Sidingsound

The first 'proper' Sidingsound Production?

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:44:00 +0000

Another quick 'ping' to the blog from my mobile (and it'll have to be quick, as I'm due back at my desk shortly from lunch), to report exciting times from the world of Sidingsound Productions. For all these years, I've been the archetypal 'bedroom musician', daydreaming of being an artist and producer in the public eye whilst watching musical friends and acquaintances actually going out and doing something about it. Well, I am pleased to announce, within the next week or so, the release of the very first Sidingsound production to be made available to the public... and no, it's not the concept album I keep wittering on about (though that's slowly budging forward, of which more another time). No, this is the children's songs CD I've been working on since last December, for my wife's programme of children's musical educational activity sessions. This evening, I will record the final overdub for the last song, mix it and add the song to the final master, whilst simultaneously finishing off the CD artwork and other 'loose threads', and bundling it all together to pack off to the duplicators. All in all, this project has been an educational experience in itself, not least with the ins and outs of copyright licensing (especially when you're not 100% certain who wrote some of the songs in the first place!), but I know I'll be quietly proud when I finally get to see this CD in the plastic, and think, "I produced this" (with some welcome help, of course). Watch this space for more info about the CD, hopefully before too long.

A quick hello...

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:24:00 +0000

Just to reassure you all (if 'all' is the appropriate word) that I'm still here, and,nominally at least, still running this blog! Sorry for the lengthy silence, which I can only attribute to extreme busy-ness in general, and a few other more specific things (like my daughter's chickenpox). I'll try and post more in detail shortly about how we've been, but I'll just mention in passing that I've been working to finish recording and mixing for a CD of children's songs (as mentioned before around here), and where time (infrequently) allows, laying down tracks towards the solo/"concept" album I've promised I'm going to finish during 2008. Anyway, this has been a post from my mobile phone, so more will appear here as soon as I can write it.

Ethereal voices

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Fri, 23 May 2008 11:55:00 +0000

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 :-)

Demo in one hour

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:32:00 +0000

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!

I want one of those

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 18:36:00 +0000

We interrupt our normal schedule of musical witterings and speculation about my 2008 album project, to give you a link to a gadget that I really, really wish its makers would find a UK distributor for...

Now, back to the usual :-)

Like buses

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 21:36:00 +0000

There's an old joke in the UK that some things are like waiting for buses: you wait ages with nothing, and then three come along at the same time. Well, in this case it's more like two, but I've been chewing over ideas for a new song, and today another completely new one overtook it and leapt into existence almost unbidden.

I've probably never said it here before, but my answer to the perennial songwriter's question—which comes first, words or music?—is usually: the music, and the words tend to follow. Having said that, since I embarked on my project for 2008 (for want of a less cringeworthy name, a "concept album"), I've found myself thinking a lot more in terms of lyrics first, probably as I have to try and fit them into the "concept". This new song is the second in succession where the lyrics came first, and the music later, except here it all occurred within 48 hours.

I had a title (which I won't reveal yet, perhaps until I have a rough demo to share), and the lyrics came out in fits and starts over the course of yesterday evening, this lunchtime and this evening. There was a rough idea in my head of the kind of musical style I had in mind. I'll be quite open and admit this song was inspired by two things: the Kinks song "Afternoon Tea" (from their album "Something Else" (1967)), and a bag of green tea I had on my desk at my office (it'll make more sense when you hear the song).

What really surprised me when I sat down with the guitar, was how easily—even naturally—the music came for the words. I rarely write music to words, as I feel the results are more stilted and 'forced' when I do that; here, however, the chords and melody almost wrote themselves, and although I may well need to sand off a rough edge here and there, I think that the final version may not change greatly from what emerged the first time I played it.

Technology old and new

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 10:50:00 +0000

For my sixth birthday (1978, if you must know), my main present from my parents was a Stylophone—a tiny monophonic electronic organ played by touching the tip of a stylus on a metal "keyboard". I had a white model, which may have been a bit rarer than the usual black-with-fake-wood-trim ones I've seen elsewhere—I ended up buying one of the latter from a jumble sale some years ago, and it's still around the house somewhere. Sadly, the white one succumbed to battery leakage in the end, but at least I still have the black one (if I can find it).

Around 2000, when I had rather more spare time than I do now, I built a Stylophone SoundFont (sampled sound bank) by sampling and looping every note on my Stylo, both via the built-in line output and by miking up the speaker. I then recreated the Stylo's vibrato in the SoundFont editor, and created a couple of patches with chorus effects. I still have the SoundFont somewhere, and might release it on this site some time if anyone is interested.

