Sidingsound

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.

One of my guilty secrets is that I actually rather like Music and Lyrics, the 2007 rom-com starring Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore—partly because Grant at his best can be quite funny in a rumpled, stereotype English kind of way, but also because it depicts a musician with a home demo studio (and let me know how many other films can you think of which do that).

Therefore, if you know this particular movie, you can probably hazard a guess at one of my favourite scenes (and for a clue, it’s none of the ones with Haley Bennett—I’m happily married, thanks ). It’s the part where Alex (Grant) and Sophie (Barrymore) have been slogging away at writing their song for teen pop-queen Cora Corman (Bennett), and Alex announces from the keyboard—where he has just begun the process of laying down the demo recording—that they can’t do any more refining of the songwriting, as “Cora is leaving in an hour”.

“OK”, I thought the first time I watched this scene, “so Alex and Sophie have sixty minutes to record and mix a multitrack demo, burn it to CD, catch a taxi to the heliport where Cora is waiting, and hope she picks it up before the ‘copter takes off. How realistic is that?”

Or to put it another way: is it possible in the real world to produce a multitracked solo demo (drums, bass, guitars/keyboards, vocals) in one hour, or is this Hollywood “poetic licence” in operation?

Well, to be fair, in my experience it can be done (and I’ve actually done it once or twice myself, but more on that later), but it’s a tough job and requires quite a few things in place to work. To start with, the musician (or musicians, if the artist has the luxury of help) obviously needs the recording facility, instruments, etc. to be set up and ready to go—there’s no time here for faffing around with sounds, patches and the like, or wondering where you plug in your guitar. As far as the setup goes, modern computerised project studio equipment can help with this; experienced users of DAW software like Logic, Cubase, Sonar and so on, often have preset project templates set up, so they can quickly create a new project/song with the tracks and instruments ready-assigned for a demo. (I’m pretty sure this can be done with my Tascam 2488mkII digital hardware multitrack too, but haven’t yet really looked into that.)

Next, as far as possible, it is useful if you are proficient enough on your instrument(s), and comfortable enough in a pressurised studio environment, to be able to lay down all the necessary tracks in quick succession, with as few retakes as you can manage. Clearly, too, it helps if you know the song and arrangement inside-out, or at least well enough to be able to lay down all the parts in as few passes as you can, as in this one-hour scenario there is almost no time for correcting mistakes. You have just long enough for one pass at every track (maybe two, if you finished other parts quickly)—this is going to be a rough demo, as time doesn’t allow for polish here.

So, how is the Music and Lyrics scenario shaping up so far? Well, it’s fair to assume that as an ex-member of a very popular 80s band, Alex Fletcher (Grant’s character, remember) would have had at least some experience of studio recording, though I did wonder why he happened to have a functional demo-recording setup in his apartment (from what I could see, based round a reasonably new Mac) if he hadn’t written any songs in ten years and was only singing at school reunions and amusement parks. (And if you think that’s over-analytical… have you ever read the trivia sections at the Internet Movie Database??!) Anyway, Alex should be proficient enough with his instruments and recording gear to bang everything down quickly enough, which is how it turns out.

In the film, Alex also has the good sense to keep the arrangement simple—keyboard, rhythm guitar, bass guitar and programmed drums (the latter tapped in via the keyboard), which not only makes it easier to play correctly and quickly, but would also allow Cora’s producer to take the song forward without Alex’s arrangement imposing too much. I only found myself questioning the order in which Alex recorded the parts (keys, bass, guitar, drums), as personally when I record, I lay down the drums earlier (second, in fact, after the rhythm guitar with click-track) so that the drums are present as a foundation for the other parts. (Some studios record the drums first, but I prefer to have a guide chordal part in the mix to drum to, so I don’t get lost!)

