Well I redubbed the drums on “Thing-Ummi-Jig” again just to tighten them up. And yesterday I finally managed to get the first CD of my boxset finished. “A Pocketful of Stars” – the first CD – is done and it is 68 minutes of hard slog over three years with eighteen tracks in total. You’ve heard some of the stuff already and some of the songs have appeared in my audio podcasts too.
What a little beauty!
For the first time ever, I am actually using some mastering software to give the tracks an extra bit of audio sparkle. I read about using such software in “Guitarist” magazine and it really does lift the track, giving extra life and pizazz (never thought I’d ever use that word) to the proceedings. Anyway, the first CD is done. I wash my hands of it. No more editing or juggling tracklists. It is over.
However, I still have discs 2, 3 and 4 to complete. Disc 2, which is coming together rather nicely, is 38 minutes in length, but it is going to be around 40-45 minutes. It’s a different environment to the first disc in that I want the listener to sit down and listen to the whole lot in one sitting, whereas disc 1 is more a cherry-picking exercise with people saying: “Oooh, I like that one” or whatever. So I am not that far off of completing the second, as untitled, disc.
The third disc is the sticker because it is intended to be a CD of vocal tracks. Now I have about 30 minutes of songs that I recorded/re-recorded/revived from the dead, but I am not sure how I am going to finish it. I don’t know. I’ve got lots of words scribbled down, but I am not a very good song writer in the classic sense of the words. And I hate my voice. And I am never satisified with my vocal songs. Ahhhh…but the point of this set is to make the ultimate artistic statement. And then I can sell my music equipment and stop all this silly mullarkey.
The fourth disc is my experimental playground. Mainly soundscaping and looping stuff, I have another 30 minutes in the bag. I am not worried about finishing this because I find it a lot easier to create this kind of dull ambient drone that crafting clever songs.
So I reckon that it’ll be complete in another six months maybe. Who knows? And then there’s the packaging. I would actually like to get this put into a litlte box with each CD having a little LP cardboard sleeve. That’ll cost money, but I have this dream, you see. And dreams often cost money…
Category: Diary
Well, I contacted my ISP and because they love so much, they cut me a deal. So I upgraded to unlimited hosting, which includes unlimited site traffic, for a whopping $10 for the next six months. Well at least that saves the problem of being shutdown for maxing out my traffic. The upside of this is now I have something like 20Gb of storage space. My goodness, I’m going to have to find something to fill that up. I got thinking about starting a depository for all the various cuttings I’ve collected over the years about certain rock bands I support. I got this new scanner last month (don’t worry, it only cost £30, I am on a reduced budget) and it could be something to do. I dunno.
Not much else to report at the moment. No exciting stuff happening because The Missus went back to work from her break last week and so I have to pretend to do some proper work. Ho hum. My hayfever is up at the moment and I feel a bit sniffy and bulbous-eyed (more bulbous-eyed that usual). It’ll pass.
Very exciting about the forthcoming MIchael Brook album, RockPaperScissor, which is due out 18 July. Brook is a very interesting artist for me and I love his production skills as well as his interesting use of the old electric geetaw. You can read about it at his website: www.michaelbrookmusic.com or you can go to Video Google and watch a great “making of” video clip. I like what I am hearing and I look forward to getting that particular disc in my grubby little mitts. Just love that guitar tone.
A while ago, I recorded a track called “Thing-Ummi-Jig” and it was based on a drum loop supplied by a guy called Penston. I really like the track, but I never got any feedback from Mr P, so it got put back in the drawer. As I said, I really like the jollity of the track and wanted it in my boxset. The only problem is that the drum loop wasn’t my own, so I couldn’t seel it, so I’d have to re-record the drums. Shudder. I can hold a rudimentary beat, if the wind is blowing in the right direction. So I sat down at my Handsonic and got the arms and legs working. I re-recorded the drums almost live – I had to go back and re-dub the toms because I fluffed them up and the cymbols seperately, but it’s almost a live track! 🙂
Direct download: CLICK HERE
Like I said, it is a spirited, jolly little track and I hope it cheers you up if you are in a bad mood, because that’s it’s aim. Nothing else other than a sunny little song.
