Catskills impromptus

June 21, 2009 in Music | Please leave a comment

catskills_impromptus_cover

You can download your own copy of the MP3s here.

As you might have read in an earlier post, Mike Bartlett and I were in the Catskill Mountains for 10 days, writing a play-with-music together.  I’d taken a guitar with me, and thought it might be nice to record some impromptu instrumentals; in my earlier, more technical, guitar-playing days I’d written a lot of solo guitar instrumentals, using extended techniques culled from the work of Michael Hedges (among others), and I’ve recently started thinking about writing more.  These four recordings, though, are certainly ‘impromptu’ and unpolished, being the result of a few minutes’ fiddling around late at night, and you’ll certainly hear a lot of extraneous noise in the background.

1. Red barn
This is in open D tuning (DADF#AD), and uses the same right-hand pattern throughout. The Red Barn, if you’re interested, is the building in the photo above, and the site of numerous rehearsals and viewings throughout our time at the Orchard Project.

2. The parted couple
This uses the same tuning as one of the most perfect pieces of music I know, The Happy Couple by Michael Hedges (GBEF#AD), and is loosely based on some of the themes in it. Very loosely.

3. Mafia party
While recording this, the rest of the artists at the retreat were downstairs, playing one of the best group games I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing. Near the beginning of the recording, you can hear Sarah (I think) giggling during her phone conversation on the stairs outside my room. It’s in standard tuning.

4. Structure of water
While staying in the town of Hunter, NY we had several days of the hardest rain I’ve ever seen, a few hours a hail, and a roaring mountain creek at the end of the garden, so water was clearly on my mind. This is a simple recording of an altered tuning chord (BBEF#AD), electronically stretched out and treated, so the notes of the chord and the harmonics come out as the chord decays.

Sci-fi staircase (Luke Vibert remix)

June 20, 2009 in Music | Please leave a comment

While trawling through loads of old music and general nonsense for archiving purposes, I stumbled across something I’d forgotten I’d done (as you tend to when you’re doing things in a hurry late at night).

A while ago, some magazine or other held a competition to remix one of Luke Vibert’s new songs (presumably to promote his new album, or something) and, seeing as how I had a night spare, I knocked something up.  Listening to it now, I suppose it sounds a little dated; I’m still vaguely proud of it.

Incidentally, there was a little hoo-ha about the eventual winner, as it turned out that there was one version that was clearly the best, as selected by Mr Vibert himself; when it came to awarding the prize, though, it turned out that it had been submitted (under a pseudonym) by Aphex Twin…

The Orchard Project, day 4- writing ‘Thrown’ with Mike Bartlett

June 12, 2009 in Music, Theatre | Please leave a comment

Mike Bartlett & I are on a writing retreat, working on Thrown, a play-with-music for the Royal Court.  It will have two rehearsed readings as part of the Court’s Rough Cuts season, for which you can buy tickets here.  Mike’s new play, Cock, opens at the Royal Court on 13th November 2009.

If you’re a regular reader of my thoughts [Hi mum!] you might have read that I’m not a big fan of musical theatre. However, as someone who both writes music and plays, I’m well aware of the power in both artforms; this all came to a head around a year ago, when Mike Bartlett asked me to collaborate on a play he was writing, called Thrown; it was still in development then (as it is now), and he was also interested in finding ways to allow dramatic action and music to interact and inform each other, without ending up with what we both perceived as the superficiality of musical theatre.

In true socialist fashion, the first thing that I did was to write A Manifesto.  As with nearly everything that sets itself up in opposition to something else, it’s a flawed statement of intent, but it did succeed in fixing a lot of the thoughts that we wanted to work on.  What with the usually hurried process of rehearsing for a reading, we had a limited time to get things together, and lots of my/our high-faluting ideas had to be left by the wayside, in order to get something performable ready in a couple of days.

So, fast forwarding to now- Mike and I are now in the town of Hunter, NY in the Catskill Mountains, courtesy of The Orchard Project and the Royal Court Theatre.  We’re here to work on the project some more and, in particular, make our links between the musical and theatrical elements clearer, bringing in some of the manifesto thoughts that we’d had to leave out of the play’s earlier incarnation.

What we’re striving for, while we’re here, is a piece of work in which the form and content inform each other- there should be a dialogue between the narrative of the play, and the structure we’re creating in order to tell that story.

