Featured

When will it stop?

A painting by Tom Phillips, CBE RA (1937-2022), containing a quote from Samuel Beckett. I was lucky enough to get to know Tom a little in the last years. He was a very funny and well read man.

The title isn’t intended as a cry for help, but a gently humourous finger pointing to a lot of recent output – three songs in the last month. I enjoy being this productive, though given when I had a band, I’d come up with 3-4 songs per week. Having to be the band slows me down!

Play it Loud

Yes, it is intentionally the title for a Slade album, but apart from that there’s little in common. After some down tempo songs, I thought I’d write something jolly.

The track came about on account of me playing around with Reason templates. One had the rather wonderful staccato synth patch, which I drove with a chord generator while I looked for some chords I found interesting.

Here’s a slight digression… We hear lots of debate about Artificial Intelligence (AI), and its role in creativity. I haven’t used any AI in songwriting, but I have been thinking recently about the difference between using tools like chord generators and AI. In my mind it’s quite clearly different: I use a chord generator like I use a guitar when I’m writing, and just bang away at chords until something grabs my attention.I don’t always know the chords I’m playing (or at least, I don’t at the time) but they sound good to me.

I’m clearly driving the process, but if I were to use AI, I’d be prompting the engine to effectively audition song ideas for me. While the chords I play have voicings that have been used in pop, rock, jazz (and whatever came before), AI is combing through genres, based on prompts, and synthesizing whatever songs it has been trained on. I can certainly write derivative songs, but I try not to, AI can’t try to do anything else. Or at least not yet.

AI is clearly not the first use of technology in music. We stretched skins tight to make drums, which made rhythms more varied. We automated the act of blowing into tubes or across reeds to invent organs. I think AI will provide creative people with tools to create music we wouldn’t naturally write, just as sequencing allowed us to program keyboards to play figures we could never play, but I suspect for the most part it will be used to recreate the past, and in the case of streaming services, to generate content that people can consume without the need to pay even the pitiful amounts they pay to artists now.

Anyway. Back to the jolly song. This was a very joyful exercise, written pretty much in linear fashion. The verse came first, then chorus. The arrangement felt more or less done when I had the chords and guitar parts, but the sequencers added a nice urgency. I then found myself wanting to shoehorn in a break, with my now obligatory jazz guitar solo. The horns and strings went in very late, more or less for shits and giggles.

I like it!

We Work in the Dark

I didn’t mean to write this song at all. I meant to tidy up my studio. I guess procrastination is the mother of songwriting.

This is another song that came from playing with a chord generator. I was really struck by what I came up with, but it didn’t quite take off until I started playing the guitar melodies. For the verse, I had the chords on a loop, and was also recording in a loop over it. I got a bit lost, and ended up coming up with the quirky lead line, which kind of resolves at the start, proving the very melancholy feel.

I needed a bridge to get to the chorus, so I built one. I went back and forth on it (I suppose I should say “I went across it and came back”) but decided I needed it. The chorus melody line also raised the level a lot I think.

Yet another jazz guitar solo. I think I need to buy a big semi acoustic guitar. I want to be Barney Kessel.

Featured

Boom!

I really need to get some more pictures! This is kind of appropriate, because I put lots of guitars (for me) on this track.

Boom Tomb came about literally the same day I posted Union! I was contemplating moving my studio downstairs into a bigger room, so starting a new track was probably not the best idea.

Who says good ideas are good ideas?

I had an idea for a kind of primitive/sophisticated song, the concept being to have some sort of old school rock or blues bit on top of a lot of electronics. I had the blues lick that goes through the intro and verses in about 30 seconds. I thought it would sound great on top of a boot stamp (the primitive thing), and found a sample in Reason. I then added a funky guitar riff underneath it.

I had to search around a bit (say 30 minutes) to figure out the bridge part, which naturally led to the chorus. There are 4 guitars in the chorus. That’s the lead, a doubled riff, and a part that just plays a string bend that’s in the doubled riff, but goes through a long delay. I can hear it anyway.

At that point we were pretty much all done, and the rest was production.

The Reason delay device “Ripley” played a blinder: those really fiddly sounds on the keys, that suggest super fast playing are all Ripley doing magic. In the bridge it sounds like an organ. I really am very taken with it! I’m adding it as an aux track in my Pro Tools template along with delay, reverb and Lexicon.

I wanted a break section, and moved a few things about to develop an idea, then, when I had the break, I decided to add a solo, which is probably the first I’ve recorded in at least a decade, and the first one that is more than a bar or so in much longer.

