Sidingsound

As 2009 approaches the one-twelfth-through mark, I thought it was long past time that I dropped by here and updated you on a few happenings (and not-happenings, for that matter) in Sidingsoundworld.

Actually, I’m typing this through a bit of a fatigue-haze: we all arrived back home at about 1.30 this morning, having spent the previous five days at Disneyland Paris (which, if you’ve ever been there, involves a lot of walking, late nights and early mornings). There’s a whole blog post or two right there, but more likely I’ll just upload a brace of pics to our Flickr photoset and link to it from here in due course. Let’s just say that the collapse of the pound against the euro is A Very Bad Thing, Naomi (4) had the time of her life, and we’ll probably be holidaying close to home this summer (if at all)…

But what of other things?

OK, the concept album. I’m coming to the conclusion that life is not going to let me complete it in the form I envisaged, so I am seriously considering just tying up the remaining loose ends and making available what I did manage to complete. More to the point, I’m thinking of treating the recordings as demos for a ‘proper’ album I may or may not make, and just uploading the lot to the Internet Archive, for the listening pleasure or otherwise of the Webbing public.

From there, I’m not sure what direction I’ll take next, musically speaking. I feel it’s time I made another instrumental album—possibly, a multitracked solo collection with lots of guitars, basses, dulcimers and stuff (and no synths, maybe), or perhaps a collection which showcases my new electric mountain dulcimer (like those old instrumental albums from the 60s, with titles like “The Hot Blue And Purple Guitar Of Chet Flinger”). And no, I’m not making that a formal resolution for 2009: I made that mistake already last year!

I’m still Twitter-ing regularly—far more than I do here, I’m afraid—and that’s probably the most up-to-date way of keeping up with me. I’m thinking this may be the year that I finally get on Facebook (having avoided it like the plague all this time), but only because it’s one of the few Web services that lots of people I know use.

What else? Well, I’m hoping to get to sleep before too long, and I’ve run out of ideas here Hope you’re all keeping well, and see you soon.

This time last year, I made something of a bold resolution:

2008 is the year that I will record and produce at least one album (if not — gasp — more than one).

I also made a rather rash comment, that if you couldn’t find any evidence of such a project here, that you were permitted to “do a Nelson Muntz” (“Ha-ha!”). I think my ears will be ringing soon…

OK, I admit it: I didn’t finish the album project. I did record about 80-85% of it, so the project could be said to have “slipped into” 2009, à la Guns’n'Roses.

Excuses? Plenty—mainly the obvious (family and other commitments, day job, you know), coupled with the delay in receiving an intact electric mountain dulcimer, which I wanted to use on a couple of songs. Aside from the dulcimer tracks, there are (I think) three more songs to be recorded, though none of these are particularly complicated ones so I should be able to get those onto disk without much hassle (yeah, right).

So, I’m now hoping to complete the recordings early(-ish) in 2009, when I will then have the puzzle of what exactly to do with them. However, that’s a concern for another day—in the meantime, I don’t think I’ll make a similar resolution for this new year…

In case anyone is gagging for me to put them out of their misery regarding the mysterious package I kept dropping enigmatic hints about (well, I can dream ), your wait is over…

You may have noticed in previous posts that I made a couple of mentions of saving for an electric mountain dulcimer. Basically, I ordered one late last month, from the Texan dulcimer builder Tom Yocky, who is well-known in the dulcimer ‘community’ for building very nice instruments which pay homage to tradition whilst not being bound by it.

To “cut to the chase”: the dulcimer arrived last week, and I’m sorry to say had been damaged in transit. Obviously, I was pretty disappointed, but at time of writing I’m working out with Tom how to proceed, and am confident that one way or another, I’ll have an intact electric dulcimer in time for Christmas (and quite possibly with some time to spare).

This may have a knock-on effect with regard to the ‘concept album’ I’ve been trying to complete by the end of the year. I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep to the deadline anyway—the recording is probably about 85% done—but I was planning to use the electric dulcimer on two, maybe three tracks as the main accompaniment. I may have to leave these tracks until last in the recording plans, so that I can still feature the instrument on the album; still, that leaves a good few songs that need finishing off, and a couple which I haven’t even started recording yet. Then, of course, I need to decide what on earth I’m going to do with the completed product…

I am giving some thought to another idea: using the Qik service to ‘webcast’ a solo gig from my home. If it goes ahead, I would ’showcase’ some of the songs from the album project (the name of which I’m thinking of finally revealing during the show), as well as a couple of other songs of mine from further back in my writing ‘career’. I’m considering doing this next month, so I’d better get practising!

(Just a reminder that for more regular updates from me, you can subscribe to my Twitter feed, which I generally post to a couple of times a day, most days.)

See you soon!

Almost a month since the last post here, though in my defence I’ve been Twittering most days!

It’s been some time since I mentioned anything here about the concept album project, which I embarked on as a New Year resolution with the aim of actually finishing it by the end of 2008. So, how is it going?

