tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18142437342619949042024-03-13T10:40:53.146+00:00Purple MusicThe blog of the Purple music project.Danhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07115287434336124356noreply@blogger.comBlogger147125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1814243734261994904.post-77817865626633841992015-06-01T19:57:00.001+01:002015-06-01T19:57:19.673+01:00Well it's been a long, long time coming, but finally it is here! The new album is out. It's available in all the usual places, but best to go through <a href="http://www.purplemusic.org./">http://www.purplemusic.org.</a> It goes by the unlikely name of "Mimetophonic Windows."<br />
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I'm sorry if there is anyone actually following this blog, I kind of gave up blogging because every time I did I was saying "well there's been a long gap". It was an odd album, small sporadic flurries of activity followed by long gaps. Sometimes there were reasons - I went through a few crises of confidence in the music, but I think the final result may be the finest Purple album yet. It's certainly the most personal.<br />
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I have plans for the next album, but I'm not sure when I will start it. I have other plans for a different recording project - songs not instrumental music - I will see which takes of first.Danhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07115287434336124356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1814243734261994904.post-16169006144928789442014-01-17T00:59:00.001+00:002014-01-17T00:59:51.335+00:003 goblins and a 2-headed OgreChristmas came and forced a break in the proceedings. I'm still waiting for a couple of location recordings from my good mate Andy before I can continue with the church stuff, so I have started working on Ketchup, track 2, which is all about gaming worlds. The first section has a name that I have wanted to use for a while, Booty Bay Blues, after Booty Bay which is a place in the game World of Warcraft. It's a goblin town, and appropriately will be a kind of skiffle/folk/blues. I say appropriately, because it seems to me that's what goblins might play, that or electro-pop. Or maybe metal.<br />
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Anyway, the tune is introduced by the players. I have invented three goblins and a 2-headed ogre. The leader of the outfit is Finklesnort and Tooheds is the drummer. Here is a cpy of my notes, and the script.<br />
<br />
The cast:<br />Finklesnort (goblin)<br />Gruntbucket (goblin)<br />Weasel (goblin)<br />Tooheds (ogre)<br />
<br />
F: Ok, tape's rolling, you ready guys?<br />all: grunts of agreement<br />F: My name's Finklesnort!<br />G: My name's Gruntbucket<br />W: My name's Weasel<br />T: And mine is the last voice you will ever hear<br />F: Aww tooheds knock it off.<br />(background from goblins)<br />T: Sorry. My name's Tooheds<br />F: and together we are...<br />All: Frankie goes to Stranglethorn<br />T: who's Frankie?<br />F: Sh. And this is... Booty bay blues. Too-heds?<br />T: Yeah?<br />F: hit it!<br />T: OK<br />
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Well this is of course reference to Frankie goes to Hollywood, and to a particular 12-inch mix of "2 Tribes" which includes the lines from teh band "My name's Pedz", "My Name's Mark", "My Name's Nash", "And Mine is the last voice that you will ever hear". But also to the classic X-factor-y introduction "My Name's Chris", "And My Name's John" ... "and together we are..." "Chris and John!"<br />
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Of course, there's only me to do the voices, so three different goblin voices and an ogre - no problem. Put a growl in the voice, use different pitches, shape the vocals with Avox Throat (which simulates modulation from different throat shapes), use a bit of pitch-shifting and some other grittying effects and it's fairly plausible that they sound almost like different people, possibly goblins. The Ogre was even easier, a pitch-shift down, a bit of stereo widening and deep talking to start off with, and a big dollop of reverb. I just love it.Danhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07115287434336124356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1814243734261994904.post-19104148287812230862013-12-19T14:32:00.001+00:002013-12-19T14:32:08.193+00:00The longest post everThat's just a prediction, it might not be.<br />
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Well, my dearest reader, it feels like generally these post start with "I've had a bit of a break and I've come back". This post is exceptional, I have not really had a break, I've been beavering away, but I've been uninclined to blog about what I've done. Partly because I've had a tendency to work in short bursts, and partly because I didn't feel like it. Anyway, I ahve just finished a short session and now I feel like like because I think I have done some slightly interesting stuff, at least things I have not really done before.<br />
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When I left you I was working on the first section of what will probably be the third track. The track is about church and the section is based on a praise song I wrote a couple of years ago, which did actually get used in church a few times. At the end of last blogging I had done the long intro, a first verse and chorous.<br />
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I have added to this with a second verse (broken down and tune on a synth) anothe bridge section with acoustic guitars, introducing a synth bass, some tambourine over that, and a final chorus, with guitars, synth tune, etc. Then finally it breaks down again into a quiet repeated chorus. It's all a bit rough around the edges and needs mixing properly, but it has a good energy to it. I have not often used this many synths in one track together. Anyway, I'm happy with it.<br />
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I then spent quite a bit of time thinking about the order of sections, and what they should be musically. I tried passing straight from this first section to what I thought would be the third section, which was the first I recorded, a treatment of "When I survey" to the tune "Waily Waily". To my surprise the transition worked well. It does mean I have two tune-based sections in a row. So I was contemplating doing this. In order to try it I was using a cubase project which also had the last section in. Now this last section is the one which I was most unhappy about when I had a listen through everything that was done back in november, and I had determined that I was going to completely rethink this section.<br />
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The problem I had was that when I listen to it in context of the previous (now second section), it made sense and didn't seem as bad as it was in isolation. This gave me a problem, because I like good transitions.<br />
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So I have effectively spent a couple of weeks trying to knock this section into shape. The structure if it is "refrains" which have a simple repeated chord sequence, and "verses" which have flute solos by my mother-in-law Kathy. Each verse has a different chord sequence, and is a different length<br />
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The first thing I was not happy with was the flute, so I spent quite a while messing with it. I had originally thought it weak so had heavily added effects - particularly phasing, echo, tone and reverb. One thing I didn't like was that at times it was too loud and at others too quiet. Adding a compresssor was the answer to that, and with a bit of tweaking, taking out the phasing and playing with the tone I got it to sound warmer and fuller, and I started to like it.<br />
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The second thing, when I listened closely, was the drums. It was very pedestrian. Now the drums for the previous two sections is also pretty standard, but seems fine because it seems to playt more of a supporting role. So I wondered if changing the samples used would help. I messed about qith the drum sets I ahve and eventually got intrigued by a sort of bangra set. Secondly, maybe the actual drum pattern was dull and unhelpful, so I completely revised that. Suddenly the whole section had a different feel, and instead of feeling lifeless and porridgey, it had a life of it's own.<br />
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For a long time I have tried to work on the principle of "don't be aftraid to ditch something if it doesn't work". There are two sections on the second album which I sincerely wish I had done that to. (Although bizarrely, when someobody at a prog rock site reviewed my albums recently, one of those was one of his favourite sections. Go figure!" Anyway, I feel like I have somewhat betrayed that principle - but maybe I've added to it. If something doesn't work, don't be afraid to ditch it, but if the idea is sound, you may be able to rescue it with reworking. I'm kind of happy to have got to this phase.<br />
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I cannot remember why I was also messing about with a synth, but I found a nice wibbly synth pad sound which sounded quite nice in context of the refrains, so I added it. Oh and I found that taking things out in the verses made nice contrasts.<br />
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So musically it was sorted, the final ingredient was to add sound clips from sermons at my church, JPC. Thankfully there is a large repository of recorded sermons available online. Thankfully also I found a good sequence of clips that I wanted to use in the first three sermons I listened to. Each by a different person, so that gives a contrast of voices. They form a pattern which roughly speaking explore faith, hope, suffering and the place of Jesus in all that, also with a little about the history of the church building. I also have the vicar saying "I must conclude" which is the closest he has to a catch-phrase.<br />
