Music production is something that has interested me for many, many years. I am fascinated how to make the bare bones of recorded sound into a commercially acceptable song. One of my preoccupations with my own music is how can I hide my own shortcomings as a player with a sheen of professional quality sound and so making music sound the best it can be has turned into more than just a hobby.
I’ve always wanted to get into music production and when bands say “Can you check out our album” I always tremble because I tend to listen to it with a producers hears rather than a critics, because their production is usually what limits their creative endeavours.
A German group called Henning, Rook and Messmer approached me for some promotion via my YouTube channel and while I politely declined and offered them some tips as how they could improve their sound, I took it one step further by offering to fix the mix of one of their songs. Reading their album description, they were looking for a very live sound, but this did a great disservice to their playing as it rendered many of their songs flat and a little lifeless.
So they gave me the master tracks of the first song from their album “Speicher” and I set to work, making sound more attractive to my ears. Now this isn’t a judging content to who’s mix is best, because hearing is subjective and a good mix is always a compromise, but I am presenting both mixes here so you can see how the same song can sound different just by mixing.
My mother was a bit of a hoarder and going through her things has dredged up a few memories and ephemera I thought was lost. Such as this here receipt for my first ever electric guitar:
And this is what I looked like with my Columbus Les Paul copy.
This guitar weighed a ton, but I remember it sounding pretty good through my Fender 15 amp. I used this guitar for a couple of years until I upgraded to a Yamaha RGX121FP in 1993. I think I might have done some early recordings with it, but my memory is a bit fuzzy these days…
The red guitar is a very old 1950s Hopf jazz guitar from Germany. It was given to me as a present from a friend of my mother. I still have it, but the electrics never worked and I nearly got electrocuted by it all those years ago – so I’ve always eyed it with some suspicion. I remember the original strings were like tramlines and cut my fingers to shreds.
My mother has been ill for a while. She had suffered from COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) for a decade. I did my best to care for her but was regarded as a nuisance, someone who was telling her what to do. Our relationship was fractious – but she was still my mother. She was a tough old boot, with a smart mouth and the final word. She was impossible, but she would also do anything for you. She was a conundrum wrapped in an enigma – I never truly understood her, maybe I was never meant to understand her. She was a force of nature, but over the years that force diminished and even though we all have a limited time on this planet, it’s hard when your mother dies.
The police arrived at 4.30pm this afternoon and I had to go with them to identify the body. She had been living with us recently, but in May had gone to live in sheltered accommodation due to her failing health and the children wearing her out. It didn’t seem fair to any of us – she wanted to go, but she didn’t. She told me, I might as well be dead now when she moved out. In a way, she got her wish.
But she was still my mother – you know.
She could be utterly wicked to me – and I’d return the favour. But then she could be caring and be the most valuable player on your team.
I used to think she would outlive me – such was her tenacity and the way she’d bounce back after health scare, after health scare. Sometimes, she appeared as fit as a fiddle and I thought the doctors had made a mistake. Some days she could barely walk to the end of the road. Such is the nature of COPD.
So for the third time in my life I identified a dead body – and I knew what to expect. The meal from the previous evening had been in the oven, cooking overnight and it was a miracle the house hadn’t burnt down. But then, Mum never wanted to be cremated. She was on the sofa, seemingly asleep – her dog by her side. There was no pain, or anguish or sign of distress on her features. It looked as if she’d prepared her meal and simply fell asleep. Again, COPD does that to you. Once minute you can be doing something and the next you can be asleep on your feet.
So now we have another dog to care for and I’ve had Verity doing her best to cheer me up.
I’ve emailed my dad, but I don’t know if I’ve done the right thing in doing that. What kind of son would I be if I didn’t email him? Sometimes I just don’t know what to do for the best. Maybe I shouldn’t even be writing this…
I keep crying and I feel sick to my stomach. Yet I knew this day would come. It comes to all of us. The living grieve for the living, not the dead. We grieve for ourselves and the broken relationship that can never be repaired.
