Ethereal voices
I've been trying to get another post up here for the last week or so, but something always interrupted me, so here's a go at a quick e-mail post from my mobile phone.
Basically, we recently invested in an iMac, partly to retire our old PC which is getting rather long in the tooth, but also for producing music and some graphics (the latter mainly for Joy's music activities for children). I bought Logic Express to go with the machine, and have been experimenting with it to add an extra dimension to our music production.
Yesterday evening I finally got to try one of Logic's software synthesisers that I've been dying to have a go on: EVOC, a vocoder synth (which blends the synth signal with an audio input such as a voice). In a nutshell, I was recording some guitar synth parts for "When The Sun Goes Off To Sleep", a song for the "concept album" (which I'm still hoping to finish this year, honest!), and decided to add some 'vocoded' voice to the end. The song has been around for a few years (I wrote it as a lullaby for my daughter), and my original acoustic demo dates from late 2004, but I've wanted to re-record it to give the song a more ambient, dreamy air. In particular, I hoped Joy might sing a bit on it, as I had conceived a female vocal sound for the ending, but she felt a bit shy and backed out, so the idea was shelved until I thought of using Logic's vocoder (which might capture even better the effect I wanted).
So, last night I recorded the voice part for the vocoder to use, set up the MIDI guitar and played the melody on the vocoder. The results were just what I was looking for—an ethereal 'voice' (or 'voices', as I'd played a 'chordal' part into the vocoder), floating behind the lead vocal in the final verse. I also tried my original idea for the song ending: two lines from the Korean nursery rhyme which gave the song its chorus melody. This worked pretty well too, so I think you can expect to hear all this on the final version of the song, when I get around to putting out the album.
The moral of this story: vocoders are fun :-)
Labels: conceptalbum, logic, mac, music, recording, studio
Demo in one hour
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!
Labels: demos, movies, recording
Do it yourself
Scott Andrew—a fine independent singer-songwriter from somewhere in the Seattle area (the "winged monkey" icon elsewhere on this page links to the Web site for his current CD, "Save You From Yourself")—has been musing on the idea of independent artists raising cash for recording projects through donations from their fans.
He has a valid perspective on this concept, not least because his current CD was largely funded through fans' pre-orders and a rather well thought-out "incentive" system (i.e. the more one paid in advance, the more "goodies" one received when the CD was finished). I liked Scott's last album (2003's "Where I've Been"), and bought the CD even though he made the tracks available for free download, as I wanted to repay in some way the trust he placed in his listeners (and the music was good too :-) ), so I also ended up pre-ordering "SYFY" as well.
Scott also raised an interesting question: if you don't know as an artist whether you have an audience out there to fund the recording of your new masterpiece (and being a thirtysomething amateur musician/songwriter who has never toured and can number his live performances in the last five years on the fingers of one hand, that includes me), why not release an album as a free Internet download, and see what reaction it gets?
I am giving this idea some thought at present, and here's my concept:
I record and mix the songs for my current project as planned, but deliberately play as much as possible myself to keep the costs down (possibly with some guest keyboards from Joy if she's up for it). I would then post the results online for free download... and it's here where I'm not sure how to take it further. I'd like to rely on an "honour system", and ask downloaders if they would like to let me know what they thought of the album, and whether they might also be interested in an "enhanced" CD version. (Presumably, by "enhanced CD", I could mean either the existing recordings with extra items on a "data" section of the CD—the approach Scott Andrew took with "Where I've Been"—or re-recorded versions of the songs with other musicians, or even a combination of the two.)
Of course, I haven't thought everything through yet. For one thing, I'm well aware that by putting the tracks online for free download, I'm taking the risk that some, or even most, downloaders will just take the tracks and give me no feedback (or even worse, some might try reselling them or passing off the songs and/or recordings as their own, or something). Well, yes, it might happen, but then some listeners might try something similar even if I just tried selling CDs, and as Scott has said more than once, it's a kind of backhanded compliment if you've produced something which someone considers worth stealing...