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So overall I think, no I'm sure the section is rescued. It sounds good, it's musical balance and interest is good, and it is well-paced and lays out some ideas as well. I guess having the section redeemed is quite appropriate in context.<br />
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So because of the shuffling around, that section is no longer the last section of the track, and having a section on praise (section 1), a section on the cross and in the setting of "church" on the communion (section 2), and a section on sermons (section 3), it seems obvious that the last section should be on prayer.<br />
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How does one represent prayer in sound/musical form?<br />
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Especially I wanted to de-emphasise ritual prayer, and evoke personal prayer - prayer is a very personal thing, and this is meant to be a largely personal album. I've thought about it a lot, and I'm finding that I really want to not over-think it, but rather to feel it. I wanted a short part exploring that experience when praying is hard and it feels like you are trying to break through a wall. This led to one of the more interesting things I've done in the name of music - set up a couple of microphones to record myself hitting a wall in increasing desparation. I tried to feel the frustration as I hit and pushed at the wall, and barged it with my shoulder. I got a little pain as a result.<br />
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Along with that I wanted a deep, sweeping and slightly disturbing ambience. I found, quite quickly, a lovely sound in FM8 (a NI soft-synth) which felt right. After the wall-slapping I wanted some tinkly noises - very high up in the frequency spectrum, random, quiet and stereo spread. I think musically the equivalent of sparks before the eyes when standing up too fast, or of sparks from a sparkler. I searched absynth for an appropriate sound but couldn't find one. I recorded the sound of a key being struck by another key, which is a nice high-pitched "tink" and tried to mess about with it, multiple copies with pitch shifting, and stereo placement. It sounded truly underwhelming, too much background hiss, too much work and not really tinkly enough anyway.<br />
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I had a good think about what might give the right sort of sound. I wondered about using a triangle and pitch-shifting it up quite a lot (I wanted it up towards the limit of human hearing). I wondered about glass, and think that tiny glass bells would have the right tonal texture. Finally I thought about wind chimes.<br />
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I went to the garden centre and bought the smallest (and therefore highest pitch) wind chimes I could find. I did a stereo recording of them, quite a long one. I cut in legthways into three and put them in parallel so they play together. I put two of them over to the ears (left and right) to get a good spread of tinkles. Each one was pitch-shifted up by about an octave, but different amounts, and then time-stretched to thin out the tinkles, which gave a tremulous quality to them too. I fed the three tracks into a group track so I could add effects that would affect all three. I did some severe tone control to drop out background noise and only leave the top end, a stereo enhancer to widen the sound, and some reverb to make it feel mosre spacey.<br />
<br />
Finally I have pretty much got the tinkling I wanted.<br />
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Sometimes I just explore with sounds and find things I like, But I do enjoy having a vision (for want of a better word) of a sound and trying to work out how to create it. It takes time, but is fun, and after all this is all about having fun with the process.<br />
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And so I have stopped. I'm trying to get hold of a congregational recital of the Lord's Prayer to put in - it feels like the right thing to do. I have asked somebody at church for a recording and am waiting for that.Danhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07115287434336124356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1814243734261994904.post-52448701689113975012013-11-11T22:57:00.001+00:002013-11-11T22:57:16.044+00:00Seven-and-a-half months laterWow, that's been quite a hiatus, and there are a number of reasons for that. The first and biggest reason is that like many creative people I lost confidence. And then I lost inertia. And then I lost all my energy in a bout of illness. I'm back, I don't know for how long.<br />
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I lost confidence for a couple of reasons. Firstly I was working on a section - that I have blogged about before, that will have sermon snippets in it, and I was not happy with it. I then got unhappy with some other sections. The second was a small round of reviewing of my previous albums, which to be honest were reasonable reviews, but somebody made a sarcastic comment about my drum sounds and that was it, I was lost in feeling like I needed to reinvent the drums. And search for more sermon sections, which is dull.<br />
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So I'm back, and the confidence is coming back. It has helped that I have made a fundamental re-decision, in that I have reminded myself of a much earlier fundamental decision, that if something isn't working, and I cannot seem to fix it, I need to change it. This can include abandoning the whole musical idea. I have had a listen through, and there are sections where there are things I am unhappy with, and so will change in due course. The section I was last working on, the sermon section, will have a major change in that the musical idea for it is going to be abandoned. Bye-bye idea, I liked you in concept, but when it came down to it you were not up to standard. This will probably be replaced by a rockier, more upbeat idea.<br />
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And so there is also a new decision - so far I have worked on sections more or less randomly, and that is changing, I am going to focus on one of the four tracks at a time, and work on not only getting the sections to work, but getting the tracks to work as tracks too. This is actually different in some ways to previous albums, and I think is a feature of the fact that the tracks are shorter than ever, at 16 minutes each, and with only 4 sections each. In this way, I hope that each track holds together, and flows through better than in previous albums.<br />
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I am sticking with the concept that this album is in general more "straight" than the other albums, more accessible and less progressive, but I'm looking for interesting things to do, interesting sounds and instrument combinations, because I think I am getting a little samey with that and was losing something as a result. I am attempting to make it more personal, and therefore more emotional, which in itself is quite a challenge for fundamentally instrumental music.<br />
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So after all of these decisions and resolve, I have thrown myself back into it, I am working on what probably will be track 3, an exploration of my church life. This has one section recorded already (the first to be recorded for the album) which I THINK will be the third section in the track. I have now started work on the first section which is about the start of a service and the usual start with some loudish hymns or songs, and it is based on a song I wrote for church (which was used a couple of times before being forgotten), an up-beat, rocky song called "Alle, Alleluja". The opening is an ambient recording I made of the congregation chatting before the service starts, with music slowly getting louder underneath, an organ, drums, piano and an "ahh"-ing choir - using the first two chords of the song but at half speed. it's a kind of tribute to the start of the song "let's talk about me" by the Alan Parson's Project, and the song "Brother Where You Bound" by Supertramp. It is working well. We then have the vicar welcoming people and rocky guitars come in with the song, the tune, drums come in, bass will come in, and we are into a verse, then a bridge. The tune for the chorus is done on a nice ballsy analogue synth. And that's as far as I have got in the last two evenings.Danhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07115287434336124356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1814243734261994904.post-22498113522683375792013-03-21T22:53:00.001+00:002013-03-21T22:53:39.640+00:00Still aliveSo the last two sessions have been working on the Still Alive section, my version of the song from the Portal credits.<br />
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In the first of these sessions I went back and re-recorded the guitar parts - quite fast for the rhythm, quite slow and fiddly for the lead lines, but I incorporated some twiddles which I'm quite pleased with, with no speeding-up tricks and my patented sound which I like. That took a long time, and the use of a handkerchief on the neck of the guitar. When I;m playing stuff high up the neck I have found it helpful to have the strings muted rather than able to ring as open strings, so this time I tried tying a hanky around the neck near the head and it seemed to work.<br />
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And then I listened through and thought about what other things should be in the mix. Well some bass of course, so I did that. I tend to find that bass lines get recorded really fast, probably it's my best instrument. (actually there's no probably about it, it is my main instrument although I took it up after guitars). What else? How about a nice wide synthy pad sound? Yes OK. So I did that with one-handed chords. I think that's everything.<br />
