Monthly Archive for January, 2007

Plagiarism – or how to cover my rear in a single step

Published on January 30, 2007 in Uncategorized. Closed

I’ve had a bandmate raise a valid (or at least valid seeming) concern about this RPM challenge. How do I feel about working on this thing for a month, and then sending it off to an address in the USA that I’ve never heard of?

Not entirely great, to be honest.

I was a little worried about this for a while, then it occurred to me that this is not a competition – it’s a challenge. If I have done what I set out to do by March 1st, then there’s nothing to be proven by sending it in – the mission will have been accomplished either way. So the focus may well shift to make this a personal project… and if it turns out good enough I’ll put it up on CD Baby or something.

I’m progressing well on the framework of the thing. The inner prog-head is pushing hard to make it a story-album, and I fear he might succeed. This is not neccessarily a bad thing – as long as I can avoid the melodramatic, overbearing “high concept” approach. It’s looking more like a collection of individual songs which will cover the ground of a relationship beginning, breakup, and reconciliation. All those pop-song staples, which should allow the songs to exist on their own, but fit nicely into the whole.

In theory…

I’m not setting myself too many parameters in terms of a “sound”, but to give you some idea, I’ve got the following artists/albums on random in my Foobar playlist for inspiration

  • The Beatles – Assorted Tracks
  • Kevin Gilbert – Assorted Tracks
  • Jellyfish – Bellybutton Demos, Spilt Milk Demos
  • Rob Dickinson – Fresh Wine for the Horses
  • Tears for Fears – Elemental, Everybody Loves a Happy Ending

I would have included Sufjan Stevens Illnoise, but I couldn’t find it :(

RPM Challenge

Published on January 28, 2007 in Uncategorized. Closed

I just came across this website. If you’ve ever heard of NaNoWriMo, it’s very much the same idea, only instead of a novel, you’re writing and recording an entire album (defined as 10 songs, or 35 minutes of original material) in a month.

I’ve got most of February off, and I just signed up. I’ve had this nebulous solo project languishing away in the back of my mind for years now – and this is the perfect procrastination buster. I might have a big old pile of crap come March 1st, but at least it’ll be my big pile of crap ;)

No cheating, mind. It’d be far too easy to noodle around on guitar solos for 35 minutes. I want to write a real album full of real songs. The album I would like to have made some time ago, but never got around to.

I’m in trouble now….

Strategies

Published on January 27, 2007 in Uncategorized. Closed

If I’m going to meet with any sort of success writing and recording an album in a month, then I’m going to need a plan, and some sort of structure. I would like to have some sort of unifying theme – partly because I like albums like that, but also becase I feel it’s going to be easier to get “inspired on cue” from a starting point.

Some potential underlying themes that I’ve had bouncing around my head for a while:

  • Songs from my ex-girlfriend’s answering machine
  • Fear of Grass
  • Canteloupes are tasty, but a bit bland sometimes

I think the first one is probably a goer… the second is cool but difficult to quantify, and I just made the third one up to fill out the list.

For now, I’m going to spend today watching DVDs and reading books, and write down any phrases or ideas that take my fancy. And the best part is, I can technically call it work. I wonder if I can claim the DVDs as a tax deduction…..

Noice

Published on January 26, 2007 in Music. Closed

Clare & I went down to The Venue last night, met up with Knotty & Cornel and thoroughly enjoyed an acoustic set by Jeff Martin. I had missed the last couple of Tea Party tours down here, and was a little miffed when they split up, so it was good to at least get to see Jeff play & sing. He did a goodly portion of Tea Party material (with which I was reasonably familiar) as well as some solo stuff (which I don’t know as well, but enjoyed nevertheless). He sang a little medley of Jeff Buckley tunes, and also a song he wrote for another late friend… It was great to see such an honest, no bullshit performance by someone I’ve been a fan of for some time. Clare loved it, despite having heard virtually none of his music before. Belated new years resolution – see more live music. I was actually hemming & hawing about whether or not to go last night, which seems utterly ridiculous in hindsight. We don’t get a huge number of notable acts down here, but I can hardly gripe about it when I often don’t even catch the ones who do make the effort. We got to bed around 2 (ooeer, aren’t we the party animals) and I was up around 8, my body clock apparently having decided that 6 hours sleep was plenty. Clare is still in bed, and I probably should be…

Not much has been happening music-wise since the last update (yes yes, over a month ago, I’m sorry). We’re in a bit of a holding pattern with The Third Ending album stuff – Prog Rock Records have sold out of the first run of discs we sent them, and we’re currently waiting (and waiting) on the printers down here to come up with the booklets and inlays so we can send them over the pond and get them distributed. Hopefully we won’t have lost momentum by the time it all gets sorted out.

We have been writing quite a bit for album numero deux, and it’s going quite well. Mostly riffs and progressions, not a lot of melodic lines or lyrics as yet, although I plan to spend some time on such things over the next few weeks. With a bit of luck, the gestation period on this disc will be considerably shorter than the last.

Oh, I jumped on the Pro Tools bandwagon last week, and picked up an mbox 2 mini. For better or worse, the software is something of a defacto industry standard, and I thought it would be worth my learning. On top of that, I was looking to get some “real” audio hardware (I’ve been using my motherboard audio for demos up til now), a DAW program, and a good set of solid “workhorse” sounds to play, and the bundled Xpand! module rounded out the package very nicely for my purposes. Runner up was the EMU 0404, but that would have cost me a similar amount, and left me with no DAW program (other than a host of “LE” versions, which weren’t really going to cut the mustard). All told, very happy so far with the Pro Tools experience.

Right – more coffee.