If I were to try this approach, I would be putting my faith in the honour of anyone interested enough in my recorded work to download it in the first place (and to get it for free), to also take a couple of minutes to let me know (a) that they've downloaded the album; (b) what they honestly think of it; and (c) whether they would be prepared to cough up for a value-added version. Yes, it's entirely possible that I might get little or no feedback, or that the feedback I do receive tells me that the album sucks and I should stick to the day job. At least if the latter happened, I would know where I stand in the arena of public opinion, and that at least I had given it my best shot and hadn't just (artistically speaking) hidden in my bedroom, too nervous of the possibility of criticism to try venturing out and discovering if my music had an audience. (Which come to think of it, pretty well sums up what I did throughout my twenties, when I actually had the time to go out and try gigging that I don't really have now (with a family and other commitments).)
Still, better late than never...?
Labels: conceptalbum, internet, music, recording
Bye bye band?
I was just leafing through some of my old blog posts, and came across an entry from last October, which contained the following assertion:
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.
Funny how one's intentions can change, even over four months. I realised when I read that entry, that without thinking about it, I was no longer thinking the same way—it's partly because the "CD project" I was referring to there, is a somewhat different concept from the one which I am currently aiming towards. Back then, I was planning to re-record a selection of the better songs I'd written in recent years, with the aid of a live rhythm section to get more of a 'band' feel (a sort of "best of", really).
Now, I've changed to this "concept album" idea, which will probably contain a few of my older songs worked into the format, but with a considerably larger proportion of newer compositions written especially for the project. For some reason, I've found I'm not thinking so much of having other musicians working on it, at least not at the outset. This may be partly because my drumming has improved to the point that I might be able to "get by" with it (especially if I record my electronic kit into a MIDI sequencer and tidy up the timing later!); alternatively, it may be a simple change of emphasis, where I record as much as possible myself and then call for help if I think the recording needs it.
Yet another approach I've considered, is to record all the songs for the project entirely solo (so I can claim that I've made that solo "one-man band" album I always wanted to do!), and then treat those sessions as the demos for the "real album", which I can then either build on with other musicians, or even re-record totally with a band.
Or perhaps I should just stop theorising and percolating on how I should produce this album, and just get on with it and see what happens? After all, I've only got ten months left... :-)
Labels: conceptalbum, recording
Getting there
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.
Labels: conceptalbum, demos, music, recording
Interregnum
(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!
Labels: childrenssongs, demos, life, music, recording, studio
Another (possible) project for the year
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!
Labels: covers, demos, music, recording
Now here's a concept
(Bit of a long post, this one—don't worry, I might not write another for a few days, so this should keep you going...)
Yes, it's that time of year again—the dreaded "New Year's resolutions" rear their head for the traditional two weeks or so that most of us actually keep to them :-) And yes, I have a couple of my own, such as the feeling that I should probably start losing weight—I think Christmas tipped the balance, literally—but there's at least one resolution I've made in a rather broad sense:
2008 is the year that I will record and produce at least one album (if not—gasp—more than one).
Now, if you're reading this a year from now and you can't find any indication of such a completed project, then you have permission to "do a Nelson Muntz" on me ("Ha-ha!"), but as I write this, at least one new album in 2008 is definitely my intention. I can't promise that all the material will have been written in 2008, mind you, but at the very least I'd like to have a new set of recordings in hand, whatever I might actually do with them when they're finished.
Actually, that's one of the big questions in my mind: is there much point in making actual CDs of a recording project, as I'm not a gigging musician as such? My last set in front of an audience of any size was at the wedding of two of my friends in March 2006, and that was just two songs. Furthermore, with OU study, the day job, looking after my daughter and helping out my wife with her various work activities, I think the chances of me making it to any open mike nights in my area could be described charitably as "slight-to-'fuggetaboudit'", so maybe I have little choice but to embrace the mantle of "bedroom musician and proud of it".
Having said that, there's something about having your music on a physical object, which a digital download can't quite capture—maybe I'm just old-fashioned in that way, but then again I think we're just replaying the "vinyl-vs-CD" and/or "CDR-vs-cassette" ponderings of years past. At least with outlets like lulu.com, which makes it relatively easy for independent artists to sell both physical CDs and digital downloads, it seems I have a choice as to which format I eventually plump for (or even both).
