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.

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…

Today’s edition of The Guardian carried a very interesting article, examining the use of music in British children’s TV. In particular, the writer compares the soundtracks for the late Oliver Postgate’s shows from the 1950s to the 1970s (“The Clangers“, “Bagpuss“, “Ivor The Engine“, amongst others) with those of 2000s programmes, mostly on the BBC’s “CBeebies” pre-school channel.

Perhaps due to the event which has apparently spurred its publication—a forthcoming live performance of some of “Clangers” composer Vernon Elliott’s scores for the programme, in London’s Union Chapel—the article concentrates for most of its “past” coverage on Elliott’s soundtracks for Postgate’s programmes. Whilst richly-deserved, this focus sadly leaves no room for the other musical jewel in the crown of Postgate’s TV work: the delightful English and Irish folk-influenced soundtrack to “Bagpuss”, contributed by Sandra Kerr and John Faulkner (who also voiced Madeleine the rag doll and Gabriel the toad respectively).

Furthermore, whilst I thought the article took a pretty comprehensive look at its subject in the space allowed, I felt mildly disappointed at the omission of one of the key figures in British children’s TV music of the last fifty years: Freddie Phillips, whose multilayered classical guitar-and-percussion creations formed the soundtrack (and set much of the mood) for Gordon Murray’s 1960s animated shows, including “Trumpton”, “Camberwick Green” and “Chigley”.

In my view, Phillips is long overdue wider recognition for his role as a pioneer of home multitrack recording in the UK, overdubbing multiple instruments himself in his home studio at a time when such facilities were the preserve of electronics buffs and tinkerers (such as Joe Meek). Actor Brian Cant—the narrator of Murray’s programmes above—has painted a picture in interviews of Phillips setting up microphones in cupboards and bathrooms, and using all manner of ingenious techniques to achieve the sounds and effects he was aiming for. The end result was a charming and highly-evocative series of songs and incidental music, which have lingered in the minds of the children who have watched the series since the 1960s, and which still stand up to listening over forty years later.

When the article moves onto the present day, the writer thankfully avoids the temptation to dismiss all current children’s TV music as bland, production-line and unworthy in comparison to its forbears (although there is unfortunately some truth to the charge). Liz Kitchen is justly praised for her Stéphane Grappelli/Django Reinhardt-influenced music for “Harry and Toto“, as are John Greswell and collaborators for the soundtrack to “Charlie and Lola” (the latter being one of the few true highlights of CBeebies’ schedule, for both my daughter and myself!).

A central thrust of the article which I would debate, however, seems to be that “live” music—with “real” instruments, preferably played live—is invariably preferable to computers and electronics. Being a musician who employs acoustic, electric and electronic instrumentation (and enjoys all of them), I have sympathy with this view, but I feel it is just too “binary” or “black-and-white” an opinion. Yes, even some modern electronic instruments can have a cold, inorganic feel to them, but there are times when that is the desired effect, or when it doesn’t particularly matter.

There’s also nothing to prevent the composer from blending the “organic” with the “machine”; not to mention, too, that on the average composer’s budget, sometimes a synth or sampler is the only way to attain the sound(s) which are needed (certainly if one is working on a “demo”). Moreover, a creative enough composer can generate warmth from even an almost entirely synthetic soundtrack—witness Andrew Davenport’s gently cosy music for CBeebies’ bedtime series “In The Night Garden“.

After all this analysis: frankly, I would jump—no, make that fly—at the opportunity to produce music for children’s TV. My ideal approach (notwithstanding my comments above) would be to avoid using a software DAW (in my case, Logic), unless the piece called for something only possible through electronic means, and stick to acoustic (and if appropriate, electric) instruments.

If given “free rein”, I’d like to create music which nods to the children’s TV music I always responded to—Freddie Phillips (“Trumpton”, etc.), Kerr/Faulkner (“Bagpuss”)—whilst feeding in other musical influences of mine which I think would work, such as the Penguin Cafe Orchestra’s less “classical” pieces (think “Bean Fields“, and other PCO tracks with lots of ukuleles, percussion, etc.). There’d be lots of fretted strings (6- and 12-string guitars, ukulele, dulcimer, mandolin and the like), percussion, glockenspiel, recorders, whistles, melodica… in fact, I feel suddenly inspired, and think I’ll try cooking up some demos in the coming days!

