First batch of demos (and more to come)
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?
Labels: demos, music, songs
Spare a thought for the guy at the back
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...
Labels: demos, drums, music
On the Album-A-Day project
First news: I turned 35 yesterday. And now I've got that out of the way... ;-)
In the dim distant future, when I find myself with a spare slot in my ever-busy schedule, I would love to have a go at contributing to the Album-A-Day project (please excuse the URL—and for that matter, some of the language on the page).
In a nutshell, AAD is a challenge to the recording artist to be spontaneously creative—to see what you can come up with given a very restrictive brief:
- The mission is to compose and record a set of songs (at least thirty songs, or at least twenty minutes' total length) within a 24-hour period. (As the project's founder points out, this idea lends itself more to lots of short songs, than to longer pieces.)
- You can collaborate with others, but everyone must be working on the same song at the same time (i.e. no "parallel" working).
- Every song you start must be included on the finished album ("no outtakes").
- No ideas or songs from before the chosen day can be included (in other words, no covers or interpretations of existing material). It all has to be composed on the day.
- Finally, the results should be made available for free download, although it is OK to offer it for sale as well (presumably with some sort of incentive to make this worthwhile).
It doesn't take a genius to work out that the output from such a project would lack some of the polish of something worked on over a longer period. However, the project makes this a virtue—an express aim of concepts like this is to force the participant to stop procrastinating, worrying over quality, etc., and just get on with the act of creating. This, for one, makes it a useful exercise for breaking the old writer's block; something I myself am only too familiar with...
I've only listened to one of the efforts to date (John Governale's "Songs of the Oxford Hills"), which whilst obviously not as polished an affair as a more leisurely-constructed set of songs, has some pleasant moments (especially the wistful "Coming Home To Hebron") and almost sounds too coherent for how I'd imagine an AAD should sound.
Whilst I'd really like to have a go at creating an AAD myself, the major bar I can think of is how I could find a whole day to actually do it, with my family to consider. I think I'd have to include them in in it somehow (Joy on piano, and Naomi (nearly 3) on constant interruptions!), and make this a feature of the finished project.
Ah well, file under "for the future"—for now, I have a couple of other recording projects on the go, inbetween which I'm still trying to get together my original CD project. At this rate, I think I'll produce an AAD first.
(Oh, and I had a great birthday—thanks!)
Labels: album-a-day, music, recording
Session musician!
I got a rare chance to play on someone else's recording session last night (as opposed to one of my own), thanks indirectly to an acquaintance of ours who is over in India for some months. Basically, she will be spending Christmas there this year, and a bunch of folk from our church decided to send her a little something to see her through the festive season: a CD with some specially-recorded renditions of Christmas songs (presumably ones that she likes).
When I got wind of this scheme, I volunteered my services (instrumental, recording, etc.), and shortly afterwards my friend Ben, who is producing the recordings, invited me in to lay down some guitar tracks. To this end, yesterday evening I took my acoustic and electric, plus my Roland VG-8 and EBow, round to Ben's home studio, to see what we could get down in three hours.
As it turned out, the answer to that is, "quite a bit, considering". With the VG-8, I didn't have to spend much time messing with mike placement and so on, so I was more or less able to 'plug in and go', which saved us some valuable time. I played on three songs ("In The Bleak Midwinter", "Shine Jesus Shine" and "Do They Know It's Christmas?" (yes, the Band Aid one, and specifically the 2004 version)); another friend, Luke, had already recorded piano tracks for the three songs, which we would be building on.
With the first two songs, I recorded a number of short guitar parts (e.g. verse/chorus, or single verses) in different styles, sounds, etc., so that Ben could splice the bits together into complete tracks later. Before now, I personally wouldn't have thought of trying this approach (especially for a recording I wanted to sell), but now I've tried it for myself, I think it would work well for demos, or where I was recording another musician and time was particularly limited (as was the case here).
It was great fun playing lots of different guitar styles and sounds—everything from 'straight' acoustic rhythm guitar, through jangly 12-string electric (courtesy of the VG-8) and some solo and 'textural' parts with the EBow, all the way to dual harmony lead guitar on "Do They Know It's Christmas?" (the latter replicating Justin and Dan Hawkins' parts on the 2004 recording, which we're modelling our version on). It's almost like being a kind of musical Rory Bremner: how quickly can I switch between different "voices"?
Working the session last night, reminded me how much I enjoy this kind of thing: I just wish I had more time than I have, to play and record music both for myself and for others. To be honest, if we'd had more time, I would've had a couple more tries at improving some of my performances, following the advice of another recording musician I know (basically, when recording, don't settle for any "second-best" attempts if you can help it, as you'll hear your mistakes every time you play the track!). However, we had the time that we had, and I think in the end, the results should sound pretty good (especially if Ben can cut-and-paste the better bits together, and maybe play some extra guitar himself, which he's well able to do).