Prior to coming here, I was a little baffled as to why the Court thought it was a good idea to send two English people, writing a play about England, and living within a 1 hour bus ride of each other, off to the Catskill Mountains, at great cost and inconvenience.  Having been here for a few days, though, it seems clear: what The Orchard Project have is a large number of artists in a small area, for a short period of time, all of whom are keen to talk about their practice, and to learn from the experiences of others.  Late-night discussions have become a commonplace, and it’s clear that there are a lot of extremely passionate theatremakers coming up through the colleges and universities.  I don’t think Mike and I would have been able to do the work we have so far, had we not been in this environment. It really is good not to have to be in London, sometimes.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say while I’m here; in particular, I’d like to talk a little more about how Mike and I are working on the play.  If, god forbid, you happen to have any questions about any of this, please do leave a comment and I’ll answer as fully as I can.

So, the Royal Court Theatre are sending me to New York…

June 1, 2009 in Music, Theatre | Please leave a comment

As it sounds: The Royal Court Theatre (of Sloane Square, London) are sending me, and playwright Mike Bartlett, off to a theatrical retreat in the Catskill Mountains in the north of New York State, so that we can work on a play together.

I’m not making this up.

Questions are arising in your mind, I imagine.  Questions like ‘Why are they sending you to New York, when you both live in London?’ and ‘Why now, when the project had seemed to be dead?’ and ‘How fucking lucky can you be?’.  I don’t know the answer to these questions, dear reader.  What I can tell you is that I’m going to be spending a lot of time writing music alongside Mike’s script, and that I’ll be taking lots of photos of a mountain, and quite possibly writing a lot of blogs about how totally sweet it is being up a mountain while you’re fed and watered and just expected to come up with some art.

It’s a hard life, eh?

Fireworks Night’s recording week: photo round-up

May 24, 2009 in Fireworks Night album, Music | Please leave a comment

Just a quick one now, as I’m off to play at the Goodbye, Faithful Kingdom! Bank Holiday festival.  Now that I’m wrist-deep in mixing the new album, it seems a sensible time to have a quick round-up of what we looked like during our recording session.

Let’s get Thom Yorke to record a voiceover for The Monroe Transfer’s album.

May 13, 2009 in Music | Please leave a comment

Yes.  It’s as simple as it sounds.  The Monroe Transfer are off to the studio next week to begin work on a new album (and you can read a little more about that here).  If you’ve seen us live in the last few months, you’ve probably seen us perform a song called Frozen field, burning field which is about half an hour long, and has a short spoken-word section about three-quarters of the way through.  Now that it comes time to think about recording the song, the question of who should perform the monologue comes to mind.  And the answer, in my mind, is clear:

Thom Yorke.

thom-yorke2

Some things you may not know about Thom Yorke and me:

a) I used to live round the corner from him. As a result of there being few parking spaces in Oxford, I occasionally had to park outside his house, and I may have caught him giving a wry smile at the sight of a very tall man getting out of an old-fashioned Mini. 

b) I’m pretty sure I saw On A Friday perform at The Point in Oxford, when I was at school. I can’t actually remember much about it, though, and no-one else can back me up on this one.

c) I was involved in a sci-fi comedy show on university radio, which featured the entire of Radiohead combining into one, giant monster, firing lasers from its eye. The heroes of the show fled when Matt Bellamy (from Muse) arrived in a spaceship, and did battle with the giant, Mecha Radiohead.

d) Thom Yorke is responsible for two songs on my ‘Music So Beautiful It Makes Me Wonder Whether There’s Any Point Writing More Music’ list. As far as I know, I haven’t written anything that’s on Thom’s list.

e) It’s possible (*just* possible…) that he has a vague idea of who we are. I know he’s a fan of online record store Boomkat and, around the time I found that out, our first album was Boomkat’s album of the week.

If you’re a Facebook person, please join up to our group and submit your suggestions as to how we might get through to him.  If you’re in Oxford, and you happen to see him, give him a cheery wave, and tell him about this really cool band he might like.  If you’re related to him (even distantly) find an excuse to pop round.  If you’re Thom Yorke himself- hello.  

