You are allowed to enjoy this…

Here’s a gentle ambient piano piece I viddied last night. It’s a live recording of me noodling around on the Boss RC-50 – I basically fed my Triton LE keyboard into it and created three separate loops, one of which is played backwards. This is how the “Mist Suite” was recorded.

Still been feeling a little miserable. The mild depression has only just begun to lift and my day has been lived under the cloud. I thought it would pass quickly as these things usually do, but it was only until later in the day and some vigorous vacuuming that things didn’t seem that bleak.
Managed to record three noodly pieces for my ambient CD. There are called Mist on Stone, Mist on Water and Mist on Mist. They are three piano looped pieces using the RC-50 and are very calming. I have edited them together to create an elongated “Mist Suite”. How fricking pretentious. But when I listened to the reverbed piano, the only image I saw was shapes coming through the mist. So the name stayed. I like them a lot but I am sure others will find them deathly dull. Tough titty.

Yesterday, we spent lunchtime at the pub, but I wasn’t in the right frame of mind. Events of the past week have been weighing on me and I was a bit snappy. I vented. I vented and I vented. Luckily, The Missus has seen this impotent rage before and so just lets me clear my pipes before letting me apologise for my stupid outbursts. I’ve been fairly up recently, so yesterday can be classed as a bit of a downer. Thankfully the booze and the venting helped me feel a bit better – even though it was completely pointless.
After listening to the tracklisting of the vocal songs I have recorded so far, I have decided to stop the CD at 44 minutes. It’s a nice size and doesn’t outlive its welcome and there are six songs from the past and six songs from the present. This gave the CD a name: SIx of One, Half a Dozen of the Other. I like the symmetry.
So now I have three of the four CDs complete and mastered. The fourth CD is about half done with 30+ minutes of ambient noodlings in the can. The fourth CD is my usual “experimental” fare and I hope that each CD gives the listener a different aspect of my musicality. The boxset title has also changed now. It was going to be called “You Are Allowed to Enjoy This”, but that has been dropped for an old expression that my late grandmother used to say: “God Pays Debts Without Money”. It seemed kind of apt with the way life goes.
Now I’ve just got to do some more noodling – hopefully aided and abetted by the new RC-50 and get the artwork together. I nixed any idea of getting this done properly because the costings are beyond me. This is a great shame, but The Missus said that CD packaging is going to be a thing of the past and that everything is being delivered digitally anyway and that I was just being too fussy. She is right, of course. And so, I am going back to the old 4-DVD cases I used before because they give me the maximum space to fit in all the details. No booklet either, but that doesn’t matter because I’ll set up a webpage where the listener can come and read all the details and lyrics.
The funny thing is that I keep listening to CDs one and two and I am really enjoying them. I hate to have any pride in my work (because pride always comes before a fall) but the work and effort in these discs really shows and I feel that I have made more progress that I could ever have imagined. Yes, I honour my mistakes and leave them in for “freshness” and so that I get a sonic smack when I play these songs back. I just hope that I get some good feedback on this stuff. I don’t want money – I just want the odd person to say: “Hey – I really like this, Darren.” That’s not much to ask, is it?
Meanwhile at Chez Lock, I opened the curtains to be greeted by this sight…

Don’t worry, this giant spider was captured by yours truly and released back into the wild.

