March 2009 Archives

Jumping the shark, in modern parlance (or in geek circles), relates to an episode of Happy Days where Fonzie jumps over a shark on water skis and after this event it was deemed that the show went downhill. Every TV series jumps the shark, every exponent of popular culture somehow runs out of creative steam and outlives its welcome in this fashion.

When I was first introduced to the Internet back in 1996, I could instantly see the appeal - though I couldn't envision the future we have now. Back then, things were slow and it was primarily a service that relied on great wodges of text to read, the very odd picture (though it would take minutes to download thanks to that crappy 33k modem) and very little multimedia.

The thing that instantly struck me was the ability to communicate simply and easily over vast distances. I became addicted to the early chat apps (though this interest soon waned as it grew popular and any attempt to engage with individuals was swamped by saddos cruising for anonymous, no-strings sex) and newsgroups were a great place to discuss music interests and computing problems. It thrilled me that you could self-publish your ideas relatively easily and give yourself a voice - so your hobby and interests could be shared with other like-minded individuals.

That was then. This is now. The Internet has naturally grown in popularity and increased access speeds means that we can access previously impossible multimedia files with ease. The idea of streaming live TV shows or downloading high quality movies in a second was beyond my ken back in 1996. I remember once downloading a three minute music file in WAV format that took something like three hours.

As the popularity has increased, the tools to self-publish on the Internet has increased - for example, this website is created using a content management system called Movable Type. In the old days, I had to code by hand and then it was editing code by FrontPage. So there is no reason why young and old aren't unleashing their creativity on the World Wide Web. It's just a matter of finding your niche and investing your time and energy into it. YouTube has been a breeding ground of new talent and you can find all manner of imaginative stuff on there. The same can be said of MySpace and music.

While the likes of Facebook and Bebo has passed me by: it's hard to have a social network when you aren't particularly sociable, I understand the appeal to generations young and old and as an effective method of communication. By now, you might have a glimmer as to what I am heading towards with the main thrust of this post.

For a while now, I have silently been observing the Twitter phenomenon and I can now state that: I just don't get it! To me it seems as if two forms of communication have been spliced together to form a bastard hybrid. Texting and social network: an unholy alliance if they had ever been. No, actually that last bit is wrong because I think I have spotted the flaw in Twitter for me.

You see, Twitter is housed in the wrong delivery system: the world wide web. If Twitter's home platform was the mobile phone and its currency were the text message, I think I'd understand it more. It would be a quick fire way of building up a network of friends and keeping in touch with all of them: simple. But the Internet version appears to me as a complete waste of time resources and is the web equivalent of standing in Trafalgar Square with a megaphone shouting 10 word statements about your day:

"Had eggs for breakfast!"

"Thinking of having a poo!"

"Don't you think that twitter is a pile of old ...."

Etc.

An appropriate logo purloined from the Skidnee website.

But then you'd have to also shout out replies that other people have shouted at you in order to validate their comments. So what Twitter does is create this completely one-sided, disjointed dialogue to no-one in particular. I've looked at Twitter threads and they work better when it is a monologue: with one person giving a single commentary, but when that person starts replying to other commentators it becomes like an experimental cut-and-paste beat poem syncopated by @ symbols. You cannot follow the narrative thread without jumping back and forth between twitter streams and soon enough you become lost pretty quickly.

Then there's the whole stalker aspect that is a bit freaky. Gone are the idea of subscribers replaced by followers. Look so-and-so has so many people "following" him. I don't know, it seems silly but that just doesn't sit well with me. Does anyone really want to be followed, virtual or otherwise?

It wasn't so long ago that comedian Dom Joly sent up mobile phone culture with his oversized handset and the echoing cry of "I'm on the train!" or "I'm in the library!"...well that's Twitter that is. Except the mobile phone has been replaced by the Internet. Bereft of creativity and the craft of creating blog entries or getting your personality onto the page, the Twitter entry is just an exclaimation of the now. A pointless cry in the wildnerness. So when Stephen Fry was twittering about being stuck in the lift, he might as well had a giant mobile phone held to ear and been bellowing: "I'm stuck in the lift!"