Finally, the vocals. I find this the hardest part to get right first time (though I feel I’m a stronger instrumentalist anyway), but Alex and Sophie in the film have an added problem: Sophie hasn’t sung much before, and certainly not with a mike in front of her with only a few minutes to go (and no-one told her she was singing on the demo). All I can say is, she must have rallied marvellously, as next thing we see, the pair are running for a taxi…

So, do I think the film was realistic, in showing the characters recording a full demo and getting it to its intended target in one hour? On balance, perhaps, yes, though I’m betting the demo Cora listened to at the heliport had more than a few rough edges (there would have been no time for a polished mix, I’m guessing for one).

As I hinted, Alex wouldn’t have been the first to achieve the feat. In the real world, one of the most widely-heard one-hour demos in rock, went out on the Beatles’ Anthology 3 album: Paul McCartney’s 1969 demo of “Come And Get It” for Badfinger. Recorded and mixed within one hour (reputedly before a session for Abbey Road), Macca played and sang all the parts in four passes (vocal/piano, 2nd vocal/maracas, drums and bass guitar), and aside from the odd fluff such as a wrong bass note at 1′44″ (E over C on the piano, instead of C), it’s surprisingly accomplished for the time it was made in.

I’ve even managed this myself a couple of times, especially recently when I’ve often had to lay down two or three songs (usually entirely solo) in an evening, for Joy’s children’s musical activity sessions. The results aren’t always as polished as I’d like, and if the recorded songs are to be heard by others outside the sessions, I wouldn’t mind re-doing a few bits (!), but it’s quietly satisfying when you can lay down a “complete” arrangement in an hour or so.

So, some useful hints for banging down quick “full band”-style solo demos:

• Have your recording facility ready to go, and all required instruments, mikes, etc. set up
• Make sure you’re familiar with the song and how you’re going to arrange the demo version (so you don’t get lost halfway through)
• Keep the arrangement simple—rhythm guitar and/or keyboard, bass, drums—so you don’t get caught up with complications
• …er…
• …add anything else you find for yourself!

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.

(or “here’s a post while I wait for something worthwhile to happen that I can post about”)!

Well, I sent in the OU assignment a few days ago (one more to go, and if all goes well, I’ll have gained the qualification I’m working towards ), so I allow myself a brief breather before heading back to the books. Well, to be truthful, a more sedentary period was forced on me the last couple of days, by what Robert Fripp in his diary might term a “Devil Bug” (high temperature, coughing up icky stuff, etc.), though I’m pleased to report it seems to have got bored and is probably looking for someone else to move on to.

Perhaps as a result, life feels as if it is taking a pause for breath itself right now—it’s rather on the uneventful side this weekend, but I may as well fill you in on a couple of things while I’m here:

• My ongoing project to produce a set of backing tracks for Joy’s children’s musical educational activity sessions, is… well, ongoing. Joy needed two more songs for this weekend which weren’t among the ones we demoed with my sister-in-law just before Christmas, so when I finished the OU assignment I went to the studio and quickly laid down the tracks. “Old MacDonald Had A Farm” ended up with an apt (albeit somewhat predictable) country-ish vibe, whilst “Cows In The Kitchen” developed a life of its own in the hour or so that I was laying it down—imagine Roger McGuinn jamming with Queen on “‘39″, and you have an idea of the direction it took…
• As you may guess, I have made no progress on any of my own material since writing about my intentions the other week, and it’s probably time I just got the ball rolling. I could make a start by making a demo of the “title” track of the concept album, which has been pretty well complete in the writing sense for some time now (though I may change the final couple of lines to lead into one of my older songs, should I add it to the album sequence—maybe I’ll record both versions and choose the appropriate one at the end). Watch this space.
• Time is also running out to commit to disk the first of my “cover-per-month” project songs, so the first one might need to be a “start of February” song instead of “January”! Unfortunately, for copyright reasons I don’t think I’ll be able to make these recordings generally available, but… well, if you really want to hear them, “where there’s a will, there’s a way”…
  And the first song? It will be “Six String Orchestra”, originally written by Harry Chapin (of “Cat’s In The Cradle” fame), but probably better known for its inclusion in an episode of “The Muppet Show” (sung by Scooter in character as the song’s eager student rock star). The challenge here will be playing the acoustic guitar and singing deliberately poorly (well, the second part should be easier ), as Chapin famously did when he played the song in concert (look on YouTube for video clips of this). Anyway, it’s quite a fun song, and I think I’ll enjoy playing the rest of the “phantom band” in the choruses!

