The Making of Fantasy Bridge - Renegade Sky Pirates / Mark One

The Making of Fantasy Bridge
Jul 1, 2009 @ 14:26
Enough prevaricating! It’s time to make an album.
This year has been a roller-coaster for me. Diagnosed with testicular cancer in March. An
operation in April, Chemotherapy in May, followed by a reasonably optimistic ‘all clear’ in
June. Going from ‘very scared’ in March (that’s the waiting for medical results kind of scared
rather than the people are shooting kind of scared... much worse, because the shooting kind
tends to be fairly short lived!) to ‘completely elated’ in June. Well, you get the idea.
One of the things this whole experience has done for me is give me the impetus to GET
STUFF DONE. Take life by the scruff of the neck and LIVE IT.
So as a musician, I’ve always wanted to make an album - well probably several... And sell
some copies too, but one step at a time, right?
Most of the Fantasy Bridge ideas go back a very long way. The title track, for instance
existed in some form or another back in the 1970s, and for years was the opening number
when I played in the band Spirit Level.
The album is partly a pastiche of 1970s style progressive rock music, with a reasonably
healthy dose of 21st century technology. The production, for instance will be unashamedly
modern. I intend using keyboard sounds that are a mixture of classic and cutting-edge. It will
be recorded ‘In-the-box’ direct to computer. I hope to engage with a number of collaborators,
guest musicians and artists. It won’t be a one man band affair.
Anyway, there are 8 songs that sort of fit together around the Fantasy Bridge idea, and I
have versions of them kicking around on demo CDs, as MP3s on the net, or sat on my aging
computer. So I’ve put together a running order, burned them all to a CD taken another listen
and decided the whole lot need re-recording.
And so I’ve decided to try and put down in words for posterity, and of course anyone who
wants to read it, a ‘making-of’ blog.
And this gentle reader, is it.
The old studio PC
Jul 6, 2009 @ 16:21
The picture you see above is my studio, which for the geeky among you, is based around
Cubase SX2.2 running on an aged Athlon 64 3000+ running Windows XP Professional on a
dedicated music boot partition, which, to be fair has served me well. In it’s current
incarnation it’s about five or six years old.
I’m well behind the upgrade curve on my Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software Cubase now being up to version 5, there isn’t enough memory, the hard disks are too small
and that single core processor is really starting to show its age.
It all came to a head back at Christmas. Sue, my wife bought me the rather excellent Arturia
Moog Modular V2 virtual recreation of the classic modular Moog as sported on stage by a
certain Mr Keith Emerson. And loading it up on the studio computer made it struggle. Those
software emulations are very accurate, but there are a lot of hard sums going on, and the
windows task manager performance tab just jumped to nearly 100% whenever I loaded it.
So I have to face up to a new studio computer and to be honest, I just can’t face that whole
building a new studio PC. That and the fact that I’ve been using a Macbook pro at work for a
while now both mean that I’m seriously looking at Mac to take on the studio duties... More
precisely, one of these.
More studio woes
Jul 7, 2009 @ 17:00
Not so long ago a good friend of mine who was downsizing his studio, kindly gave me a
power amp to replace the 27 year old amp I had driving the Tannoys that was finally giving
up the ghost. And while I’ve had a couple of thoroughly satisfying months from the Alesis
amp, it has now developed some kind of intermittent fault whereby the audio cuts out, only to
be coaxed back if you crank up the volume. I suspect some kind of capacitive breakdown.
So we have a dilemma. Replace the power amp, and go on using the somewhat aged
Tannoy Reveal nearfields, which although reasonable, aren’t really up there with a lot of
newer powered nearfield monitors and are probably hiding lots of details in my mixes, or look
at some brand new active nearfields to replace the amp and the monitors.
So it looks like while I’m talking to Digital Village about a new DAW computer, I might as well
go and audition some monitors too.
The great monitor audition
Jul 13, 2009 @ 21:09
Today I took the afternoon off to go and listen to monitors. I took the demo recordings of
Fantasy Bridge with me, plus a whole bunch of other reference tracks I know really well. And
of course my trusty second pair of ears in the shape of Sue.
We spent a long time listening. Paul, the manager at Digital Village Bristol set us up in their
acoustically treated demo room and left us to it. We started A-B-ing Yamaha HS80Ms and
KRK Rocket RP8s. The Rockets had an initial wow, but the longer I listened the HS80Ms
came across more neutral (almost like the KRKs had a 'smiley face' EQ response applied)
Then damn him, Paul suggested the Adams A7s.
I think that maybe, had I been paying attention, I'd have seen that his face was lit from below
with an evil green light, and if I had REALLY been listening, he actually ended his sentence
with 'MWAHHAHAHAHAHA!'
Here's the thing. Sue, who I think initially started out this listening session a little bored, (she
is so long suffering, with my music gear shopping) but by the end of the session was saying,
'play that bit agin through the Yamahas... Now the Adams... No, forget the Rockets... Back
to the Adams... Now try something rockier... Again.. The Adams... the Yamahas... No can't
hear the strings so clearly now... No, there's no contest... The Adams... And so it went on.
The Rockets fell by the wayside quite quickly, but given their price the HS80s have a lot to
commend them, and hadn't the Adam's reared their head, I would probably have come away
with the Yammeys.
As it is we went back down from the demo room got a quote for a pair of Adams A7s, a 24”
iMac fully tricked out with 4MB of memory and a 1TB hard drive.
And the DAW? It had to be Logic 8. I know I’ve been a Cubase die-hard for years, but, Logic
is such good value.
Paul gave us a really competitive deal, and well, within days I called back with credit card in
hand and paid the deposit
So now we wait for the new goodies to arrive.
The studio gear arrives
Aug 7, 2009 @ 21:26
Got a call from Digital Village yesterday, to tell me that the monitors, the iMac and Logic 9
were in. Yes Logic 9, not Version 8. The very day I phoned Digital Village with the order for
the new studio gear, I opened my browser at work, which just happens to have the Apple UK
news page set as the homepage. And there splashed across the top banner was the news
that Logic Studio version 9 had just, that day, been released. I called Paul at DV and yes,
he’d noticed it too. Did I want my order to still be for version 8 or 9?
Well, what do you think I’d say?
So, I left the office early and up to Clifton we went to pay the balance and pick up some big
cardboard boxes full of goodies.
I would just like to offer a big Thank You to Paul and the guys at Digital Village Bristol. Their
service was exemplary. Even down to pre-installing Logic on the mac for me. I heartily
recommend them to everyone.
All Systems Go
Aug 8, 2009 @ 9:52
So, here I am. The Adams are installed on the stands, decoupled and angled down at my
ears on Auralex MoPad isolation pads hooked up to the Alesis firewire mixer which is in turn
plugged into the big shiny new iMac. The Alesis Mac drivers work like a charm
The MIDI interface installed painlessly too. I do have a deficit of MIDI ports though, and
although I’ve got the Fusion, the EMU and the Prophecy hooked up OK, the Wavestation is
sitting in the rack waiting for me to figure out a better MIDI interface scheme.
The thing that kicked all this upgrade activity off the Arturia Moog Modular installed quickly,
and I am happy to report that it installed like a dream. As did the other software instruments I
have that are Mac compatible, the only things I leave behind on the PC are Emulator X
which although an excellent sampler, is replaced on the Mac by the very capable ESX24
sampler and the vast library that it comes with, and the Jamstix virtual drummer. This is
supposed to have a Mac version shortly after Version 3 is released, so for now I am going to
have to rely on ESX24 drum libraries and my own inadequate drum programming (Until I can
orgainse a real drummer of course!)
So now I’ve started porting songs across from the PC.
I’m intending to take MIDI tracks from the Fantasy Bridge songs and use these as guides to
start with. There are audio components that I can and will reuse, like guitar performances
from musical collaborators. But much of the original instrumentation like my keyboard parts
will get redone. And all my vocal parts will have to be re-recorded.
So the hard work begins.
The track-list
Aug 24, 2009 @ 10:32
It’s been a while since the last entry.
But I haven’t been idle in that time. I’m about half-way through importing the guide tracks
from the old PC and going through each one to see what is there, what is usable and what
needs to be re-recorded.
So, what are the tracks, what are they called, what are they like?
Most of Fantasy Bridge has at some point or another appeared in the public domain as
either a live song or demo version, and if you know my regular internet haunts, you have
probably heard some of this stuff before.
The provisional track list for the album looks like this:
Fantasy Bridge
A symphonic rock instrumental
Children of a Forgotten Sun
A 12 minute tour-de-force with sci-fi based lyrics by a great lyricist and poet called Ted
Barrett. It will feature the talents of Nick Crosby on guitar.
Dawn
An instrumental piece fusing classical orchestral elements with electronica
Don’t Give Up on Love
Inspired by the music of Yes. Lyrics about lovers separated by alternative realities, dense
vocal harmonies (hopefully!) and another dose of fantastic guitar work from Nick Crosby
Endless Ocean
Solo Piano and orchestral strings. I have to say listening to this one again, it’s place on the
album isn’t a given. We’ll have to see how things pan out.
Together on the Shores of Time
The love song on the album. Written for Sue on the occasion of our 20th wedding
anniversary.
The Ode to Joy
Hopefully Mr Beethoven won’t spin too rapidly at this rock instrumental that kind of nicks the
theme to his 9th symphony’s last movement.
A Day by the Sea
another long song, that looks at some childhood memories of a day at the seaside, it’s
melancholic in part and looks back with a tinge of nostalgia to a simpler time. A fitting end to
the album, I hope.
Getting to grips with Logic
Aug 25, 2009 @ 11:30
As I hinted in an earlier post, my DAW of choice for the longest time has been Cubase, so it
might seem a strange decision to go with Logic 9.
So first off, I’ve been a Mac user for a couple of years, and I really like Macs. I like the way
OS X just works. I’m several versions behind the upgrade curve on Cubase and it would
have cost somewhat more to upgrade to the latest version.
Secondly, I’ve never really invested a lot in 3rd party plug-ins or instruments, and Logic is
stuffed to the gills with instruments and some very highly regarded effects. Their EQ,
Compressor and the Space Designer reverb all get a lot of attention.
Finally, having experienced Apple’s usability with other of their applications (Like their Final
Cut video editor) I know that stuff is generally easy to do with Apple products. Of course I’m
not a complete stranger to Logic, I used MicroLogic for PC back before I went the Cubase
route
None of this makes Cubase a bad product, and I think the endless debates you see on the
web about which DAW is better than the other are completely futile. It’s a tool, and like all
tools, how well it works is more about the user.
