There's a kinda hush...

It's been a pretty quiet week on the Studio front this week, so I've been spending some time sitting in my fat controller's chair updating this and installing that and fiddling with a new GPS I purchased through EBAY. I definitely need to be told where to go and how to get there, a poor stumbling, wandering being such as myself often needs a little clear concise direction.

I also received a new hi tech gadget from my parents who just returned from their overseas holiday. They brought me back a Merlin which is a media player/recorder with an internal 120g hard drive, awesome little gadget, they managed to pick this up in Dubai, so I have been sorting through some of my favorite movies, and dumping them onto the media player. I had to include Naked Lunch, The man who wasn't there, Blade Runner and I am considering transferring my David Lynch and Woody Allen collection to the device as well, after that I will probably start on my favorite albums.

It was also a week of good news, I received confirmation this week that J and I have a permanent weekly gig at a local restaurant, we did our first one last Friday, and it went well, though could have been a few more diners to hear us. The management were quite impressed and I believe there could be additional work if they have a booked function. J and I haven't had the duo going since my medical problems about a year back, so it was good to be a musical team again.

I also played a gig last night with a few musician friends (some I had never played with before) for an organization called merry makers, who are a social group for adults with disabilities. It was a fun night, they really knew how to kick up their heels and get into the spirit of things. We played mainly standard country and rock songs, and they (and we) absolutely had a ball. It was so great to see an audience enjoying themselves that much. I even spotted a few of my music therapy clients, they were quite surprised to see me on stage with a band.

In the next few days I hope to finish off a song I've been working on, and we might even see something new from the collaborative group ( I think Dave will be back from interstate this week ). So keep your ears wide open.


Ecca.

Lost Weekend

I've been toying about this next entry over the last few days, but each time I poise my eager fingers over an awaiting keyboard, something screws up or comes up, one of the two.

On Thursday I was frustrated to discover that this computer had suffered a virus attack ( the one where your wallpaper gets changed to a fake spy ware detected warning message). I actually had the same virus some months ago and managed to get rid of it with a little research on the net, so this time, I simply took the same action (or what I could remember I did last time) and it seemed to have disappeared but basically just pulled it's head in to reveal itself with greater impact a few hours later ( I think they call them Trojans because they disguise themselves but maybe they should be called turtles).

I spent most of Friday in town in the rain, doing music therapy, visiting the library, and spending 2 1/2 hours at the doctor (that not waiting, that's actually seeing the doctor). Nothing major, just getting some paperwork filled so as I can complete my music therapy degree.
At the library I was reading a book about the making of the Pink Floyd movie 'The Wall', one of my favorite albums. I was surprised to discover that when Bob Geldof was offered the lead role by his manager in the back of a cab, he turned it down because he was never into Floyd, and thought they sucked badly. Little did he know that the cab driver was up being Roger Water's brother, so this soon got back to him. Well he got the part anyway. Freaky stuff.

Later in the afternoon, I was to play at a cafe in Gosford with one of my good mates, though the owner pulled the pin on the night when they didn't have any patrons ( as I was packing up, group of fifteen arrived ).

Later on Friday evening when I got home, my partner reported that the computer locked up, so I rebooted and ran my antivirus software. I left this running overnight as you do, and the next morning I could tell something wasn't right, the antivirus software had locked up. This time after rebooting I was locked in a logging on logging off cycle without actually getting to my desktop to do anything (even in safe mode), so I saw this as a perfect opportunity to reinstall windows on a different partition, and copy important data to the non windows hard drive, and then zap the windows hard drive (format), and reinstall windows.

After the above process I was presented with an unusual blank desktop, where I am used to icons everywhere, so I had a big task ahead of me getting my most used programs back up and running. Come Saturday afternoon I was adequately functional again.

Fortunately, I run three computers here, with only this one connected to the net, both my main music computers are Internet free to prevent this very scenario, so no music or musical utilities were lost or harmed in this process.