So if you have any sense of craft or interest in using the Internet for creative purposes say no to Twitter. And like Facebook, Bebo, MySpace and Friendsreunited, it's influence will slowly wane.

She really is a "Black Beauty"

I hadn't played a Gibson Les Paul style guitar since I sold my Columbus copy back in 1996, so when I saw one of these come up on eBay for £330 I thought it was a bargain. So I purchased the guitar and an internal MIDI pickup kit from Roland to do a DIY install so I could use it with my Roland GR-33 and VG-99 pedal boards.

The guitar was really well made for a copy and I was very surprised by the finish and most importantly the variety of tones you could coax from the instrument with the three humbucker pickups without any fancy effects. The instrument had a good weight and the setup was low, with minimal fretbuzz.

Here is the body of the guitar complete with MIDI pickup

Converting the instrument into a GK-2A midi guitar was trickier than installing it into a standard Fender shape body because you don't have the routing beneath the scratchplate to play with. Instead, you have to fit the circuit board in the existing cavity where the tone-pots are housed, which is a bit of a squeeze and fitting the control buttons were also a problem, unless I wanted to drill holes in the front of the guitar and ruin the finish.

Here you can see how I mounted the controls in the plastic pickup housing

I didn't want to do this, so I came up with a novel way of housing the control buttons, pickup switch and activity LED light. Using a very small hand-drill, I made holes in the plastic pickup housing closest the bridge and housed these controls there. I needed a steady hand with the soldering because there wasn't much space to move and I purchased some small switches from Maplin for the job. It was a first class job and I really impressed myself.

The only other fly in the ointment was fitting the separate volume pot for the MIDI output, and I could either drill a hole in the body or fit it into the scratchplate. I did the latter, even though it was a tight squeeze.

The Epiphone was a great MIDI guitar like this and I really regret selling it on, because my GK-2A installation was a thing of beauty, even if I do say so myself. The main reason for me selling it was that the brass fittings gradually lost their lustre over time and I read elsewhere cases that they actually started to go green, so I decided to sell while the guitar was still in good cosmetic condition.

The golden GP-100 sitting magnificently at the centre of my old rack

This is part of the "gear that I have owned" thread. I bought a second-hand Roland GP-100 guitar effects processor from a seller on eBay back in 2003 in a whim. I didn't really need it as I was using a Roland VG-8 guitar system, but I'd read in the past that Robert Fripp of King Crimson had used them and in a supreme case of "monkey-see, monkey-do" I bought this unit in an attempt to search for the "new sound".

The GP-100 is austentatious in its gold casing and fits in a 1U rack. In terms of sound, I was quite impressed by the COSM effects inside the unit considering it was quite an old piece of kit at that time and had been superseded by other effects units in the Roland range. I used it for parts of my Textures, Without Words and Empty Spaces albums. I tended to use the more unearthly effects that unit could produce and I must admit that I've found it hard to reproduce these sounds on my current rig.

While I was impressed with the sounds, I wasn't so impressed with the editing functionality. The unit came without instructions, so I had to bluff my way through using it and I found the editing side of the GP-100 rather user-unfriendly. But then I had been spoilt by the VG range of units from Roland and their slightly easier to use interface.

I eventually sold the unit after a short period because it had developed a fault that meant it used to freeze up and stop working. The only way of fixing this fault would mean me taking a screwdriver to the unit, opening it up and removing/replacing the battery inside, which would somehow reset the unit back to normal. This took time, and was frankly a pain, so it had to go.

If another one of these came up on eBay for the right price, I'd probably grab it just for the heck of it - though I am wary about the condition of these units now as they are rather old, they do go wrong and the front panel control are a little prone to wear.

I don't particularly like living in a shed, but since our incident I have been forced to do whatever recording and work for the shop from this shed. Don't get me wrong, it is a nice shed. It has a nice rug and decor and lots of flourescent lights. The downside is that it is frigging cold (even with the electric heater on full blast) and I have noticed that something in the shed likes to bite me. Fleas. Yes, fleas. I have this theory that rabbits might be living under the shed, but maybe I was watching the video clip in yesterday's post too much.