Anyway, having ported a few of the Fantasy Bridge projects across, I’ve dived straight in and
made a start on re-doing Children of a Forgotten Sun. The audio routing is dead simple.
Create a new track, select mono, and select the audio input. These correspond one to one
with the mixer inputs on the Alesis Multimix 16 Firewire mixer. And that’s it. New vocal takes,
here I come.
Next I’ve tackled some timing problems with the original. I was never completely happy with
one or two areas, so I’ve taken the opportunity to make some changes. The problem is Nick
who played Guitar, played in time with the original backing tracks. I didn’t want to ask him to
re-record them all at this point, but Logic 9 comes with this rather nifty feature called Flex,
where Logic detects the transients in an audio file and lets you move them around, timestretching the audio one side and time-compressing it the other. Meaning you can change
the timing of an audio performance. Potentially, you could change the entire groove, if you
wanted! This is great stuff!
Re-recording
Aug 27, 2009 @ 12:05
Most of the songs are now on the Mac as projects now. Only Day by the Sea and Together
on the Shores of Time to go. There are some potential back-up tracks I’m going to bring
across from the PC too, because with subsequent listens to the demo versions, I’m
becoming less convinced that Endless Ocean really belongs with the other tracks, and
although I really love Together on the Shores of Time as a song, it has a far ‘poppier’ vibe
than the rest of the songs and does sort of stand apart. No final decisions yet though.
Anyway, rather than just spend my evenings transferring audio and MIDI files, I’ve been
interspersing the rather dull mechanical process with some fun re-recording.
Children of a Forgotten Sun now has a completed set of new vocals, and I’m really pleased
with them. In fact, that track is coming together nicely.
Last night was percussion night! I was pulling the various elements of Don’t Give up on Love
together, and listening back to some of the percussion elements like the chorus cowbell, the
bongos, shaker, cabasa, etc in the bridge, and it all sounded very mechanical, being as it
was originally a set of samples played from MIDI. However in the last year or so I’ve been
building up a nice little collection of percussion instruments, so I set up a mic, and set about
recording a bunch of them, and that worked really well. I’m sure my percussion playing skills
aren’t up to a great deal, but it all sounds real now.
Over the next few days I want to attack more of the vocals, and also start seeing if I can
cajole some people into recording some guest parts.
OMF import woes
Aug 28, 2009 @ 8:30
It turns out that A Day by the Sea contains quite a few audio files, and not everything was
recorded as MIDI at the same time, so I decided to try out the OMF export/import facilities
offered by Cubase and Logic.
I think, with hindsight, I would have been better off doing it manually.
OMF or Open Media Framework Interchange, which is supposed to be an industry standard
for transferring data between multimedia applications. Judging from this Wikipedia
article and some google searching, information on OMF and how it works is pretty thin on
the ground.
Suffice it to say that it isn’t all that seamless. Of course, when they created the format they
probably weren’t thinking of me. ADBTS is about 10 minutes long, has 4 tempo changes,
and two time signature changes.
Having exported everything as an OMF type 2 file (whatever that is) in Cubase, I popped the
file onto the MarkOneMusic network and went back to the Mac. OK it understood the file,
asked me where I wanted to put the audio files and duly imported them.
Now when I am working on something long like ADBTS, I tend to attack it in sections, so if
I’m working on a keyboard solo, that uses a Prophecy lead, and comes in at bar 98 for 16
bars. I’ll work on just those 16 bars. Consequently I have sections of MIDI and audio dotted
all over the project. Clearly OMF doesn’t like that. It sort of put stuff in the right order, just not
in the right bar, or even in any bar. It took ages to map out what went where.
And when I played it, a lot of it sounded pretty average! So I’ve dumped all the vocals (well, I
knew I was going to do that) and pretty much consigned everything else to ‘guide track’
status. I’ve also decided that it will need real guitars, and not my MIDI guitar sounds played
off the keyboard. Looks like I need another guest musician.
Bring on the bass!
Sep 1, 2009 @ 14:39
It was an excellent weekend in Fantasy Bridge land. Adam, my nephew, who plays bass,
brought his Warwick 5 string over on Saturday.
I DI’d him straight into the desk, and with almost no tweaking we were getting a really great
bass sound. Back a couple of years ago he played Bass in the band I’d put together for
Sue’s 50th birthday bash, and on that occasion he played on 2 of the songs that are due to
appear on FB. The title track and Don’t Give up on Love. So we launched right in on Fantasy
Bridge, and in no time he was back up to speed on the bass line, so I hit record and we had
a take in the can. Did a couple of subsequent takes and comped together a great Bass part.
DGUOL was a bit more difficult. (Well apart from being longer that is!) When we played it
live, we played it in D, but I wanted the studio version in E, because, the lead vocal was
more comfortable in E, so poor Adam had to transpose his part. But by the end of the
session, we had another great bass part in the can.
Sunday, I made inroads into the new vocals for DGUOL. Got the lead part down, comped
and ready, and about two thirds of the harmonies. Did I tell you there are a lot of harmonies?
At one point there are five separate harmony parts, and even the 3 part harmonies are
doubled... Well, you get the idea.
Unfortunately, I’m now in Paris on business - for the day job - get back late Wednesday
night, and then we start the festivities, because, I turn 50 this Friday, so I have Thursday and
Friday off work, and we’ll be celebrating.
Therefore I suspect this may well be the last entry until next week...
Until then...
50th Birthday Studio Goodies
Sep 8, 2009 @ 12:41
As I eluded in the last entry, last Friday was my birthday. It was one of those ‘milestone’
birthdays too! I turned 50. Well we had a fun packed weekend, a couple of nights away in a
swanky hotel, and a fine time.
Importantly for the studio and the project I had some music related presents in the form of
Native Instruments fine Hammond tonewheel organ simulation B4II and their equally
splendid Akoustik Pianos, which feature a Steinway D, a Bosendorfer Imperial 290, a
Bechstein D 280 and a Steingraeber 130 vintage upright. Now, I would have added
hyperlinks to the products for you to peruse, but as has happened so often in the past, the
moment I get my hands on these fine products, the company making them (in this case
Native Instruments) have decided to discontinue them. In the case of the pianos I guess
there are many big sampled piano libraries out there, but the B4 has a reputation for being
the most accurate Hammond tonewheel organ emulation out there, and along with a great
many others on the internet, I’m really amazed they decided to drop this product.
Anyway, both products are now installed and working a treat. The organ in particular takes
the solo in A Day by the Sea to a whole new level of realism. And the Bosendorfer Imperial
has made me reconsider ditching Endless Ocean from the product.
Transfer wise, the guide tracks to all the songs except Together on the Shores of TIme are
now on the mac. I also have my couple of ‘Plan B’ tracks to bring across.
Most of the creative stuff right now is going into A Day by the Sea. Hoping to get vocals for
that down during this week. Watch this space
The Ode to Joy
Sep 9, 2009 @ 11:59
When Sue and I have done this live it’s proved to be a bit of a crowd pleaser. (Even if, I
suspect LVB himself might, were he still around not be all that enamoured!)
However, the guide track I had was just lifeless in comparison, so I decided to junk it
altogether and start from scratch. For the drums I opted for using the Apple Live Loops that
come with Logic, for now at least. I hope we can replace that with the real deal later on. I’ve
also tacked on a tempo sync’d pad intro before the string parts play the OTJ theme in what
is meant to lull the listener into thinking this is a genteel orchestral cover. That is until the
Hammond intro kicks in.
The new NI B4II comes into its own here, I’ve opted for a pretty dirty tonewheel sound with a
bit of leakage, (for the hammond geeks amongst you the registration is something like
888002462 , with 2nd order percussion and a load of key-click) played through an overdriven
122 cab emulation (one that simulates the sides being removed from the leslie).
Also, I have decided to feature reFX Slayer which is a physical model of a strummed guitar
and a set of different cabs, and stomp boxes doing a ‘chunk’ heavy guitar thing to drive the
groove, which is a kind of rock shuffle. Bringing Slayer into the mix has upped the energy no
end, and I’m really pleased with that, even if that itself might get replaced by a real guitarist
down the line.
I intend to draft Sue in on her electric violin, suitably distressed via amp and stomp models to
take the screaming lead line I have in my head.
The icing will be (I hope) a Korg Prophecy key solo -which has nothing to do with Mr
Beethoven’s tune I should add, but will be 24 bars of my own making.
Most of the keyboards were tracked last night, and overall, I’m pretty happy with the results.
This is a fun track!
Becalmed
Sep 14, 2009 @ 11:46
No progress to report in Fantasy Bridge Land...
Other things have been vying for my time, unfortunately, well, not all of them are unfortunate,
we got a Blu-Ray player over the weekend and that is nice - even though any AV
improvement I make never goes smoothly, due to the nightmare that is my HiFI wiring. But it
was worth the effort. Blu-Ray is wonderful!
I did get Together on the Shores of Time transferred to the Mac, but listening through to the
guide tracks, I am less and less happy with the arrangement.
I still love the song, but now I’m thinking: Power-Ballad. This means a brand new
arrangement, instrumentation and direction for the song, but I think that might be more in
keeping with the rest of the album.
I also have been re-listening to one of the Plan B tracks called Quiescence, which is a
spacey sounding thing I did a few years ago which features an amazing sax solo by a guy
called Wim Koopman who I met online at the Cubase user forum cubase.net. It is only a
short little number, clocking in at just under 3 minutes, but it might just find its way onto the A
list.
This week will see me in London on Business, followed by a long weekend in Venice with
friends, so I really can’t see a huge amount of progress being made until next week.
As always, watch this space
Going Mobile
Sep 15, 2009 @ 11:34
Back last Christmas, one of the goodies I was given was this little Behringer UMA25s, which
is a very portable controller keyboard with a built in audio interface. It also came with a
headword mic and headphone thingy. So, given that I’m away in London tomorrow night,
and that CNN is not great company, I thought I’d pop this into the bottom of my overnight
bag so I can work on the new arrangement of Together on the MacBook using GarageBand.
I’ve also discovered that I can import GarageBand tracks straight into Logic 9 (how cool is
that?) so actually, anything usable that comes from the hotel room noodling will be able to
drop right into the project.
However, I suspect that even suggesting I pack it for the weekend in Venice would be a step
too far. So I’m not going to do that, I promise.
London Calling
Sep 17, 2009 @ 12:31
Just a quick update following last night’s hotel noodling. I rearranged the chorus of Together
on the Shores of Time in GarageBand. dropped the BPM to around 100 from 118, gave it a
big stadium drum beat, some Mellotron-esque strings and big power chord guitars. In other
words: Anthem!