Well, I reckon I’m about 85-90% done with the recording—as far as I can recall, all but two of the songs have at least been started, with the rest needing additional or re-done parts. At this rate, I think I could well complete the album by Christmas, though I may hold it over for the New Year as I’m currently saving up for an electric mountain dulcimer, which I’d like to play on one of the songs if possible. Of course, if that doesn’t go through as planned, I’ll probably just record the song with guitar and have done with it…

I also had an idea for an album project for 2009, which would be even more of a commitment than the current one. I’m an admirer of songwriters like Neil Innes and Mitch Benn, who both have a great talent for writing parodies of existing songs, which sound like their subject matter without following them too closely. Mitch Benn is also a regular on BBC Radio 4’s The Now Show, where he writes and performs two songs per week on a topical theme from the past week.

Yes, you can probably guess where I’m going with this: the challenge would be to write one song per week for the whole year, each concerning a topic from the past week, and post the results on the Web somehow. I doubt I’d be able to keep up a consistent quality throughout the project, and sometimes the recordings would probably be very rough, but it might produce some interesting results.

Anyway, I think I’ve got RSI, so I’m stopping there

Just to reassure you all (if 'all' is the appropriate word) that I'm still here, and,nominally at least, still running this blog! Sorry for the lengthy silence, which I can only attribute to extreme busy-ness in general, and a few other more specific things (like my daughter's chickenpox). I'll try and post more in detail shortly about how we've been, but I'll just mention in passing that I've been working to finish recording and mixing for a CD of children's songs (as mentioned before around here), and where time (infrequently) allows, laying down tracks towards the solo/"concept" album I've promised I'm going to finish during 2008. Anyway, this has been a post from my mobile phone, so more will appear here as soon as I can write it.

I've been trying to get another post up here for the last week or so, but something always interrupted me, so here's a go at a quick e-mail post from my mobile phone.

Basically, we recently invested in an iMac, partly to retire our old PC which is getting rather long in the tooth, but also for producing music and some graphics (the latter mainly for Joy's music activities for children). I bought Logic Express to go with the machine, and have been experimenting with it to add an extra dimension to our music production.

Yesterday evening I finally got to try one of Logic's software synthesisers that I've been dying to have a go on: EVOC, a vocoder synth (which blends the synth signal with an audio input such as a voice). In a nutshell, I was recording some guitar synth parts for "When The Sun Goes Off To Sleep", a song for the "concept album" (which I'm still hoping to finish this year, honest!), and decided to add some 'vocoded' voice to the end. The song has been around for a few years (I wrote it as a lullaby for my daughter), and my original acoustic demo dates from late 2004, but I've wanted to re-record it to give the song a more ambient, dreamy air. In particular, I hoped Joy might sing a bit on it, as I had conceived a female vocal sound for the ending, but she felt a bit shy and backed out, so the idea was shelved until I thought of using Logic's vocoder (which might capture even better the effect I wanted).

So, last night I recorded the voice part for the vocoder to use, set up the MIDI guitar and played the melody on the vocoder. The results were just what I was looking for—an ethereal 'voice' (or 'voices', as I'd played a 'chordal' part into the vocoder), floating behind the lead vocal in the final verse. I also tried my original idea for the song ending: two lines from the Korean nursery rhyme which gave the song its chorus melody. This worked pretty well too, so I think you can expect to hear all this on the final version of the song, when I get around to putting out the album.

The moral of this story: vocoders are fun

There’s an old joke in the UK that some things are like waiting for buses: you wait ages with nothing, and then three come along at the same time. Well, in this case it’s more like two, but I’ve been chewing over ideas for a new song, and today another completely new one overtook it and leapt into existence almost unbidden.

I’ve probably never said it here before, but my answer to the perennial songwriter’s question—which comes first, words or music?—is usually: the music, and the words tend to follow. Having said that, since I embarked on my project for 2008 (for want of a less cringeworthy name, a “concept album”), I’ve found myself thinking a lot more in terms of lyrics first, probably as I have to try and fit them into the “concept”. This new song is the second in succession where the lyrics came first, and the music later, except here it all occurred within 48 hours.

I had a title (which I won’t reveal yet, perhaps until I have a rough demo to share), and the lyrics came out in fits and starts over the course of yesterday evening, this lunchtime and this evening. There was a rough idea in my head of the kind of musical style I had in mind. I’ll be quite open and admit this song was inspired by two things: the Kinks song “Afternoon Tea” (from their album “Something Else” (1967)), and a bag of green tea I had on my desk at my office (it’ll make more sense when you hear the song).

What really surprised me when I sat down with the guitar, was how easily—even naturally—the music came for the words. I rarely write music to words, as I feel the results are more stilted and ‘forced’ when I do that; here, however, the chords and melody almost wrote themselves, and although I may well need to sand off a rough edge here and there, I think that the final version may not change greatly from what emerged the first time I played it.

Scott Andrew—a fine independent singer-songwriter from somewhere in the Seattle area (the “winged monkey” icon elsewhere on this page links to the Web site for his current CD, “Save You From Yourself”)—has been musing on the idea of independent artists raising cash for recording projects through donations from their fans.