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Which brings us to tonight. One of the consequences of the rather odd way I work is that I want sections of precise lengths. This has generally turned out to be easier than you might think when using the cubase software to keep precise time, as I can easily get it to an exact number of bars. It becomes a bit more tricky when I have a tune I want to do at a specific speed, because run-throughs then take a specific length of time. I have found with this section that I wanted to run through 3 times, and with the right lengths for intros and so on this didn't quite come to the 4 minutes I am aiming for. I have 8 bars spare.<br />
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So I did a "bridge" after the second "chorus" and before the 3rd run-through.<br />
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And I wanted it to be a free-form weirdy bit. For a start I held a B chord, which the last note can be held over, but is not the normal chord. I have had some time to think about what I might like here and had some ideas.<br />
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For a start I wanted a cymbal that didn't fade, just went on with a really long crash. So I played a cymbal on the drum samples, rendered it and brought it in as a sound file. I chopped it off before it finished and made a reversed copy which I stuck on the end. I chopped off the end of that (which because it was backwards was what used to be the beginning), made another copy and re-reversed that, sticking it on the end. I then stuck on backwards and forwards copies until it was a long "shhhhhhhhhhhhhh" sound, albeit waxing and waning. I then used the volume control to make the quiet bits louder and vice versa so that it was more or less constant volume. The tone changes interestingly and it finishes with the backwards beginning.<br />
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The next thing I wanted to do was with the hanging guitar chord, which I edited into fragments, and extended the fragmentedness by copying some fragments and reusing them. I then went through and did pitch changes to the fragments, scattering them across the stereo image. It finishes with the chord going backwards and ending exactly where the music box notes start.<br />
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This was a good start, I then went hunting for sounds on the internet. I found a strange site where you enter a sentence and they turn it into a GlaDos style spoken sound. (This is the voice of the artificial intelligence in the game that the song comes from) They warned on the site that it takes a while for each one to be created and that there was a queue in getting your sentence made. I don't know how long they have been running but the current queue length is measured in several months! However, they did have all of the previous sentences created available for download, so amongst the obvious dross and filth I found some sentences that either are from the game, or could be, including the first few lyrics for the song.<br />
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So I took 6 of these, and put them in the bridge, with some overlappiing, stereo placing, a bit of pitch tweaking and different levels of reverb and volume. It ends with a coundtdown to the music box sounds.<br />
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Finally I wanted to fill out the background a bit, so I found a little softsynth I have with good spatial atmospheric sounds, and added two different ones. Finally after a bit of listening, tweaking and rough mixing I'm relatively happy to let people hear the results. Here it is:<br />
<br />
<br />
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Danhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07115287434336124356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1814243734261994904.post-50608285855953700882013-03-13T00:00:00.001+00:002013-03-13T00:00:48.184+00:00Using a flute as a Q-tipSo I've done a reasonable amount of work since I last blogged, in several sessions. Let's see how much I can remember<br />
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I worked on the section I was talking about last time, slow chords, a refrain and some weird chords inbetween. I finished off the organ, did guitars and bass - hey presto the backing trak was done. That was the longest ago and I cannot really remember if anything interesting happened.<br />
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The next session was quite interesting. After a bit of guitar fiddling for teh weird chord sections I decided that what I really wanted was a flute. I felt truly uninspired about writing the solo so I called on a flautist and asked her if she felt like improvising to weird chords. It turned out she did. Her name is Kathy and she is my Mother-In-Law.<br />
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So we had an interesting session. I've got very used to recording myself, so recording someone else was a refreshing change. Most of the session was spent giving her the chords and her working out the stuff to do. In the end we managed 2 of the four "verses" and she went away with promises to work the rest out and practice.<br />
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Now I knew that there was another section I would want flute in - so I thought, if that section was ready enough for her to flute into it, we could tackle that as well when she came back. One of the four tracks is all about my gaming life, and for this section I really wanted to do the tune from the song "Still Alive" from the end of the seminal game "Portal". You can see it here if you are interested: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ljFaKRTrI">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ljFaKRTrI</a> . Anyway I wanted to do it slowed down a bit and with a flute doing the melody for the first and last sections.I didn't have time to create the whole of the rest of the track, but I focussed on the bits the flute was to be in. I did acoustic guitar picking and a soft, tremelo electric guitar on the other ear for the first run through. The second run through is to be electric guitars and more rocky, and I recorded the rythmn guitar and the lead lines, with a nice compressed sound. Unfortunately the sound was quite "dirty" between notes (hums and clicks) so I did some volume editing. I have found this seems to be a common problem when I want a compressed sound, when no note is playing the hum from the synthesized amp is amplified to loud levels.<br />
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I ignored the 8-bar "break" in the middle except to decide the starting chord would be a B, which is different from the other stuff, but fits with the final F# note of the tune played by the lead guitar. I have some interesting ideas for that break but we'll have to see if I can achieve them.<br />
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Then for the 3rd and final time through I did like a tinkly music box sound using Absynth, breaking it right down to just that and the proposed flute. There is a harmony line in the middle of a runthrough and while in the first run that fill be flute, in the second it is electric guitar, in the third I introduced a mandolin, played with little extended note trills. The backing builds up with the guitars coming back in and at teh end there is an outroduction with flute playing tune and mandolin playing harmonies.<br />
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So that was all hunky and dory. Kathy came back and we recorded her created lines for sections C and D of the other section, and then ploughed into the Still alive tune.<br />
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Kathy is a classical kind of musician, who does things with music paper and dots that I kind of theoretically undersand but find hard to use in anger. I'm more of a "playing by ear" kinde of person, which is helped by the fact that I seem to pick up lines, riffs and tunes quite fast that way. I had recorded a fake flute version of teh tune with a simple flute sample and played it to her and she attempted to transcribe what I assumed as a simple tune, but turned out to be heavily syncopated. Her bars were twice as long as mine were in my head, and her bar lines were in a different place.<br />
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We eventually found a really simple solution, doing something with Cubase that I had never done before. I took the MIDI part for the fake flute and opened a "score view" which showed it in musical dots. Now of course I had not programmed it exactly styraight, I had played it quite fluidly on a keyboard, and Cubase attempted to reproduce that fluidity - the music was a nightmare!<br />
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So we had a little race, while Kathy tried to transcribe the silly music score into a reasonable and sensible one, I went back into teh cubase editor and straightened the notes out until they were exactly starting on the beats, and exactly finishing in the right places too, and printed out a "corect version" of the music. I won but only just.<br />
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So we recorded the tune for the first pass, and again for the second pass (I have a strong resistance now to just copying and pasting, especially with real instruments, it should sound like it was played subtly differently each time). Then the outro and finally the harmony for the first time through. Thanks Kathy, we'll see how it sounds when I get chance to produce the sound and make it shiny.<br />
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So tonight I have come back to the middle iteration, the rocky one. I programmed the drums and have developed a new rule - if you are going to have drums DO THEM FIRST! My timkeeping is much better to drums than to a click track, and all of what I had previously done was far too rubbish in terms of timing to keep. I rerecorded teh rocky rythmn guitar, and then actually spent the rest of the session with Guitar rig, trying to create a better lead sound. It took quite a while, but I'm pretty happy with it. It is high and compressed but much cleaner than the first one, and it has a gentle subtle stereo phase and a quiet stereo echo delay (called a "ping-pong" echo because it bounces from ear to ear). Most importantly, I have found out how to use a "noise reducer" which gets rid of the annoying sounds between notes. What I haven't done is re-record the actual tunes though because I got bored after a while and wanted to stop. Then I thought I could blog. So I did. Now it's supper time.Danhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07115287434336124356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1814243734261994904.post-13828613220415910412013-02-27T17:30:00.001+00:002013-02-27T17:30:10.492+00:00A little bitty bitHello all you readers of my blog, it's been a while.This seems a recurring theme at the moment.<br />
