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Its all piling up

Published January 27th, 2010 in Album progress, Audio/Studio, General thoughts and Music related. 0 Comments

*Note to self: Don’t leave so long between posts, people may not read long ones.*

So here is my most recent thoughts and activities in order of which comes to mind…

I’ve been offered an interview at Leeds College of Music for which I have to prepare a structured oral commentary of a song I’ve written and produced. This for any normal person may be a little nerve-racking but for me I feel its a whole different league. Presentations are my biggest foe by far, not to mention the fact that even just thinking to myself brings NO results to the questions I need to cover in it. How do you answer a question like, ‘how did you compose this piece?’ when you’re an idiot who just makes stuff up, records it and then forgets how to play it? And what should I do to justify my works industry relevance other than to point out to them that its a piece of music, which, dare I say is as valid as any other.

Next in my train of thought is that I’m a fool and left my car’s interior light on last night thus my battery is now on charge and resulted in me going back to bed instead of being mildly productive at college.

Its no doubt that this happened as a product of my tiredness from now working till 11 every night after college, I say work, those of you who follow me on twitter will notice that I get little work done but boredom is tiring too right?

I have a fairly recently formed pop/indie type band The Lounge Crusade (which you should have a listen to if there’s enough time left in your day after reading this post) with whom we’ve just started booking various gigs. Needless to say my recent change in shift patterns has made the whole experience rather a frustrating one.

I’ve decided I’d like to start trying to make a bit of extra money from recording people if at all possible, so I’ve invited a local band to come and do a FREE track with me which I find my feet and while I wet their apatite for some more when I whack a price on it. Might I add, they sound very excited.

After months of rehearsing for a Michael Jackson tribute band at college (for which I play bass guitar) Its sounding very good, I recommend that anyone in the Lincoln area comes to see the show on either the 11th or 12th of February.

Beacause of most of the above I’ve been feeling a little bit down with myself for not having achieved any solo project progress and I feel like I’m somewhat loosing touch with my guitar playing ability, perhaps all the recent talk of theory has made me feel somewhat inadiquate.

Well, I think that’s about it for now, my problems don’t look as big when they’re written down. Perhaps that should be a lesson to you all.

Album progress Pt. 4

Published December 6th, 2009 in Album progress and Music related. 0 Comments

First of all ‘lol’ at my last post for being so naive. While I have 7 songs just about finished thats pretty much the stage I’ve been at since then… That’s not to say I haven’t been at all productive.

In recent weeks I’ve recorded four new songs with my band for whom I drum and I’ve also been drumming in pantomime, doing Aladdin at college which has taken up a fair few of my free days for a while now.

As far as plans for the album go, I’ve had various thoughts about having people play other instruments on it for me, like Trumpet for example. Being the stubborn person I am I concluded that it would kind of defeat my aim of making a completely ’solo’ record. So… I decided to learn to play the trumpet. I’ve already added Trumpet into one song with which I’m quite impressed. I’ve also spent the majority of today getting my head around a friends piano he left here and recording some parts with that, everything is filling out rather nicely.

Album Progress - Pt.3

Published September 21st, 2009 in Album progress and Music related. 0 Comments

It would appear I wasn’t wrong about my creative juices. I’ve just got 2 tracks recorded in a week. (which is good by my standards) If I can keep it up I should have the music to all the tracks done, ready for vocals in a few weeks.

I am however back at college now so I hope that course work doesn’t slow me down again…

Album Progress - Pt.2

Published September 13th, 2009 in Album progress, General thoughts and Music related. 0 Comments

Last weekend was unconvention Swansea, delivering the dose of knowledge and motivation I’ve come to expect from it. Having spent everyday of this week trying to record more of my album it seems like I’m fighting a losing battle.

There’s always something that comes up that’s unavoidable or indeed that I can’t resist setting me one day back at a time. Yesterday for instance, I managed to finally find time to record a song, got around half of it done before it was time to go to work… Intent on finishing it off this morning I was somewhat frustrated that the mums boyfriend was ill in bed in the next room and I wasn’t to make any noise. *hand gesture*

Anyway… Now that my long awaited creative juices are flowing again and I’ve managed to suss out my interface it shouldn’t really be more than a couple of months till I have my 10 or so tracks ready. The track I’m working on at the minute is the 5th so far.

I’ll work out some cunning scheme of letting people hear some examples of the album in progress as the finished product draws closer.

ART Tubefire 8 - 8 channel Audio interface and tube pre amp

Published August 31st, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Finally my new toy the ART Tubefire 8 Has arrived. I’ve long awaited being able to afford one and put off the completion of my album due to not having one but now its here, brought all the way back from the USA by a very kind and attractive lady friend of mine. Apparently there were suspicions as it went through the airport but then I’m not surprised… A large box full of circuitry with pictures of flames all over it and the words ‘Tubefire’ and ‘turn up the heat’ written on it. That’s not to mention the fact that my courier girl was half Arabian too. Still, the hassle of it all saved me £140 in the long run.

