posted by Tim @ 13:42
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Oh, and while I'm at the keyboard...
I've been musing over how I'm going to achieve probably the major 'task' of my nascent CD project: recording some live backing tracks with real musicians. I mentioned in an earlier post that I'd like to have a 'real' (i.e. not programmed) rhythm section on some of the songs—on present thinking, about half of them—and have a reasonable idea how I'd like to go about it.
The main factor impacting on this laudable concept, can be summed up in three words:
Let's face it: most people would say they prefer hearing a live drummer, bassist, digeridoo player or whatever on a recording, rather than the MIDI/sampled/Casio keyboard equivalent. Sometimes, that would even include me, and in my younger and more ignorant days (circa 1991!), I admit to have (shudder) suggested to at least one higher-profile recording musician than I, that he might have made that last album of his with a bit less programmed backing. (Sammy, if you ever read this, I really hope you don't remember that gawky teenager saying that to you at that signing session, but if you do: sorry, and I'm older and a bit wiser now...)
I'd agree that nothing sounds quite like a 'real' band going through its paces, as opposed to programmed drums (and especially cymbals) and other MIDI backing parts, although to be fair there's often a place for the latter. This is why—after years of multitracked and usually partly programmed solo demos—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.
However, despite all the advances in music technology over the years, it remains a right royal pain-in-the-proverbial to actually record a group of real musicians (especially if there's a drum kit involved), and even more so if you're doing so on a shoestring budget... or for that matter, next to no budget at all.
You may have picked up that my project here falls more or less into this category. I've already planned to cut down the time it will take to record the band tracks, mainly by
But, that still leaves the question: where will I actually do the recording? The options are not, on the face of it, promising. One day in a pro studio would probably cost a few hundred, and recording in a rehearsal studio with the "Sidingsound Mobile" (i.e. my own gear) probably wouldn't save me much dosh when hire of the room was factored in, though I haven't checked that route much yet. Basically, even if I had that kind of money to spend on the recording, I'm not sure at this stage whether I could justify it, especially as at this stage I'm not even that sure what I'm going to do with the end result.
Which leaves what I think is the most likely option considering the above: set up all the gear in someone's home, and record everything there. In fact, at this stage, the primary candidate location is... our house's "music room", where Joy currently teaches piano. On the plus side, it's big enough (just) to accommodate a drum kit and two guitarists, and I'd only have to move my recording gear downstairs instead of across town.
Of course, you knew there had to be a few catches:
So, perhaps not an ideal location, then, but unless some Good Samaritan I know can come up with a better location which won't triple my recording costs in one go, I think our "music room" is looking the likely winner. And much as I'd like to put this off for a while, I'd rather like to get the 'band' recording for this project done soon; if possible, by the end of 2007, which leaves me with only about two months to sort this whole business out.
Rather a lot of trouble to go to, for a CD project that I'm not even sure what to do with when I finish it! Still, I think that if I can pull this off, I'll have a set of songs that I'll be able to look back on in years to come, and think, "that sounds pretty good, hmmmmm" (or maybe better, if I'm fortunate).
Anyway, it could be worse—at some stage, I'll have to think about how I'm going to get the project mastered...
(cue 'Psycho'-style shrieking violins :-) )
Labels: music
posted by Tim @ 21:49
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Just for the record (pun intended), I re-did the bass guitar on "This Little Light Of Mine" yesterday evening as I predicted, this time playing my Squier Precision Special bass instead of using the VG-8's "JazzBass" patch. Yes, the latter just about does the job for very rough demos, but for any bass parts you'd like more than a couple of people to hear, I'd reach for the Squier any time.
I should schedule myself a "vocal session" before long—not just for the track in hand (which for an exercise in learning how to work my new multitrack, is turning out somewhat protracted), but for the first "proper" song that I started recording for the CD project a few weeks ago: "When The Sun Goes Off To Sleep". The latter is more or less complete apart from the vocal, so once I've got that down on disk to my satisfaction, I'll be 1/10th of the way towards finishing the album...