Looking at my traffic stats, I reckon I’ve got 24 hours before my hosts close down this website until the end of the month. This is because I have exceeded my 20Gb traffic limit for June. It turns out that something downloaded a rather large file on my server (my video podcast) a whopping 460 times in one day. I get the feeling that this was a bot of some description because large volume traffic tends to happen over a longer period of time rather than concentrated on one day and one file.
And so this website will disappear for a while, which is a shame because I’d gotten a heck of a lot of traffic thanks to a link to my recent Robert Fripp reviews courtesy of Sid Smith at DGM Live. My traffic almost doubled thanks to Sid and considering that I get three times the traffic compared to a certain cult rock band site that I supposedly run, this is ain’t bad going at all. However, I have emailed my webhost asking if there’s a cheap way to upgrade my service without the site going down. I await their reply. If the site isn’t here the next time you visit, it’s not my fault and will return on 1 July 2006 (fingers crossed).
Seeing as I have been in a loopy kind of mood, here is a gentle piece for your consideration. It’s working title is Digital Sunset 1, but this could change. It’s nothing radical just soothing washes of sound. It ain’t gonna change the world but it made me feel relaxed as I recorded it live. With this track, I have been experimenting with my pedals and all though this starts with me dubbing up on the RC-20XL at the beginning, I kick in a 23-second panned stereo delay midway through courtesy of my DD-20 and so you get this spacy kind of loopy thing going. OK – it’s not a twin Eventide, but I think it sounds good. Still wishing I had the cash for an RC-50…sob…
Direct download: CLICK HERE
Today, I got an email from CDJAPAN saying that the payment for the recent Exposure CD that I bought from them has been denied by my credit card company. This all goes back to my card being cloned. This whole incident has turned into a rather expensive nightmare. I also got a nice email from Scott Stephen from Norfolk who also attended the recent Norwich Cathedral appearance by Robert Fripp. He found the concert by accident on the day of the event and enjoyed himself immensely. He also owns a Boss RC-20XL and likes noodling with loops. You see, all this looping stuff is catching…
At the weekend, I went through a pile of old CDs looking for more songs to retreive for my 4-CD boxset. Again, I am trying to put together a CD of vocal songs and to save time writing new material, I am revisiting old stuff and attempting to breathe new life into it.
One song I wanted to use is called “Save Me” and so I went back to my master CD-R, but alas, laser rot or something caused the disc to be unreadable. I then spent most of Sunday afternoon looking for a solution to retrieve the seemingly lost data, before coming across BadCopyPro, a data retrieval suite. A few minutes with this and I successfully brought back the lost masters with the click of a mouse. What a relief. With the masters back from the dead, I listened to the track and decided to just remix the backing track and re-record the vocals. It works a bit better than the old version and I even did some slight editing on the end of the track to make things fit together better. A second song from the same sessions in 1999 called “You’re Going Down” was also saved, but I don’t think I’ll be re-using this. It wasn’t very good then and it sounds even worse now, even if I did decide to intervene and re-record some parts. Anyway, here is a rough mix of the new “Save Me” track:
Direct download: CLICK HERE
Back in 1999, I did a little CD called “Save Me”. Those were the good old days of www.mp3.com – a website where you could quickly and easily upload your songs and create purchasable CDs with the minimum of effort. We had great fun creating the artwork for that CD as it featured myself in the Missus’s old Vauxhall Nova, running myself over. Some clever trickery in PhotoShop made it all work, but I had to suffer for my art and lay on the cold road for 10 minutes while The Missus took the photographs. Those were the days! Unfortunately, a lot of the original artwork got lost when the backup CD-R went a bit manky and all that’s left is this front cover picture:
Who are those hairy fellows?