And in my continued determination to do more recording (and hopefully songwriting) in 2008, my latest idea to ensure I actually do this…

As far as possible, I am going to try and record at least one ‘cover version’ a month throughout 2008, partly to get me into the habit of recording, arranging and so on, and maybe to kick-start some new songs of my own.

I have a couple of candidates in mind already. To a great extent, I’m going to try and choose songs I like, but which I don’t think are that widely known. If I do end up covering any more familiar numbers, I will try and perform them in a different way to the original(s), unless I really can’t think how to do that

Unless there’s a copyright issue which makes it a risky prospect, I hope to post the tracks for free download here, along with some notes on why I chose the song, the techie stuff about the recording, etc. I may also limit the time period during which these recordings will be available from this site, partly due to the above issue, but also because I don’t have that much Web server space to archive the audio files (and I’m not sure if I can upload material to the Internet Archive which I didn’t compose myself).

So, keep an eye open for the first cover, probably within the next few weeks or so, and remember: these tracks may only be available for a short time, so jump in when you see them!

If you’ve been reading here for more than a few weeks, you may recall a previous post where I promised I would make available some of the demos I’ve recorded in the last few years. Well, it took a bit longer than I expected, but to reward your patience I herewith offer up the first instalment of recordings for your free download (and, hopefully, enjoyment).

I should mention at the outset that these tracks are all hosted at the Internet Archive, and that the links below point to the archive page for each track. The recordings have all been converted automatically into various audio formats, including the ubiquitous MP3, Ogg Vorbis and FLAC, so you can choose which one you wish to use (and I’d recommend the latter two, especially FLAC if you want the best quality).

Unless stated otherwise, assume that everything you hear on the recordings is me—that includes some background noises (e.g. rustles, creaks, knocks, etc.), as I haven’t always cleaned these up. These recordings should really be considered “rough”, but hey, you’re getting them for free…

• Sidings and branches – from the spring of 2005, one of my personal favourites. That’s a real glockenspiel on there; the instrument is now unfortunately somewhat “trashed” after my daughter got her hands on it…
• Inner Roundabout Way – another 2005 song, intended as the first in a series of spoof “lost” Sixties songs by imaginary bands with silly names, but this one ended up the only track I completed for the aborted project. (The band, incidentally, was going to be called “Icarus’ Wings”—a folk trio who decided to go electric and psychedelic, with mixed results. You be the judge.)
• Shell-like – again, from 2005, a sprightly ode to the delights of a seaside holiday in summer, with the odd unexpected lyrical twist.
• Christmas morning – Written and demo-ed in the late spring of 2002, just after I got married, this song’s lyrics actually doesn’t have much to do with the festive season, but it fits that time of year quite nicely anyway. Best of all, I entered the song into the Folk category of the 2002 UK Songwriting Contest, and it was a runner-up in the category – perhaps my finest hour to date? My wife Joy plays piano and synth “bells”, but the guitar synth “pad” is me, as is everything else.
• All that I can do – The newest song of this batch, this jaunty number was written over August and September 2007 with the ukulele Joy gave me for Valentine’s Day this year (aaaahhhh, it must be true love ). This is a fairly rough-edged demo—two ukuleles and acoustic guitar—and please forgive any background noise you may encounter here and there. (This was also one of the first recordings I made on my Tascam 2488mkII multitrack, so I was effectively learning how to use it as I recorded this (still am, really).)

