So, we made our way down to Cribbs Causeway (a really rather big shopping mall in Bristol, for anyone outside the UK (or the south of England?)), and amongst other things I bagged two CDs in the Zavvi sale which demonstrate my musical multiple personalities reasonably well: Coldplay's "A Rush Of Blood To The Head" (no, I don't own it yet), and The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band's 1967 debut "Gorilla". On the latter, it's possible to hear even at the start of their short recording career, the Bonzos pulling in two directions at once, playing both the 1930s novelty songs with which they began, and the warped Beatles pastiches (such as Neil Innes' sublime "Equestrian Statue") which probably bagged them a cameo appearance in Magical Mystery Tour, and may have helped Paul end up producing their biggest hit single, "I'm the Urban Spaceman".
As for the Coldplay CD, you have to bear in mind that I've heard their singles many times, in most cases without ever finding out what they were called. Whilst "Rush Of Blood" has at least two of the ones I wanted, the song that I was really looking for, turned out not to be on the CD I bought, but on the one before it ("Parachutes"). At least I finally found out that the song was called "Trouble", though...
And on that note, I bid a workmanlike farewell to you all in 2007, and look forward to seeing you all again in a couple of days, to see what 2008 might have in store for us.
Hope you're all having a great Christmas and general holiday period—thought you'd like to see the latest addition to the Sidingsound gear roster, courtesy of (Secret) Santa:
In short, it's a Behringer BDI21 bass guitar pre-amp/DI box. I mainly play bass on my own recordings, when I'm handling most or all of the instrumental duties myself, but I don't own a bass amp (just my Squier Precision Special 5-string bass). This means that if I want the tone that an amp brings, I would need to use a bass amp simulator effect or a pre-amp. Unfortunately, my multitrack doesn't have a dedicated bass amp sim function, but fortunately Behringer makes the BDI21, which I have read is effectively a clone of the rather more expensive Tech 21 SansAmp. The BDI21 also has an XLR output, meaning it can be used as a DI box, so I could run the bass straight into a PA system or mixing desk.
I'm looking forward to using this on some recordings soon; in the meantime, hope you're enjoying Christmas!
...I promise I'll be back before the festive season...
Well, I said that in my last post, and would like to keep my word after all :-)
A few moments of peace and quiet have descended on Walker Towers, affording me a brief window of opportunity to check back here before the Christmas festivities kick off in earnest. I hope you're all having a good run-up to the festive season, and that things are generally holding together for you.
The main things to report right now, are that Joy's students' piano CD project went well, and we've now begun our next recording endeavour: a bumper collection of backing tracks of children's songs, for a new activity of Joy's in the New Year. One motivation for doing this ourselves, was that we (OK, mainly I) didn't like the production values of many of the pre-school children's song CDs we've heard, and felt (correctly or otherwise) that we could do better ourselves. Whether or not this turns out to be true, we're going to give it our best shot...
The recording commenced last weekend, with me tracking Joy playing "guide" keyboard parts for around twenty-five songs (mostly nursery rhymes and other children's favourites). We did this so that my sister-in-law Charlotte could come up from her home ninety minutes or so away, and record lead vocals on as many of the songs as we could manage in the time, as we were assuming for various reasons that this would be the only chance we would get.
Ultimately, Charlotte was a real pro, and was able to sing on all but a couple of the tracks (and I even found time to double-track her voice on one song). We now have the basis for the rest of the recording work, and Joy and I plan to build the rest of the instrumentation around Charlotte's vocals, perhaps even replacing Joy's guide keyboards along the way. Joy's going to play piano and other keyboards, whilst I'll be contributing guitars, ukulele, recorders, bass, drums and anything else I can lay my hands on (!), plus probably contributing some extra vocals here and there.
I don't know how much we can get finished before the New Year, but I'm back to work pretty promptly after the 1st, so I'll really need to get my skates on and lay down as many tracks as I can whilst I have the time off. I will try and keep you in the loop as to how it's going, and what we're going to do with the recordings when they're ready.