In the post: Robert Fripp – Exposure 30th Anniversary Edition. I know, I know. I already have the Japanese edition, but there is a story involved in all this. I had ordered the Japanese edition ages ago – I think it was January/February time and subsequently my credit card was cloned and I thought that my Internet order would not get processed as the card I had used was no longer valid. So in the meantime, I ordered the cheaper EU version from HMV using a voucher I had collected. The Japanese version turned up (my new credit card had been charged) and it was too late to cancel my HMV order as it had been on Special Order. So now I have two copies. Well that’s my story and I am sticking to it. I am sure Sid is having a good chuckle and waggling his finger at the screen at this record collecting shenanigans. Anyways, if you are planning to buy the CD, buy the Japanese version because the packaging is far superior. The EU version is nice, but they just know how to pull the stops out in Japan.
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING ENTRY HAS AN IMPOTENT RAGE RATING OF 9 OUT OF 10
This morning, my mother had very kindly dropped off a copy of The Observer’s Music Monthly magazine through our door. While I had been fairly laid-back about getting a copy, she said that she would slip a spare issue out if they had any left over in the shop. So while I scoffed me cornflakes, I read the main interview with Thom Yorke from Radiohead. As I worked my way through the piece, I realised why I have become so disinfranchised with the whole music “scene.” In the past, I was the kind of guy who you couldn’t take into HMV because I spend a good hour in there pouring over the racks before coming out with cash spent and a little blue plastic bag full of goodies. Last week, I went into HMV and Virgin in Norwich and couldn’t even face looking at the shelves. It all leaves me cold.
So anyway, back to the wonkey-eyed whinger…in the interview, Thom Yorke dribbles on about global warming, Iraq, the government, capitalism and free-trade and the self-same student bollocks he’s been wittering on for years. All the time, we know that he is part of the system already. He is the one who spends vast amounts of money on world tours, using phenomenal amounts of carbon-based fuel to propel him and his band from continent to continent, causing irreversible damage to the environment and climate, to the nuclear power stations that power their events, to the corporates who sponsor the events and sell Coca-ColaTM at £5 a carton. The biggest irony, when it comes to the eco-friendly musicians, is that their product itself is incredibly toxic. You have a CD or LP, which is made from oil, with a silver substrate which won’t degrade, which is housed in either a paper sleeve (with paper made from trees and often bleached, more environmental damaged) or a plastic jewel case, which is made from more oil. The only good thing about digital downloads is that they are the greenest form of music other than live perfomance with an acoustic instrument.
At least, Thom Yorke admits he’s a hypocrite, but he’s still part of the system. He is still part of the capitalistic machine that sells the product. He is the product. You’ve already sold yourself, son, so shut up and take the dollar bill. So you sit there and you read this guy venting, a musician who hasn’t made a decent record since 1997, despite what the fawning critics might say, throwing their hands to heaven and praising skittering dross like “Hail to the Chief” and “Amnesiac” in fits of masturbatory joy, and you think to yourself: “Is it me. Or has the whole fucking world gone mad?” This guy isn’t a genius – his band is just a three chord rock band who managed to find oblique time signatures and Krautrock to pilfer. Why is this guy still here? Why are the music press still writing about them?And why is he still wittering on about problems of which he is part? More importantly, what the fuck am I doing wasting my time reading this?
Moan about the environment = stop travelling and burning valuable fuel to promote your folly.
Moan about slave labour = stop buying imports (even the Fair Trade crap which is just as exploitative) and buy local produce.
Moan about capitalism = withdraw your financial support and basically go live up a tree.
Moan about the government = become active at a local level because that’s how change occurs.
Moan about Iraq = strap explosives to yourself, book that meeting with Blair and press the red button at the appropriate moment. It won’t change anything but at least we’ll have got rid of two knobs at the same time.
