Complex Rhythms. Full Stop.

When I started writing this album, I was so sure I wanted to create a concise piece of work that really hits you hard and makes a simple point. Many of the demos use really simple drum rhythms and catchy bassline hooks. I've figured this gives me leeway to explore how the song will sound and focus on melodies/vocal lines as and when I feel like it. It's no secret I'm not the greatest musician or vocalist, but I've learned to play to my strengths over the years and I feel this has so far been effective.

I often listen to music I love and no matter how diverse, I always end up thinking "that's so cool, I need to write more stuff like this. It's good for the purposes of being eclectic. I'm really excited about the prospect that the listener will put the album on and half way through, wonder if they're still listening to the same body of work.

But will it work? I suppose time will tell. I took a break from everything over the weekend and went to visit my friend Judith (on the MA course) for wine with her friends and listening to a broad range of music. I think that's when I realised that people don't really listen to albums beginning-to-end anymore. In a way, why should they? We have playlists and random music players now that act as our automatic DJs in our own bedroom. I then felt I might actually be on the right track here, because the album is a satire to those with short attention spans, disguised as a pop album to satisfy their needs. Why shouldn't an album have songs that sound different to one another? Songs that act as if they were on a pre-set playlist in sequential order that can be played beginning to end without the listener getting bored of the same sound.

This shift in direction has caused demo number 10, titled 'Normal. Apathetic.' to go back to my roots of writing evocative IDM/dance. It's still a 4/4 track for people to dance to, but has some fast off-beat sounds (noises) to pace the listener up and then breaks back down to its trip-hop fundamental. Unlike last week's song (was it last week? I can't remember), which was written in no time, I've spent the past few evenings working on this and taking it very, very slowly. It's quite frustraiting because there is so much attention to detail. I'm trying not to get carried away with a copy/paste ethos, get carried away with a copy/paste ethos and make the rythms complex and tastily unique to the ear.

I don't want to go overboard with sounds either, which it has the danger of doing so - and that's why I'm here blogging - to stop getting carried away (procrastination). My plan is to create many loops and add this into Pro Tools, allowing me to play with each of the loops in any order I desire, rather than destroying my processor within Battery 2 and a wholoe lotta MIDI. Maybe Ableton Live is also an option? I've never used it before, believe it or not. Chopped acoustic guitar is what I want for the melodies and something a little different for the vocals, but that all sounds too far in the future to think about.

Wow, I can sure write a lot of crap. But if it makes it onto the album, the above may well be justified. If not, I should write novels.

Two Hours...

That's how long it's taken me to write a new song, "Pull Your Fingers Out". Record timing, probably (Yes, of course that's only the demo). I'll probably get critisised for being too NIN on this one, but I personally like to see this as a tribute to The Chemical Brothers. More on that later...

I bought a UAD-1e card last week and finally had time to play around with it. The Neve plug-ins on it are superb, especially the EQs. I was a bit annoyed to find that I can't seem to run more than one or two UAD plug-ins at one time without it running out of processing power (picture me shouting: "What the hell did I just buy you for if you're going to run out of processing power on me??). However, that's probably because I'm wrapping this into RTAS plugins when effectively they're VSTs. I'm just going to have to be more clever with its use.

Jolly good.

Recording bass with Mike

It's Sunday morning and I wake up 40 minutes before my alarm. Something must be wrong with me: (a) because I NEVER wake up before my alarm (except those annoying times when it's like two minutes before) and (b) I never set my alarm on a Sunday when money isn't involved. That can only mean I'm in the studio today and I haven't smoked any pot for a week or so... on a detox, you see.

I was due to record bass with Mike Osborne, as planned but he had his phone stolen a few days before. Making it a little difficult to get hold of him. Incidentally, I couldn't actually remember what time I was supposed to be at the Vestry Hall studios, but I assumed it was 1pm. I called the studios to be sure, around midday and received a rather arsey lecture from the technician for not being there at 10am. Whoops! I still hadn't heard from Mike yet. Eventually I told him to assume I wasn't coming unless I called again within half an hour.

Mike did show up with two of his guitars and a fucking huge bass amp, but the studio deadline had passed. Shit! Still, I wasn't going to miss the session so I thought I'd cut my pride on the beautiful pre-amps in the studio and give it a go on my home set-up. I borrowed a Joe Meek pre instead and miked up with amp with an SM58 and a D.I. box.



I know what you're thinking, "you're miking up a big-ass bass amp with a '58?. Are you insane?". Despite what purists might say, this is always has been a classic technique. We recorded bass for three songs, "It Felt Like Forever", "Compassion" and "Superficially Innocent" - the latter two using the D.I. box and "...Forever" using the '58. I think they all sounded fucking fantastic, but the miked recording really has some substance for the song in question. The song is pretty synthetic, full of synths, so it's always good to get some air into it for life.



The other two songs are still in early stages. I spent most of the last week getting ideas for how the bass will sit and not really much attention to the rest of the songs, although now I have these elements, it's given me many ideas for how they'll come out. I felt really bad for Mike as I was probably patronising his skills and forcing him to perform mostly against MIDI-based demos and he still did an awesome job.

And since I'm posting pictures, I will finish on my stupidly messy workspace... yummy.

WINE!

Saturday night and I'm indoors not doing anything exciting. I've just been listening to some of the demos I have been working on and getting rather excited about where this album will go. It's easy for me to listen to A Place Called Nowhere and think to myself "oh, that's a pretty good recording / song" and want to do more with it, but despite what I went through to record it, it is NOT what I aim to do in the long run. "Pretty good" isn't good enough. I need to create something incredible, something that matters even in today's musical climate.

Yeah, that's easier said than done! I'm not even working on anything right now, just listening and musing. I finished off my industry assignment and results pending, now know how to release my own music. I now have time for me! Time to catch up on my ever-growing pile of DVDs, books and Wii games. Time to socialise, consume things that are no good for me and yet here I am: too bored to sit and do nothing but too tired to really achieve anything productive. I'm drinking a large quantity of wine as I type, this has got to have something to do with it. Money also plays a big part. Tomorrow I will work on stuff, I'm recording bass with Mike Osborne next week, so I have an incentive there...

I'm now posting this blog on MySpace () to try and keep things together with each other, I may do-away with Blogspot in the near future but for now I'll post on both.

Drink. Smoke. Sleep.