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So I've started work on another section. This one follows straight on from the "waily waily" section I did way back (first section done I think) and keeps the chords and pace, and drum sound, and probably guitar sounds.<br />
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There is a "refrain", a sequence returned to several times, which cycles D and Bm four times. It's inspied by a worship song called "day by day" (which is actually in A not D). There are then "verse" passages between them, each of different lenght and with differing chord sequences. There are four of thes and I will bore you with the chords:<br />
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A:<br />
Em, Faug, D/F#, G7, E7/G#, A7<br />
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B:<br />
G, D/F#, Bb/F, C/E, Cm/Eb, D7, Fmaj7, Cmaj7, A2(no3rd), A7<br />
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C:<br />
C, B7, Em, A7, Am, Adim, Aaug, Bbaug, G, C, A7, D, B7, Em, Am7, A7<br />
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D:<br />
Ebdim, Em, A7, D, Ebdim, Em, G, A7<br />
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To be honest most of my time was spent creaing those chord sequences which I hope will be satisfying (to me). I mapped out the structure with markers, and have adapted the drums from the previous section. I also did about 50% of the section with a nice hammond organ sound. To follow: more organ, 2x acoustic guitar and Bass. And then some decision about solos and lead instruments.<br />
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I'm off sick at the moment, and meant to be mostly relaxing, so while I want to get into doing more of the music again, it should be short sessions. To he honest, I might have done guitar, but after messing about on the guitar so much trying chord sequences, my fingers were hurting which is why I tackled the organ.<br />
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<br />Danhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07115287434336124356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1814243734261994904.post-77821790364891014962013-01-03T13:34:00.001+00:002013-01-03T13:34:24.891+00:00Gannin' section finished!<div class="widget_iframe" style="border: 0; display: inline-block; height: 104px; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 380px;">
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<br />
Well you know, "Finished" is not the right word really, first pass of recording done.<br />
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First of all, I never explained the name of the section: "Gannin' Down The Scotswood Road". This is, of course a line from teh folk song "The Blaydon Races", the unofficial anthem of Geordies everywhere. Well this section is about my commute home, which takes me down the Scotswood Road, across the Blaydon Bridge, through Blaydon and then up the Tyne Valley to home.<br />
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So back to the music: What has been added. Should I write this chronologically, in the order I added stuff, or in the order things appear in teh track? Well given this is supposed to be an insight into the recording process, I'll do it chronologically. There are at least 4 individual sessions since I last posted. The first was finishing up the trio of lead guitar work. There was a slower bit at the beginning of the "verse", followed by the fast stuff already done, and then everything else breaks while the guitars arpeggiate down in harmony.<br />
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Next I tackled the piano. I usd a nice sampled acoustic piano, and it appears in three verses. The first is a rocky verse with soloing. For the backing (left hand) I used my MIDI guitar (first time used in anger in recording) because it's identical to the guitar backing. For the right hand I used a keyboard and some direct-note-placement editing. I edited it all to get rid of small mistakes etc.<br />
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The second verse of piano is even more rocky and features the "tune" such as it is. Again left hand with MIDI guitar, right hand with keyboard.<br />
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The third piano verse is a jazz verse - a bit of a breakdown with quite a bit of ambiguity over the chords. Left hand was done with the keyboard, the right hand was mostly keyboard, but with some editing.<br />
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Then I decided that the background needed something fuller - a pad sound. I spent quite a while playing with synth sounds, including mellotron, until I found what I wanted. This was added to most of the section, except the jazz verse and the guitar arpeggios.<br />
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Finally: Trumpet. This was done with a solo trumpet sound (sample) and a trumpet section sound (also sample). I have spent quite a while tweaking the sounds to try and get to a stage where I am happy with them. The trouble is, it's almost, but not quite convincing as trumpets, and sounds really like a trumpet sound I used nearly 20 years ago when recording christmas carols with an early sampler. Anyway, there's a tune verse, and a breakdown soloing verse. They also join back in with the piano tune verse.<br />
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And finally finally, some sounds recorded of cars crossing the Ovingham Bridge have been added. The same sounds are used right at the beginning of track one of the album, and I am bookending with it - this will be the last section of the album. Technically, if I commute up the scotswood road I don't cross the Ovingham Bridge, but hey, who cares.<br />
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The whole thing sounds quite rough to me as a mix, especially quite bassy, but hey, I'm not meant to be mastering yet.<br />
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You can hear it through the widget at the top of this post.<br />
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Danhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07115287434336124356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1814243734261994904.post-21484210469590850252012-12-21T17:09:00.001+00:002012-12-21T17:09:19.228+00:00Gannin' down the Scotswood RoadWell it's been quite a while, but here I am back again in music-making mode.<br />
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About 18 years or so ago I was in a band. I've been in several bands of various kinds - this was a Soul/Rock band called "Heart & Soul" and I was mostly the bassist, but occasionally I fronted it and sang. I wrote a few songs for it too.<br />
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I wrote this one song, called "Guilty" - it was about being trapped in behaviour patterns you cannot break even though you know they are wrong, and unhelpful. Musically it was the source of many arguments between myself and our drummer. I wanted it to be in "a very fast 6/8" and tried to describe what I wanted. He claimed it was impossible. I claimed it wasn't and eventually in frustration played him a live version of Shadows In The Rain by the Police which had exactly what I wanted. He muttered something non-commital and continued to claim that it wasn't possible. We did eventually master it, a breathless rolling train of a sound with a very particular bassline.<br />
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And now the rythmn and the bassline are seeing the light of day again. And probably the tune.<br />
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I have been working on the last section of the album, which represents my commute home. I had had a crazy plan which was to strap a video camera to the bonnet of my car, and film my commute home. Then I was going to speed up the video until it was 4 minutes long, and then I was going to set it to music.<br />
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Instead one day I decided it would be nicer to use "Guilty" - it has a frantic urgency, and it's not a bad finisher for an album, rollicking with high energy. I would also reprise some of the ideas from teh album, and maybe a motif or two from previous albums. I would finish with the sound effect of going over the bridge that the album opens with.<br />
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So I've found the speed, worked out how long it is (12 bars) and therefpre how many times through teh pattern I can go (8). I have a snare roll introduction and then it breaks into the frantic hurrying. So far I have programmed the drums (probably needs humanising) and I spent a long time doing the bass. My fingers are a bit sore. I'm quite happy that there is a bass focus again, this seems to be a feature of this album and I like it - given that it is probably my best instrument.<br />
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I have also added some electric guitar, following the same pattern. There is one section which will be electric guitar soloing, and I have done 4 bars of that, which is identical to 4 bars used a few times in the "Electricity" section on teh last album - a bit of a cross between Jesus Christ Superstar, The Magic Roundabout and something by Thin Lizzy, and uses three guitars in harmony.<br />
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So after the guitarring my fingers are even sorer. Oh how I suffer for my art! Still, that's most of the rythmn track down now, tehre's more guitar, some piano and some trumpets to go. I think.Danhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07115287434336124356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1814243734261994904.post-88437363934168980602012-11-19T23:32:00.001+00:002012-11-19T23:32:31.524+00:00Lost in a paperwork desert..which is the title of the most recent section to be worked on.<br />