I should also point out that these recordings are all released under a Creative Commons licence (specifically, the England/Wales Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA) 2.0 version). In plain English, that means you can’t sell my recordings to make money (though you’re welcome to distribute them for free), and you can use them as a basis for a derivative work (i.e. remix, add extra instruments, etc.), so long as you make the derivative work available under the same licence conditions. Basically, please feel free to download these tracks, use them in your podcasts, include them on your “great tracks I’ve heard” playlist or whatever—in fact, please do, and drop me a line (via the obfuscated e-mail link elsewhere on this page) to let me know

I’ll upload a second instalment of demos soon, and after that I plan to add some older “albums” of mine to the Internet Archive, such as the mini-album “Rosewood” (2000-2001), and the instrumental collections “Over The Bridge” (1999) and “Through The Arch Window” (1998). Beyond that, my “juvenilia” becomes, I think, increasingly embarrassing, and I’m not sure how much I wish to reveal!

Having said that, “Five Songs” (1996) has some moments I’m quite pleased with—I taped (literally) that collection in the autumn of 1996 on a Tascam 424mkII four-track, under the influence of melancholy singer-songwriters such as Nick Drake, and the early solo work of Everything But The Girl’s Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt.

Artistically, and particularly for me personally, the mini-album is rather of its time and place, and I’m interested in preserving it mainly for that reason. Mind you, I’m not quite sure how I’d go about transferring the tracks from the four-track cassettes (even though I still have the 424 up in the loft) to digital, nor to what extent I could “clean up” the audio and make it more listenable—nor, for that matter, can I say whether the effort it would take would ultimately be worthwhile. And come to think of it, I’m not 100% certain where the master tapes are…

Food for thought, indeed, and perhaps a project for the Christmas holidays?

You know, now that I’ve been learning drums for a bit (adding it to guitar, ukulele, mandolin, bass guitar and the rest), I can honestly say I think the tub-thumper at the back of the band (which they usually are, unless one’s name happens to be Dave Clark) is often the most maligned and undervalued member.

Fine. So drummers don’t play a melodic instrument as such—oh, and what a debate we could have there!—and some of them do tend to fit the “Animal” stereotype, if we’re honest—but with the exception of the keyboard player, it’s unlikely that any other band member will usually be playing two, three or even four independent parts at the same time, as the drummer may be doing.

That’s what I’ve found most difficult to get used to when learning the drums, especially when some patterns might (say) require you to play quarter-notes on the hi-hat, whilst playing a combination of quarter- and eighth-notes on the kick and snare. And doing this whilst keeping accurate time and doing so over the full duration of a song…

…well, all I can say is: don’t wheel out the drummer jokes until you can prove you’re able to play what they can! And if you think about it, a good drummer can potentially save a bad band, but a bad drummer can kill a good band…

Whilst I’m here, I might as well mention that I’ve made no progress on either the original CD project I’ve referred to in the last month or two, and am even thinking of dropping it entirely, in favour of moving on to new material. I can’t see there’s much prospect of me being able to work on the old stuff for the rest of the year, not least because I have a couple of other short-term projects which are likely to take me up to Christmas (of which I may post more in due course).

Thanks for your patience in the meantime, and please keep an eye on the blog…

As my nascent CD project advances with the pace of an asthmatic ant with some heavy shopping (to paraphrase Blackadder Goes Forth), in the meantime…

It’s been my intention for some time to make available at least some of the demos of the songs of mine, which are most likely to make it onto the CD, so you can have some idea of what form (hopefully) the final album may take. The oldest of these demos date back to the spring of 2002, whilst I threw together the latest one only about a month ago, so they cover quite a range of my “career” (such as it is).

Whilst the demos are not quite ready for downloading yet, I’ve started uploading them to their first online destination: the Internet Archive. I have had a login at the IA for some time, and even uploaded a ‘test’ track a few years ago—this time, I thought I’d try the Archive for hosting the demos, mainly because of bandwidth, more expansive hosting space, and the fact that (if I am correct) the IA automatically encodes audio into multiple different file formats, so visitors can choose the format which suits them best.

It’ll take a little time, as the IA usually requests that audio files be uploaded in uncompressed WAV format, so that they can then be encoded automatically into MP3, Ogg, FLAC and other formats by their systems. However, I hope soon to start letting you know where you can download the tracks, so you can begin to get an idea of where the CD project is heading.

Keep watching…