(also- if you happen to be Tom Sheehan, I hope you don’t mind my using your photo.  It’s a great photo.  If I can ever afford your services, I’ll be banging on your door)

Recording a new Fireworks Night album #8 [T+2 days]: What We Have Learnt (or ‘There Is No Magic Bullet’)

April 29, 2009 in Fireworks Night album, Music | 2 comments

Fireworks Night having a clap
So, The Fireworks Nights are back in our native land, with a couple of hard-drives crammed with gigabytes of audio, tummies full of food we didn’t have to cook, and the some damned good songs rattling round our brains whenever we wake up in the night.  Personally, I’m absolutely exhausted, as I’ve been working for about 14 hours a day for the last 10 days, in about 3 different roles; if you’re looking for quiet holiday time, may I recommend not producing and playing on an 11-song record in 10 days? So, now that I’ve had a little more experience of being in charge of the whole recording process, I thought perhaps I’d offer a few thoughts on a few things I’ve learnt.  None of these are earth-shattering revelations, but they’re all good general principles that I’ll be bearing in mind the next time I’m doing something similar.  Next month, for example…

  1. There’s no such thing as a magic bullet   The more I do…well, pretty much anything- printing, playing an instrument, engineering, mixing, the list goes on…the more I realise that there is never any one factor that determines whether something is ‘good’ or not.  It’s all the hundreds of tiny, tiny things that add up to give you a great result.  In the case of engineering, for example, having a great mic is no use at all if you’re not putting it in the right place.  Having a great mic in the right position is no use if your guitar is rattling and out of tune.  Having a great instrument is no use if your player doesn’t know the part.  A player who knows the part, but is just playing it mechanically, is going to make a mechanical record.  And so on.  Your recording chain is only going to be as strong as its weakest link.Nick's work area
  2. ‘Engineer’ and ‘producer’ are very different roles    Over the last 10 days, I’ve straddled both roles and, I hope, done a reasonable job at it; it helps, of course, having a group of people that you know very well.  I’m not sure how well it would have gone, had I had anything at all to worry about on top of these roles.  ’Producing’, in the hands-on, people-interaction sense wasn’t something that I’d had a lot of experience with.  In my moments in the role, I had to make sure everyone was comfortable with the recording space, tell them not to worry about making things easy for to record and just to play their part well, get them coffee and water, find less squeaky chairs, diplomatically tell them what went wrong in the last take and how to get a better one this time round, and give ideas for the feeling we needed from the performance.  It surprised me how much time and energy this role took up- musicians often just don’t know how they’ve played: often the take that they think was the killer was actually sub-par, and vice-versa.  People need to be kept happy and able to perform, otherwise the whole exercise is pointless.Equipment
  3. It’s nearly always quicker to try something out than to argue someone out of their position.    If someone has an idea they want to try out, it may be bloody awful.  It may be obvious to you, as an engineer/producer, that it’s a bloody awful idea.  It may be that the only person who may be convinced it’s a great idea is the person pushing to try it.  The thing about arguing, though, is that it’s pretty damned rare to change someone’s mind: by ‘winning’ an argument, the other person may well back down but, most of the time, they’ll still believe they’re right.  And then you have a slightly pissed-off musician, as well as having wasted time.  Normally it’s quicker to throw up a mic and try something- people will hear pretty quickly if it’s terrible.  If it’s sounding like there’s some mileage in the idea, then maybe alter your mics and positioning and get a proper take of it.  Maybe something wonderful will come of it.  Maybe it’ll be terrible.  In any case, you tried it out.Tim at the piano
  4. The goal is to make a great record.   Right from the start, this was pretty-much my only concern.  I wanted to make a great record much much more than I wanted to be right, or to be in charge.  I tried to be very open with everyone about this- if we got to the mix of the record (or even the first rough recordings) and we didn’t think that I’d be able to do the job, I would step aside, and we should scrape some money together and go into a pro studio.  As it turned out, it looks like I might have done alright, but the pursuit of recording a great record meant that some ideals had to be dropped.  One song, for example (more than one, in fact…) has some pretty damned hard, double-stopped string parts and, after a hard day of getting the best takes we could, we realised that we just didn’t have it.  It just didn’t sound good.  So, picking them apart, we went back and recording each note of the string parts separately, getting the articulation, tuning and rhythm spot on for each of them, before combining them again.  And it sounded great, like the song always sounded in our head.  One of our goals at the beginning was to have an ‘authentic’ recording process, playing live as much as we could, and we stuck to that pretty well.  There’s no way that I’d let the goal of a great sounding record be compromised by ideals that we occasionally couldn’t live up to.  God knows I’ll be comping a few of my guitar parts in the final mix.  Which leads me on to…Rhiannon
  5. Computers can correct technical errors, but they can’t create musical feel.    I’m recording to digital recording software.  I’m going to use the facilities that this software offers.  If we’ve just got a great drum take, but Ed’s dropped a stick halfway through and missed two beats, I’ll comp something in there.  I’d like to be a purist about everything, but the practicalities of recording to any form of time limit mean that compromises have to be made.  Get your musicians to perform as well as they can, with all the right sort of energy the song needs, and any ‘errors’ may well be part of the feel of the take.  If they’re not, then we do have the power to make changes; like all powers, it must only be used for the forces of good.Mics and a pool
  6. Have a regular backup schedule.    I can’t emphasise this enough.  Everyone says it.  Everyone is right.  Few people do it enough.Tim's mighty organ
  7. If it sounds good, it is good.   Enough said.