I know we had our differences and you thought I was a complete arsehole, but I will always love you, Mum.
I did this video before as part of the Google+ Hangouts and recorded the thing live, but I only had one viewer and the resultant upload quality didn’t really cut the mustard. So here it is again.
It is just a video of me talking about all the music I’ve recorded over the years and hopefully it will be of interest to some of you. Thanks for having the patience to watch it all!
So what really happened in 2008? Do you want to hear a story of misery and woe? Do you want to settle down with a cup o’ java and watch as one man’s life, hopes and dreams unravel before your very eyes. Do you want to see a family triumph over outstanding adversity onto to fail against an uncaring world?
This is no Hollywood blockbuster starring Matt Damon. No. This is real life starring yours truly, the insurance industry and a number of car batteries.
Emotions are a strange things. Despite what those of you out there might think, I am a big ball of emotion, draped in this flabby, out-of-condition skin, held up by piss and vinegar and the willpower to continue. Today, I lost a good friend. OK – it was just a pet cockatiel, but when a pet has been with you for 18 years, they become more than feathers and claws and a beak. He was a presence. He was someone who told me to go to bed (yes, he did indeed make a heck of a noise if I was staying up late and he wanted some peace and quiet and I would have to duly retreat), he was someone who would amuse me with his wolf-whistles and clucks and cuteness.
This bird had history: he knew my grandfather who sadly passed on in 1994. He was a link to the past. He’s lived in every house I’ve ever lived in. He’s travelled everywhere with me – a feat not even Alex the Wonderdog can boast. He’s been a presence for a long time. He was bought as a birthday present for me in 1994 from a pet shop in Wood Street in Walthamstow and he was named Speckle because he was speckly when we got him. Then he moulted and lost all his speckles. He ended up with a completely incongruous name. I might as well have called him Fred.
In the first decade, he would have the run of the house, perch on my knee whilst I watched movies on TV, sing to the birds through the window and generally be cock of the walk. Then things changed between us – not sure why – but he decided he wanted to be the alpha bird and would try and attack me whenever I let him out. And so, his freedom was limited severely and he was only allowed out for daily exercise.
As the years passed, his interest in flying diminished and he became a cage bird. But he survived the crash. In a fluke of luck for him, I moved him to the box room because he would sometimes disturb Verity as a baby and make a noise during feeds, so he was exiled for a period. This exile in the box room saved him, because if he’d been in the room when the car struck our previous dwelling, he’d have either died of fright or his cage would have fallen out of the building and ended up on the road. But he was saved.
Last year, after we moved, he wasn’t very well. He took to nesting at the bottom of the cage or his tail would be tucked under him, but I gave him some bird tonic and he always seemed to buck up. But in the past week, he was spending more and more time at the bottom of the cage, making it impossible for me to clean him and give him his food. Yesterday, I knew something was up and even warned Verity to be quiet because he was very ill and I was worried “something might happen”. Verity did as she was told and drew a picture of him and placed it in her room.
Today, I heard him in his cage in the morning, but as he’d been under the weather, wasn’t planning on uncovering him until later. When nursing a sick bird it is best to keep them warm, in a subdued environment and preferably covered to avoid any shocks or noise. And with two small kids who loved running up to his cage, keeping him covered was the only option.
Just before 4pm, worried I’d not heard anything, I checked his cage to find him passed on.
I’m not ashamed to say I’ve been crying today. Like I said, I am just a big ball of emotion.
One of my favourite bands have a competition at the moment where you can remix one of their songs from their new album and you can win some goodies. The last time I entered a remix competition like this (about 10 years ago – Paul Oakenfold “Ready Steady Go”) I won a runners-up prize, so fingers crossed!
If you click any Amazon or Adsense link featured on this website, I will earn a shiny silver micro-penny. (I’m just doing this to make sure that I’m abiding by FTC law in the US, which has zero bearing in the UK)
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