. Although there are some weak parts on both cds, there are such highlights that buying the double album will well be worth your hard earned money. I have to say that after this first listen I like Shade more. I mean Resolution, Surfing, Tears Of An Angel, Ringscape and Nightshade are just fantastic! Quicksilver was maybe a bit of a disappointment but I believe I have to listen to it a few more times to make up my mind about it. Slipstream was surprisingly good while Romance wasn't THAT bad either. I think it is a track that is a bit misunderstood (whatever that means  ;)

The Light on Light are Angelique, First Steps, Rocky and Sunset.

I think there are a lot of surprises in many of the tracks opposed to what some have said. Clearly the best album since TBIII.

Back to the music now.

Cheers
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TOBY Offline




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Posted: Sep. 28 2005, 13:03

Quote
Why not try acoustic dance music????  
Wrote Ian

Actually if you fancy this idea I could point you in the direction of two very good tracks. Firstly a track called 'Hoops' by the Chemical Brothers of their Come With Us album. An amazing piece of bouncy eletronica with a wonderful classical guitar lick played through it, its thought to be one of their best tracks. Also a track called Zenophile off Mylo's recent album. A great chill out track with a nice acoustic guitar part. Its a shame Mike can't take his inspirational cue from these guys instead of trying to sound like the homogenous rubbish that pours out the speakers at Cafe Del Mar.
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ian Offline




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Posted: Sep. 28 2005, 14:56

Yes I have the Chem album right here.Very good they are too.Liked the last album.Surface To Air is the best track by far in my opinion. I went to school with Tim Burgess from the Charlatens.He was the one that recorded me his Dad's single of Blue Peter on a tape for me as it was a version I hadn't heard.Now I bet he wouldn't admit that in a hurry now.

Anyway, back to Mr Oldfield.I have listened to shade a bit more and have grown to like it a bit more.Tears Of An Angel has some horrible Oooh Oooh's that sound sooooooooo cheeeezy I am embarased to listen.The guitar work is good but so many of these tracks are spoilt by choice of sounds, too much fake vocals and that darn piano that is on nearly every track.Too much reliant on his Tubular bells motif if you listen to Quicksilver.Yes, here we go again as we did on Tres Lunas.

Interestingly, Lakme sounds a more cutting edge dance track.Is it produced by Mike? Its actually not too bad and works quite well like William Orbit's thingy for strings.It works as an uplifting dance track.

I think the Ringscape track is not as good as it was on the game.It doesn't build right and the organ spoils it for me.The ending fades like it's a rough demo.Shame as this is a really nice piece of music and very uplifting.

As for light, well I like the first track very much but then it just fades into the realms of new age doodlings with Ooooooh's and Ahhhhh's etc.

My highlights are Angelique, Resolution (except the obvious fake screaming vocal which would have sounded so much better with a real performance like on Floyd's DSOTM), Slipstream, surfing and Lakme.Nightshade is not too bad either.Perhaps it would have been interesting to see what it would have sounded like if he linked them all together like SOTDE.


:D
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TOBY Offline




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Posted: Sep. 28 2005, 15:58

On the Chems. Yeah Surface to Air is sublime, they first started doing this track live quite a while back so I've been lucky enough to hear it in various forms as they developed it, its just such an upliftingly euphoric piece of music.  Good story about Tim Burgess by the way.

On L+S. Well having listened to it at work today and tonight I can't say its grown any more on me and hasn't really faded in any real sense either. I agree about the organ on Ringscape, though some people seem to like it, I think it clutters it. Its a shame that the tracks we're given the opportunity to remix are the tracks that I'd least want to. Is it just me or are a lot of the lead guitar sounds quite far back in the mix generally? When the lead guitar sound comes in in Ringscape it doesn't have as much punch as it did when playing the game. TOAA is still the only real stand out track for me,
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Piltdownboy on horseback 22 Offline




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Posted: Sep. 28 2005, 16:25

What do you think of the electronic vocals of Surfing? I think I like it (not as good as a real singer though) :) . His guitar is often good. That returning pianosound on many tracks (like someone said before) is actually quite irritating! It sounds so fake or cheap  :/  But the album as a whole is better than I expected!  :cool:  He's still got it!!  :D

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"And now we're going to play Platinum!"
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ian Offline




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Posted: Sep. 28 2005, 18:02

It just seems like he has not got an imagination and thinks the piano has to be used all the time.