Anyway, the upshot of this is that recording time has been incredibly limited. I've done a few things and tried to commit some base tracks to work on, but it has been hard to concentrate, what with the cold hands and the constant whacking of my head on the low beams inside the shed. Also, the cold plays havoc with my bladder, so as soon as I get a creative wind behind me, I have to retreat indoors for a pee. Ahhh, the details of my life on the page. This makes great blog reading, dunnit?

One track I have managed to finish is this item called Slow Drift. I've posted the demo of this before, but this is the finished surround sound version. The thing about the recording of this is that the lead guitar part was recorded on my Godin Multiac nylon guitar and was recorded in one take with the drum part as backing. I was just riffing to the track and managed to capture something in one take. On top of this I laid some more guitars and some stuff from my 6-string bass guitar.

It's a little loose, but I think it works. As there has been a reluctance from myself to sit in a cold shed for hours at a time, I have been attempting to archive old master recordings and remix old stuff. One thing I enjoy doing is surround sound mixing (I've detailed this before) and I've been coming up with new surround mixes for my older albums. Because it literally takes 10 minutes to do a surround mix (I don't do fancy mixing with elements flying all over the shop, just tasteful placement of sounds) I can knock off a mix quickly and hence I've done it for this new song.

If you want to listen to it, connect your PC or laptop to a surround sound speaker system using your optical 5.1 output (if you have one) and play the music file. Alternatively, you can load it onto your Xbox 360 using a memory card (or stream it) and listen to the track that way via your surround sound speaker system.

Direct download: CLICK HERE

The intention is to produce albums of surround sound mixes for your listening enjoyment, like I did with my Textures release. Huzzah for me!

Not sure if this is genius or seriously messed-up...US Military bunnies kill Al-Quaeda camels, sounds like a great idea for an animated series. Let's really confuse everyone and call it "Cat Shit One". Only in Japan...only in Japan...

One of my favourite recordings is an album called "From the Caves of the Iron Mountain" which features Tony Levin, Steve Gorn and Jerry Marotta. The unique thing about this recording is that it is recorded live and improvised down an old abandoned mine. The recording was made by a fellow called Tchad Blake who has made inroads in something called "binaural" recordings. Basically, this fellow wears a recording microphone on his head, roughly where his ears are, and takes recordings like this so that the resulting recording captures the ambience of the location and "feels" as if you are actually standing in the enivronment.

With that recording, Tchad Blake walks around the performers and interacts with the environment so it is a truly unique proposition. Listening to the recording on headphones is a constant joy and something I often return to when looking for inspiration. The album is so open and feels so expansive and full of ideas that I'd probably put it in my top five recordings. Yes, it really is that good.

One thing myself and old ex-recording chum Andrew Osborne share is a love of said album and when going through some old discs recently, I found a recording I'd made that sounds like something from it. Not a pastiche, but something unique, a homage, perhaps? It was recording in 2002/3 and if I recall correctly, Andrew had sent me a short recording of himself playing on a flute he'd bought from eBay. It had a lot of character, even though it wasn't particularly musical, and I thought it leant itself to such a homage. So I put some acoustic bass and suitably ethnic percussion behind the flute and drowned the whole lot in reverb in a sad attempt to approximate the ambience of the abandoned Widow Jane mine.

Here is the recording:

Direct download: CLICK HERE

This somehow seems to make sense:

You can now purchase a compilation CD of my various improvisations I've recorded for YouTube over the years. Presented in glorious stereo and remastered for the CD medium, the tracks have taken on a new life and represent the music that can be created in one go under the unfailing, critical eye of the red recording light.

It is a shame that old Fatboy Slim AKA Norman Quentin Cook has checked himself into rehab due to his fondness of the sauce, because his new album "We are going to need a bigger boat" released under his 21st pseudonym "The BPA" (Or Brighton Port Authority) is a pretty decent effort. This is my second favourite tune off the album after "Toe Jam":

My latest waste of cash is a Godin Multiac nylon guitar I purchased for a good price on eBay. After being impressed with the XTsa guitar, I was eager to try another of their instruments and have always had an ear for nylon instruments, though cannot profess to have any proficiency on such an instrument in the classical context. For me, I play the Multiac the same way I play the electric, with a pick and as a lead instrument in the genre of "rock" or whatever they call it.