On Saturday evening I had a dinner appointment with my old band members at a restaurant we frequently visited in our glory days (maybe glory hours), which ended up being a very pleasant evening. I caught up with all the Zubrick gossip, my partner J also enjoyed some intelligent conversation (which she definately doesn't really get too much of from me).

Tools (our aptly named bass player), J and I enjoyed a few hours at the local club testing out the payout capabilities of the pokies ( not the best results I'm afraid, but an entertaining few hours ). The selection process was all in J's hands so we obviously played the cutest, noisiest machines to be found. J is into all the bells and whistles even if the payout is minuscule as long as the machine sings and the animation is good, she's happy. A payout is just an unexpected bonus.

Sunday morning was spent sleeping, sitting lazily with J, rebuilding my email address book, installing a few additional applications, and finally going over to J's folks place for Father's Day. I spent a few hours there watching 'Down Periscope', and parts of various war DVDs whilst enjoying J's mum's delicious rock cakes.

My folks are still on their Mediterranean escape, probably in Dubai now doing some major shopping deals with the Arabs. They are back later this week, and I am sure they will have some great stories to tell. I would like to do some more overseas travel myself soon , I'd like to visit Thailand, maybe do a spiritual quest in India or something along those lines.

I'll probably spend this coming week tweaking this computer back it's former self and going through some material for some upcoming gigs. The next few weekends are booked with a country gig, a charity gig, and a corporate gig a few weeks after that with a fair bit of new material.

I may get a chance to do some recording with the guys this week, so if anything new gets finished you'll be able to hear it here first.

That should bring you all pretty well up to date, so enjoy your week ahead, and stay happy !

Ecca

Everything but the sync

It is always interesting talking to other musicians and learning how they approach their music. Yesterday I spent most of the day with the guitarist from my covers band going over our live material.

After some time, the subject got onto sequencing and such, as we both are into using computer technology to record and produce music. He was explaining to me methods of syncing computers and sequencers and effects units so as they all share the same timing source. Now this was something I have toyed with, though due to my unconventional nature of doing things, have decided to stay right away from.

My approach always has been to play my VST instruments live. In fact, none of my works are sequenced using a sequencer program, rather I just load them into a VST host software as needed, and record them live layer upon layer. I guess the results of this approach are that I am getting a human feel to my recording rather than a sequenced machine feel. I know sometimes the timing can be out, but working with loop recording software this can be easily rectified if it is too much of an issue, and as mentioned in previous posts, plugins such as melodyne are great for setting major timing issues straight (even if Acid does tend to crash on contact with melodyne).

If I need to use a instrument which is rhythmical in nature, ( such as an evolving sound or beat based sound ), setting the tempo of the VST host to the recording software tempo usually brings them into sync well enough (even though these are two different computers).

I have also been studying scale structures and jazz chords lately, so some of my new work may seem more inclined to using strange chord shapes . This is an area I have looked into a number of times, but was overwhelmed by the vast possibilities, though this time I think some valuable and usable information has sunk in (even though I may have used these chords and scales previously, now I can actually figure out what I am doing, and hopefully embellish it).

I don't think I'm going to instantly turn Zappaesque, but I might actually achieve some of the strangeness and odd feel that I am looking for in my composing, so lets hope it all works out. Meanwhile I will keep delving into this most interesting area.

Well that's enough rambling for now, I hope I should be able to leave you with something new on my next post.




Ecca

Gotta Boogie

Welcome all, today's audio installment involves a little swing, a little dance, a little moonlight romance. Our latest recording is a bit of a dancy swing number, (for those who thought that all we could come up with were stalking songs..)

Yes, firstly I should mention the feedback that I got from Man on a mission, most was fairly positive, though the guitarist's flatmate found the lyrics a rather creepy. Well I agree they don't make a great bedtime story, but I cant see anything too scary about them, they just describe what is inside everyone of us either on the giving or receiving end.

This latest recording though has turned to the bright side. Billy and I got together and tidied up some previous recordings earlier in the morning before Dave and Wayne turned up. We wanted to start something fresh, Wayne had an old bass run which sounded quite groovy which he showed Dave who quickly embellished it with his own style and quick finger action. We needed drums, so as is becoming quite a chore now, I sifted through some of my loops, and found nothing that was swingy enough, so we settled for a pattern from one of my VSTI's, addictive drums, which worked well.