It’s short, it’s catchy. Boom!

Featured

Next Song…

So quick!

The title gives this song away slightly – it started as an attempt at a middle eight for Subtitles 888, but proved completely unsuitable. I liked it however, so I saved it as “Next Song“, and the next song it was.

The original idea was based on some chords out of the Reason Chord Sequencer driving a Malstrom patch. The patch was slightly sparkly/shimmery and had nice presence. Over the top I used the Complex “modular” synth with a patch called “Hold One Play Another” which added a legato feel.

In the finished version you can hear the chords very slightly in the background of the verse, behind the guitars. It’s a bit louder in the chorus. The Complex patch ended up getting ditched, though I took the lines and played them on the heavily echoed guitar lines in the bridge and chorus. For some reason I labelled them “Herald Guitars” in Pro Tools because they had a bit of that kind of feel. There’s lots of chunked out echo chords that add nice texture. Good old dotted eighth note delays.

The last bit of the puzzle was the play out, where I used the bridge for a build up after the breakdown, before repeating the chorus. It felt like I should have a more or less complete stop before the breakdown, but the echoes didn’t quite fill the gap. After various false starts, I came up with the backwards piano chord that adds some interesting tension.

I feel like I want to do something accoustic next, but that probably means it’ll be back to the synths and disco!

Featured

Catching up

It’s been a while since I posted about tracks, but I’ve been more active uploading actual songs. Sorry! So, let us begin

Soundtrack

This piece started out as a finger exercise for this non-pianist. I felt I’d come up with something nice, and also something with nice dynamics – my keyboard playing tends to be a bit ham fisted.
I started to look at adding counter melodies, different voicings etc., and the rest is Soundtrack

Grove

If I recall correctly, this started with a keyboard loop, which was about 30% of the ascending electric piano part that starts the song. I felt it should go somewhere else, so I figured out how to play the part I liked, and took it the rest of the way. The disco beat was obvious right?
The Rhodes chords I just worked out. Then I added funky bass, and started on some nice guitar licks – the chord stabs, the chorus riffs with a slight jazz feel.
I started playing about with strings, which provided a nice lush feel. That led into the middle eight part.
I was pleased with the slight Beck “Sea Change” feel, and now I feel comfortable with French Horns, that added another voice.
The slightly “glam” feel of the guitar lead in the playout was quite playing. I don’t have any guitars with P90s, but I got a satisfactory “scooped out” sound out of my Tele Custom

Evening Hall

What was I thinking with the godawful pun in the title???
This track evolved from a very clean, sine-wavey organ sound and some chords I found. A little playing with my Tele on the neck pickup brought out the riff. I added a more ambitious Rhodes part than I’d normally go for, and it worked out well.
The chorus is a fairly logical development, but brought in the arpeggio feel that I developed in the “Philip Glass” middle eight. Another new instrument for me in the form of the celeste.
I’m very happy with the bass parts, and the slightly oblique strings arrangement.
Everything was written pretty much linearly – verse, chorus, break.

The Rest is History

This song also started on guitar, with a riff over a synth loop. When I started tracking properly, the really greasy Stones chords came in, changing the feel from indie to “coked out 70s Keith”, but I liked it, so that’s where it went from there.
The bridge felt like a nice break before the build up in the chorus. I had the guitar part with nothing else for a day or so. Then I had the idea of using the piano ping through rotary speaker thing, a la “Echoes” by Pink Floyd. That inspired the Mellotron parts, initially with the flutes, which ended up all over the shop, then the Chamberlin strings. Actually, the pings also ended up everywhere!
The last bit was the brass stabs, which I think worked very well with the 70s feel.
This is probably the best production/arrangement/master I’ve done to date.

Subtitles 888

Some songs have an odd genesis. This is such a song.
The original song was kicked off by the organ sound, which was originally part of a Reason Combinator patch called “Progressive House ARP Combo” (what a fantastic name!) I ended up keeping both parts – the organ and the Boards of Canada sounding arpeggio on top, but while the organ stayed the basis of the song, the arp ended up being used sporadically.
After “The Rest is History”, I was on a bit of a Mellotron jab, so the flutes came back. I’ve not really managed to get the verse to a happy place. I like it, but I couldn’t really develop it as I wanted. Maybe a vocal would crack it.
The real drive to keep going was the chorus, which I’m really please with, especially the guitar over the top. The middle eight/break came after, and I like the feel of that a lot – more Chamberlin strings – especially as it slides nicely back into the chorus to play out.
Sometimes you win. Other times you mostly win!