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A little bit of purple history is called for to give context. On the first album, 11 Bells, I created decided I wanted a single-instrument section (sections were 5 minutes long) and opted for Piano. I introduced a particular musical motif (taken from the guitar part for a song I wrote years ago called "behind the storm"). For reasons lost in the mists of time I called this section "Lost in a Moonlit Desert".<br />
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On the second album, Under A Binary Tree, I decided that I would once again have a single-instrument section. This time it was electric piano, and because the first half was all white notes and the second half all black notes, I called it "Lost in a monochrome desert". Once again it featured the same motif, but modified.<br />
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By the third album, B:M:S, I seemed to have developed a habit, this time I opted for classical guitar, and the name "The Lust Of The Eyes (Lost in a nylon desert)". While it focused primarily on musical plagiarism, I managed to effectively steal from myself and use the same motif again, as well as many others.<br />
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So here we are on album no. 4. I have a hard habit to break. I had already decided that this section would be called "Lost in a paperwork desert" and would represent the insane amount of paperwork I seem to have to deal with at work. At some point I decided that an appropriately "dry" (although not hugely papery) sound would be a Marimba (which is a kind of wooden xylophone). So there is a 4-minute marimba section, and yes I do use the same old motif, briefly at the end.<br />
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In fact the section wanders (as is appropriate for someone lost in a desert) through several motifs. It start with a few chords, and then launches into a pattern inspired by rhythmic tapping that I sometimes do. I like tapping interesting rhythms, and this is at least the second such tapping motif that has made it into the music. This gets faster and faster. Then there are a few harp-like arpeggios and next we have a bass-line like boogie-woogie piano and similar to one I used on the first album. After developing that there is a brief glissando and then I use a motif in 15/8 which appeared on the last album. Finally we meet the habitual lost in deserts motif, but backed by the funky bassline which will appear in several other places on the album.<br />
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<iframe class="widget_iframe" frameborder="0" height="104" scrolling="no" src="http://www.reverbnation.com/widget_code/html_widget/artist_1687494?widget_id=50&posted_by=artist_1687494&pwc[design]=default&pwc[background_color]=%23333333&pwc[included_songs]=0&pwc[song_ids]=15224974&pwc[photo]=1%2C0&pwc[size]=undefined" width="380"></iframe><br />
<br />
And you can use this widget to hear a rough mix of it... I hope! Apologies it is mixed a little quiet.<br />
<br />Danhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07115287434336124356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1814243734261994904.post-12567685422536072822012-11-10T22:11:00.002+00:002012-11-10T22:11:34.341+00:00Many, many little sessions, one sectionThe will to blog has been blighted of late by the fact that my sessions of music-making have been piddling and small. But on the whole, it would seem numerous.<br />
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Let's see if I can summarise. Or something.<br />
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The first section of the "at home" track is now more or less finished. It features a baslline "refrain" followed by stylistic "verses". <br />
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The first verse is sort of kind of Jazz, with a walking bassline, swing-ish drums and introducing electric piano. It starts as kind of cool jazz, but deteriorates into "what time does the tune start" kind of quickly. The brass stabs bring us back to the next refrain, in which the electric piano keeps on.<br />
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The second verse is sort of kind of Reggae, with off-beat guitar, organ and E-piano, bassline missing the "one" and typical triplets on the snare. This verse features organ playing a sort of tune, but may have a (real) trumpet added. Back to the refrain and the organ is featured<br />
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The third verse is sort of kind of Bluegrass, with a C&W - sounding guitar, a drum pattern stolen from "Lay Down Sally" by Eric Clapton, Country-style bass and... banjo. I had to go looking for a banjo sound on the internet, and found a reasonable "sound font". These are basically sample patches that were designed to work with a wide range of instruments. They don't seem to be as popular as they used to be, but I have a nifty sound font player, and it sounds pretty good. it is rare for me to use samples for a fretted instrument, but I cannot justify buying a banjo. I really wish I could find somewhere I could rent instruments!. Anyway, back to the refrain and the guitar is featured.<br />
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The last verse is sort of kind of Space Rock, the more mellow and spaced-out end of Prog rock, featuring wibbly synth and tambourine. Real tambourine (of course, a lot of my percussion is real). The final refrain features the synth and the tambourine.<br />
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Altogether I seem to be using a lot of different sounds, and this section has felt like a mini-project all of it's own. I started it way back in September, it's now November. Progress has been slow because I've only had nibbling small sessions mostly, and also because i lost hearing in one ear for about 2 weeks. It's coming back now.<br />
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In the meantime I have had some more musical ideas, which I need to make notes of as they seem to fit some of the themes for sections I have. I'm not entirely sure, but I THINK I now have an idea for each of the 16 sections. I also have 3 sections broadly done, but am hoping to get guest musicians in for 2. I need to decide if I will do guest musicians all at the end or a bit at a time.Danhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07115287434336124356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1814243734261994904.post-51095280630717603412012-09-27T20:31:00.001+01:002012-09-27T20:31:40.963+01:00Tidying and other stuffWell I've done some stuff which is mostly not directly making music. Most importantly I have been Tidying Up.<br />
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I have a nice little room here where I do my recording, it's really not possible to call it a studio, it's more of a box room. It houses the PC, a chair and a keyboard, and a guitar rack. Most of the other instruments are squirrelled away elsewhere. If I want other people to come into this room to do some music for me it needed to be a good sight more tidy than it was. It now is, 2 sessions of tidying, sorting and (shock) hoovering later and it is presentable. One more session should involve some reorganising, swapping a keyboard and installing the new printer (it's shiny) and we should be all done. My lovely wife has installed a blind so we can even shut the sun out on a sunny day.<br />
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The other thing I have done is some sound recording using a little "zoom" handheld audio recorder I borrowed from work. I have recorded quite a bit of the kids playing in various circumstances, and the ambience in church before a service, and the sound cars make as they go over the Ovingham bridge - a sound I want to use as the opening to A View To The Bridge.<br />
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Speaking of that section, the only bit of music I have done has been working on some brass stabbs at the beginning of the section (after the bridge moment) and which will be used as puctuation for the section.<br />
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So progress, but mostly not direct and totally not interesting.Danhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07115287434336124356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1814243734261994904.post-80211313286123503272012-08-29T21:10:00.001+01:002012-08-29T21:10:31.713+01:00Transference and basicsWell, dear blog-reader, we left off last time with some guest keyboards. In this session I took the keyboard MIDI parts from the project at 144bpm and transferred them to the one at 192bpm. There was a small problem in that all the MIDI on events had the same velocity (this sometimes happens in my setup) so I did some humanising, and a little bit of tweaking to manipulate the notes - shortening, lengthening and occasional timing (but hardly any, the notes were wonderfully consistent in timing!). All in all about an hour went into the importing process and then I added some more drums earlier on and then some bass. SOunds simple but it all takes time - I don't seem to have any juicy details to give you. That was the first session this afternoon, and that section is just about ready apart from some guest violin (I hope)<br />
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This evening I have worked on a different section, the first section of the album (probably) called "A View To The Bridge" (which is a play on the play entitled "A View From The Bridge" by Arthur Miller, and is a reference ot the fact that we can see Ovingham Bridge from our house, down the hill in the valley) This section is based on a bassline I have been playing with which I can best desctibe as "rich and fruity" - it's similar to one used on 11 Bells, but in 8/8 rather than 9/8. Kind of Funky. The whole section will be bass-focussed, and will feature "refrain" bits (using the aforementioned bass riff) and "other" bits where different styles are introduced. Probably Jazz, Reggae, Disco and spacey. Each time before the refrain there is a stabby bit such as James Brown might have used (brass) which I am going to use as a sort of "call to order" after going off-topic with the "other" bits.<br />