From here, I understand Ben's going to record the bass and drums with various other church people we know, as well as assorted solo and choir vocals. I'm really looking forward to hearing how this turns out, and hope that the results will help our friend in India feel like she has a part of us with her for Christmas.
Labels: guitar, music, recording, session
Music quote of the day
From Alexis Petridis' review in today's Guardian of a new CD by Icelandic band Sigur Rós (one of my favourites):
Hoppípolla [a track from Sigur Rós' 2005 album Takk...] is the track television turns to when it wants to push the button marked Cower Before the Majesty of This Event, Puny Human.
If you've ever heard Hoppípolla (and if you live in the UK, you probably have without knowing it—amongst its many uses in the British media, the BBC used it on the trailers for Planet Earth), you'll know exactly what Alexis is talking about: a majestic arpeggiated piano introduction morphing into a sweeping orchestral epic which puts one in mind of vast glaciers or huge herds of gazelle leaping over the Serengeti.
I just wish I could've come up with Alexis' way of putting it.
Labels: music, quote, web
Just like riding a bicycle!
To follow up yesterday's "round-up"—where I revealed how I was having trouble with one of my drumming exercises—I'm most pleased to bring some good news...
Yesterday evening, I was sat down (and I won't say where), when I thought I'd see if I could do the exercise (crotchet beats, alternating left and right hands, with "bass drum" on beat 1 and "hi-hat pedal" on 3) without the sticks and practice pad. Whilst before, the exercise turned me into an uncoordinated mess, this time to my amazement, I found I was suddenly able to do it. Yes!
Moreover, I barely had to think about what I was doing. This is good, as it's important that I don't think much about it, if I'm ever going to be able to play drums to even a reasonable standard. It's rather like when you learn to play any other instrument, or ride a bicycle—when you can stop thinking mechanically about what you're doing, and just do it, you've made a breakthrough.
So, it looks like I've passed a milestone on the road—just thought you'd like to hear the good news :-)
Labels: drums, music
Demos on the way...
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...
Labels: demos, internet, music
Thursday round-up
Just to reassure you all, dear readers, that I am still alive here (!), and to reward you for your patience, a couple of quick updates:
- Managed to squeeze in a bit of vocal recording for the CD project track "When The Sun Goes Off To Sleep" last night; however, I wasn't pleased with either my performance or the sound quality of the recording (of which more in the next point), so I'm going to give it another go in the next couple of days. After all, if I'm actually going to do anything with these tracks in the end, I'd rather they were the best performances I can manage—one great piece of advice I picked up from a more experienced recording musician I know.
- I have got to figure out the effects section of my 2488mkII, and quickly. At the very least, I need to know how to get the noise suppressor working, to cut out the hiss and extraneous noise when I use the mike and external compressor, as there's no way I can leave such distractions on record if I'm going for a 'proper' CD recording (as opposed to demos which only friends/family will hear). It's just a shame that compared to my previous multitrack (a Boss BR-8, which admittedly was designed to be utterly idiot-proof), I find the 2488mkII's effects facilities rather impenetrable, but I'm going to have to get the hang of them pretty rapidly if I want to make progress with the CD project.
- The drum lessons have hit their first snag: I'm having trouble getting my arms and legs to act truly independently. Granted, I have the rudiments down fairly well already, and I think I could, at a pinch, knock out a straight 4/4 pattern. However, my teacher has set me a particular exercise (alternating right/left single-stroke rolls on beats 1-4, with bass drum on beat 1 and hi-hat pedal on 3), and suddenly I turn into one of those clockwork robot toys that kids used to get for Christmas in the 1960s, except without the precision. I'm trying to practice this in the evenings (and I'm increasingly realising I'm just not used to practicing at musical things, so it's not easy), but overall I suspect I'm going to have to work quite hard at this before I get it right. And I'm starting another OU course module next week...
- Drum-related note (sorry): I'm quietly hoping to have amassed sufficient moolah by Christmas, to be able to add a Roland HD1 electronic kit to the Sidingsound studio for Christmas. Fitting it into the room may require some shuffling-around of the current furniture (even though it's probably the most compact electronic kit out there that you'd want to own), but at least I have a bit of time to figure that out.
- And just to round all this off, I'm thinking of posting a quick 'tour' of the studio soon, though at about 10'x6', a single article should be enough...
Labels: drums, music, recording, studio