In contrast, the verses will, I think be acoustic guitar, vocals, and perhaps some Mellotron
style strings, to bring some light and shade. Finally, I’m thinking about a big Moog modular
solo, in the sort of style as that in Lucky Man, to replace the very laid back solo that exists in
the current guide track.
It’s unlikely that this will properly come together until next week. So, we’ll have to wait and
see how the GarageBand project drops into Logic.
Update on the shores of time
Sep 29, 2009 @ 8:52
First of all, welcome to the new version of the blog! Yes we have moved from the iWeb blog
to a brand new WordPress blog. I had been unhappy with some of the limitations the iWeb
blog put on the page, for instance, unless you had the blog hosted on MobileMe you couldn't
have comments, and you had to create entries locally on your development platform and
then upload the whole thing. The WordPress version in contrast is a proper grown-up blog
with comments, a side bar, style templates and so on. And I can edit or add entries from
anywhere I have a web connection, and not just from the MacBook where I have the rest of
the site.
In Fantasy Bridge land, Together on the Shores of Time has come together splendidly. The
instrumental tracking is complete. The choruses and instrumental are epic, and the verses
provide a quiet acoustic guitar led contrast. I might see if I can find a willing volunteer to
replace my guitar part with a real one.
It's getting close to having to do a serious vocal tracking session, so if time permits this
week, I'll be setting up to record vocals again.
Feature Creep
Oct 1, 2009 @ 9:52
Or the perils of self-production.
Feature Creep is a software term that describes when you start to add extra features that go
beyond the basic function of the product. It's usually seen as a bad thing.
I'm kind of afraid that Fantasy Bridge might start to suffer from this. For the longest time the
original 8 songs I had selected out of my catalogue of possibilities were it, as far as the project
goes. But being properly self-critical, I didn't want there to be any 'filler' tracks. I took a long
listen to the demos of each song and decided that I needed one, or perhaps two 'plan B'
tracks. Quiescence quickly became a favourite to replace The Endless Ocean, which seemed to be
the weakest track in the original 8. But with the addition of the NI Akoustik Pianos virtual
instrument, I found myself re-recording The Endless Ocean (The link by the way, takes you to
the original demo, not the re-recording) and reviewing my opinion of the tune. Maybe it should
be on the album after all, and so should Quiescence. Oh Dear. Now we have nine tracks.
It gets worse. I really like that NI Akoustik Piano, Particularly the Bosendorfer 290. It is just a
joy to play from the Alesis Fusion 8's 88 weighted keys. I find myself loading it up and just
playing. The thing is, that kind of noodling is exactly the way I often come up with new material.
And, well, there was this groove that just jumped out; a kind of jazzy thing in a sort of Dave
Grusin-esque style from his work on the movie The Firm. And before I knew it, a new song.
Something, I wasn't going to do for this project. I was going to do an album from my existing
catalogue with no new material.
So I'm going to just have to see. I've decided to complete the new, and as yet untitled
instrumental, carry on with the outstanding tracking for the other tunes and see how it hangs
together later on. This is of course one of the big problems working as your own producer. If I
had a proper producer on the project they would be making all those decisions. And sticking to
them!
Fantasy Fjord
Oct 2, 2009 @ 17:20
I checked my e-mail this morning and had a very nice surprise.
A couple of weeks ago on a music related forum I often habituate, I mentioned that I was on
the lookout for musical collaborators for the album, particularly in the form of guitarists. One
of the other regulars Steinar Gregertsen happens to be a darn fine guitarist, (check out his
2006 album Southern Moon Northern Lights) and he very kindly volunteered his services on
a track of my choosing.
I e-mailed him some MP3 stems (mixes with various parts either muted or soloed) so he
could hear the track with and without the guitar parts, and left him to it. This morning,
waiting in my inbox were some MP3 snippets of his takes.
They flat-out rock.
I immediately replied enthusing over his parts and by lunchtime had YouSendIt links to the
24 bit audio files. It's amazing how when you start to include other musicians the music can
take on a new persona. This is true synergy. Steinar has pretty much stayed true to the
guide tracks I sent him, (apart from adding a rather tasty solo in one place) but his playing
has brought a vibrancy to the track. I can hardly wait to mix these parts in properly .
Also, if all goes well Adam should be here tomorrow afternoon to track some more bass.
I love making records!
Keys'n'Bass
Oct 5, 2009 @ 15:35
No, not a new dance genre, but a thoroughly satisfying tracking session with Adam. This
weekend we got the Bass for the new Together on the Shores of Time arrangement and The
Ode to Joy tracked.
Together is sounding beautiful, I'm really happy with the way the new arrangement has
come, er, together. Whilst Mr Beethoven's tune has got more energy than a can of Red
Bull!
In other news, Quiescence is now officially part of the Fantasy Bridge canon, while the new
aforementioned unnamed tune has not only gained a name, but has found some lyrics, in
the form of a song sketch I had lying around from 2006, so the 'new' song will after all not be
quite so new, and is to be called Autumn Rain. Both Sue and Adam think that this song
should also be part of the album, so although I have yet to make a final decision it is looking
more likely.
And Adam's verdict of the weekend?
Tracking Vocals
Oct 8, 2009 @ 12:39
(And Special Effects Fun)
Last night, I did all the vocals for the new "Autumn Rain" track, and I guess that given the
results, I have finally decided that it is a keeper for the album. So now, the track count is up
to 10. This is the END OF THE FEATURE CREEP. I promise.
For Autumn Rain, I wanted a fairly understated performance, and listening back to the initial
take, it sounded all a bit thin and weedy. So I went for double tracking the vocal. For the
uninitiated, This is a technique often used in the studio to thicken up a vocal, where you sing
the same thing again, and the natural phasing between your voice singing the same notes
provides a warmth and thickness to the performance.
Having soloed the takes I did notice some intonation problems, so I punched in some
replacement phrases where I had badly missed the pitch. (In Logic punching in is nondestructive, it adds a second take which it comps in with the original take)
Once I was reasonably happy with that I flattened the takes to a new audio file for each vocal
double track, and then imported them into the dreaded pitch corrector. In my case that
is Melodyne which is capable of the most amazingly transparent vocal trickery, you can
almost transparently shift vocal pitch and timing by several whole tones. But I didn't want to
go that far, I just wanted to check my vocal tuning was accurate, and where I was out by a
tiny bit, or where the odd note had a bit of wavering pitch, I wanted to smooth that out. Is
this cheating? Undoubtedly, yes. Is it wrong? No, not really. Firstly, I am, I confess, not the
worlds greatest singer,, and secondly there is so much trickery, slight of hand tweaking etc
that goes into recording a song these days, that this is just another tool in the engineers
toolbox that helps turn that song in your head into reality.
On to the bridge. After the first two verses there is a two-line bridge which I wanted to be
replete with 4 part vocal harmony. I duly worked out the harmonies and recorded them. It
was kind of what I wanted, but I wanted something more etherial to go with the lines
starting: Tears we Shed for long lost dreams. So I created a new aux bus and sent the vocal
to that. In the aux bus I loaded up an echo, and a flanger. This gave a dreamy strange
effect, but of course on it's own was almost unintelligible. But mixed in alongside the
harmony vocals it sounds gorgeous. (Even with my singing!)
So, the song that came out of nowhere is pretty much in the can. I might see if Adam wants
to add bass, but otherwise, it's there.
Logos, artwork, etc.
Oct 13, 2009 @ 15:33
We have a winner!
I have decided that voting on the album artwork is closed. And the winner is Fantasy
Bridge with 45% of the votes. Thanks to those of you who voted. I created the image
in Carrara which is a nice 3D application. For the actual artwork it needs some work. The
sky could be nicer, the sea is a fairly simple wave pattern, and both can be improved
immensely, as can the lighting. With Global Illumination turned on and Caustics (the
interaction of light with transparent objects) the whole image can look a good deal more
realistic, all of these things will make it a beast to render, but that should be something the
computer can crank away at overnight once I've made the changes. I will post the final
image up soon.
I have also been looking at the logotype for the album, and in keeping with the whole 70s
prog vibe I found a font called FLOW made by this guy, which I think fits in with the feel quite
nicely. The keen memoried amongst you will remember that I did use this as the Mark
Green logo on the old website, and although I searched high and low, I really couldn't find
anything I liked better, so FLOW it is. You can see what I've done with it above, using a little
photoshop magic. So this will be the logotype font for the album, and in the coming days I'll
be working on a high resolution album cover using the artwork and the logotype.
And now, back to music-making!
Geetarz!
Oct 19, 2009 @ 9:19
I received a whole bunch of guitar tracks from Nick Crosby on Friday, these are all the
separate guitar parts for Children of a Forgotten Sun. Basically, when Nick did the parts for
that song originally, he provided me three guitar stems, the lead stem, and two rhythm
stems, however, the lead stem contained a composite of three distinct guitar parts, which at
one or two points play counterpoint to each other in a rather great Steve Howe-esque way.
Having these as separate parts has given me quite a lot more choices for the mix, including
panning and different processing with Logic's rather tasty Amp Designer.
But there are a lot of guitars here, and it's a long song - the longest on the album, topping
out at around 13 minutes (well, this is prog after all!) - so I took most of the weekend
chopping up the parts, deleting the silence between sections, colour coding stuff so I could
make sense of what was where, and then started in on the processing and balancing. There
is a fine line between an immense wall of sound and descending into mush, and I'm not sure
I've pulled that particular trick off yet.
And I've decided that the intro vocals now sound distinctly wimpy in comparison, so that has
gone back onto the list for re-tracking.
Busy, busy, busy.
Mixing it
Nov 3, 2009 @ 16:44
Traditionally the jobs of tracking and mixing are separate studio tasks, often performed by
different specialists. But given that I'm going to have to wear both hats on this project, and
given that the majority of the keyboard and programming parts are now in the bag, and other
musician tracking sessions are likely to be a week or so away, I have turned my attention to
mixing those tracks that are more or less done from a tracking point of view.
A lot of the tracking blurs into mixing for me anyway, I have often already made choices
about reverbs, compressors, etc during the recording process, so the mixing is all about
balancing these elements.
Anyhow, I've made a start on Quiescence and Endless Ocean as these are relatively simple
pieces. I burned Quiescence to a disk and played it lot on my way to work, noted some
things that weren't working, notably in the reverb and delay areas. However Endless Ocean
- You remember, that track that almost got dumped? It still needs something.