He has a valid perspective on this concept, not least because his current CD was largely funded through fans’ pre-orders and a rather well thought-out “incentive” system (i.e. the more one paid in advance, the more “goodies” one received when the CD was finished). I liked Scott’s last album (2003’s “Where I’ve Been”), and bought the CD even though he made the tracks available for free download, as I wanted to repay in some way the trust he placed in his listeners (and the music was good too ), so I also ended up pre-ordering “SYFY” as well.

Scott also raised an interesting question: if you don’t know as an artist whether you have an audience out there to fund the recording of your new masterpiece (and being a thirtysomething amateur musician/songwriter who has never toured and can number his live performances in the last five years on the fingers of one hand, that includes me), why not release an album as a free Internet download, and see what reaction it gets?

I am giving this idea some thought at present, and here’s my concept:

I record and mix the songs for my current project as planned, but deliberately play as much as possible myself to keep the costs down (possibly with some guest keyboards from Joy if she’s up for it). I would then post the results online for free download… and it’s here where I’m not sure how to take it further. I’d like to rely on an “honour system”, and ask downloaders if they would like to let me know what they thought of the album, and whether they might also be interested in an “enhanced” CD version. (Presumably, by “enhanced CD”, I could mean either the existing recordings with extra items on a “data” section of the CD—the approach Scott Andrew took with “Where I’ve Been”—or re-recorded versions of the songs with other musicians, or even a combination of the two.)

Of course, I haven’t thought everything through yet. For one thing, I’m well aware that by putting the tracks online for free download, I’m taking the risk that some, or even most, downloaders will just take the tracks and give me no feedback (or even worse, some might try reselling them or passing off the songs and/or recordings as their own, or something). Well, yes, it might happen, but then some listeners might try something similar even if I just tried selling CDs, and as Scott has said more than once, it’s a kind of backhanded compliment if you’ve produced something which someone considers worth stealing…

If I were to try this approach, I would be putting my faith in the honour of anyone interested enough in my recorded work to download it in the first place (and to get it for free), to also take a couple of minutes to let me know (a) that they’ve downloaded the album; (b) what they honestly think of it; and (c) whether they would be prepared to cough up for a value-added version. Yes, it’s entirely possible that I might get little or no feedback, or that the feedback I do receive tells me that the album sucks and I should stick to the day job. At least if the latter happened, I would know where I stand in the arena of public opinion, and that at least I had given it my best shot and hadn’t just (artistically speaking) hidden in my bedroom, too nervous of the possibility of criticism to try venturing out and discovering if my music had an audience. (Which come to think of it, pretty well sums up what I did throughout my twenties, when I actually had the time to go out and try gigging that I don’t really have now (with a family and other commitments).)

Still, better late than never…?

I was just leafing through some of my old blog posts, and came across an entry from last October, which contained the following assertion:

I’d really like to have at least a live drummer and bass player on this CD project, even if they don’t appear on all the songs.

Funny how one’s intentions can change, even over four months. I realised when I read that entry, that without thinking about it, I was no longer thinking the same way—it’s partly because the “CD project” I was referring to there, is a somewhat different concept from the one which I am currently aiming towards. Back then, I was planning to re-record a selection of the better songs I’d written in recent years, with the aid of a live rhythm section to get more of a ‘band’ feel (a sort of “best of”, really).

Now, I’ve changed to this “concept album” idea, which will probably contain a few of my older songs worked into the format, but with a considerably larger proportion of newer compositions written especially for the project. For some reason, I’ve found I’m not thinking so much of having other musicians working on it, at least not at the outset. This may be partly because my drumming has improved to the point that I might be able to “get by” with it (especially if I record my electronic kit into a MIDI sequencer and tidy up the timing later!); alternatively, it may be a simple change of emphasis, where I record as much as possible myself and then call for help if I think the recording needs it.

Yet another approach I’ve considered, is to record all the songs for the project entirely solo (so I can claim that I’ve made that solo “one-man band” album I always wanted to do!), and then treat those sessions as the demos for the “real album”, which I can then either build on with other musicians, or even re-record totally with a band.

Or perhaps I should just stop theorising and percolating on how I should produce this album, and just get on with it and see what happens? After all, I’ve only got ten months left…

Rejoice, o people—at last, I’ve managed to dash down a basic demo of the “lamppost song” (the one I’ve been mentioning over the last week or two). It seems that these days, I can only record stuff for the new album project in-between ongoing tracking for songs for Joy’s children’s musical activity sessions—I slotted this demo after laying down part of a backing track for “Hop, Skip and Jump”.

I say the new demo is “basic”, but it’s currently vocal, electric guitar, bass and drums, and if Joy can find the time, I’m hoping she can play some “harpsichord” (sampled, naturally). On the other hand, I realised partway through that I’d missed out the ‘instrumental break’, so I may re-record the song for the album at a later date, and keep this song for reference.

In my view, the demo isn’t quite ready for others to hear, mainly because to my ears, the pitching on the vocal is way out (it’s a weakness of mine, but I can, and have to, do better than I did this time). However, at some point soon I’ll upload the demo to the Internet Archive so you can have your first taste of the direction the album will probably take.