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Anyway, tonight I have done the bass for the refrain bits. It's not the easiest but I like it, it sounds nice. I'm actually (unusually) using the bass "naked" rather than sending it through Guitar rig, but I am using one of the rather more way-out guitar rig settings as a "send" (I bleed a little of the sound out to the effect instead of putting the whole thing through) which gives me background spacey weirdness, kind of like a delay crossed with a flanger, and almost exactly what I was hoping. The bass comes through clear but there are little twittery spaced-out echoing things happening like moths floating around. It's a beautiful thing!<br />
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So I'm done for the night.Danhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07115287434336124356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1814243734261994904.post-81076782141486778632012-08-27T20:35:00.001+01:002012-08-27T20:35:09.743+01:00A Purple FirstFor the purple project I have had several principles that I have worked to. There are probably some I don't realise, but some of the ones that are deliberate include no singing (entirely instrumental, maybe some odd speech or SFX) and a focus on a certain kind of music. Another principle has been that I have done everything myself.<br />
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I have broken that principle. I intend to break it good and proper on this album and have guest musicians in several places. The first has actually happened - my wife has played some keyboards for me.<br />
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This is still working one the set of folk tunes (this section is taking some time) and I want alongside the mandolin to have accordion and fiddle. My wife did the tunes for me on a keyboard for the accordion sound. Accordion is one of those instruments where a MIDI keyboard and a sampler do a really realistic job, partly because it's a keyboard anyway on a piano accordion so it sounds like it's played naturally. You can't get so much nuance of squeezing pressure but these are fast tunes anyway.<br />
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My one-handed jeyboard playing is not too bad, and I could ahve learned to play them myself, but my wife is a proper piano player, and significantly for this is good at the changing hand position thing - these tunes have lots of that and that was what I was finding difficult.<br />
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Anyway that's it for this sessionDanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07115287434336124356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1814243734261994904.post-3769582007284622032012-08-24T22:51:00.000+01:002012-08-24T22:51:08.054+01:00The Bad BloggerThat's me - I've not been as good as I could be in my blogging - I have had a couple more sessions on the music - three I think since I last blogged. I have been working on the same section - the folk tunes.<br />
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Session 1: I have firstly added some strummed mandolin, and some strummed and picked acoustic guitar to the first tune (The Beech Grove), and some strummed Mandolin to the last tune (Bob's Your Auntie). I did this "at speed" (192bpm)<br />
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Session 2: I added some electric guitar - heavy rock overdriven guitar to the second tune (Daisy Chain) and that continues into the 3rd tune, but after the first time though changes to a less rough "skaga" sound (like slow Ska). The middle tune is going to be pretty heavy rock. This also was all done "at speed".<br />
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Session 3: Drums. First of all I spent some time choosing an appropriate rock drum kit sound, and then I programmed drums for tunes 2 and 3. Tune 2 is heavy drumming, starting with tom fills (I extended the number of toms in the kit for this), then stabby kits to go with the chords I ahd recorded and finally becoming a fairly consistent heavy rock beat. What makes it heavy rock? Well the pattern for one, but I also have discovered that half-open hi-hat gives a loose rawness to a rock pattern (it's something one of the drummers did in church one Sunday). Lo and behold, combine that with the guitar and it sounds pretty rock-like, which is interesting when the tune us being played on mandolin - in fact it' s coming out as a nice rock/folk hybrid right now. Moving into tune 3 the drumming tightens and lightens somewhat, switching to ride cymbal to give a more "rolling" feel (that's what I always feel about ride cymbals instead of hi-hat, they make the sound push on or roll along better, possibly from association with swing jazz), and then into the second time through switching to a light reggae-like beat to go with the skaga guitar. This is turning into something altogether interesting, a coming together of Ska and Folk - unlikely combination I know.<br />
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A really standard rock beat in 4/4 is to play bass drum on beat 1, snare on beat 3 and hi-hat on all 4 beats. There are lots of variations and stuff but that's the basic "back-beat" rhythm. To get a "light reggae feel" like I described above I basically use the same thing, but the hi-hat only plays on beats 2 and 4. This give a completely different bouncy feel (and is really easy).<br />
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Now all of the drumming here has been programmed so far, so I have been through doing some humanising of volume, I will also (but have not yet done so) "humanise" further by introducing slight variations in the positions of the beats. Cubase can do that for me with random variations (not enough to make it feel wrong, but enough to loose the metronome-like feel that programmed drums can give)Danhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07115287434336124356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1814243734261994904.post-59715063170852930462012-08-10T23:13:00.002+01:002012-08-11T22:44:17.864+01:00Tunes from the gardenNot a lot has been done on the music in the last couple of weeks - but there has been some progress.<br />
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The first important thing to tell you is that I got a mandolin at Christmas. I have played it for real a few times now in the ceilidh band I am in, and I am not doing too badly with it. It is after all strings, frets and familiar stuff like that. It is tuned differently to a guitar, which makes the adjustment interesting (it's actually tuned like a violin) and I have started to work out some tunes on it.<br />
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So I have written a few tunes on it - broadly ceilidh-type (folk) tunes, most definitely suited to the mandolin of course. On BODY:MIND:SPIRIT I had a section which was three ceilidh tunes I had written, and would like to repeat the feat. I wrote the first one and half of the second one day while in the garden with the family. My wife suggested I called the first tune "The Beech Grove" which is a nod to a famous tune called "The Ash Grove". Nice naming. I have named the second "Daisy Chain", partly because we were making a daisy chain when I stated writing it, partly as a reference to my daughter's middle name (Daisy) and partly because it's a round of sorts.<br />
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The third tune was written more over the past couple of weeks, mostly in the Sitting room while twiddling. I wondered about calling it "Peggy-Oh" or even "Our Peggy-Oh" because it has a lot of arpeggios in it, but have decided to call it after my sister-in-law who has been staying with us for most of the time while it has been written, so it is called "Bob's Your Auntie".<br />
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"Daisy Chain" has had a lot of work done on it to make it work properly as a chain/round - initially I wanted it so it could change harmony as it progressed - it doesn't really do that, I think because it was too hard a thing to attempt. I still quite like it though.<br />
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And some work has been done towards recording, namely I think I have the mandolin parts down. I have cheated, in that I recorded it at 144bmp and have sped it up to 192bpm which is quite a lick, but sounds good, It also helps me fit all three tunes into 4 minutes. I got a surprise when I found the tunes were of different lengths, but that's all good actually. I did all of the recording so far to a click track, with many, many takes (the hardest bit is the last line of "Bob's Your Auntie" - it doesn't have the most notes but it has the most string changes). I have pretty much mapped out how the three tunes are realized over the four minutes. I will also have in accordion, and I hope violin. This will be the first time Purple has used other musicians, but I am hoping to use a fiddle player from the ceilidh band. Oh and there is the small matter of accompaniment to sort out.<br />
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All this will be the last section in the track that's all about my home life, broadly because it's tunes written at home.Danhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07115287434336124356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1814243734261994904.post-88056097372795253382012-07-23T22:05:00.002+01:002012-07-23T22:05:53.801+01:00Fisrt section "done"...Well "done" is of course a relative term, done subject to me deciding it's good enough, that bits of it don't need re-doing and any changes that need making so that it integrates with the sections before and after it, and of course it is not properly mastered at all. I'm going to have to say this every time I get to this stage with anything so please take it as read that "done" means stage 1 is done and it is by no means finished.