At the very least, it’ll give me a good reason to (finally) put together the “music” page on this blog, that I’ve been promising for weeks

So, the August Bank Holiday has come and gone, and as we embark upon the final third of 2009, as if to mark the occasion, the British weather opened up with some pretty hefty showers this afternoon (and thankfully I was inside for most of them). Never mind: at least I got the grass cut yesterday when it was at least fairly quiet on the meteorological front…

Just a couple of items to report for today:

• Yesterday, Joy and I managed to get some work done on the Christmas CD project between us, as I’d hoped. During the day, Joy and Naomi took themselves off for a couple of hours, in which time I recorded some acoustic guitars and bass on “Joy To The World” (joining one existing electric dulcimer track, and accidentally wiping another ), and also played the same instruments to begin work on what I hope will be one of the centrepieces of the album (but don’t mind if I keep that under my proverbial hat a bit longer). Finally, to round off the afternoon, I fired up Logic and began another new track, “Silent Night”—recording some “voice” tracks to use later.
  Then, in the evening, Joy and I carried on working on this track—Joy recording the piano part into Logic, and me using the MIDI guitar to create organ, synth bass and a couple of vocoder parts (that’s why I needed the voice recordings I made earlier). I feel we have plenty more to do on these songs, but at this moment it feels as if we actually stand a chance of finishing this project in time for December… and then we can figure out what we’re going to do with it
• You may have noticed the Lifestream daily digest pages are publishing fine—I haven’t decided yet whether I’m going to keep them, or perhaps move to a weekly version, so please feel free to comment on what you’d prefer. I’m also going to experiment with some code created by the Lifestream plugin’s author, which would add to a “single post” page on this blog, some entries from the Lifestream from around the time of the post. Exciting times…
• I am planning to return to last week’s post about the Nokia N900 (mainly, to answer some of the queries I myself posed), but I have to admit I am leaning away from considering the device as a phone upgrade to my venerable Nokia N95.
  It’s not that the N900 doesn’t look impressive—quite the reverse—but I’m mainly concerned that (a) T-Mobile UK is unlikely to stock it; (b) if they do, the cost of an upgrade is likely to be prohibitive and ongoing; (c) the N900 will not be a significant enough improvement for me over the N95 to justify ditching the latter; and (d) there just aren’t—and may never be—enough apps available for the N900 to do everything I’d like it to. Instead, I am thinking of keeping the N95 and looking for an “end-of-line” or refurbished older Linux “netbook” (such as an Asus Eee 701 or earlier Acer Aspire One), which would offer many of the same benefits (and others besides) for significantly less than the outlay for an N900. This all depends on many factors—finding such a machine, available funds, etc.—but for now I think the N900 is off the menu.

And no, I haven’t done any more work on the proposed “Music” page yet, but I will…

A quick note before I really start getting ready for work (what, it’s the 19th August? where is this year going?), to mention that I’ve been recording some new parts this week for one of the tracks for the prospective Christmas CD that Joy and I are working on when we have time.

The track in question (It Came Upon The Midnight Clear) was begun last month, with two electric dulcimer parts from me, and this week I’ve added two electric guitars and bass guitar, as well as two MIDI guitar parts in Logic (“Hammond organ” and “upright bass”).

It’s quite listenable at this stage, though I haven’t decided whether to keep the MIDI upright bass or the electric bass yet, and I’d like to find time for Joy to play piano on the track, so there’s a bit further to go yet. Still, that’s progress of a sort, eh?

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

Scott Andrew drew my attention to an interesting artistic project the other day:

“DIY hand made folktronica” (it says here) artist State Shirt, is inviting folk on the Net to send him snippets of audio, which he then intends to remix into an original album project. I’m seriously thinking of bunging down a couple of electric dulcimer loops and chucking them his way, to see what he makes of them.

(Oh, and I’m glad to say my dulcimer noter—a short length of hardwood dowelling, used by traditional mountain dulcimer players to fret notes—was lost, but as of the other evening, is now found. I didn’t fancy my chances of getting another one easily…)

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