Featured

Inspiration is for amateurs!

The current tear continues.

I had felt a little “dry” after the publishing frenzy of the last month or so. It’s undoubtedly true that I posted some older songs, but I’ve now completed five new songs in four week. Five songs from conception, through tracking, to mastering. Oh, and I also edited, remixed and mastered the older songs.

Then I started playing with the Reason Chord Sequencer, which is a neat tool for non keyboard people like me. Pick a genre, then a style within that, then start pressing the big round buttons. I wanted to use some unusual chords, so I selected “Jazz & Fusion”, and then “Bright Modern”, and hey presto – some very interesting tones I wouldn’t have easily have found by myself. The result was a song, unsurprisingly called “Bright Modern” (OK, so I failed on originality there, but maybe it’s better than “Bravo Mexico”!)

From there on, the juices flowed. I found neat Dr. REX loops for drums, and bass, and that got me writing a bridge, chorus and middle eight. As I’m a sucker for strings, I added some cello, violin and viola parts. Once I had those, I went back and edited the drums, added another drum loop with a little more action and noise on top, and then tracked a real bass that took its inspiration from the loop in the verse, but then went tonto in the bridge, chorus and middle eight. After that, I recorded some guitar with my Tele, through a really sweet sounding Helix preset (“Bentique” if you’re interested, which is based on a Dr. Z Route 66 amp that I don’t own.) The tone was pretty natural, but it really cut through the rough mix, and suggested the kind of riffs and licks I had to play. The general feel was Steely Dan, and somewhat jazzy. Appropriate I guess, given the chord palette.

We’re all different when it comes to writing, but I know I’m not unusual in being driven by chords or tones, and the great thing about the tools we have today, is that we have so many quick ways of trying out sounds, sketching ideas etc., and that inspiration, even on the dryest day, is a few clicks away. That’s not to say that it’s easy: sometimes getting everything to pull together is hard and frustrating, but that effort can trump the ideas that come too easily. The pros I know are pretty unanimous – you have to seek out inspiration.

In the age of the internet, I’m always a little skeptical about the origins of quotes, but this quote (attributed to Picasso) says it all:

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”

Featured

Evolving evening

The songs are coming thick and fast – sorry, can’t help it at the moment!

Evolving Evening came about as a bit of a “palate cleanser” or “Terminal Grey” I was also keen to try our the new Reason “Objekt” instrument. I had in mind something slightly abstract, perhaps ambient or more avant garde. As I wanted to play against some kind of motif, I came up with a simple electric piano riff, which led me off towards more structure: that’s fine, the song goes where it wants, and it often knows better than I do.

I used a couple of really nice “sequenced” tones, which are basically rhythmic pads, and from there I had something that felt like it could do with a vocal sample. I thought of the muezzin sample I used in “Power of Two“, and set about a taxing Internet search for the exact right sample. I found it in about 3 minutes! I must search more often, because I’ve been tremendously lucky, the second time the piece was in the exact right tempo and key.

I then decided I wanted something more constant/longer, so I went to my go to place, The Conet Project and found a Russian numbers station that added more rhythmic tension and some oddness.

After that, I found some sparkly chords and pads, and nice cinematic drum loop, and we were done. Again.

Featured

Hola, amigos. I know it’s been a long time since I rapped at ya…

…thus spoke the great Jim Anchower.

It’s definitely been a while (just over a year) since I wrote anything on here. In my defence though, I’ve been posting stuff on Soundcloud, just not writing about it here. There’s been a bit of disruption in the house, and, my somewhat Heath Robinson UK/US voltage rig literally blew up on me. Luckily, only the step down transformers went to heaven, but it caused some headscratching. And some rationalisation…

Cue another equipment cull – I needed new, UK voltage audio interfaces, I didn’t need my monitoring system, or my old channel strips. Enter a pair of spiffy new Focusrite Scarlett 18i20s. In the quest for single voltage, I also shed my old MIDI interface, and got a small USB powered jobby. Now I’m down to a single step down, with my Alesis weighted master keyboard plugged into it.

After a lot of manual reading, and getting my head around the slightly odd way the Focusrites are configured, I managed to get everything working. It’s all much more streamlined, and it sounds pretty damned good!