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However, excitingly, I think I can post it in here in a lovely widget so you can hear it...
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Hmm it doesn't seem to be playing in the preview, hopefully that's just because it's a preview. Look, in case I've not got this technology going properly yet, there is also<img border="0" height="0" src="http://www.reverbnation.com/widgets/trk/40/artist_1687494/artist_1687494/t.gif" style="height: 0px; visibility: hidden; width: 0px;" width="0" /><img border="0" height="0" src="http://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion/1007099629/?label=3-50COOg5wIQ7b2c4AM&guid=ON&script=0" style="height: 0px; visibility: hidden; width: 0px;" width="0" /><img alt="ComScore" border="0" height="1" src="http://b.scorecardresearch.com/p?c1=2&c2=10349858&cv=2.0&cj=1" style="display: none;" width="1" /> a <a href="http://tinyurl.com/cetgklh">link to it here</a>.<br />
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So what have I been doing in this session? Lead guitar playing of the final verse and outro. Many, many takes (about 1.5 hours-worth) to get it "just right", especially focussing on getting it expressive, which I'd like to think it pretty much is. My fingers hurt but it's worth it.<br />
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I'm happy to read any comments on it from anybody, the point of posting it up is to get feedback, give me the benefit of your ears people, be part of the process :)<br />
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<br />Danhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07115287434336124356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1814243734261994904.post-29769446588749883182012-07-05T20:05:00.001+01:002012-07-05T20:05:23.916+01:00Getting into the swingSo I've had a bit more happen on this section, and should be not too far off giving you lovely nonexistant readers something that you can not comment on.<br />
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I've started with the tune (Water is wide/when I survey) on the electric guitar, I have 3 verses down and 1 to go. For the reason that it just happened this way, the tune was the first thing down, but this is OK (I did it to a click track) because the tune is the focus. The real reason I haven't done the last verse, is because at the end of it there is some "noodling" to be done to fill up the 4 minutes of time, and I find noodling hard to do without the chords in the backing.<br />
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So the next thing into the mix is some electric piano. There is a huge variety of sounds you can get in an electric piano, and I'm not a great expert, but this is what I think of as a "plummy" sound - deep and mellow but with a slight edge. I played it using the keyboard (rather than programming it) and it took many, many takes to get it right. I basically did the first verse with it.<br />
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Then the drums - now these are sampled and I did program them. I do have an electronic kit but my confidence with it is a bit low at the moment, so I may get into the live playing later. I'm using a sampled kit I've used quite a few times in the past, a "pop kit" which has a nice, meaty bass drum, and the drumming is pretty simple. The drums come in in the second verse, and then the third verse pulls back right down to a bass drum kick (this is a very quiet verse). I need to do something to it to get deep reverb in that verse.<br />
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So then came the electric piano for the 2nd verse, which I did separate hands on separate tracks. I might change my mind later, but right now I am thinking I am going to as much as possible completely demistify the process of recording. I use a lot of "tricks" to produce things that I couldn't do "for real". In my defence I (so far) do it all myself, and if you are going to complain that any kind of "trick" is cheating, you need to draw a line somewhere? I mean, is taking several takes cheating? Is overdubbing cheating? My philosophy is I will do anything in my ability to produce something that sounds good and that I am proud of. I don't consider myself a virtuoso on any instrument, but my abilities include quite a variety of recording tricks. I wouldn't want to program everything as that tends to sound quite antiseptic, and I am aiming for a more organic sound. I guess my reluctance to reveal how I do things comes from a desire for people to think I'm a better musician than I really am.<br />
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Then came acoustic guitars, verse 2, as often is the case, one for each ear. A few takes (not many)<br />
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And then paddy strings. Despite being a fan of such things generally, I don't seem to use them often. I think there is the danger of things becoming too saccharin, and so they need to be used carefully, but I have been listening to a lot of ELO recently (somewhat depressing from the recording point of view because they were so carefully engineered!) and so maybe that has brought string parts to mind more than usual.<br />
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Now I've got a problem with the track that I have been wondering what to do about. I'm using Guitar Rig to get the guitar sound, which basically is this amazingly versatile piece of software - you plug your guitar in and it simulates a wide range of effects, amps, speakers and microphone setups. It's one of those "where on earth do I start?" things because there is so much variety and versatility. The thing is, it's simulation is so realistic, that if you choose a noisy "amp" it simulates the noise as well - even in the quiet bits when you are not playing. The sound I have got for the lead guitar is well noisy, It's not too bad when lots of other thigns are playing, but when you want a quiet verse that pulls back to almost nothing, and you play really quietly, the noise is... annoying. It turns out though that even a very quiet bit of strings backing as I played it is at just the right frequencies to mask the noise. Result!. I am probably therefore going to leave the string backing in all of the three verses I have so far.<br />
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And that's where I'm up to - I'm about to start another session so there should be more soon. The other thing to say is that I was in am usic shop today, and was trying out a rather nice Ibanez electro-classical guitar. and I have guitar envy. It did have a problem, one of the strings was buzzing, but a plug-in classical is one of the two remaining guitars I am craving, the other is an electrified Dobro. Anyway, I bought a kazoo. I bought a kazoo for the last album but it got very lost somewhere.<br />
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<br />Danhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07115287434336124356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1814243734261994904.post-57287508270881474362012-07-03T22:41:00.002+01:002012-07-03T22:41:59.593+01:00A small startWell not only have I declared that I have started, but I have actually made a real start - maybe. Not the one I intended to do. I thought "lets get a good guitar sound for (a particular section)" and while fiddling thought "this might be a good sound for (a different section)". So I had a play around and eventually thought "you know what, I could try recording this".<br />
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So the first section has been started, and already I am plagiarising. Well not really because I will give due credit. I am using a folk tune often known as "The Water Is Wide", but is also used as an alternative tune for the hymn "When I survey". Although there is no words or singing, it is the hymn that is in my mind. It feels odd to record the tune before the backing, and for the last verse I want the backing in before I complete the tune.<br />
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So I did the playing to a metronome track. I hope it works, but if not I can re-record it. The guitar sound is a slightly crunchy sound withe heavy tremolo, which to me is reminiscent of Ry Cooder.<br />