I mention this because at the time I made this SoundFont, I really wanted to make another one, this time of the Stylophone 350S. This was the "deluxe" Stylo, with a wider range of voices (organ, clarinet, etc.) and a higher price tag to match; I really wanted this instead of the model I actually got, but of course all these years later, I realise Mum and Dad would have been crazy to have bought such an expensive piece of kit for a six-year-old!

My wish to make a 350S SoundFont was understandably stymied by the difficulty of actually finding one—fully-working models are not common now, and those you do find are quite pricey—and I doubt I would find the time to sample it and produce the SoundFont these days. Just as well, then, that I no longer have to, as Precisionsound now offer a Stylophone 350S sampled "instrument".

Something else for my pocket money to go on sometime :-)

Do it yourself

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 23:06:00 +0000

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...?

An anniversary of sorts

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 23:25:00 +0000

Just time—in-between daughter-entertaining, studying-and-writing for next OU course assignment and hoping that all this penicillin will kill off the horrid throat infection I've been enduring since the weekend—to mark something of a milestone: on this day, exactly twenty-one years ago, I planted myself beside my bedroom record-player (for that it was—dates me a bit, I know) with my mum's Spanish guitar and her Mick Abrahams tutor record, and let Mick's voice guide me through my very first guitar chords. Even then, I wondered how long I'd keep at it.

Suffice it to say, over two decades later, I'm still strummin' and pickin', and have even added the odd other instrument to the roster (though if they've got strings and frets too, that helps). I count learning the guitar as one of the better decisions I've made, not least because it's often been a kind of escape for me—probably less so now than in the past, as I feel generally more content and comfortable with myself these days than has sometimes been the case. But there's a whole other post there; just not this time...

So, will I reach for the guitar tonight and, for old-time's sake, try and imagine how I strained to finger those first G and C chords? It's hard to say, what with all the other calls on my time, but... well, you know, I just might do that.

"One, two, three: dum-ching, dum-ching, dum-ching..."

Bye bye band?

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 20:29:00 +0000

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... :-)

Getting there

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 08:49:00 +0000

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.

Maps and movement (or lack of it)

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 20:11:00 +0000

Nope, still haven't committed a demo of the new song to disk, but I'm really going to try hard over the weekend, honest! (I mean, it's just going to be guitar and vocal at first, so how long can it take, anyway...?)

I also had an idea for yet another song, that I started "brainstorming" when I arrived home from work this evening. Sometimes, I use "mind maps" (or a mutated version thereof) to help me organise related thoughts, and I find they can work pretty well for songwriting, at least when you're at the stage of collecting ideas, concepts, phrases and so on for your new creation.

Anyway, I jotted down a few thoughts as a mind map, and will leave them to percolate for a bit, as seems to be my usual habit. I won't mention much about the song yet, except to say it's another element of my "concept album" idea, about two young lovers who like to meet on the old stone bridge over the stream on the edge of the village.

And anyone who's thinking that this sounds like a rural retelling of Terry and Julie's end-of-day romantic meetings in the English capital... well, if you listen to enough of Ray and the boys' oeuvre, as I seem to be doing a fair bit at present, one can't easily help the odd influence creeping in here and there, can one...? ;-)

Song update (but no demo yet)

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 12:49:00 +0000

A quick post dashed off from my mobile (in case you were wondering, I didn't enter all this on the phone keypad, as I have a Bluetooth keyboard), because... well, just because I can :-)

Thought I'd update you on the song which I said in the last post that I was writing. I'm hoping to find some time this week to record a first demo of it, which will hopefully show me if/where I need to work on it a bit more. I have an arrangement idea already: I'm going to play Spanish (nylon-strung) guitar on the song, and hope Joy will try playing harpsichord (at least, a sampled one). I'll probably add drums and upright bass (MIDI guitar for the latter), and possibly a "string quartet" arrangement (yup, sampled again), but at the start, I'll keep it to guitar and vocal only.

If I can find the time, I'll try and lay down one or two other demos, such as the "title" track of the "concept" album and maybe even something else I've got queued up. Then again, I have enough other calls on my time to risk not being able to record much this week; come back in a few days to see what (if anything) I managed to fit in.

I wrote a lyric

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 21:29:00 +0000

And just when I wasn't expecting it, I just scribbled down some lyrics the other day. They weren't entirely out of the blue; the song itself is one I've been percolating for a bit, for my aforementioned concept album idea. I will keep the title to myself until I've at least recorded a rough demo, just to string you along a bit...

I'm not completely happy with the lyrics themselves at this point (they feel rather stilted and rhyming dictionary-ish to me, and overall read like I was trying too hard, which perhaps I was), but think they were heading in the right direction, so I'll see if I can buff them up before I let the song out.