Anyway, have a very happy Christmas Eve/Day/Boxing Day, and see you back here in the last few days of 2007...
A quick post to reassure you that I'm still here—don't worry, I've just been very busy with assorted pre-Christmas busy-ness. One of the biggest projects of the moment: Joy and I have been working feverishly preparing a CD of her piano students' performances for their families for the festive season, and it's due to come back from the duplicators any time now. We're very pleased with the results, and are hopeful that Joy's students and their families will feel the same way.
So, I hope all your Christmas preparations are going well, and I promise I'll be back before the festive season!
Well, that audio processing is still going on, so while I'm waiting some more...
Have you discovered the Web site Now Play It? The concept is simple: take some well-known pop and rock songs (both old and new), and sell video downloads teaching you how to play them.
So far so good—music tutor videos have been around almost as long as the home video concept itself—but I think what makes Now Play It a bit more special, is that the Internet and modern audio/video production methods make it possible to produce these videos and get them out to the audience much more quickly. In other words, the tutorials can cover songs which have barely dropped out of the charts, whereas tutor DVDs might be months behind the times, if not more.
What's more, NPI have managed to get some of the artists who produced the original tracks, to present the tutorials themselves, and it's here where for me, it gets really interesting. You can have members of Supergrass coaching you through some of their back catalogue; KT Tunstall showing you her guitar chops on "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" and others; Graham Coxon (ex-Blur) doing much the same (on his songs, obviously)...
...and lastly (and most pertinently for me): Sir Paul himself, giving us a full-blown multi-instrumental (guitars, bass, drums) lesson on one of the better songs from "Memory Almost Full", "Ever Present Past".
Quite aside from me seriously considering stumping up the readies for Macca's video tutorial, Now Play It has got me thinking: with YouTube and mobile phone video output getting better and cheaper all the time, why aren't more musicians providing this kind of interaction with their fans? I'd consider doing this for my own works, although I admit I've got to build up a few fans first...
So, if I end up posting a video tutorial for "Sidings and branches" or something, you'll know where the idea came from. You read it here first.
File this under "just because I can", or possibly "something I'm doing while I'm waiting for some audio to finish processing"...
One of my favourite singles of the year would have to be "Dance Tonight" by Paul McCartney, from his latest album "Memory Almost Full". Full disclosure: I've been a Macca fan since the 1980s, but to be honest, I wasn't as keen on MAF as I was on Paul's last (pop/rock) opus, "Chaos And Creation In The Backyard" (2005), and I'm still not quite sure why. It's not just that I'd hold "Chaos" to be one of the best albums of Macca's career (yes, all of it)—I simply didn't feel that the songwriting on "Memory" was that consistent, and that there were just not as many strong numbers on the album as there were on "Chaos".
Maybe the key was Nigel Godrich, who produced "Chaos". I've read that McCartney himself credits Godrich with really "pushing" him on the project, rejecting many of McCartney's songs as "not strong enough" (my paraphrase) and encouraging him to show what he is capable of as a writer and performer.
Godrich also largely isolated McCartney from his usual touring band, persuading him to play most of the instruments himself. Whilst Macca is certainly no stranger to this approach (quite a few of his albums were recorded mostly or completely solo), being effectively forced to work differently to how he'd probably expected to do, may well have contributed to Paul producing an album quite different from most of its forbears.
But back to "Dance Tonight", which I think is just a great single. It has more hooks than an angling competition, not least with that thumping four-on-the-floor bass drum and the jangling strummed mandolin which provides the body of the song. It's almost primevally simple in concept, yet the song has a cheerful simplicity which just seems to pick me up when I hear it—and don't we all need that somedays?
And it gave me as good an excuse as any to try posting a YouTube video here :-)
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.
About Me
Name: Tim
Location: United Kingdom
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?