With drums and bass down, we could see this was going to be a groover. we added some nice acoustic rhythm guitar and then a lead solo which was emphasised by a key change (always works a wonder). Vaughn was our guest lead guitar god for this one hopefully he will join the team for regular recording sessions, as he is quite an incredible guitar player.

We deliberated over lyrics, and we soon agreed that the theme was about a guy who takes his girl out dancing, gets all exited, gets tired and worn out yet all his girl wants to do is keep dancing. Typical scenario hey guys? I am a bit of a dictator when it comes to lyrics ( as the guys are probably well aware now ), but we were all happy with the results.

Billy was chosen to sing the song, we recorded his vocals without too many problems, and then added our group vocals later (I decided to remove these the next day and redo them myself and adding a few clones to get the same effect, only in tune and in time).

I also played around with an effect called Melodyne which I used to tidy up the timing of the guitar solo, but found that I need to be careful with this one as it tends to crash my recording software at times.

I also added some piano parts to the song today, which filled it out a little.

As usual you can download or stream it from the link below, and please leave your comments.

Put on your dancing shoes and enjoy !

Ecca

Boogie With Me

Cistern of the Down

Hi folks, welcome back to the blog that just keeps on giving....
Not much has been going on over here over the last few days, which is sort of good because I need some time to organise this little space of mine. The tidying up has been going well, the places looks half decent now that I've found a spot for most things.

As I have nothing new to post up of my material, I thought I would share a tune with you which I put together about 2 months ago. The idea for the song came to me as I was travelling home from a party for a Friend of mine who had moved bush some years back and was doing a week back on the Coast visiting friends and such. As I was travelling back from this party, the phrase 'Never leave a nugget in your sandbox' came to me. I love bemusing little lines like that one of favorites has to be 'Never butter your toast with a feather' but that's another song yet to be written.

I started thinking around this Nugget in the sandbox phrase, and surprisingly enough, the lyrics started to flow. as soon as I got home I wrote them down as I knew there was no was I was going to remember them the next morning.

It took me few days before i got back to the lyrics, and attempted to put some music to them, I had a basic idea of what I wanted, I knew the chorus would be a repetition of the inspired phrase, and I felt that the rest of the song deserved a hard hitting riff or anthem to keep it pumping. I sorted through my sample CD's for some metal crunching guitar sounds and hard hitting drum loops and before too long I came up good.

The vocals were recorded, and as always were mixed with a pitched octave down version. The chorus vocals were processed through a 4k filter to give a phone voice sound. I should also note that the amazing guitar solo was produced using liquid instruments VSTI (guitar library). In fact no live instruments were used to product this song other than my keys, a host of VSTi's and samples.

Download or stream the song from the link below, and Enjoy!

Cistern of the Down

Missionary man

I have been rather busy over the last few days, Friday was a disaster for one, after finishing my morning music therapy session, I thought I would get a usual weekend task out of the way, and do my weekly Mannering Park surveillance duties where I am currently looking after my parent's place while they are holidaying in Malta and the Greek islands, I am desperately trying to keep their garden alive unsure of whether it is suffering from lack of water or the cold winter w( as I am most comfortable with items which have keyboards attached to them be it music or computers, gardening and plants leave me bewildered, like goldfish, most plants eventually die on me).

I didn't quite get there though... halfway there, my car started shaking and convulsing as it if it had been suddenly possessed by the fiercest of automotive demons, so I turned around and headed back toward home and to my local mechanic who changed a coil block and a few spark plugs, chanted a few mantras, sprayed some holy water on the engine block, charged me what I had made from my last two gigs, all in the space of about 3 hours and I was on my not so merry way.

Now some people are paranoid about their health, whether the doctors have given the correct diagnosis and carried out the right tests and such, well I am pretty OK with all that, but when it comes to my car, I fret like a new mother listening for the smallest irregularity which might indicate another problem.

