Sidingsound

Before we dive into the Christmas festivities head-on, I’d just like to take the opportunity to wish you a very happy Christmas (or whatever you may happen to celebrate at this time of year (have to say that ).

Apologies for not posting here that often in recent weeks; I’ll try and write more here as long as time allows, but if somehow you’re desperate to read more of my jottings, you can keep an eye on my “lifestream” page (which collects together my Twitter feed and other online activities), as well as Eee 701 Planetoid, my blog dedicated to my Asus Eee 701 ‘netbook’.

Have a great holiday, and I hope I’ll get back here before the New Year

I’ve been promising a little Christmas surprise for readers of my Twitter feed, and here it is…

Since the late summer (!), my wife Joy (a great pianist) and I have been working on recording some of our own arrangements of Christmas pieces. Our idea is to do some more work on the project for Christmas 2010, but in the meantime we are giving CDs of the tracks recorded so far, as “stocking fillers” for our immediate family.

However, because we’re so nice ( ), we’ve decided that you can hear five of the seven tracks from the CD—if you like, this is a Christmas gift for you from Tim and Joy Walker…

Joy to the world (1:59)

Joy’s on piano for this song, with me playing electric dulcimer, all the guitars (five stacked electric guitars for the finale!) and the MIDI strings/tympani arrangement. You can tell I had fun with this one…

See amid the winter snow (4:01)

Joy takes the lead on this one, both on piano and synth (the flute-like parts), whilst I handle the guitars and guitar synth (mostly ‘pad’ chords, but also the “clarinet”-like solo part in the middle).

It came upon the midnight clear (2:21)

I play two electric dulcimer parts throughout, and also overdubbed electric guitars, bass and MIDI guitar “organ”, whilst Joy contributed the jazzy piano in the second half.

O come o come Emmanuel/Carol of the bells (6:30)

This one’s all me: 6- and 12-string acoustic guitars, multiple electrics (including one EBowed part), bass, electric dulcimers and a few guitar synths. The solo synth parts were all done with the AM Pro SoloVST software synth (a clone of the ARP Pro Soloist, used by Genesis, Anthony Phillips and others).

Away in a manger (1:57)

Joy played the piano and celesta, and we both arranged the violin and cello parts. (Whisper it quietly: they’re sampled strings, but not too bad for all that…)

(We’ve left out two tracks from the CD we’re giving to family, mostly due to copyright issues (e.g. the song is still within copyright), but we hope you don’t mind this time around.)

These tracks are free to download, and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. We hope you enjoy them, and ask for only one thing in return: if you download these and enjoy them, please visit the contact form on this site and let me know, as we’re thinking of expanding and improving on these recordings to produce a “proper” Christmas CD for sale next year. (Alternatively, if you downloaded these tracks and they weren’t to your satisfaction, please let us know as well (preferably constructively!), so we know where we might be able to improve.

In the meantime, have a very happy Christmas, and best wishes for a peaceful and successful New Year 2010 (if I don’t manage to come back here before then)!

…amid the winter snow… by Tim and Joy Walker is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at www.sidingsound.co.uk.

So, according to the Guardian’s “Pass notes” column, the Christmas tree in your house is supposed to adhere to one of a small number of “styles” (“Arboreal Aryan”, “British Imperialist”, etc.)?

I’ll try and avoid the phrase “pretentious load of cobblers” as far as possible (!), but I think I’d call our tree style “English Genealogy”—that is, no hint of a common “style”, but carrying a wide range of different decorations from over thirty years of family history. Rather like a patchwork quilt, but… well, in the form of a 6-foot-tall artificial tree-like object

I don’t know about you, but I find that more “homely” (even “Christmassy”) than an “Arboreal Aryan” tree any day.

While I’m at the keyboard and in WordPress…

Periodically, over the last few months, I’ve made references to a Christmas CD project that Joy and I have been working on (here’s the blog post where I first mentioned the CD), and if you’ve been following this blog for a while, you may have wondered how things were progressing on the recording. (Hey, I can dream )

In short: I think we’re about 75% done on the actual recording, partly thanks to an evening of work Joy and I put in the other day (mainly various keyboard parts of hers). Out of the six definite pieces on the “mini-album”—we might add a seventh if time and inspiration allows—five are at various stages of completion (and one, I think, is actually finished). The one “definite” piece we haven’t started yet, is waiting for the middle of next month, when we’re planning to spend some time with a friend in a proper studio with a decent piano, so Joy can record some solo parts.

At the rate we’re going, I reckon we’ll have this wrapped up in time for early December. At this point, I think the CD project will be limited to friends and family “stocking fillers”, but if the results turn out well enough, it’s certainly possible that they will receive a wider airing in due course.