First impressions: Why can’t they write an instruction manual that’s of any use at all! As much as I and other men alike love to just work out how to use things ourselves, there comes a time when you don’t have the time to piss about. Thankfully it only took me about 2 hours to work out how to get all 8 channels synchronised with Cubase.

The reason I bought this was to record drums with the clarity they deserved, and it has so far proved to be a worthwhile purchase for that job. The drums sound effortlessly brilliant, which is good because I’m an effortless kind of guy.

I’ve had a few difficulties with this product which aren’t impossible to work around but just make my head hurt to think about… for example, if I plug my monitors into the outputs I have absolutely no control over the volume of sound coming out unless I run it out into a mixer first. And secondly, there appears to be no way of hearing the input signal and the output signal at the same time… So if I’m recording something I can’t hear such as a Direct In guitar, I have no way of hearing the guitar and the sound from Cubase at the same time. This proves to be a pain in the arse when overdubbing guitar/bass or indeed trying to play to a metronome.

Can’t complain though, it does what I thought it did and does that well, good buy!

P.S. If anyone knows any easy ways around my difficulties please let me know.

One way ticket

Published August 13th, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

I’m not one to live life on the edge or take risks. Nor am I a particularly regular abuser of the law… But having taken a 5 second short cut down a 10 meter piece of road in the wrong direction at 2am when all was clear I don’t think deserved a £60 fine and 3 points on my licence. Not chuffed.

Audio Interface

Published August 1st, 2009 in Audio/Studio and Music related. 2 Comments

I finally managed to save up enough money to buy a laptop this week… Then I decided not to.

Noticing that for around the same price I could get an ART Tubefire 8 mic premp/interface when I happen to be in the middle of recording an album, it seemed to be the more sensible choice. Especially considering that every song I record I seem to get a pretty different drum sound, as recording 5 mics into 2 channels doesn’t allow for much flexibility in mic placement.

I’ve known I wanted this interface for a while now, I’m all about stupidly cheap things. Providing there are no major setbacks I’ll probably buy one within the next two weeks… I’ll be sure to give a brief review of it and perhaps post an audio sample too for those of you interested in its capabilities.

Parks of Bathgate - Album Progress

Published July 7th, 2009 in Music related. 0 Comments

The summer holidays from college have upped my busyness levels by a greatly needed amount… Following the motivational boost that was Unconvention and noticing gaps big enough in my schedule to do something worthwhile.

I’ve recently begun working on a solo album under the name ‘Parks of Bathgate’. It isn’t however to be strictly instrumental like it has been in the past. ‘Parks of Bathgate’ has simply become the outlet my non-acoustic based solo projects.

…anyway, my plan was to have recorded a 10 track album by the end of the summer even though none of the material had yet been written. 2 weeks in and I’ve got two tracks finished ready for vocals so I’d say I’m quite well on target.

Its turning out to be a bit more upbeat than the previous material, but I guess that can only be a good thing.

Counseling, will it help?

Published June 12th, 2009 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments

You may have read about my need of counseling in my previous post. I managed to find the balls to actually turn myself in and book an appointment. I say find the balls, what I actually mean is I told some girls I wanted to go and then they refused to let me back out of it. I guess that could prove to be a productive way of working in many situations.

So, I’ve had one session so far. I’ve always imagined that counselors would just talk rubbish, make points that were completely obvious and blame everything on your childhood like that bald guy from Spendaholics does. Well, that kind of is what happened, except things make a bit more sense when you’re the one being counseled. Or maybe that’s what they want you to think?

UNCONVENTION

Published June 7th, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Its bizarre how one can go 20 years, then in a single weekend learn more than you ever could through years of schooling. Needless to say, this years UnConvention (the first conference I’ve been to) was a hugely worthwhile experience.

My new found knowledge seems to be a bit of a hollow victory though. Having spend a few days around people that know exactly who they are, what they do and who just simply ‘do it’ has put me into a position of great confusion… Yeah, ok so I’m a musician, but what does that mean? I guess I’ve sort of learned that it doesn’t matter what you are good at or what you’re not good at, but about how you go about showing people that you’re a worthwhile investment in their time.

A fairly obvious point, and one I was probably trying to avoid realising because of my massive confidence and communication issues. I’ve pretty much come to the conscious conclusion that I need to seek some form of counseling so I can turn what people frequently mistake for laziness into productivity and industriousness.

Big thanks to all panelists, and indeed everyone who I managed to speak to at UnConvention.

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