This piece is unusual for me, because when I write songs I almost always end up coming up with the music first, whereas this time it's coming the other way round. It might be because I've had so little time lately to go near an instrument for any great length of time. I have a few chord and melody ideas, and am weighing up whether to try composing this song on piano, mainly because I'm not great at the keyboard and it might (paradoxically) make me think more about what music I'm writing, or lead me down a path I might not take were I holding a guitar.

Hope to have a demo of this song to share with you soon, anyway. It looks as if the "concept album" project might have started sooner than I thought.

Interregnum

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 18:49:00 +0000

(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!

Fun with a Futurama

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:38:00 +0000

Fear not—I'm still here! I've been submerged in my latest OU course assignment (which I'll be getting back to in a few moments), and have barely done any recording since the last post here nearly two weeks ago, so there's not a great deal to report.

OK, I have laid down a couple of tracks for Joy's children's musical activity sessions—for one, I added some electric guitar and bass guitar to one of Joy and Charlotte's keyboard-and-vocal tracks ("I'm A Little Teapot", if you must know :-) ) about a week ago. During this session, I plugged in a wonderful early-60s Hofner Futurama bass, which I've borrowed from a friend to play on a few tracks. It has real flatwound strings (instead of the roundwound ones you get on almost all guitars and basses nowadays) and a single neck pickup, and it is a joy to play, compared to "The Beast" (my Squier Precision Special 5-string). I should also add that my Christmas present is turning out very useful for my bass tracks!

Best of all, and partly because of the strings and pickup, the Hofner has this woolly, thuddy, slightly honky sound which you normally associate with mid-60s beat groups and Paul McCartney's basslines with the Beatles—-exactly why I wanted to borrow this bass for these particular tracks I've had in mind. It was perfect for my version of "The Wheels On The Bus" for Joy (as I mentioned last time, I was going for a Monkees-kind of "Last Train To Clarksville" approach), and I'm hoping to use it on a few more tracks before I have to give it back ;-)

Right, and now I really do have to get back to the study. See you next time...

Kid's stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 18:26:00 +0000

First off, it's looking like the covers recording project (from last time) may well end up being for immediate family and friends only (lucky them :-) ). I had an e-mail exchange with a singer-songwriter in the US who has done something similar, and he said that over there, if you record someone else's composition, you have to tell the organisation which collects songwriters' royalties, and cough up a fee for each copy which gets sold, downloaded, whatever. ("Well, duh!", comes the retort from the seasoned artists out there—hey, go easy on me, I'm new to this ;-) )

I imagine there's a similar arrangement here in the UK, and apparently it applies whether you're a million-selling artist or a dilletante bedroom musician, or whether you're offering it for free or charging for it. Methinks this will stay a little private project of mine, then—oh well, the practice will be good for me, and it might even spark a new song or two...

Anyway, I'm still doing some other recording at the moment: you may remember from a few weeks back, that Sidingsound Productions is busy on a set of children's songs for Joy's new programme of children's musical activity sessions. I now have a good number of tracks "in the can" (OK, on the disk) for that, and will probably be working on the others sporadically over the next couple of months. Ultimately, we think we'd like to try selling CDs of the songs, so the arrangements will need to be filled out and tidied up before then.

In the process, though, I must say I'm enjoying working on these tracks—even though these are children's songs, I'm approaching them not that differently from any other song I'd produce. Some songs are receiving a slightly different treatment than you might expect; I've arranged "The Wheels On The Bus" in a kind of Monkees style (sort of country-tinged folk-rock), and even borrowed a friend's wonderful old 60s Hofner Futurama bass guitar (with flatwound strings!) to get that "Last Train To Clarksville" sound.

Other songs are getting makeovers for these sessions, too: "The Ants Go Marching" has shades of Billy Bragg's "The Marching Song Of The Covert Battalions" (which nicks the "Ants" tune anyway :-) ), and "Johnny Works With One Hammer" dovetails two arrangements, inspired by Julia Plaut and The Wiggles' versions of the song.

I shall tantalise you with that glimpse of the future, and leave it at that for now...

Another (possible) project for the year

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 13:02:00 +0000

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!

Now here's a concept

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 20:24:00 +0000

(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! :-)

An end of a year

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 20:54:00 +0000

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.

Maybe even that difficult first album? ;-)

What Santa brought...

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 11:03:00 +0000

Behringer BDI21 bass guitar pre-amp - front view,
originally uploaded by tawalker.

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!

Of children's songs and Santa

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 21:47:00 +0000

...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...

Taking a breather

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:08:00 +0000

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!

Now play this

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 23:37:00 +0000

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.

I might find this useful one day

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 22:59:00 +0000

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 :-)