I don't know what yet, but it definitely needs something, so I've put that to one side while I
think about that. Now I'm turning my attention to Children of a Forgotten Sun, which is a
huge undertaking, with it's multiple sections. It should keep me busy until we have the next
tracking session.
Fun, fun, fun.
More about mixing
Nov 9, 2009 @ 14:12
(or the tribulations of mixing prog-rock.)
So here's the thing. This prog stuff is complicated.
I am right now struggling with getting a mix I like of Children of a forgotten Sun (and along
the way deciding that one of the key changes didn't work without another 36 bars of new
music to make it sound like it was not contrived! - but that is another story, for another day.)
In the traditional rock song, you get an intro, a verse or two, a chorus or two, maybe a guitar
solo, an outro and a fade. Instruments come in, vocals come in, and that's about it. And
come mix time there are some tried and tested rules that work well in getting things to
balance, things to blend well, things to cut through, things to sit in the front, things to sit in
the back.
Children is a rather different beast. There is a longish ambient start with a solo Dave
Gilmore-esque guitar over washy synths. This leads into the slow intro part, replete with
harmony vocals building into an instrumental section which introduces one of the major
motifs of the song, before giving way to another vocal section, echoing the intro, and then
kicking up the tempo into a big full-on instrumental section. With me so far? This
instrumental leads into what feels like a second movement. Different key, different tempo,
different time signature (and this is where the new music was needed to make sense of the
transition, by echoing the previous section in the new key before launching into the main
'children' anthem). Finally the key changes again and the final section echos the main preanthem motif before breaking down into the outro section which reprises the ambient start.
Phew!
Everything I learned about mixing seems to fail on this song. Balance the vocals for one
section and they sound buried in another, EQ the guitars to cut through in another section
and they are completely overpowering in yet another, etc, etc. So I'm going to have to
seriously automate the mix. Break down the sections, make them sound ok in their own
right and move on to the next. treat each section as a mini-song in its own right and take it
from there.
Wish me luck!
The extra bars...
Nov 17, 2009 @ 14:35
As I hinted in the previous entry, I ended up adding a new bridge coming into the anthem
theme of Children of a Forgotten Sun. which consists of a 38 bar section driven by a rather
fantastic set of cathedral organ samples. The reason for this addition was that the preceding
section was a rather hard driving instrumental section in D at around 160 bpm, and the
anthem theme was in G at a mere 122 bpm. The key change was a fairly standard
modulation around two pivot chords, and that would have been fine were it not for the tempo
change. It was simply too much too soon.
So what I did was modulate into G and then at the slower tempo on the cathedral organ full
stops setting repeated the main organ riff from the previous section. This sounded right,
echoing the high energy part in a majestic way. Then I happened on a nice set of chord
progressions that suited the organ sound and recorded them with some drums and bass and
a tasty mono synth lead, which was a fanfare announcing the anthem section.
That done, I had a link that sounded logical and not like the listener was slipping on a
banana skin from one section to the next. As icing on the cake, I used the same organ
sound under the second intro phrase for the song, and for the crescendo of the anthem
section.
And finally, I have an arrangement I really like, and the one or two people who I've entrusted
with test mixes are also happily enthusiastic. I just might have cracked it people!
Inspiration!
Nov 24, 2009 @ 13:40
Last night was great. Actually, last night was amazing.
Last night we went to see Yes live at Bristol Colston Hall, and it was, without a shadow of a
doubt: awesome.
I have to confess to a certain amount of trepidation. Rick Wakeman has more or less retired
from touring, and had suggested his son Oliver Wakeman to take on keyboard duties. Jon
Anderson had to pull out of the tour almost before it began due to health problems (He
appears to be recovering now thankfully, and is doing a series of one-man acoustic shows
now) but they ended up drafting in frontman from Yes tribute band Close to the Edge, Benoit
David, who sounds uncannily like Jon (I would have loved to be a fly on the wall when he
got that call: "Hi, Benoit, this is Chris Squire from Yes. We'd like you to join the band").
But I need not have worried. Oliver is a Wakeman and a Keyboard player, and stands
surrounded by keyboards. He even looks like his Dad! Benoit, as I said sounds uncannily
like Jon.
And they all flat out rocked.
If you get the chance to, go and see this show. They played stuff from many parts of the
canon, including two tracks from the only non-Anderson non-Wakeman album, Drama.
Stand-out moments were And You and I, Heart of the Sunrise, and the Encore, Starship
Trooper. Oliver's rig was similar in scale to his Dad's Yes rig - 8 keyboards in a U around
him. And we sat 5 rows back, right in line with the Keys.
Now as you probably know, Yes are one of my major influences, and seeing them live last
night has inspired me to push the Fantasy Bridge project even harder, to redouble my efforts
to create an album that does justice to the prog genre.
On with the work!
Late Night Monitoring
Nov 25, 2009 @ 15:39
I love the Adam A7 monitors. I really do. They are open, revealing, accurate, incisive and,
er... Loud.
Now this is usually not a problem. We live in a detached house on the outskirts of a town. If
I am mixing late then I'm not disturbing the neighbours. But Mrs Green, well sometimes I'm
up in the studio mixing and she's downstairs trying to watch a DVD, or something on TV, and
those Adams... Well, did I mention they are loud?
The other thing is, that although they are splendidly revealing monitors, at 46 Hz they are
3dB down, and from there they tail off steeply. Which is the only real downside to mixing on
nearfield monitors. As someone recently said to me, the upshot of this is that getting the
bottom end really right is something of a crap-shoot. While I could just say, "never mind the
low-end, I'll just roll off everything below 46 Hz", I really do want to have some Moog Taurusesque bass in there. (As I have said so many times before, this is prog, after all!)
My reference system down in the lounge is a pair of B&W DM603 floorstanding speakers
and a REL Acoustics sub-woofer. This combo has been carefully tweaked to provide a
pretty flat response down to 20 Hz, so while I can check the low bass response of mixes in
the lounge, I refer you to the above fact about Mrs Green trying to watch her DVD.
I do have a pair of AKG K240s headphones, and while these are pretty good for general
purpose studio duties and are quite comfortable for protracted listening - which is why you'll
find them in radio stations the world over - they aren't quite audiophile. And it is for this
reason that I have now acquired a pair of Grado SR125i headphones. These are amazing.
Open, revealing, accurate, incisive and, er... Loud. Except that they are only loud for me.
And they happily go down to 20Hz.
Which means the mixing can go on, and Sue can happily watch, undisturbed. Whatever time
of night it is, and I get to hear what is going on in the Earth-shattering department.
Now, where are those Moog Taurus samples?
Shaken, not stirred.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 12:32
The first track is done!
Bar any nasties detected when trying it on different sound systems, I think I've finished
mixing Dawn. It's the only track that has no drums, bass, guitars. It's just keys and
orchestral programming. Clearly, it would be better with the addition of an entire symphony
orchestra, but since we are a little lower-budget around here, the orchestral parts are
courtesy of Garritan Personal Orchestra. Which in orchestral sample libraries is also low
budget. (Some of the top libraries around cost almost as much as hiring an orchestra!) but I
think with some careful programming, it's capable of quite amazing things, and whilst it's not
going to fool a discerning listener that it's the real deal, it does provide a lovely sonic canvas
when working in the classical idiom.
Anyway, while we are on the subject of mixing, and apropos the picture at the top of the
post; more than one sort of mixing goes into making an album around here... Regular
tracking sessions have been augmented by the addition of the odd late night cocktail
provided by the ever-supportive Mrs Green. Of late the favourites have been various
martinis, and of course the ever popular Tequila Sunrise. And while I can't say definitively
that these libations aid the creative process, I can confirm that they are nonetheless a
refreshing adjunct to it.
Cheers!
The Mellotron
Dec 1, 2009 @ 12:54
There are a number of keyboards that define prog rock. And of course amongst their
number are the giants: The Hammond B3/C3, the Minimoog, the almost mythical Yamaha
GX1 and the Mellotron. Now, I have to confess a kind of love-hate relationship with the
mellotron, I can't deny the impact it had on music in general, and the prog rock genre in
particular. It's use by Tony Banks on those Gabriel era Genesis songs such as Watcher of
the Skies and by Rick Wakeman on the Fragile and Close to the Edge albums, these sounds
defined my musical upbringing. More often than not the Mellotron was associated with those
somewhat plaintive string sounds (Think: The Moody Blues Knights in White Satin) But
Mellotrons were capable of flute sounds, brass, and choir sounds)
But on the flip-side to this, I always thought that it's very nature was it's weakness. An
electromechanical keyboard that worked by dragging lengths of tape across multiple tape
heads each containing a recording of an instrument, or ensemble playing a note, in effect the
first sample replay device. You could only play 8 second notes, because then the tape ran
out. If you played a big chord the pitch dropped due to all the friction, and they were prone to
tape flutter, breaking down or even on the odd occasion, catching fire!
The tape frames wore out and consequently the sound became more muffled with time, and
Messers Wakeman, and Banks have written or spoken about their dreadful Mellotron
experiences. (The story goes that Rick once took one out, poured petrol over it and
ceremoniously set fire to it!) And while you can't deny the melancholic slightly fluttery, slightly
detuned sounds that define many early prog tracks, I was always more drawn to the
shimmering, albeit more artifical sound of devices like the Eminent String synth and its ilk.
OK, prog purists, please don't hate me!
Despite all that, I decided that Day by the Sea was the sort of song that lent itself to that old
school sound. I decided that in the 6/8 synth solo I could just imagine someone like Tony
Banks playing a string part with his left hand, on a keyboard behind him while he noodled out
the solo part. Who am I to deny my imagination?
So although I'm not Tony Banks and I don't have a Mellotron, I decided to add the part
anyway. My Alesis Fusion 8HD is, I suspect the most underrated keyboard in the world. It
contains a rather amazing powerful sampler and is capable of some incredible sounds. One
of the sound design companies that worked on this keyboard on behalf of Alesis was Hollow
Sun and Steve Howell from HS provided his NewTron Bomb samples for the Fusion. This is
about as authentic as you can get, samples directly from an original with nothing added or
taken away other than being seamlessly looped so they play for more than 8 seconds. I
decided on the rather excellently named Tape Watcher program (Apparently for the intro
for Watcher of the Skies, Tony Banks set switch on his tron to somewhere between the
Strings and Brass settings, which made the machine play a bit of each tape)
And so despite my ambivalence towards the venerable 'Tron' it is nonetheless going to find
its way onto the album after all.