But of course, I still have to actually produce the music first, and it's there that I'm pondering what path to take. I'm in (at least) two minds on this question; one idea is I could just write songs and accumulate enough for an album, but I suspect that won't be structured or goal-orientated enough to help me get going (or keep me going).
The other idea I am more seriously toying with, is a "concept album", which automatically makes me feel somewhat defensive when talking about it. Now, I'm not considering this approach to hark back to the heyday of the "genre" in the 60s and 70s—it's more to give me some kind of framework around which to start writing new material, without which I might find it hard to get started again after what's been a quite lengthy lay-off.
I don't want to give too much away at this stage, for various reasons (inc. not having much to give away yet, and the possibility I might not actually get far with the idea anyway, though I'll give it a good try), but here's the concept: a set of songs with the "arc" theme of one day in a road in an apparently sleepy English village, and a few of the people who live in this road. I envisage a couple of "undercurrents", such as whether the village really is as sleepy as it seems, a fondness for the English countryside (or at least a "townie"'s image of it), and so on.
At this point, I can imagine someone suggesting that Ray Davies took a similar tack with "The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society", and that came out before I was even born. But hey, even if my concept was more than superficially similar (and they are different as you press deeper—trust me on this), it's not a bad record to follow, don't you think? :-)
In fact, the album I'd more likely cite as an influence on my idea, is one of my "desert island albums": The Divine Comedy's second long-player "Promenade" (1994). It has a similar concept in some ways (a "day in the life", in this case of two lovers), and I really like the album's quasi-classical "chamber/baroque pop" sound (with lots of string quartet and oboe/cor anglais) which Neil Hannon never returned to once he could afford big orchestras from the mid-1990s onwards.
I actually sketched out the first song (which carries the same title as the projected album, though I won't reveal the name yet) back in the autumn of 2006—just as Ray Davies wrote the original song "Village Green" in 1966, two years before the rest of the album. I may try and work a couple of other existing songs of mine into the lineup, but others will have to be new compositions. A couple of ideas I'm toying with, both for songs and for characters in the "story", are:
- The vicar of the parish church, trying to write a sermon; to suggest the books in his study, the "lyrics" would be a long list of names from Church history (basically, a conscious homage to "The Booklovers" from "Promenade")
- A man who lived the high life in LA for a number of years (not sure yet what his job was, and maybe the detail is not that important), but who now lives quietly in this sleepy English village—song presented as a jangly, mid-tempo, Roger McGuinn/Tom Petty folk-rocker (something like McGuinn's "King Of The Hill", if you've heard that)
- The old wrought-iron lamp-post (!) in the small square at one end of the road, imagining what it would've seen over the decades (if it could see, obviously)
I think you can see roughly where I'm heading with this, although the final sound of the album may not be as heavily "classical" as "Promenade" was, mainly as I'd have to render any classical instruments with MIDI, and would have to write some convincing string/woodwind arrangements too. Not that either of those points would stop me or anything, but they're making me think about which direction I really want to take the project in.
There's also a mental image forming of an idea for the cover art: a photo of a typical English parish church, digitally processed to look like an old lithograph or pencil drawing. I picture the rest of the CD inlays as looking like an English parish church newsletter would've appeared before the arrival of home PCs and cheap DTP in the 1990s—typewritten text, literally cut-and-pasted and duplicated on a questionable-quality photocopier. I don't know if this can be "mocked-up" on a computer, or whether it would be necessary to actually produce the artwork that way (cutting/pasting, etc.), but it would be fun finding out...
So, that's an idea of what I've got in mind for the year—I wonder what I'll be writing in twelve months' time?
Oh: Happy New Year! :-)
Labels: music, recording, studio
Of children's songs and Santa
...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...
Labels: childrenssongs, music, recording
Taking a breather
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!
Labels: music, recording, studio
Now play this
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.
Labels: music, nowplayit, recording, web, youtube
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
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
More recording last night
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
Recording: "This Little Light Of Mine"
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):
- "Rickenbacker 12-string" - accompaniment
- "Rickenbacker 12-string" - lead
- "Electro-acoustic 12-string" - rhythm
- "Fender Jazz" bass
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