Labels: recording
posted by Tim @ 21:24
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I did some recording yesterday evening, roughly between 9.45pm and 10.30pm. It is part of my ongoing process of trying to "learn the ropes" with the Tascam 2488MkII, and this track is therefore probably not going on any albums, though I might make it available in some other way.
The recording itself is a more or less straight copy of Roger McGuinn's Folk Den rendition of "This Little Light Of Mine", which he plays very much in a Byrds sort of style, using his Rickenbacker 37012RM "signature" electric 12-string. I wanted to see how close I could get to his recording, using my Steinberger Sceptre electric guitar and Roland VG-8EX V-Guitar System (which has a pretty good McGuinn-style Rickenbacker 12-string patch created by VG-8 user Les Fradkin).
Anyway, I didn't finish the recording last night, but managed to lay down the following tracks (all using patches on the VG-8):
I'm definitely going to replace the VG-8 bass part with one played on my Squier Precision Special, and the VG-8 "acoustic 12" part might not survive either, but at least I have something to build on here. Hopefully I will get the chance to record the rest later this week, and will let you know here how I get on.
Labels: recording
posted by Tim @ 08:49
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So, you might be thinking around this point: what do you do with your studio set up?
Well you might ask, and the simple answer—occupied as I am with the worthy demands of job, vocational study and family—might be, "not as much as I'd like"! I'm not the most prolific of songwriters at the best of times, but I do actually use the studio for producing demos, and actually hope that the weeks and months ahead will see me doing more with it than has been the case until now.
Since I acquired the Tascam 2488mkII (my current multitrack, a 24-track digital hard-disk-based machine, of which more detail in a future post) this August, I've already become a little more active on the recording front, and I expect this activity to continue to increase from here.
It often helps to have "something to aim for", and the most immediate "project" which I have scoped out for myself, is to gain experience with operating and getting good results out of the 2488mkII, by producing what I hope will become my first proper CD (at 35!). I have a stack of demos of my songs, accumulated over the past five years or so, and whilst the results are superficially reasonable in their own right, I am planning to re-record ten of the songs on the 2488, possibly for some kind of release (though I'm not sure exactly what shape that will take yet).
For the most part, I performed the demos entirely myself, with some guest appearances (mostly my wife Joy on piano, and Dan, the friend who's teaching me drums, played djembé on one). However, I'm hoping to record roughly half of the songs with a 'live' rhythm section (Dan on drums and another friend on bass, with me on guitar); we'd get the basic backing tracks onto disk, and then overdub the rest of the instruments at leisure later. (According to a 2000 Sound On Sound magazine article on the band Eels, this is the approach they took for their album "Daisies Of The Galaxy"—it gives you a live rhythm section on your recordings, without the expense of recording everything in a pro studio.)
The other tracks would be mostly solo again, either with comparatively stripped-down accompaniment or (in at least three cases I can think of) some measure of programmed/sequenced backing. I'd say the latter is for artistic reasons rather than economic, in that I'm going for a deliberately "electronica" sort of sound—in other words, the songs which I 'hear' a proper "band" backing for, will hopefully have it.
When will I start on this project? Well, I already have—I recorded the backing track for what I think will be the CD's closer ("When The Sun Goes Off To Sleep", a song I wrote for my daughter Naomi in 2004, before she was born), a few weeks ago, more to test the 2488 than anything else. The results were better than I expected, so when I shake my current bad cold (!) I'll overdub my vocal onto it.
As for when I'll record the 'band' backing tracks, that depends when I can get it together. I'd like to do this before the end of 2007, but it will depend on when Dan and/or my bass-playing friend are available; where we can record as cheaply as possible (rehearsal studio?); whether I can borrow some drum mikes; can I fit it around study/family duties... you get the picture.
Anyway, as they say, watch this space—I'll keep you informed here as to how (and where) it all goes.