Tempus Fugit
Dec 4, 2009 @ 12:39
Gosh, I can't believe it's December already. And I can't believe that the Fantasy
Bridge project is in it's 6th month already. Perhaps it's time for something of a round-up of
progress so far.
The observant readers out there might have noticed that progress at MarkOneMusic is rarely
linear. In fact the image of a butterfly hopping between flowers probably comes to mind.
This is partly because work proceeds in quite small chunks in evenings and at weekends,
and it is rare that I will get a whole day on the project, so it necessitates a mindset of: what
can I usefully get done in the next hour and a half. The other reason is, because, by not
getting bogged down in any particular song, all of them are remaining pretty fresh, and my
enthusiasm, likewise.
Right now I am tracking the remaining vocals for A Day by the Sea, and once that is done,
pretty much all my keys and vocals are in the can. The outstanding tracking will be bass on
four tracks, if Adam is able to fit in the time, guitars on three tracks - I have guitarists who are
keen to do the sessions, but sorting out people's availability is not going to be easy.
Which leaves the big unanswered question of drums... I'm keen to see if my old bandmate
Paul can add real drums, but he has his own business and is mega-busy, and although he's
said yes in principal, I don't want the project to flounder while we try to organise both his
time and a venue with good acoustics. We're due to get together over Christmas, so one
way or another the question of drums is going to be resolved.
As I reported a few days ago, mixing is complete on the one track with no drums, bass or
guitars, and Dawn, now has a mix that seems to translate pretty well to different systems, so
I do have one track in the can (Only 9 more to go!). I also have a completed test mix
of Fantasy Bridge to see what the result will be, if I go with sequenced drums, and I've had
some good feedback on that, so if the live drumming thing doesn't pan out there is a plan B.
So, progress, will, I suspect slow down from now until Christmas, Adam is looking at a day
tracking session over the holidays and in the next week or so I'll be trying to cajole guitarists
into committing to dates.
Other non-music related progress. I have the front cover artwork and back cover done. I
need to decide what the inlay will be, a single sheet, or a 4 or 8 page booklet. Note to self,
look at the difference in costs with some duplication companies.
That leaves me to try and define a target for project completion, if it is not to drag on through
much of 2010, and I guess in my own mind, I'm now kind of looking at a Spring release date.
But, as always, watch this space.
More Modular Madness
Dec 17, 2009 @ 11:00
Not much has been going on over the last couple of weeks, hence the silence on my part.
This hasn't been helped by the real job meaning I've spent all week in London... And this
time no portable kit to hand. However, in a few spare moments last week I was looking at
the lead sounds I originally chose for A Day by the Sea, and I decided that a stock lead from
the old EMU Proteus Rompler weren't that interesting. So I popped open the Arturia Moog
Modular and developed a couple of interesting leads based on three triangle oscillators, two
filters and two VCAs with different LFOs driving the filters and panning the VCAs to the left
and the right. The sound has the same whistle -like quality of the original sound, but are far
more individual interesting and, of course unique.
I love the immediacy of this synth.
Happy New Year
Jan 6, 2010 @ 17:12
Well, here we are... It's 2010! No flying cars, no space bubble habitats and no silver lycra
suits for everyone. (OK that last bit is good!) However, hopefully we can look forward to the
culmination of the Fantasy Bridge Project and it release onto an unsuspecting public.
Let me wish you all a fantastic new year.
Christmas in Fantasy Bridge Land was great, there were new studio toys, which I'll tell you
about over the next few days, and lots of opportunities to try them out. Got a bass tracking
session in with Adam too, and got a rough cut mix of the whole album together for Paul to
look at from a drumming perspective. That was interesting to do in its own right, because it
was the first time I sat down with a CD of all the tracks in the right running order and listened
through on the big speakers downstairs. I made copious mixing notes and highlighted some
areas that needed attention in the tracking and editing department.
And so with lots of things to do in 2010, it's on with the show...
Studio Goodies - Part 1
Jan 7, 2010 @ 14:00
As I mentioned in the last post, I got a couple of toys for the studio under the Christmas tree,
and this is the first of two posts to tell you all about them. So, first up we have a new MIDI
interface from Mark Of The Unicorn: The MOTU Micro Lite. For those of you that don't
know, MIDI - The Musical Instrument Digital Interface - was developed by the MIDI
Manufacturers Association back in 1983, to standardise the way electronic instruments
(primarily keyboards) talked to each other, allowing one synth to control another, or another
device entirely, like a sequencer to take control of the instrument. Since then MIDI has
become ubiquitous on keyboards, and anyone who has spent any time with electronic
keyboards will be familiar with the three DIN connectors on the back - MIDI IN, MIDI OUT
and MIDI THRU. Anyway, the Micro Lite is a device that allows a computer to interface from
it's USB bus to MIDI equipped equipment. To quote the MOTU blurb:
micro lite is a 5-in/5-out MIDI interface (compatible with Macintosh and Windows).
Built from the same technology found in MOTU’s flagship MIDI Timepiece, the micro lite is a
professional MIDI interface that provides portable, plug-and-play connectivity to any USBequipped Macintosh or Windows computer. The micro lite takes full advantage of USB,
giving you high-speed MIDI throughput, sub-millisecond timing accuracy, support for “hotswapping” and plug-and-play expansion.
Computer MIDI interfaces used to be a common sight in studios, and everyone and their dog
made one, but as the software instrument revolution took hold, everyone gave up on their
MIDI controlled hardware in favour of software plug-ins. Now as any regular reader might
know, I like software instruments as much as the next guy, and they afford someone like me
the opportunity to include the sounds of a classic Hammond organ, or a Moog modular synth
into their projects. However I still like real synths, real hardware with keys, knobs, and of
course, for the most part a MIDI socket or three to allow them to be controlled by a
sequencer, or DAW.
Up until now I have been using an Edirol 2 channel interface, which was fine, except that a) I
have 5 external instruments which meant that I had to daisy-chain them via the MIDI THRU
socket, which causes problems when you have multitimberal instruments capable of
receiving multiple signals on different MIDI channels, and b) for whatever reason, the mac
didn't like the Edirol driver and the interface would regularly become unavailable for no good
reason, which was annoying. To say the least. Now while little one or two channel interfaces
are still to be had, MOTU are pretty much the only game in town when bigger more pro
devices are required. This thing is great. It's built like a tank, and device driver is stable and
solid. Nice
As I type, I have the keys and modules all cabled up to their own dedicated interface, and
from Logic, I can just call up, for instance, the little Prophecy, select a sound and play.
Which means that I'm having fun trying out all sorts of new lead sounds, and new pads.
Ahhhh!
Studio Goodies – Part 2
Jan 10, 2010 @ 16:53
Or.. that big grey thing behind the microphone...
The second studio toy that santa brought was a Vicoustic Flexiscreen, which is a gadget that
sits atop your mic stand and absorbs reflected sound energy, giving a much deader acoustic
environment around the mic.
It's a bit like having your own personal vocal booth. Many home recordings suffer from the
fact that they are recorded in less than optimum acoustic conditions. You might think your
room isn't imparting any character to the sound, but in all likelihood, untamed reflections
from walls and ceiling are interfering with the sound in a most unflattering way.
I had already invested in some large absorption panels made from rockwool, and these have
gone a long way towards a more neutral recording space, but vocals could still be a little
boxy in character. But the flexiscreen appears to have tamed a lot of that now. Which is
excellent.
So, onward with the work!
Time Out
Feb 4, 2010 @ 11:09
Well, Fantasy Bridge Land has been rather quiet of late. I felt I was a bit too close to all the
tunes to retain any objectivity, so I decided to leave it all alone for a week or two. Pretty
much all the keyboard parts, and the vocals are done now, only one track is awaiting bass,
and we're still trying to organise the drum tracking sessions, so I just found myself tinkering,
and I didn't want to fall into that old artist's trap of not knowing when to stop, and potentially
overworking things.
So I just put things on hold for a while. To get some space from the songs, listen to some
other music, and hopefully regain some perspective.
And I think, it might have worked. I had a listen through the latest mixes in the car the other
night and immediately decided that the chorus in Together on the Shores of Time needed a
high harmony part. So last night I put on my best falsetto voice, and went for it. I'm really
happy with the results.
In other news, I have been unhappy with the studio layout for a while now, with the sofa
down the side wall opposite the keyboards. I mentioned this to Sue and she confessed
similar feelings about her study. We worked out if we swapped around some of the furniture
between us I could get the sofa at the back of the room, and lay things out a bit more
ergonomically. That agreed, I went off for a week travelling in Paris and London. And the
brilliant thing was, while I was a away Adam came around and helped Sue move everything.
I came home to a completely tidy and re-arranged studio.
And it's brilliant. I'll try to put some pics up so you can all see.
I'm also thinking about filming some of the studio sessions, so you can see the working
process first hand.
So, watch this space!
Tearing up and starting again
Feb 10, 2010 @ 12:40
Sometimes, you can just find yourself going around in circles, and getting more and more
frustrated. Especially when mixing music. Take Together on the Shores of Time. This song
starts as a simple guitar and vocal ballad. Then the bass and mellotron come in, and it's still
pretty laid back. And then for the chorus, there are big guitar power chords, four part
harmonies, Taurus sub-bass, and huge stadium drums. Before it all breaks down to the
vocal/bass/mellotron for the second verse.
And nothing I did would really make the choruses pop. Sure, they were louder. The meters
showed me that, the verses were peaking down at around 7-8dB and the choruses up
around 2-3dB, but it just didn't have the punchiness I was after. I added compressors here, I
tweaked EQ there, and just got more annoyed with it.
So at the weekend, I deleted every FX bus, zeroed all the EQs and started again. And it all
started to come together. I had the light and shade, the choruses were loud and punchy, I
have half the FX I did, I have way less EQ, and it all sounds so much better.
So it will be interesting to see what happens when Andy, a guitar playing friend comes over
this Friday and lays down a real acoustic guitar part to replace the MIDI guitar part.
I'll let you know.
Lots of News
Feb 22, 2010 @ 13:12
A somewhat action packed edition of the blog today folks.
First off: Guitars. Andy came over the other Friday and brought his rather nice Yamaha
acoustic, and his even nicer American Stratocaster. I miked up the Yamaha with a Samson
CO2 Small Diameter Condenser mic set about 18" (45cm) from the soundboard pointing at
about the 12th fret. Got a really nice sound. Anyway, we tracked the acoustic guitar parts
for A Day by the Sea and Together on the Shores of Time. Then we moved to the Strat,
which I DI'd directly into the DAW, and then using Logic's Amp Designer I selected the Large
Tweed Combo which is modelled from a classic Fender Tweed amp. This was used to great
effect on the rock section of A Day by the Sea. I'm really pleased with it.