So, what have I done musicwise since April last year…

Bass so finishes a song

I’ve talked about Papa Bravo before, and I loved the James Bond-ness of it, but I always regretted not being able to put bass on it, so when I could record bass, I went back and finished it, or “finished as much as I could, given my songs are as finished as anyone wants them to be.” I really enjoy playing bass as it’s such an interesting role – hold down the rhythm, hold down the chords, echo the melody – or at least it is if you’re not set on simply sticking with the root note of the chord!

I usually record bass on a loop, and can trance out in the groove for quarter of an hour at a time, getting lost in eight or so bars of music, until it really feels like the glue holding the track together.

I’m not a gear head, but I have good gear

The clue to what Helix Melancholy is about is in the name – I wanted to be able to track guitar more easily than formerly (wheel out the Vox, mic up etc.), so I got a Line 6 Helix rack. This track is about testing the new piece, which of course required that I write a song.

This is very much a tone inspired song. I found a pleasant natural sound, the basic verse riff came out of enjoying that sound. The rest was just playtime. Since this, everything I’ve recorded on gutar or bass has been through the Helix. Very, very useful.

DAWs often have really good song templates and presets

Getting closer to the current time, Bravo Oscar Kilo came about from me playing with a synth that was part of a starter template in Reason. That’s the sound that starts the song. There’s also a really good rhythmic/sequence synth that I use throughout. From there on it was pretty easy – probably two days from first key press to upload, and that includes a bit of a glitch that stopped my tracking the bass.

The Disco never closes

What started out as a more 80s inspired piece (think a more interesting sequence in a Duran Duran song, or the generally excellent “Quiet Life” by Japan), ended up veering off into my fun place – DISCO! Say hello to Mexico Hotel! Then just for good measure, when I was arranging the song, I added French horn, a first for me, and suddenly we’re back with James Bond. Still, a very happy track, just the kind of track I like to produce.

You don’t know what’s there until you look

At the time of writing Mexico Hotel, I had 82 songs on my Soundcloud, which made me wonder what I hadn’t posted. The answer was “a lot.” Empty When Full grabbed my attention by virtue of the title: I remember being taken with the phrase when I saw it on a container of some kind. I couldn’t for the life of me remember what the track was (I usually can’t recall what a track is from the title a few weeks after writing it!), so I opened it up in Pro Tools and remembered really liking the song. I’d tracked it without bass for some reason, so I added bass, remixed and remastered it.

The inspiration for the track was a short electric piano loop, from Reason I suspect, that suggested an atmosphere. The loop runs throughout, in one place I pitch shifted it. After that, it just felt like a langourous, slightly trip hop groove.

I know I’ve got quite a few other songs of that quality sitting on my hard drive. Watch this space.

Everyone wins in a fair fight with a song

No Reason to Stop came about as an attempt to keep up the creative momentum. I think it succeeded.

I’ve never had a problem using tools to stimulate my imagination, and in this case, the impetus came from Reason’s Chord Sequencer player. As I can’t play keyboards, tools like this allow me to find interesting chords that I can use along with synth sounds to get something going. I have to say the chords are pretty jazzy in places, lots of stuff I couldn’t identify on a guitar!

For this song, the path was pretty linear – I wrote the verse, bridge, chorus and middle eight in that order. There was a long time, or probably a day given how quickly this came about, while I tried to figure out how to tie it up. In the end it snapped together when I started arranging. I make no apologies for going back to Disco, or for using Reason’s Disco School pack, which yielded the wonderful drum loops, and some very messed up Rex loops for strings and horns. The pizzicato celli are purely gratuitous. I’m not apologising for that either.

I also like a long fade out.

Featured

Catching up – looking at cows

I’ve posted over on Soundcloud, but haven’t caught up over here as there’s been a lot going on…

First, we’ve moved house, and that’s quite a lot of work. Very much worth it though! I sit writing this, glancing out at acres of green fields, often populated with cows. Quite the transition from urban (and urbane) Didsbury, to very rural Cheshire, close to the borders with Wales and Shropshire.

Second, racking, wiring and testing a studio in a new place is very time consuming. Of course, as soon as noise starts to come out of the various machines, it becomes obvious that certain parts of the setup have to be rethought out, especially as this is the final home for the studio. I mean, when this was all running in a converted garage in West Seattle, it made sense to have a monitoring configuration that allowed me to run sound through different speaker pairs. In this tiny, snug, and beautifully situated new room, not so much! Plus, when I was recording drums in the garage it made some kind of sense to have a pair of channel strips for overheads etc.. Now, all I’ll be recording will be guitars and the occasional vocal, so one UA6176, will suffice, along with the Neve and the API. Yeah, I know, a struggle right?