Of course, I am just being an extreme reaction to his views because it makes fun reading – this is dark humour, you know. While I totally understand the necessity to be passionate about the things you care about, people like Thom Yorke are in the best position to organise, mobilise and change things. Yet they never seem to be able to deliver. It’s Bob Geldof-syndrome all over again, I guess. While well-meaning, their actions never actually achieve the aim. While Live8 was a great idea, it was poorly executed (no black artists – crap, get Gabriel on the blower and get him to call his coloured chums for a knees-up down his way). What did it actually achieve? Greater awareness? Did the politicians listen? In that instance, the decisions had already been made – so Geldof was really just having a big party.
You cannot achieve global change. No one can – only Mother Nature herself – or a random accidental asteroid in collision course with Earth – or a tiny virus with the capability of killing all human life – or a crazed man with the button and the nuclear warheads ready to go. But you can change the little things, make small incremental changes at a local level and if you are successful, these will move out to other areas, like ripples on a still pond after you’ve just thrown that pebble. I just wish these self-aware, almost saintly, musicians would just get on with what they are paid to do – make music. The Geldofs, Yorkes and (spit) Bonos of this world could change things if they really wanted. They have the money to do it. They could, if they so wished, raise a guerilla army and liberate the oppressed masses in West Africa. But they won’t, because that would actually mean doing something instead of bleating to the newspapers and having a platform to sell more product.
Of course, the reason I get riled when these rock stars open their gob and expect me to stop buying South African bananas goes back to that bloody St Bono and the time when appearing at a charity gala with Pavarotti, he paid something like £1200 to have his favourite trilby hat flown from Ireland to Italy. That must have been a pretty special hat. Think of all the African children the money could have saved?
Another strand of the interview portrayed Thom Yorke as a tortured soul, forever worried about the state of the world. For fuck’s sake, grow up man! Why worry about things you have no control of? Maybe I’ve got it wrong – I tend to worry about whether or not I locked the back door when I take the dog out for a walk – but I think that the environment will take care of itself. Mother Nature will wipe us out and start again when we’ve outlived our usefulness, much like what happened to the dinosaurs. You can’t change the fundamental nature of mankind – modern man is greedy, stupid and selfish with power and wealth being a corrupting influence. While being poor doesn’t automatically make you a saint, it does give you some humility which is greatly lacking in this world.
Anyway, I am not sure exactly what that rant was about. I know it started off about Thom Yorke, but I let my fingers run away from me. Anyway, I’m glad I sold my Radiohead records bar the good one.
The recent visits to see Robert Fripp perform have been very inspirational. Hearing the music in the proper context had a profound impact on me and I still stick to my judgement that performing Soundscapes in a rock context (i.e. in front of a boozed up, jaded and cynical audience expecting balls-out rock and roll) is like throwing your pearls to the swine.
Anyway, I’ve been noodling about with looped music for a quite a while – since about 1994 when I got my first guitar synthesizer, the Roland GR-1. Again, hearing Fripp made me realise just how much one can miss a piece of equipment. In those days, I didn’t have any delay or loop devices to help me get the sound I wanted. A delay pedal is a piece of equipment that basically acts as an electronic echo and duplicates the sound played into it, gradually decaying over time – The Edge from U2 is the biggest exponent of the delay pedal I can think of. A loop pedal is a bit more complicated and just plays back whatever you put into it and you can overdub sounds on top of that.