The guitar itself is a wonderful piece of craftmanship and feels solid and expensive. The electronics means I can connect it to all my GK-enabled Roland gear and get any sound from it. Its MIDI tracking is second-to-none and this is what turns me onto the Godin guitar range. If you want a guitar that can solidly track MIDI data, the RMC piezo pickups in Godin guitars are THE BEST. THE BEST. THE BEST. I said that so it goes in. Roland might have the market with the GK range of MIDI pickups, but the RMC piezos have the best all-round use.

Don't think I've been lazy with the lack of music output on this site. The way things are at the moment, my studio isn't exactly how it was and I'm doing little bits of recording as my bass is packed away. For your consideration is the next piece which is a demo track that I recorded a few weeks back. It showcases the Multiac and will form the basis of a "proper" song once I've thrown some bass and electric guitar at it. For now, you just have drums and acoustic guitar. It's fairly loose and is more of a framework to hang other elements on. It's how I record, from the bottom-up I think it is described in music circles. At the moment, I've got loads of little bits of music on the hard drive recorded like this. Fragments of songs to be, little riffs that have been committed to a stream of zeros and ones, bits that will one day be recombined to form something more solid. A digital musical pot noodle - just add water - or in this case magical musical glue.

Anyway, enough of the preamble: this is a demo track using the Multiac and I really like the tone it has.

Direct download: CLICK HERE

Alan Moore wrote a graphic novel a long time ago. I thumbed through it and went "meh". Now there's a movie about said "unfilmable" novel, I'll wait for it to come on Sky or Blu-ray and sit there for three hours and go "meh".

But this is the Watchmen movie I want to see:

I'm not one for remixing and, in my humble and honest opinion, most remixes are superfluous to requirements, but a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, yours truly entered a remix competition. Actually it was late 2002, if my stress-addled memory holds up. Yes, I know it sounds preposterous that I should even dare to remix another's music but I was swayed by the fact that when I downloaded the music files containing instrument samples etc., I noticed that the original version of the song completed omitted the vocals & lyrics that had been laid down by the singer. I thought that this could be the basis of my remix and I would restore the words, try and turn into a song proper and add a bit of Darren Lock guitar magic. :-)

I couldn't find a video of the original track on YouTube so you'll have to do with this live performance, which captures the same song structure that appears on the album.

Now this is my version and you'll hear that there's added guitars, bass and those missing verses and chorus from the rap. This was a TDK remix competition and although I didn't scoop top prize, I got a runners-up prize pack which included a hat, T-shirt and signed CD which I ended up floggin on eBay for cold hard cash. Huzzah!

Direct download: CLICK HERE

After the clunking great Vestax MR44, I progressed to the Yamaha MT4X four-track. The MT4X is a great recorder and to me felt like the Starship Enterprise back in the mid-1990s when I purchased the unit. However, I grew disatisfied with four-track recording and started to record and bounce down in stereo pairs, in order to achieve a more professional sound.

The MT4X was retired and sold when I move over to digital recording via the home PC around 1998. Though with our recent move, I discovered a case full of my old 4-track master recordings made during this period and thought it was a shame that I could no longer access these tapes.

A quick scout on eBay brought up the MT4X and I purchased a unit for just over £60, including its original box and manual. The unit itself appeared as new and worked great on the old tapes. It was strange to hear old stuff and to find tunes that you had completely forgotten about. I am presenting two such tunes today.

The first I have called "Future Echoes" and I have no idea when or how it was recorded. It sounds to me as if it was recorded completely using a MIDI unit and I suspect it might have been during my dalliance with the Yamaha QY10, which would place this around 96/97 though I can't be completely sure. It might be from earlier using a Roland MC-500 hardware sequencer I purchased in 1994. Who knows? It sounds a bit Krautrock and I like it.

Direct download: CLICK HERE

The second piece called "Afex" is a bit more abstract and completely unlike anything I've ever done before or since. Again, not sure of how I did it or why I did it or when I did it, but it is a slab of amateur dance electronica. Like the previous piece, no guitars were used in the recording.

Direct download: CLICK HERE