Saturday morning was band rehearsals, so my partner and I packed up the Jeep (her car), and made our merry way to five hours of band rehearsals only to zip off to her father's place afterward to help clear up a house which he was selling. Trailer attached, we returned in the evening with a few extra pieces of furniture, 3 big ceramic pots, a antique chest of drawers, and assorted oddments. We both crashed out after a tiring day.

Sunday morning I managed to get up early and re-attempt my surveillance duties. Being the first trip back in the car after it's exorcism, I was a little a little paranoid thinking that some possibly related overseen fault would manifest itself and leave me stranded in the nether regions of Mannering Park (about half an hour from home). I am pleased to say that this time the trip was incident free. After getting home, I spent most of the afternoon just quietly vegging out, whilst my partner revisited her father's emporium of material delights.

Monday arrives with an early morning visit to the pathology department for regular blood tests and such, which don't really bother me too much (though still listening carefully to the sounds my car is making),

I return home and get a call from my mates who had planned to come over and finish off a song we had been working on last week saying they will be around soon, so I tidied up a little, prepared the baby room ( as they have a 2 month year old newborn ), and set up the baby monitor.

They arrive, Billy, David, and mother Robina start working on vocals for the chorus of the unfinished track. ( I managed to put down some vocals to the verses previously with my usual octave down pitch shifted effect which all were pretty pleased with and made it easier to come up with a chorus as a subject had been established ). We decided that with four singers on board, that harmonies were the way to go, so we figured our parts, laid out tracks and soon had a chorus which sounded pretty OK.

Now Dave is a huge Frank Zappa fan so he felt obliged to include the zappesque 'yeah' and 'mmm' exclamations you can hear within the first verse section, he was pretty chuffed with his work too may I add.

We made a group decision to remove the firecracker recording and subsequent giggles we had added to end the song during the previous week ( agreeing that a cracker going off had really nothing to do with the subject of stalking, and submissiveness) and decided to end the song in a more conventional way.

All of us were pretty happy with the finished product ( and started working on a new track).

That just about ends my last few days activities, my studio looks no cleaner or organised, so that is my attempted project for the next few days.

You can have a listen to the new tune from the link below.. enjoy.

Ecca.



Man on a Mission

Final Studio Update

Ok the new area is functional yet not totally set up. I still have lots of stuff lying around, but over the last few days, I have had a number of new projects started so I am waiting for some time to clean up.

On Tuesday, my mate Wayne came over for a jam and chat, and we got started on a song which has been in his head for some time, so we wiped away the cobwebs, and started work on it. He said it was a piece inspired by a Sophia Loren movie he had seen some time back which has haunted him since. It sounds promising from what we have so far, yet is in no way complete.

Tuesday night I wanted to try something new out with my partner, we have been talking about having a go at writing some country rock songs (which is quite strange because neither of us are huge country music fans but J has a great voice for country music). I managed to get together a tune, and record it and J has written some lyrics which mention living in the bush and the problems associated with the current drought situation in the Australian outback. Our next step is to put the lyrics down. This should happen quite soon so as soon as it is ready, I will post it on this blog.

Today (Wednesday) two of my good friends (Billie and Dave) popped in with their guitars to put something down. After a rather slow start getting drums recorded, we entered hyper drive. The tracks were being layered down thick and fast, and before we knew it we had a complete song (without vocals as yet). I played around with the production side of it for an hour or two after they left, and am quite pleased with the results, even with the firecracker we recorded going off at the end of the track, which was Dave's great idea after spotting my collection of bungers. 'Let's end the song with a bunger going off' he laughed, and sometimes I just give in to his crazy ideas.

So as you can imagine, the area is not totally organised as yet, there are still leads, amps, and all sorts of stuff lying around though we already a hive of activity. I will probably down the instruments, and get to doing some more cleaning up this weekend ( but there is no guarantee).

And of course my cat Mugsy likes the area, he has taken up the habit of hanging out with me in here especially during the middle of the day when the sun streams full strength through the window.


Ecca