Years ago, when we wore short pants and we lived in shoebox int middle 'o'  road, music was more organic as when you wanted an unusual vocal, you sampled it yourself.Listen to Jarre's Zoolook and The Wind Chimes.All unique audio bytes that nobody else has.Now you get a sample CD of world sounds and its too easy.I recognise some of the sounds Mike uses as I have XPhraze and Stylus RMX on my music PC within Cubase.He has just used the straight presets and not really edited anything to at least make it his own.This is what doesn't help in giving him his own sound or identity.Even Tubular Bells 3 at the finale it at least sounds unique to Mike Oldfield as he has recorded his own vocalists and instruments and its also an excellent piece of dance music with his own style.

Perhaps he's too tight to pay any vocalists haw haw :p
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Harmono Offline




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Posted: Sep. 28 2005, 18:13

I am totally fed up with worthless posts.
Light&Shade was just released and its superb.
But negative comments are flying around.
Im so dissapointed with almost all of you. What are you doing here? Go home. Some Dudes should put up their own site just for mocking things.
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designer Offline




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Posted: Sep. 28 2005, 19:04

Still havent got my copy from Amazon UK yet  :( . Has anyone else recieved it from Amazon UK yet? They did say at first despatch would be 1 to 2 days, now its saying 6 days  :/ . Perhaps they had some and are sold out. I knew Mr Oldfield would be in big demand  :) .
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TubularBelle Offline




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Posted: Sep. 28 2005, 23:38

This is confusing, is it in demand and out of stock?

Or have they simply supplied very little stock?

Who decides, "We think this is a big seller, we'll start with a million, or let's play it safe and start with 100,000."

Even if there wasn't much stock, we should have got the first of it, the people who paid up front to mail order companies, but nothing. So as someone said, have they taken all the stocks to the shops and sold out?, but it still begs the question, "How much stock was there?". Is my Mike being idolised and I don't even know it!?


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I hate getting up early. I didn't even realise there were two 6 o'clocks in one day!
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ian Offline




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Posted: Sep. 29 2005, 01:57

I think it would be wrong to all say Mike is brilliant whatever he does.He is brilliant but In MY OPINION I find this new album dissapointing.I just cannot lie and say I love it all just because its Mike.I thought the whole point of forums was to discuss openly.I am certainly not mocking him, I have huge respect for his talent.

To say "go home".I am at home ;)
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tubtattoo Offline




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Posted: Sep. 29 2005, 02:50

Quote (ian @ Sep. 29 2005, 01:57)
I thought the whole point of forums was to discuss openly.I am certainly not mocking him, I have huge respect for his talent.

To say "go home".I am at home ;)

I have to agree with you mate, in respect that we all have our viewpoints. And, most importantly you voice it as your opinion.

I only have issues with pointless negativity that comes from a sort of 'I know better than you do' school of discussion- doesn't wash with me!  :)

I'd hate any forum to get too amorphic so let us continue to agree to disagree, as long as it's done like grown ups (not like me when I'm at Alton Towers then  :D )

Malky
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Ddave_73 Offline




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Posted: Sep. 29 2005, 05:05

listening to it each day now and so far its not bad .

But imo at the moment I simply see it as an average album with nothing to truely seperate it from the crowd , light is better than shade imo and is the disk I will listen to the most ..

This certainly is not his finest work but for a man with a music catalogue like mike it is realy hard to make each album better than his previous successes ..

Keen to hear the 5.1 mix and on whole I give this album a thumbs up :)

Not his best work but certainly not his worste ;)

I suspect he may gain a few new younger fans with the shade disk :)
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Splinter Offline




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Posted: Sep. 29 2005, 06:19

Bought the album yesterday and listened to it. It is indeed not the best album ever, but it's defenitely not on the last position on my albumlist. I was surprised to find the u-myx files and program on the Light-cd.

I think the whole u-myx idea is great. The program works very simple and you can save your own mix. You can even save it as a wav-file so you can hit the road with your own mix in you're car stereo.

With the program you see a timeline of the song with all the differenttracks that are used. You can now, simply by clicking, turn some parts off or on to create your mix.
It's not possible to mix different songs together, but it's still a nice feature.

I think the album is great and the songs on it are still different from the songs you hear on the radio nowadays.

Much greetings from The Netherlands.
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Korgscrew Offline




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Posted: Sep. 29 2005, 07:50

The case of the piano is a little bizarre. Some of the parts are played on Mike's Steinway acoustic piano, while others are most definitely synthetic. I would agree that they're likely from the Yamaha Motif.