Studios are never done!

Anyway, let’s get to the tracks in order of posting, though, as you’ll see, not recording:

Tango Victor started as a chill piano piece – there’s that rhythmic single note motif again, but in this case, it has no Morse significance (or does it?) It kind of morphed when I discovered Loopcloud, and found a lovely muted trumpet lick that went really well with the bits I had. Then I found a funky Rhodes part that added a nice grittiness.

Crossing Over is another song I did with Leslie. It’s probably fifteen years old, but sounds really fresh. This isn’t Cantona, but a side project called Flatpack. I remixed/remastered it, just because why not? This was one of my first serious forays into string arrangements, and is one I’m very proud of. I must have been listening to Sufjan Stevens when I arranged this, because it now reminds me a lot of his “Illinoise” record.

Finally, and literally posted minutes ago, there’s Bravo Sierra. This song started out as a strange, scratchy drum loop, that had a really interesting four note piano riff buried in it. The crunchiness appealed, and for some reason I decided to track a bass on it. I was very taken with the two bar riff that came out, something was happening, though I didn’t quite know what. I kept bringing up the file and tinkering, but not saving anything, until one day I found a really nice electric piano patch and a cool figure that gave me a tune. After that, I came across a very funky guitar arpeggio (I can’t really record guitars easily at the moment, so I have to rely on samples), which took us to the next place. After that it was just a matter of arrangement. Some more piano added a chorus of sorts, though essentially all of the other instruments carried on playing the same parts (bass, guitar are more or less identical.) I had to do strings, because I like doing that, and there was a very satisfying little song.

Next up, I have to get the studio set up for recording guitar. Watch this space.

Testing, testing…

Reuse and recycle

I do my bit to not waste ones and zeroes, so often, when I’m testing something out – a bit of new kit, a completely moved and rewired studio – I end up working up a complete song. The last two songs I’ve posted are good examples.
(The photo is a bit of a contrived connection, as it’s some of my photography that I happened to have to hand, and rather than upload another picture of a guitar, I thought I’d use it!)

Here in the Studio

This track started out as a test to see that my relocated studio was all wired up properly. I thought I’d create a Go-go rhythm as I’d be listening to a lot of Trevor Horn/Steven Lipson, and the pretty much perfect “Slave to the Rhythm”. Go-go was on the verge of great things in the early 80s, and is such a languid, catchy groove, but I suspect House was more flexible, and went massive.
I think I did a pretty good job of programming the beats – there’s almost nothing out there in the way of libraries for Go-go, reflecting I suspect its nicheness. After that, it went a bit jazz, especially when I put guitar on it. I seem to be doing a lot of guitar at the moment, but it’s the only instrument I can actually play (and I suppose, bass by extension), and I’m liking it a lot.
Anyway, here is my take on Go-go.

Who Knows (Question Mark)

This song had an odd start.

I began by messing about with sounds after I patched a Kaoss Pad into my recording set up. It was intended to be a throw away bit of stuff that just allowed me to play with the KP, but this riff came along. I thought it was catchy.

I found some chords that modulated it. The bridge turned out to have to change key for the chorus, hence the slight ramp. The chorus went guitar crazy. Lots of Scritti style details on the synths (though less used for punctuation than they liked).

The break (and intro) came last. I like those chord changes best, thought I also really like the other chord sequences. Probably my best mix to date, though I will remaster at some point to get rid of a few (almost unnoticeable) clicks and pops – the electricity around here is a little active at the moment!

When you fight with a song!

I had a big fight with this song.

The title reflects an idea to have two guitar lines throughout, that would intersect at different points, hence “Union”. The lead lines came together in about 10 minutes, as did the intersecting ones, but I ended up ditching the latter.

The arrangement was mostly done quickly (the piano and bass), but it became obvious the guitar line was too low, and in the way of the bass. Also, the bass sound was rubbish…
…And I was having all sorts of problems with pops and clicks. I tried a new cable and the pops disappeared on recording. I transposed the guitar lines up an octave, and we were good.

I added a break at the end, which was written pretty quickly.

Next came the orchestration, which took two attempts.

As I’d been watching a lot of Steven Lipson/Trevor Horn videos, I was doing lots of doubling of lines, i.e. figures played on different instruments for effect. That didn’t help mixing.

Maybe 2 hours of writing. 2 weeks of debugging, 2 days of recording, 2 hours of mixing.

Worth it, I think