Yesterday, spent the morning re-recording an old song of mine called “Gone”. Revitalised the original music tracks and remixed it, before adding a new vocal. Also, added a new vocal to “Mr Straight” where I managed to channel the spirits of Mike Reid and Ian Dury. Throat was a little hoarse after that.
Later in the evening, I sat down to re-record the drum loops for “Age of Communication”. The original loop, which you heard the other day, was actually nicked from a commercially available song and was used as a guide rhythm. And so I had to sit down and recreate the rhythm myself, which is a bit tough when you are not a drummer, but I managed to pull something out of my arse which was suitably driving and ramshackle at the same time.
I now have 44 minutes of vocal songs in the can for the third CD. The Missus recommends that I stop after the next tune – afterall, an hour of me warbling is probably torture. Thinking hard about reviving my first ever recorded song “Electric God”, but I am worried that I won’t be able to get the same drum track. Need my old Alesis HR-16B back. This is the problem with recording stuff and then moving on – you end up thinking “I really like that drum machine” and then realising it sold it over a decade ago. I am sure I can come up with something…I still need that pet drummer in a cage. That would make recording a little easier.
Here’s a clever video that is doing the viral rounds at the moment. It’s the band OK Go with “Here it Goes Again”, which is reminscent of those smart videos we used to get in the 1980s when the medium was still young and full of creative vigour:

Managed to tart up and fix “Don’t Want to Be Found” the other day. It’s new name is “Over It Now” and the vocals have been redone and some bass drum added to the mix. These are never the final mixes I post here – I wouldn’t want you to think that this is how this songs are going to end up on the new CD. No, there are rough mixes and very often I re-record the vocal guides and nail down my wavering voice.
I’m not a particularly big Beatles fan, but I understand their value and contribution to popular music. My favourite ever Beatles track is “Tomorrow Never Knows” – purely because it is the first progressive pop record. I’ve always wanted to do a homage and last night I sat down to record the backing for “Age of Communication” – a direct rip of that track. OK – I hope all you staunch Beatles fans won’t throw bricks at me – this was created out of love. This is a rough mix and the lyrics are below, so you can don your favourite Beatles wig and adopt a Scouse nasal drone…

Productive couple of hours before lunch saw me pen the following little ditty. OK – I am the first to admit that I am not the world’s greatest songwriter and I find it hard to fit lyrics to tunes, but I think this one has some spirit. It’s called “I Don’t Want to Be Found” and the lyrics are below so you can sing along.

As someone who sells items on eBay quite a lot, I use the services of the Post Office and I often sit at home weighing letters and padded envelopes for transit around the UK. Today, a guide arrived to explain how from the end of August, the way we pay for postage is changing. The size as well as weight is going to affect how much we pay. I sat and stared at the brochure over breakfast and fell into a stupor. Maybe I am being thick, but I don’t get it. A small packet is bigger than an envelope and therefore heavier. That is fact. So I don’t understand why the size has much to do with the overall cost because size and weight are exponentially connected. I tried to do the math and worked out that there’s a possibility that the Royal Mail are attempting to screw another 20p out of us for this service. So instead of sensibly increasing prices, they spend god know how much money printing posters and leaflets to be distributed nationwide, telling us of this hidden price hikes. Goodness me, another waste of money where that saving could have been used to keep the cost at normal rates. But this is the UK – a nation preoccupied with wasting money and creating large inneffective structures in the name of customer service. Anyone remember how much cash was wasted on the whole Consignia debacle? The sooner they open up postal delivery to the market forces, the better.
Last night, I recieved a mysterious email from a chap called “G” asking about my music. Nothing weird about that because I often get a couple of emails a year thanking me for the tunes. The odd thing was that the name was a little familiar and so I went back to Friendsreunited and re-affirmed that “G” is also the name of my half-sister’s current squeeze. If he’d been John or David, I might not have noticed. Of course, I might just be a little paranoid (I blame the new neighbours) and this fellow is perfectly innocuous. They are coming to take me away – aha!
On a musical note, the Boss RC-50 is turning out to be quite a useful tool. I was expecting it to be used purely for creating soundscapes and looped ambient music, but I have discovered that it can also be used as a natty, on-the-fly compositional tool. So now I hit the loop button and record some chords, then overlay a slight melody and then use this as a template to solo. Below is another example. Of course, this isn’t a serious tune, but an insight to how I come up with guitar solos. I normally improvise until I find something I like and then refine the idea with a honest dollop of musical spit and elbow polish.