In some cases, I can understand it - for the more dance orientated tracks, I think a more synthetic sound works well (the classic was always the Korg M1 piano, which sounded horrid if thought of in terms of an emulation of an acoustic grand piano, but which worked very well in the context of dance tracks). But with Blackbird...why? He'd already got the piano miked up for the melody line, so why not spend an extra half hour or so recording the accompaniment? I would have thought that a lighter piano sound, if that was what was required to make it fit in the mix, could easily have been obtained by a different mic position, or a little EQ bracketing. I can't really think of many reasons why he'd want to use a synth piano sound instead.

On virtual voices, I think that the voice on Surfing is better than a human singer. It may not be an effect which everyone likes, but it's an effect which is I think unique to synthetic vocals. I don't think the song would be nearly so intriguing, were it sung by, say, Maggie Reilly. It could be made to work, of course, and some may prefer the end result, but it wouldn't be the same in any way. That's what puzzles me about the pianos, really - they don't seem to be used in a way that takes advantage of their unique feel and sound, but rather places them in a position where they're playing second best to 'the real thing'.
I personally think that the aim with every arrangement (and I'm talking in general terms here, rather than directing this at Mike or anyone in particular - this is more my own personal philosophy) should be to make use of instruments' unique qualities, and put them in places where they're irreplaceable (or close to it). Not doing that is invariably going to lead to it sounding compromised, I feel.

Negativity is definitely around, and in certain forms can be as healthy as positivity. However, I do get the feeling that there are people active at the moment (not necessarily in this discussion) who are just out to wind everyone else up. We have our eyes on them, but please, if anyone recognises the signs of a troll (outrageous claims that make you want to yell "You are soooo wrong!", extreme views expressed with over the top and sometimes offensive language, topics posted to by many new or infrequent members who all seem to have the same opinion and possibly writing style), don't fall into their trap. Flaming them back isn't going to help, and even trying to join them in discussion can sometimes just incite more drivel from them. Best to leave them alone and enjoy the album (or not enjoy it, as the case may be...doesn't matter, there are plenty other albums out there to enjoy).
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Piltdownboy on horseback 22 Offline




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Posted: Sep. 29 2005, 10:23

Maybe you're right about the electronic vocals on Surfing. It is an interesting aspect of the song.
I think it's really cool that mike plays (almost) all of the instruments himself, and perhaps he uses computer-drumsounds because he's not really a good drummer. Doesn't matter. As long as it sounds good it's great. On most L&S tracks it does. But the thing about the keyboards is true. But I feel there's just nothing like his guitarsound, so that's what keeps his albums set apart from the ones made by other (dance)artists.
I do think the last message before mine tends to be a little negative ;)  ;)


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"And now we're going to play Platinum!"
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ian Offline




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Posted: Sep. 29 2005, 14:14

For the record, I certainly am not out to wind anyone up.I just like to discuss music objectivley.

I agree that the synthetic vocals in Surfing work because of the what the song is about.I like the track.Its quite hypnotic.

I didn't know Mike uses a Motif keyboard as I have one.The pianos on it are very good indeed :) how do you know he has one?

Ian.
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Blue Dolphin Offline




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Posted: Sep. 29 2005, 17:00

Quote (ian @ Sep. 28 2005, 20:56)
Interestingly, Lakme sounds a more cutting edge dance track.Is it produced by Mike? Its actually not too bad and works quite well like William Orbit's thingy for strings.It works as an uplifting dance track.

Lakme??? Do I miss something? I don't have that track on my copy of L + S.

Korgscrew: I'm suprised you think the vocals on Surfing are better than a real voice. I think they are nice but they sound so "cold" and "mechanic". I have played the track to a close friend of mine (she is a singer) but she hates it.


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-The mark of a good musician is to play one note and mean it-

Mike Oldfield - 1980
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TOBY Offline




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Posted: Sep. 29 2005, 17:13

Lakme and Pres De Toi are 'bonus' tracks on some CD's. They're not much of a bonus if you ask me but some people like them.

I do agree with what Korgscrew is getting at though, Surfing sounds like it was built for a virtual voice. I've always thought it kind of sounds like a futuristic lullably and I'm sure something like that was Mike's intention with it. It would be to simplistic if sung with a human (remember them? ) voice i think.
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Blue Dolphin Offline




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Posted: Sep. 29 2005, 17:15

Ah right. I think I read something about that somewhere. Which cd's do contain those tracks then? I think I have the UK version (since it says that when I rip the album).

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-The mark of a good musician is to play one note and mean it-

Mike Oldfield - 1980
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