Also on the Guitar front Nick has agreed to do me another solo, this time the guitar solo in
the 6/8 instrumental section of A Day by the Sea. I sent him links to the section in question,
and the whole song, and he's going to get to work on it.
Next up: Bass. Adam was in Tracking some alternative bass parts for A Day by the Sea,
because we agreed that what we had worked out last time could be improved on. This time
we came up with some really outstanding bass parts, and it has lifted the arrangement to
another level. We also tracked about 70% of the bass for Children of a Forgotten Sun
before we ran out of time. We have another session booked for this coming Friday so that
should see all the bass in the can.
Finally for today: Drums. Paul is booked in for an all-day session on the first Saturday in
March. This will be a fun day. I've booked a Church building for the day, which has some
killer acoustics - It's a large vaulted ceiling building which would seat up to 300 people but it
is carpeted and the chairs are upholstered. This gives a space which has a nice reverb tail
but isn't overly lively. I reckon that we can get a great drum sound in there. I also have
access to a fair selection of mics - D112 Kick mic, Audio Technica AT4021 overheads,
Shure SM57 for the Snare, Rode M3 for the hi-hat and another for the floor tom. and my
Samson C02 pair for the rack toms. I'll also take my Groove Tubes GT57 Large Capsule
condenser for the ambience mic.
I have installed Logic onto the Macbook pro, and I'll be taking the Alesis Multimix to interface
it all to the computer. I've recorded a drum kit in that space before and was pleased with the
results, but this will be the first time with my own gear, so it's all going to be a bit of an
adventure.
This is the big push to get the final bits of tracking done. I still have Sue's electric violin part
to get for Ode to Joy, but I can now see the end in sight for the tracking.
Mixing again
Mar 5, 2010 @ 13:43
This week I've mostly been mixing.
Clearly these aren't final mixes but I needed to do this to get the tracks a bit more
streamlined, bouncing MIDI virtual instrument parts down to real audio, all in preparation for
moving the logic project files over to the portable hard drive.
This is so that I can easily move between the studio iMac and the Macbook Pro (which now
is fully 'Logiced-Up' ) for the big drum recording session which is tomorrow. Yay!
Along the way, I've taken the time to do some editing and mixing following the last two
sessions with Andy and Adam, and I am really happy with the Acoustic parts
in Together and A Day by the Sea, and the new bass parts in ADBTS have really lifted the
feel, particularly in the 6/8 instrumental.
Also coming under scrutiny were the big multi-tracked vocal harmonies in Children of a
Forgotten Sun, Don't Give Up on Love and ADBTS . I have created vocal groups in each
case and used Logic's Focusrite compressor model in each case. This has helped to blend
the vocals together in a really lovely way.
So the tracks are now all on the portable firewire drive, the MacBook has had the Alesis
mixer drivers installed. I have all the mics ready and cabling up together. So hopefully my
next entry will be all about drums.
Rhythm Making
Mar 12, 2010 @ 10:02
Well, the drumming is pretty much done. Last Saturday Paul and I spent the whole day
recording drums.
Starting early I got to the venue at around 9:30 and set up the Alesis mixer and laptop, then
patched the outputs from the big Yamaha MG32 into the Alesis (I think the Yamaha preamps
are nicer, and it also meant I could take advantage of the floorboxes routed to the Yamaha
to aid the micing up)
We set up Paul's kit and I set about positioning the mics. By the time we were ready to
record it was about 11:30. From then till 7:00 we were recording non-stop by which time we
had the 7 tracks that feature real drums in the can.
For the nerdy amongst you the mics were D112 on Kick, Audio Technica AT4021 on
overheads, Shure SM57 on the Snare, Samson C02 on the hat and another on the ride,
SM58s on the toms and a pair of Rode M3s for the room.
So now I have 12 tracks of drums for each of the 7 songs to go through, I intend to edit out
the silence between hits on the toms and the ride, to clean up the bleed-through. I also
discovered that for whatever reason the snare mic was overloading on louder hits, so I'm
looking at a combination of audio restoration to remove the spikes, and replacing (or
augmenting) the snare hits with samples. I might also do the same for the kick to give it
some more snap, and potentially the toms in places too. Logic has a built-in Drum
replacement/augmentation facility that detects transients on a track and assigns a MIDI not
to the default drum note for the drum you have selected. It then opens the ESX24 sampler
and loads a set of samples for the drum you have selected.
Lots and lots to do. Fun, Fun, Fun!
When is a drum not a drum?..
Mar 23, 2010 @ 10:47
... When It's another drum, recorded by someone else.
Yes, the magic of drum replacement.
Well. As I hinted in the previous mail, it turns out that my drum recording skills leave
something to be desired, which means that I have not quite realised my vision of awesome
rock drums recorded in a big room. To be honest, the kick drum tracks sound a little like a
cardboard box, and the snare just lacks that snap that cuts through the mix. Luckily, I have
some pretty neat performances from Paul, and now I've pretty much edited out the odd bum
hit, corrected the odd timing error with Logic's Flex Audio feature, and comped the drum
tracks on 6 of the 7 tracks, I've turned my attention to drum replacement.
Now while I might not have the requisite mics or years of experience in placing them, or
thousands of pounds worth of mic preamps, converters and what have you, Steven
Slate has all these things, and a drop dead gorgeous collection of the best drums ever
made, which he's meticulously recorded to 24 track tape in a pro studio with the best mics
available, processed with some wonderful high end outboard, converted with some high end
D-A and created a set of drum samples that are in demand from some of the hottest
producers out there.
So, on to Logic's Drum replacement facility. Well, I read the manual, I watched some
tutorials, and it looks quite simple. In fact, this Youtube video makes it look so easy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tldf6Ogqf5o
Right!
What I found was that the 'Threshold' control actually seems to have an almost random
effect on which hits to choose and which to ignore. Meaning that to ensure that you get all
the hits that are real drum hits, you get lots of ghost notes where the replacer has chosen to
trigger off a bit of bleed-through from another drum at a much lower level.
In the end the solution was to insert a noise gate, gate the track really heavily to get only the
drum hit you are after, and then bounce the track to a temporary track which the drum
replacement algorithm can work on. In other words: it's taking ages!
But we're getting there. I've been burning the midnight oil, and all but A Day by the Sea are
done... And I think the final result is turning out to be rather tasty.
More about drum replacement
Mar 26, 2010 @ 15:03
A quick extra post about the drums. I thought, just for fun, I'd give you a flavour of before
and after the processing to add the new kick and snare drums. These audio samples are
from the start of Fantasy Bridge.
https://soundcloud.com/markonemusic/sets/drum-snippet-comparison
The first example is pretty much what was recorded. There is a bit of EQ and compression,
and I've mixed the levels to get a balance to the kit.
The 2nd example uses the Steven Slate samples (In this case a Pearl kick drum and what
they describe as the Led Zep snare) each sampleset has multiple samples and a roundrobin algorithm that chooses a slightly different sample on each hit as well as different
samples depending on drum hit velocity. This helps keep the augmented drums pretty
natural sounding.
Currently I'm working on the drums for A Day By the Sea, and I got an email from Nick today
saying that he is working on the Day by the Sea guitar solo. I'm really looking forward to that!
Vocoder!
Mar 31, 2010 @ 13:56
Well, I watched a DVD of Conspiracy, Chris Squire and Billy Sherwood's band last night. If
you like Yes, you are almost certain to like this. Anyway one of the two keyboard players
Michael Sherwood (Billy's brother) made extensive use of a Korg MS2000b vocoder to
recreate the layered vocals from their studio output, and I thought as I was watching, that the
intro vocals to Children of a Forgotten Sun could use an effect like that to create a really
thick vocal texture. I already had 7 harmony vocals going on, but a vocoder harmony bed
under that would be amazing.
Anyway, I remembered that Logic has a vocoder plugin called the EVOC PS20, so I went
straight to the studio and figured out how to drive the EVOC. I then took the lead vocal part
used this to drive the vocoder playing a series of chords and bingo! Instant lushness.
https://soundcloud.com/markonemusic/vocoderplusvocals1
Have a listen
Time to get some perspective
Apr 13, 2010 @ 14:10
I have been mixing in every spare moment for the last 2 weeks.
And frankly, I just don't know any more...
I just can't say if this stuff is any good or not.
I'm swinging between - "This is awesome" to "Oh my, it's all complete garbage" All I can say
for sure is. it's DIFFERENT. If I put on some commercial mixes they are completely different
from my efforts (I seem to have discovered at least one if not two octaves in the bottom end
where commercial music just doesn't go - is that a bad thing? Darned if I know). Then
listening in the car I think that my mid range is a bit cluttered. Then another listen and
commercial material all sounds like the dread Smiley Face EQ has been at work.
Some people I trust have told me this isn't unusual. A kind of "Recording Ears Burnout" that
at least three people have told me they experienced when mixing their own albums. The
only way they suggest to sort it is to leave it alone for a couple of weeks. Get some space
from the songs, listen to something else entirely. So this is what I'm going to do. As far as
the audio is concerned. Fantasy Bridge is on hold. I might spend some time looking at the
artwork, or the packaging etc, but I'm going to try to leave Logic unopened for a while.
Which actually fits in with real life. Because I'm off to Paris for the day job this week, I'm in
London the week after and then we take a week off to a secluded cabin in Cornwall, far
away from distractions like making an album.
There might be some ad-hoc entries apropos music tech and maybe artwork in the
meantime but the next time we discuss the album is likely to be May.
With hopefully some recalibration of the old ears successfully completed.
And we're back!
Apr 29, 2010 @ 13:51
After a few days staying in a log cabin in a valley in Cornwall remote enough from civilisation
to not have any mobile phone coverage, but resplendent with a TV, DVD player and hot tub,
Sue and I have returned to the world thoroughly chilled out.
So I feel about ready to grasp Fantasy Bridge by the scruff of the neck and wrestle it into
shape. Paul is coming over with his roto toms so we can overdub some cool roto tom fills,
and Sue is preparing for her electric violin solo. I am collecting some commercial reference
tracks together that are in the ballpark for the sort of sound I'm after and then mixing will
recommence.
Hurrah!
A Man, some roto-toms and a cymbal
May 3, 2010 @ 13:35
I just thought I'd post this pic of Paul doing his stuff with the roto-toms in the studio last
Friday.
All went well, and not only did I get the extra roto fills I wanted, but we recorded samples of
some roto-tom hits at various volumes and some cymbal crashes. All of which I sampled
into Logic's ESX24 sampler. Bargain!