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So as I write I have outline ideas for (I think) 14 out of my 16 sections I need. I am definitely more planned than ever before, and I seem to have an almost fear of getting going. A "can I really do this" fear. I have already done 3 albums - it's a bit late in this game to be having this sort of doubt.Danhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07115287434336124356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1814243734261994904.post-84032440037859694682012-06-22T22:23:00.002+01:002012-06-22T22:23:54.091+01:00NEXT ALBUM STARTEDYes it's official, I am making a start on the next album, titled "Windows". I will be blogging the full process right here (as before with BMS), along with thoughts, feelings, philiosphies and aspirations. For the full experience click on the button to follow this blog.<br />
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I had intended to wait until September before starting the album, but it has been more and more on my mind lately, and I have got to the stage where the pressure of ideas in my head is getting too much and I need to open the valve and let it out.<br />
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I have some aspirations for the album. it's the fourth album so the number 4 will of course feature obsessively. There will be four tracks, each will have 4 sections of 4 minutes, making a total of 64 minutes of music.<br />
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The reason it is called "Windows" is that each track will be a window into one of my worlds: my home life, my work life, my church life and my gaming life. I already think that the album cover will be a break from the normal countryside scenes and will feature a wall with 4 windows, each styled appropriately for the world it is looking into. Of course the guitar will feature too. This will be a shorter work than BMS was, and deliberately more personal. Musically I intend to pull back a little from the more progressive elements and have more straight rock, but this may change as I get into it. Also there has been this progression in the past. 11 Bells was a fantasy, and the titles for sections were inspired by the music. Binary tree was conceptual and it was more the other way around, with the music being created to echo the concepts. This was taken even further with BMS where the whole structure and concepts were mapped out before work started. With Windows I intend to pull back a bit on that and let musical ideas just be themselves for their own sake more, but not entirely (sections will still have concepts, probably). Believe it or not, I am already partially formulating plans for Album no. 5 in which I will go completley back to the music being the starting point rather than the other way around.<br />
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Technically, for BMS I decided that I would put in 150% of the effort into perfecting it that I had done previously. I feel at the moment that I have pushed this as far as I want to, I am broadly happy with the quality (things can ALWAYS be better) but towards the end of the process I was getting somewhat sick of it, and so I don't intend to step up the production quality perceptibly. Of course thsi still means I am aiming high and constantly stretching my abilities as a musician and producer, but I will let about the same level of imperfections stay as I did with BMS. I'm also scared that if I push any harder on technical quality I will start to lose "feel".<br />
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Which brings me to the next thing to say - my aspiration for this album is to make it feel even more "real". This is always a challenge for a multi-instrumentalist project like this, getting music that breathes organically in the same way liave music can. I would like this album to be more rockin' more boogie-like and more emotional than ever before. This will probably mean I need to be ready to emotionally invest more in the process than ever before. I am after all aiming for a "personal" album.<br />
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Finally, with all that in mind, I am intending to be more brutally honest and open about the creation process. As far as I know there are occasional readers of this blog (maybe 1 or 2), there are about 100 FB followers (http://www.facebook.com/Purpleproject) and an FB post typically reaches about 25-30 people. There are 441 twitter followers thanks to the efforts of my temporary publicist last Feb - I don't know how many people read tweets. Oh, @PurpleBMS if you want to follow. I intend to make public (or as public as this gets with these parameters) as much of the process as possible, musical ideas and motifs, rough mixes and so on for comment. The full process comes here to this blog. Although, ultimately I am making this music for my own sake, for my own enjoyment, and am still very hesitant about any ideas of making money out of it, I WELCOME ALL CRITICISM AND COMMENTS.<br />
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So I was intending to actually do something on the album tonight, instead I have had some website changes (arrgh, I need to upload!), a small bright blaze of publicity and this blog. The first phase of the process this time is "pre-production" - getting ideas and settling them in order and place. This is fundamentally less ad-hoc than previous albums, but mostly is because I am bursting with musical ideas right now, so I want to spend some time mapping it out, maybe having plans for almost all of it before I start recording for real. I will need to do some test tracks, some bashing down of ideas and so on in this process,<br />
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So this is is, a crack from the starter's pistol and we're off, back down the track, heading for another finishing tape called "album release", probably sometime in 2013. I must enjoy this process, otherwise I wouldn't be doing it for a fourth time.<br />
<br />Danhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07115287434336124356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1814243734261994904.post-54943785837454950192012-06-18T11:38:00.002+01:002012-06-18T11:38:30.833+01:00Discovery 17: Colosseum II<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/DLEb6LDg3qE" width="420"></iframe><br />
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http://youtu.be/DLEb6LDg3qE Loving the nimble fingers. Guitarist: The Gary Moore. An older band but a new discovery for me.Danhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07115287434336124356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1814243734261994904.post-29856393802124364872012-06-15T12:40:00.000+01:002012-06-15T12:40:25.736+01:00Discovery 16: Carptree<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/dwFionTNrxk" width="420"></iframe><br />
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http://youtu.be/dwFionTNrxk Synthy neo-prog from Sweden, a little reminiscent of Genesis. I like.Danhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07115287434336124356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1814243734261994904.post-61277869561986413152012-06-11T11:36:00.001+01:002012-06-11T11:36:57.116+01:00Discovery 15: Campo Di Marte<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/h69YrtaqsMA" width="420"></iframe><br />
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http://youtu.be/h69YrtaqsMA Prog, but in Italian. There was quite a lot of it in the 70s but this bunch is one of my favesDanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07115287434336124356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1814243734261994904.post-4683476534082781122012-06-07T11:13:00.000+01:002012-06-07T11:13:10.263+01:00Discovery 14: Neal Morse<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/64PrPBOfqrQ" width="420"></iframe><br />
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http://youtu.be/64PrPBOfqrQ @nealmorse<br />
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It's impossible to get the full idea of Neal from one track, his Concept album "Testimony" is an excellent exploration of his Christian Conversion - personal, honest and musically to die for. Who says prog has to be clinical and unfeeling?Danhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07115287434336124356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1814243734261994904.post-10061552695869291332012-05-30T11:55:00.001+01:002012-05-30T11:55:54.457+01:00Discovery 13: Bruford<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/nQHfwT5BRLI" width="560"></iframe><br />
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http://youtu.be/nQHfwT5BRLI @ThePlayerSchool<br />
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Jazz/Rock/Prog fusion by some of the unsung luminaries of Prog: Bill Bruford, Dave Stewart and Jeff Berlin - and some guy on the guitar.Danhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07115287434336124356noreply@blogger.com0