You are allowed to enjoy this…

The way I record has now changed due to the various changes in my life. Spare time is a premium and I am torn between my baby daughter and the shop I now own. However, I refuse to let my creative urge (no matter how feeble the results might be) die out and so I have found myself recording things even quicker. I believe in the “get it done” work ethos when it comes to “art” – and I think you can labour over a piece of writing or music or art until you lose focus. Now I am just recording this stuff as it happens. I now riff to a drum track from my drum machine and improvise bass parts over it. Then I go back and refine and revise. “The Sun Even Shines” was such a track and this new piece is starting the same way. The same seed is sown and so if you check back in a couple of days something might have come out of this rough recording.

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This little ditty was based on that “Super” jam I recorded last month. Unfortunately, my guitar playing is less that inspired as I have been have a few aches and pains in the joints of the fingers in my left hand. Now I have an excuse for my crappy playing – hurrah!

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Recording chum Andrew Osborne sent over the individual tracks he’d recorded for his cover of Tubeway Army’s “Are Friends Electric?” and this gave me the chance to have a go at some production. His version was a more mono mix, whereas I tried to make it more “produced” if you know what I mean. I also dropped the old vox back in – but this time I think you can hear that I had a heavy cold when I was singing. Whoops!

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I have upgraded/sold off a part of my home studio. In an effort to conserve space, I have sold my audio mixer, FX processor, compressor module and PC audio interface/synthesiser. I have replaced the equipment with an EDIROL M-16DX digital 16-track mixer which seems ideal for working with Sonar. I’ve owned the new mixer for over a week but not done much recording with it. As with all new gear, there is a honeymoon period where you test it out and try and figure out how to get it to sound like your old equipment! I am having trouble with the levels in the M-16DX at the moment. Anyway, now I can recorded sixteen tracks at once if I wish, so I can have the drum machine running and jam live over the loop, which is a novelty that I’ve missed since moving from a 4-track multitrack recorder to PC recording back in 1997. I could only ever record a single stereo pair at a time. This morning, in about fifteen minutes, I recorded this little thing. It’s nothing serious – just a playful rhythm track for me to test the levels of my new mixer.

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My old recording chum Andrew Osborne emailed me over an instrumental cover of the Tubeway Army hit “Are Friends Electric?”. Unbeknownst to Andrew, it happens to be one of my favourite songs from my childhood – in those days us youngsters thought the likes of Gary Numan was cool. Anyhoo, I really got carried away by Andrew’s backing track so I decided to add my own vocals to it. I’ve probably ruined a masterpiece, but I really like it in all its wonderful lo-fi glory. Enjoy!

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The track I recorded for the Adrian Belew competition has morphed from Yoli Moli into “Let it Come Down”. There’s very little change to what you heard before except some hastily recorded drums added to the end of the track, where I try my best to channel Bill Bruford. I wanted to spend more time on this, but life has a habit of getting in the way of creative folly.

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Not been doing much recording. Instead I have been spending the maternity leave with The Missus vegging out on a TV diet of Homes Under the Hammer and Jeremy Kyle. But I had a little noodle the other night and came up with nuggest of an idea. It’s called Crossroads because it reminded me of…well, Crossroads, the soap opera theme, not the junction between two intersecting roads.

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In the meantime, I have been getting to grips with the idea of fatherhood. Much equipment has been purchased ready for BabyLockTM’s arrival. One afternoon, I learnt how to assemble and use a baby buggy, though nowadays they call them things like a “Baby All Terrain Vehicle” or something. Our one transforms into a pram, then into a buggy and then into a Decepticon jet fighter. Oh wait a minute, that’s Transformers, isn’t it? Anyhoo, here’s a couple of pix of me getting the lowdown on the new buggy and realising that it is more Darren friendly that I realised.

“Hey, they’ve thought of everything with these things…”

“Heck – there’s even somewhere to put my beer!”
Remember folks, drink responsibly and never push a buggy whilst under the influence of the happy juice.