But I had neither, so I came up with a novel way of achieving my own soundscapes. What I would do is create a sound on my Roland GR-1, usually based on a string pad, and make sure that the decay of the sound was really long, so that when you plucked the string, the sound would continue for ages before dying out. This way I could play long deep notes and try and solo/add melody with the higher pitched strings on my guitar. The earliest example of this was a track called “Angel’s Tears” and actually it used a Yamaha MU-50 as the sound source, so it has a rather unique sound to it. Here it is:
Direct download: CLICK HERE
Over the years, I’ve purchased delay pedals such as the Line 6 DL-4 and the Boss DD-20 digital delay pedals, both of which allow you about 20 seconds of stereo looping time. With equipment like that, you can set down some synth pad noises and solo over the top. They are quite effective and work well despite not really being looping devices. Such examples of the DL-4 and DD-20 can be heard in this next piece, Shard of Indecision:
Direct download: CLICK HERE
Since then, true looping pedals have come to the fore and I’ve been using a Boss RC-20XL. Despite being only a mono device, you have an awful lot of delay time to play with (around 50 minutes, I think) and the sound quality is superb for such a compact device. I’ve been salivating over the new Boss RC-50, which is a stereo looper, but alas, I have neither the space nor the money to purchase one. But I’m not bitter, I am making the most of what I’ve got.
I think looped improvisation is a really interesting musical form and, for me anyway, it gives me the ability to tap into my subconscious creative mind. Once you set things off, you don’t really know where you are going to head and it is both nerve-wracking and extremely liberating at the same time. Seeing Robert Fripp perform with his banks of equipment was a real inspiration and it gave me the metaphorical kick up the rump to go back to my pedals and get playing. This morning I came up with this live improvisation called Cloistered Spaces 1, inspired by my visit to Norwich Cathedral yesterday. It’s not particularly good as I’ve not been ‘scaping for a while, but it is a start:
Direct download: CLICK HERE
The Missus quite enjoys my ambient noodling and reckons I should try and play this kind of stuff live. I always reply that if RF has such a hard time of it whenever he fires up a soundscape, what chance have I got. You’ve got to admire her blind faith, haven’t you?
Awww crap. Being a self-confessed stat slut, I noticed that someone or something had downloaded my video podcast directly from this site. Of course, it is a very popular item – people like to see my pasty Uncle Fester face looming into view and plonking away unconvincingly on that rubber bass doo-hickey. But on 11 June, there were over 460 downloads of that particular file – this means that already I have used 13Gb of my monthly traffic quota and if traffic continues as projected, I am going to shift 37Gb of data this month and have to pay for it. Pay in blood, my friends. Pay in blood and sweat and tears and other bodily fluids. It’s not going to be pleasant. Oh what to do? I’ve already removed a load of unnecessary files from here – but I don’t want to take down the stuff I do – that’s the whole point of this place. I am in a right ol’ quandry and no mistake.
The weekend consisted of more sitting in the garden quaffing vodka. It’s an interesting drink. It’s not the slow descent I get with whiskey or pints of cider or pissy lager – one minute I am fine and the next, when I am least expecting it and usually three or four drinks down the line…whammmo…I can begin to feel worse for wear. Of course, it could be that I am just a big ol’ pansy. Who knows?
I also discovered that trying to squeeze into an old pair of shorts discarded many years previously is not conducive to one’s reproductive health. As I sat on the grass, strumming me geetar and terrifying the neighbours with looped improvisations (heck, it was a free concert and they should be grateful), the strain on my undercarriage was too much. Eventually I exclaimed “ooooh me ballbags” and ran inside to slip into something a little more comfortable. Damn the Missus for washing my favourite and only pair of shorts that actually fit me. The swine!
Today, I am back in the garden trying to get work done in time for the Missus who is having a break from her work over the next few days. We intend to do exciting stuff. Stuff that is so amazing that your brain would crawl out of your nose in sheer apoplectic exultation to escape your cranium and dance around in front of you singing songs of wonderment and joy. Tomorrow we are heading into town for some fun – shudder – and then we’ll be casting our net further afield later in the week. Don’t worry, I’ll take lots of pictures so you won’t feel left out. Of course, I know that’s there is only three regular readers left. I blame that sunshine…making people want to go outside.
Rant and rave, rant and rave. Just going on to make it look as if something is actually happening here. It isn’t. Back to the vodka, the work and the sunshine. 😉