(And, for that matter, when/where you'll be able to buy a copy of the results! :-) )
posted by Tim @ 18:56
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One of my more unusual musical activities of late (at least, compared with the rest of my musical 'career') is that I've been taking some drum lessons on Saturdays with a friend of mine.
It's something that I've wanted to do for some time, not least because drums is the one instrument in the conventional rock band lineup that I don't have at least some measure of ability with. I've been playing guitar to what I'd call a reasonable standard, for twenty years now; I can handle bass guitar competently enough; my keyboard skills are at what I'd call "John Lennon" level (i.e. I just about know where the notes are!); and I'd say I can pick up a few other instruments (e.g. mandolin, ukulele, recorder) and get acceptable results out of them.
This has meant that I've been able to record multitrack demos over the years, playing most if not all the instrumental parts myself. However, when it has come to drum parts, I have either had to program them into a MIDI sequencer, use sampled drum loops or basic drum machine patterns, play other kinds of percussion parts, or just do without them altogether.
My hope is that I will soon be in a position where I can 'play' drums on my recordings, if the need arises. I'd really like to buy a Roland HD1 "V-Drums Lite" electronic drum kit in the future, which would allow me to play drum parts into my MIDI sequencer, or record the actual sounds from the kit onto my audio multitrack, whichever was the best approach.
Although I doubt I'll end up drumming for a live band, I just thought that being able to play kit drums would be a useful skill to have. I don't know which direction this will take me in, but it should be fun finding out.
(Oh, and in case you were wondering where the 'carrots' part of the title came from... well, I did roast some vegetables for dinner last night, but that's about as far as it goes!)
Labels: drums, instruments, music
posted by Tim @ 20:33
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Further to my last post: I've started hacking around with the existing page template, to try and turn it into something more my own. There's still plenty of the original left at the moment, though over time I hope the page design will end up mostly if not all "me". Don't be surprised if the page changes appearance quite frequently at the moment---the decorators are in!
Oh, and I'll start writing about music stuff soon...
posted by Tim @ 20:40
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Now I've confirmed that the mike is working---as it were---time for my first 'proper' post...
So, welcome to the Sidingsound blog---the latest in a medium-sized procession of attempts by myself to start (and more to the point, maintain) a written presence on the Web. I used to maintain a personal Web site regularly for a number of years, but getting married in 2002 (despite its many compensating benefits!) has meant a reduction in the amount of time spent in front of a monitor, in favour of giving well-deserved attention to my "real-world" family. All quite commendable :-)
So, why start a new blog? Well, partly because it may give me the impetus to build on it to revamp the rest of the www.sidingsound.co.uk webspace, as I've been meaning to do for the past couple of years but didn't get around to. Also, I thought people might be interested to find out more about (particularly) my home music recording setup and activities... and yes, there's the small matter of my brother having just started his own (very fine) blog lately, so a little good-natured sibling competitiveness could be said to have come into it!
Hopefully, before long I will find the time to apply some metaphorical WD40 to my seized-up-for-lack-of-use CSS skills and give this blog a homegrown template, instead of the mighty-fine-but-generic Dave Shea one it's sporting as I type this. In the meantime, here's a taste of what's likely to be appearing here in the near future:
And this being the era of Web 2.0 and all, you might see the occasional item inserted from our Flickr photoset, YouTube and the like. Finger on the pulse of the age, you know :-)
Incidentally, I pledge that I will try my best to post here regularly, as I repeatedly promised and failed to do with this blog's predecessor! I'm going to try the "little and often" approach, with a mix of short and longer pieces, and see how long I can keep that going.
Here goes...
posted by Tim @ 16:47
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...testing, testing, number one, number one, isn't this a lot o' fun...
If this is working, I'll see you here again soon!
Labels: testing
posted by Tim @ 16:53
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The blog of a thirtysomething English musician's activities, in his home project recording studio (called, appropriately enough, Sidingsound) and elsewhere. Usually music-related, but not always.
In my mid-thirties, married with one daughter, like playing various instruments, recording, songwriting... actually, that's all in my list of interests, isn't it?
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