Mix Preview - Part 1: Fantasy Bridge
May 3, 2010 @ 14:07
OK, now we're getting down towards the finish line. Enough talk, I hear you say (or was it
just the wind?) We've had lots of stuff written about the music... but what does it all
actually sound like?
Well, now you can hear for yourself.
In a series of posts, I'm going to present short extracts of each track as I get a final mix in
the bag.
So starting at the beginning, here is just over a minute from the title track Fantasy Bridge.
https://soundcloud.com/markonemusic/fb-final-excerpt1
Mix Preview - Part 2: Children of a Forgotten Sun
May 4, 2010 @ 12:22
This is the big one! In fact, everything about this song is big...
Topping out at 14 minutes long, it's certainly the longest song on the album. It Features
multiple tempo changes, time signature changes and key signature changes. It has some
awesome sci-fi inspired lyrics by the amazing Mr Ted Barrett who I met on the Cubase user
forum. These lyrics tell the story of the million year cyclic evolution of the Scale Birds and the
poet who sings their song.
It also features some blistering guitar playing by Nick Crosby, and it turned out to be the
most ambitious song on the album both musically and technically.
In a word: Prog-tastic!
It has also shown itself to be the most difficult to mix, as each 'movement' has it's own
balance requirements, so there is much fader automation going on, lots of tweaking here
and there in EQ, effects pans, etc. Getting it to the point of a mix I'm happy with is a most
satisfactory feeling.
But such a big song can't really be represented by a snippet lasting a mere minute, so I give
you 3 (yes three) excerpts to enjoy.
https://soundcloud.com/markonemusic/coafs-final-excerpt2
https://soundcloud.com/markonemusic/coafs-final-excerpt3
https://soundcloud.com/markonemusic/coafs-final-excerpt4
Mix Preview - Part 3: Autumn Rain
May 5, 2010 @ 22:26
Reading back through the blog I can see that I've written very little about this track. In fact I
could only spot 2 mentions in total.
Apart from the fact that it was a late entry into the track list, written as a jam with the then
newly acquired NI Akoustik Piano, and re-using some lyrics I wrote several years ago, I have
said almost nothing about it.
The lyrics came one sunny autumn day, when looking out of my office window, there was a
sudden cloudburst. The sun was right behind the raindrops and they literally sparkled. It
was one of those magical moments, and I just had to commemorate it.
On the face of it, this is a fairly simple song. The arrangement is sparse, consisting of piano,
bass, drums, vocals, a little pad synth in one spot and a lead synth solo outro. It was a great
song to record, it has a nice groove to it and was fun to sing and play. I'm really happy with
this mix.
https://soundcloud.com/markonemusic/ar-final-excerpt
Mix Preview - Part 4: Dawn
May 9, 2010 @ 22:25
The instrumental Dawn is my attempt at a tone-poem. Following the completion of Children
of a Forgotten Sun. I had this other piece of music in mind that didn't fit with that song, but
was inspired by the same story.
So this tune describes the first dawn after the million year night from that song.
Musically, it's an experiment in combining genres. Taking an electronica bass sequence I
found lurking on the EMU Proteus and a pad whose filter cutoff is controlled by the
keyboard aftertouch, and combining it with a full orchestral arrangement and embellished
with tempo-synchronised Moog Modular basses and effects, to create what I hope is an
interesting soundscape which evokes the feeling of dawn. A big tutti crescendo of brass
strings and woodwind represent the moment the sun crests the horizon, settling back to the
main sequenced theme and then fading as the day begins.
Well, that was what I was thinking. Whether you hear that, is, of course, another mater.
https://soundcloud.com/markonemusic/dawn-final-excerpt
Mix Preview - Part 5: Together on the Shores of Time
May 12, 2010
You may remember me talking about the origins of this song. I wrote it on the occasion of
our 20th wedding anniversary for Sue. It is, simply put; a love song.
As it was originally arranged it was fairly straight ahead pop, albeit with a somewhat otherworldly lyrical style. And in that form, it didn't really fit stylistically with the rest of the album,
so it had something of a make-over.
In it's final form, there are Mellotrons and Taurus basses and a huge synth solo on offer,
symphonic strings accompany the outro. Yes, it's over the top. But hey, it's prog right?
This excerpt shows the way the acoustic guitar led verse gives way to the stadium style
chorus.
https://soundcloud.com/markonemusic/totsot-final-excerpt1
Mix Preview - Part 6: Quiescence
May 28, 2010 @ 13:23
Several years ago, I was at a conference that took place in Montreaux on the banks of Lake
Geneva. It is a fantastic place, and early one morning I took a walk along the lake shore. The
water was almost like glass and the far side of the lake was almost but not quite invisible.
It was so peaceful. A moment of quiescence.
Fast forward a couple of years and I was messing with a newly acquired Korg Prophecy and
playing along to a sequence I'd discovered from the EMU Proteus and I'd pulled together the
bones of a rather cool sounding instrumental. Then, I had a brainwave! At the time I was
quite active on the Cubase web forum cubase.net and one of the regulars over there is the
rather amazing Wim Koopman (Known as HornForHire) and as the screen name might
imply, he's rather gifted in the sax department.
Wim agreed to provide a sax solo for the piece and with the addition of some hammond
organ it was all but there. So I had this song and no name, and I don't know the reason, but
for me it conjures a serene image of still waters. Just like that morning on the shore of Lake
Geneva. And so: Quiescence was born.
Fast forward again to 2009 and I was looking for an extra song for the Fantasy bridge
project, and here was Quiescence just waiting in the wings on my old music PC. I kept the
audio files from the Prophecy and the Proteus, added some Roland 808-esque drums from
the Logic Ultrabeat drum synth, replaced the organ with the ever trusty NI B4II, replaced the
bass-line with a Moog modular patch of my own making, and well here we are. Another final
mix done.
https://soundcloud.com/markonemusic/quiescence-excerpt
Holding Pattern
Jun 15, 2010 @ 22:26
No, I'm still here mixing. Some day-job travel has been getting in the way. Currently
working on Don't Give up on Love. Think I'm just about there, but want to listen in the car
and on the iPod to be sure.
Also looking forward to some last minute extra instrumental input. Stay tuned for news on
that.
In the meantime, look out on twitter for interim updates.
Mix Preview - Part 7: Don't give up on Love
Jul 4, 2010 @ 18:26
You aren't supposed to favour a child over all the rest are you? Thing is, of the songs on the
Fantasy Bridge project, this one is undoubtedly my favourite.
A dimension spanning, time and space love song, where the protagonists are living in
alternative universes, and only know of each other through their mutual dreams. OK, maybe
I have been watching too much Doctor Who... Nah!
Loads of keyboards, layered vocal harmonies, a big Moog Modular solo, electric and
acoustic guitars from Nick Crosby, (he does some rather luscious harmonics at one point),
gothic choirs, and of course... Cowbell! You can't have a an album without some cowbell
there somewhere.
The track clocks in at around 8 minutes, and I figured that meant more than one clip.
So here are two excerpts for you. The first is the intro, driven by heavy-ish bass riff, that
Adam, it should be pointed out rather likes playing. The second is the 2nd verse and chorus
fading as the big instrumental starts to kick in (with Adam's other favourite bass riff!)
There might be a couple of tweaks to this before it goes off to the mastering process, but it's
more or less there.
Enjoy!
https://soundcloud.com/markonemusic/excerpt1
https://soundcloud.com/markonemusic/excerpt2
Mix Preview - Part 8: Endless Ocean
Jul 15, 2010 @ 15:20
A piano, some bass and a few strings - That's it.
This is a quiet interlude after the boisterous fun of Don't Give up on Love.
I've experienced the feeling behind this song a couple of times. Standing on a beach in
South Australia, looking out to the Southern Ocean. Somewhere on the Pacific Coast
Highway at sunset, overlooking the Pacific. Both times and seeing nothing but ocean, as far
as the eye can see. Intellectually knowing perhaps that you can see around 3.6 miles (5Km)
to the horizon doesn't matter. Somehow, deep down, I could feel the empty distance ahead,
and could well imagine it went on for ever.
And this instrumental piece attempts to capture something of that feeling. Hopefully you can
close your eyes and feel it too.
https://soundcloud.com/markonemusic/eo-final-extract
Oh no Mr Beethoven!
Jul 18, 2010 @ 16:14
Joy, beautiful spark of divinity
Daughter of Elysium,
We enter, drunk with fire,
Into your sanctuary, heavenly (daughter)!
Your magic reunites
What custom strictly divided.
All men become brothers,
Where your gentle wing rests.
Quite so, Messers Schiller and Beethoven, quite so. Of course, in German it rhymes and
everything. More to the point, however, and apropos the subject in hand, namely a certain
prog rock album. It ain't half a good tune. Now, I'm not sure what Ludwig would have made
of a hammond organ (via suitably overdriven leslie) and an electric violin (via suitably
overdriven amp stack) going hammer and tong at his carefully crafted theme, but actually, I
have a feeling he might have actually quite liked it.
This afternoon I revisited the synth solo that has actually nothing to do with LVB's piece at
all, but was an excuse for me to indulge my liking for my Korg Prophecy, the Moog modular
Arturia plug in and a logic Amp Designer setup called Turbo Stack, with the setting set to
'Shred' Which didn't, to be honest seem over the top at all...
Which means that we are at the point of getting the DI set up and getting Sue to record her
violin part, before letting me loose again with the Amp Designer. (cue eerie lighting and the
sound of someone going MWAAAHAHAHAH!)
Fun, fun, fun!
Mix Preview - Part 9: Ode to Joy
Aug 14, 2010 @ 16:02
VIOLINZ! - More specifically an electric blue, electric violin, in the hands of Sue!
And then mangled.
In Logic you have these two effects sections called pedal designer and amp designer, which
carefully emulate all manner of stomp boxes, guitar amps and speakers. Firstly the violin
passed via a classic Wah pedal and then into an amp model called 'High Octane' based on
some modern heavy-metal all valve head, with the controls set to a setting named 'shred'
paired with a 4x12 cabinet simulation... Well, lets just say, I suspect you might not guess it's
a violin.
This was a thing Sue and I have done live on and off for years. It kicks off with a gentle
orchestral arrangement of the Ode to Joy, before the Hammond sound kicks in with a
straight ahead rock/shuffle intro, then the electric violin takes the lead on the famous theme.
Add in a dirty keyboard solo over the band riffing on G (which Mr Beethoven has nothing to
do with) and a ripping synth improv over the final bars and you have... RAWK!