So now, we’re on to the mixing stage.   Hopefully I’ll be able to start posting about that process in the coming weeks, and talk you through the evolution of a recording.  Thanks for reading, as ever…

Recording a new Fireworks Night album #7: video evidence!

April 25, 2009 in Fireworks Night album, Music | Please leave a comment

It’s been quiet on the old blog for the last few days, as I’ve had my head stuck in another computer in a different room, doing the actual recording: by the time the evening’s come round, I’ve been way too exhausted actually to write anything. As, indeed, I am now. Tim, on the other hand, has been making lots of videos of what’s been going on, all of which can be seen by you, the discerning reader/viewer.

Organ Grinder Records on YouTube

And of course, if you have a YouTube account, you can leave comments on these videos, making us all warm and fuzzy and making us believe we have fans. 

Recording a new Fireworks Night album #6: photos from the studio

April 22, 2009 in Fireworks Night album, Music | Please leave a comment

(if I have this right, I think this will automatically update whenever Neil uploads more photos.  Which is ‘constantly’)

..

Recording a new Fireworks Night album #5: day 3- rhythm takes

April 19, 2009 in Fireworks Night album, Music | Please leave a comment

This is the fifth in a series of posts detailing the recording of a new Fireworks Night album; the series is going to follow everything I get wrong, every expensive mic I knock over and every cable I really should have taped to something solid.

No post yesterday (yeah, like you noticed) as I was exhausted, and had no time after annoyance of working out that I couldn’t backup all our work with any ease.  Grr.

If you’re a Twitter user (can I suggest ‘Twit’ as the noun?), you may have seen my recent messages to the Intervoid, proudly announcing that we’ve tracked 9 rhythm parts for the new album.  It varies from song to son, as the ‘rhythm’ instruments vary, they’ve all involved drums so far, normally with piano, and often with bass and acoustic guitar.  The bleed between the mics is, as I mentioned in an earlier post, much less easy to control than I’d hoped; on the plus side, this has made me focus on getting a really good sound in the room and turned into 1s and 0s through the mics, knowing that there won’t be a lot I’ll be able to fix in the mix.  In many ways, I think it’s been a very helpful stage to get through.

I, in my amateurish enthusiasm, have been taking copious notes, and have fairly precise diagrams illustrating how everything was made.  Doubtless I’ll be uploading various scans from my notebooks at a later date, for detailed discussion of ‘how the hell am I going to fix what I’ve done wrong?’. 

We have the luxury of a few good-quality, variable purpose, microphones, which has made it relatively easy to vary the sound, and feel, of a recording.  Again, this is something that I’m bound to repeat at tedious length in the future, but if you’re recording several songs-worth of material in a similar sounding room, I would personally advise changing up the sound by changing your mic’ing to suit the piece.  For example, the role of drum overheads (about which more later) has been filled by a pair of Behringer B1 (a large diaphragm condenser- relatively inexpensive), a pair of Cascade Fatheads (which, I cannot emphasise enough, are the most flexible and lovely sounding things that I’ve had the chance to play with), a pair of Rode NT1 (classic small diaphragm condenser, but turned out not to be particularly appropriate) and, for a particularly retro sound, my homemade ribbon microphone as a mono overhead.  So, without having to do a single bit of post-production noodling around, we’ve already found a number of excellent sounds.  And, of course, this is also part of committing to a sound early on in the process. 

So, to bring you up to date: we have three more ‘rhythm’ tracks to do, which are the quieter songs- one involves piano and bass, one needs electric guitar, bass and piano, and the other…well, I can’t remember.   But we haven’t taken the drum kit down yet, so I guess we must need them still.

So, once the whole recording process is done, the plan is to follow a particular track all the way through the process; maybe tomorrow I’ll start it off by putting a rough bounce of something up here.   Until then, it’s time to continue the mandatory backup schedule.  Yeah.  It’s a rock & roll lifestyle, all right.