More updates will follow shortly…

It’s an overcast Monday lunchtime (with the sun making heroic, and occasionally successful, attempts to pierce the gloom), and I might actually pluck up the courage in a few minutes to take a constitutional round the block.

Until then, I’m sat in a corner of the canteen with my N95 and Apple keyboard, to bring you a couple of updates and thoughts (which I’ll try and keep brief):

• Yesterday evening, I recorded the very first parts for the Christmas CD project I referred to a few days ago (and this is the last time I’ll say this: yes, I know it’s late July, but if I don’t start now, we’ll never get this done for December!). It wasn’t much in the end: just some basic electric dulcimer parts for “Joy To The World” and ” It Came Upon The Midnight Clear”, but enough to build upon over the coming weeks.
  The CD is likely to be a “mini-album”, with six or possibly seven tracks, but some of the tracks themselves may well run to well over 3-4 minutes, so the runtime may not be that far short of some “full” albums out there. Watch my Twitter feed (as well as this blog) for further details as they come.
• Just in passing: I am trying hard to give Stephen Moffatt and the new Doctor Who team the benefit of the doubt. Stephen is responsible for some of the finest moments of the regenerated (!) series, and I know he and his team realise how high the bar has been raised, and has to stay. I can just about trust the casting of 26-year-old Matt Smith, and again am willing to give him a chance as the Doctor.
  But whose idea was it to give Matt a costume as the Doctor, which makes him look like Bertie Wooster??!?!?!! I thought the outfit in his initial publicity photo looked rather more like what a 900-year-old Gallifreyan should be sporting, but isn’t he going to look a bit daft in slicked-back hair and a 1920s suit and bow tie when he next pays a visit to a 52nd-century space station?

Just a quick rant, and perhaps this is all a big wind-up by Moffatt and co, where we’ll find out that this was merely Matt’s Doctor attending a 1920s fancy-dress party in the first episode, whereupon he will soon revert to something which doesn’t leave me wishing nostalgically for Colin Baker’s mid-80s get-up.

Now for that constitutional…

Posted by Wordmobi

Over the past few days, I’ve been reaching for my electric mountain dulcimer a bit more than I have in recent weeks, and the reason may surprise you: I’m starting to plan out a Christmas CD for Joy and I to record together.

Now, I am perfectly aware that it is the middle of July – not that you’d really be able to guess from the somewhat autumnal conditions outside – but I know from last year’s experience that if I don’t start laying the groundwork for a Christmas CD project now, it won’t happen (just like… well, last year). We’re both busy people – Joy in particular, with her piano-teaching – and if we can do the lion’s share of the arranging and recording by the end of August, then Naomi can start school and we’ll just have some “tidying-up” to do on the CD.

Surprisingly, after seven years of marriage, it would be the first time Joy and I have really done any “serious” recording together. It’s not through lack of will; we’ve wanted to do so much more, but it’s so hard to fit in recording activities for us both, even more so since Naomi was born. As a result, I’m thinking that the CD should be relatively short – more of a “mini-album” than a full-length one, perhaps with six or maybe seven tracks, although some of the tracks themselves might not be that brief.

I’m realising as I mull over some pieces we could play, that I’ve got so used to doing all the arranging and playing myself when I record, that I might find it a bit of a challenge to collaborate more equally with Joy on this (even though that’s what I really want). We’ve talked a bit already about what to do, and these are a few ideas we’ve thrown about:

• I’d really like to open the CD with “Joy To The World”, and have an idea or two of how we might arrange it. This would start quite simply (maybe with the dulcimer), and build to something much bigger (an orchestra from Logic! Massed guitars! Church organ!), though it’ll depend on what we can call upon from the home studio…
• We think Joy should have at least one solo piano piece, where she might improvise on a seasonal favourite, but which one isn’t clear yet.
• I would probably “get” a solo piece to myself, which I currently think would be a medley of two Christmas pieces I really like, with a multitracked arrangement of guitars, dulcimer and the like, and (where possible) no synths or other MIDI instrumentation.
• The rest would hopefully be duets between Joy and myself, perhaps with some overdubs if they would suit the material.
• Part of me thinks we should close the sequence with “Silent Night”, but that seems to be what everyone does when they make a Christmas album, so that may require a rethink.

Instrumentation-wise, of course Joy will be playing piano, and perhaps some other keyboards as well, and I’ll be bringing electric and acoustic guitars, electric dulcimer, percussion, guitar synth and who knows what else, as well as recording and producing it all.

My original thinking was that this would be a CD for our families and friends, to include in the (metaphorical) Christmas stockings, though if the results end up good enough and we can find the appropriate “vehicle”, we might make the CD more widely available somehow. I have been “roughing out” a CD cover, and if all goes well, this year we’ll have something more than good intentions to show for our efforts.

One way or another, you’ll hear it (or about it) here first…