It's always gone down quite well live (though in all honesty, never at this octane level!) and
it's been huge fun to do. So enjoy this snippet:
https://soundcloud.com/markonemusic/otj-final-excerpt
Radio Silence
Sep 23, 2010 @ 15:33
I bet you thought I'd gone away, that the project had stalled and this was one of those blogs
that just dies.
But no! Just been maintaining radio silence while I kept my head down and got on with
mixing.
So, some news. Guitar supremo Nick Crosby has provided the extra guitar parts for Day by
the Sea and very nice they are too. I have comped together the big guitar solo for the 6/8
time sig, instrumental but Nick being Nick, he had not only fulfilled the brief in getting those
32 bars of solo to me, oh no, I had 4 tracks of guitar for the entire song to pick and choose
bits from to augment Andy's acoustic parts and his Strat part in the middle section. This is
the last song on the album and one of the long ones, clocking in at around 10.5 minutes, so
pulling all that together has been something of a task. A very enjoyable task nonetheless.
As soon as I get a passable mix, I will of course let you have a listen.
New Toy!
Sep 24, 2010 @ 16:02
Look at this!
Splendid isn't it.
It's my new Fantom G7, and full of excellent wonderfulness it is too!
I've been after a keyboard that I can use live for quite a while. The Alesis Fusion is an
incredible synth, but the 88 note fully weighted keybed makes it VERY HEAVY. It's sample
load feature can sometimes be a bit quirky, not freeing up memory properly and giving an
'out of memory' error. Not often, but if you select a mix, or a song that uses big sample sets
you can get caught out. But mostly, it's just very heavy.
The Roland Fantom has some great features that were designed in to make it a brilliant live
keyboard. Including the ability to sequence backing tracks, change sound at the push of a
foot-switch, trigger samples from pads, the list goes on! It is also, being a 76 key semiweighted board, light enough to man-handle fairly easily.
What I am thinking is that I would really like to do some live shows featuring Fantasy Bridge
material, but since the rest of the band is in another country/currently at university/running
their own business (delete as appropriate) the only option is really to do it as a one man
show. I don't know how audiences will take prog rock Karaoke but I figure there is only one
way to find out, and that is to actually try it.
And now I have a keyboard that will allow me to try at least. And it doesn't half sound good!
Morphwiz
Sep 25, 2010 @ 17:32
That rather excellent keyboard playing genius Jordan Rudess of Dream Theater fame is
renowned for his quest for unusual musical controllers. One of his favourites is the Haken
Continuum Fingerboard which is a touch sensitive surface you play by sliding a finger across
it. It is wonderful, but costs an arm and a leg, and probably a few internal organs too.
However Jordan is also a champion of musical apps for the iPhone and iPad, and he teamed
up with a developer called Kevin Chartier and created an iPad app based on the principles
of the Continuum, called Morphwiz. Now Sue has an iPad, which she occasionally lets me
use, and being the great wife she is, and knowing I was intrigued by Morphwiz, bought and
installed the app. It's rather brilliant. Left and right moves across the screen control pitch
and up and down moves control timbre. It has a clever feature that always pulls you to a
correct tone in your selected scale when you touch the screen (if that's what you want) and
similarly, you can ensure a slide ends on an harmonically correct note. It's even polyphonic.
So impressed by all this, was I, that I had to feature it on the album, specifically on Day by
the Sea in the intro, outro and the end of the instrumental. And rather good it is too.
I now have a candidate mix of the song to listen to over the coming week and if I'm happy
with it, I will let you hear a snippet next weekend.
Which scarily will mean all the songs will then be mixed and ready for mastering. Gulp!
Light at the end of the tunnel
Oct 1, 2010 @ 16:52
We are nearly there.
The completion of the Fantasy Bridge project is finally within view.
I now have candidate final mixes ready for all 10 tracks, and next week I will be playing them
through for a mate of mine who in a previous existence worked-in/ran/engineered for a few
rather well known studios (and has the gold records on his wall to show for it!)
He has kindly agreed to give a critical ear to the mixes and give me his expert and
unbiassed opinion.
I will then make any revisions to the mixes incorporating his feedback (assuming it's
not: start again!) and then it will be mastering time.
The same friend has suggested one of his old business buddies as a possible candidate to
master the album. (On this I will say no more, apart from to say that if it comes off it will be
huge!)
In other news I have been speaking to Paul (the drummer) and upon commenting that I was
really hoping to find a company that could do digipak CD packaging with a gatefold artwork,
he mentioned that his son's drum teacher has just released an album with digipak
packaging, and they used a local company to do their packaging. Paul is going to find out
more. I will keep you informed.
I have completed a first draft of the artwork, that I think will work really well, so I am hoping
that will all pan out. My only concern is the limited space for credits, etc. There probably
won't be a booklet with the CD. My thought is that I will have a dedicated page on this site
showing all the credits, liner notes, lyrics, etc in both HTML and PDF format if people want to
download and print them.
Then I have the PRS/MCPS registration and the PPL membership stuff to sort out to ensure
that the right codes are allocated, and any play royalties (ever hopeful) come back to yours
truly.
And then finally I have to choose an electronic distribution company to sign with to get the
album up on iTunes, Amazon, etc.
So, basically, lots of admin type stuff still to do, but the end is definitely now in sight.
And then I will have to see if I can sell a few copies.
Mix Preview – Part 10: A Day by the Sea
Oct 17, 2010 @ 17:24
Well. This is it. The last track on the album, and the final mix preview.
The quintessential English summer holiday, by the sea. As seen though the eyes of a young
lad. Replete with sand castles, toy boats, kites, ice cream, the pier amusements, the funfair.
All peppered nicely with a large dose of childhood imagination.
I was that young lad, and I have tried to write a song that captures the spirit of those long
ago holiday memories.
The arrangement swings from a quiet voice and acoustic guitar, courtesy of Andy, to a triplet
based motif instrumental full of whistling synths, guitars and harpsichords, then into my little
homage to the Beatles with the pier visit and the funfair, with guitars provided by Andy and
Nick. Then into a frenetic 6/8 instrumental depicting the roller-coaster ride, with two different
Moog modular synth parts playing off a ripping guitar solo from Nick. This part also features
the Morphwiz iPad synth, doing some really nice glissandi. Then back to a reprieve of the
first theme, this time with the band turned up to 11.
This track was a joy to mix. It just came together and clicked. For me at least it is a fine way
to end the album. I hope you think so too.
https://soundcloud.com/markonemusic/dbts-final-excerpt
Paperwork
Oct 23, 2010 @ 12:07
There's more to this self-release album game than meets the eye. Who knew there was this
much paperwork?
First off. All tracks require an ISRC International Standard Recording Code. This is the
international identification system for sound recordings and music videorecordings. Each
ISRC is a unique and permanent identifier for a specific recording which can be permanently
encoded into a product as its digital fingerprint. Encoded ISRC provide the means to
automatically identify recordings for royalty payments. Now while I suspect that royalty
payments are unlikely to roll in like a flood, actually, online music stores like iTunes require
any tracks they sell to have a valid ISRC. Also a mastering house will request your ISRCs
when they are preparing the CD pre-master.
In the UK ISRCs are administered by the PPL, and while some online distributors like
CDBaby will provide you ISRCs, registering your own record company and getting your own
ISRC range is easy, and more importantly, free. So I have registered both as a performer
and a record company member. Well, when I say I have registered. I've filled in the online
paperwork, got it signed and witnessed, and submitted it as a PDF scan. Now I have to wait
for the applications to be processed.
Next up. The Performing Rights Society (PRS). Registering with them as a songwriter allows
you to register your songs to their database and should the CD manage to get airtime, or if
any of the songs get used by someone else, I will get royalties. In any case, becoming a
PRS member and registering the songs with them means that I can also get
the MCPS clearance on the songs easily. This clearance will be requested by the CD
replication plant, to ensure you are not trying to duplicate someone else's music without
permission Registering with them is more manual, you fill out a form online and then sign it
and send it by post with a copy of your passport. Once again this is now done and awaiting
processing.
So, paperwork is done until the memberships are processed and I can move on to the
mastering phase.
It's all so rock'n'roll
PRS – Update
Nov 2, 2010 @ 13:04
Well, there we are. I am now a member of the PRS. What this means is that should any of
my music get performed, or played, and that music has been registered with them, providing
they know about it, they will collect royalties for me. What this means in practice is of course
yet to be seen. Whether Fantasy Bridge will in fact go on to receive airplay somewhere, or
multiple iTunes purchases, is something of an unknown. Did I need to get PRS membership
in reality? Possibly not, but I always said that I would do this self-release properly, as
though it was a proper record company release, and therefore these registrations are
necessary.
And anyway, I have lots of songs. I might find a market for them somewhere, and hence the
PRS.
Choosing a CD Manufacturer
Nov 26, 2010 @ 14:28
There are loads of companies out there doing CD manufacturing. All offering various
permutations of the same service, at all kinds of prices. The thing is, most of them are
probably geared up to big runs in the 10s of thousands, and little guys like me are not their
top priority.
I am looking for someone who does minimum runs of 500, with a 4 panel Digipak rather than
the traditional jewel case, and the companies that do 500 minimum quantities are fewer
than I thought, most doing minimum orders of 1000.
Anyway, there are a few companies that seem to meet my needs and I'm getting quotes in
right now, so hopefully very soon I should know who is going to produce the CDs and than I
can get their artwork guidelines and bash the Fantasy Bridge artwork into the right format.
As always, I'll try and keep you up to date on that.
Prepare to be mastered!
Feb 21, 2011 @ 13:32
Mastering (or to give it it's proper name pre-mastering) is one of those tricky elements of an
album project. It involves making sure the tracks all 'gel' together, there is not a huge
discrepancy in volume between tracks, and the tracks are loud enough (without descending
into the over-loud madness produced by the loudness wars). It also provides an opportunity
to tweak the overall EQ of a track, provide processing to enhance the stereo image,
'sweeten' the upper frequencies, and top-and-tail the tracks, create the fades where
necessary, and also ensure the tracks translate well between high-end hi-fi systems average
home systems and portable devices like iPods. Generally mastering is done on specialist
equipment in a good acoustic environment on really high end monitors, and most importantly
done by someone other than the mix engineer, with a fresh pair of ears and an unbiased
perspective. While I have some of the tools available to do mastering, home-done mastering
jobs are rarely as successful as getting an expert to do it.
I was playing the final mixes to my good friend, one time studio owner and record producer
Paul, and was discussing the need to get the project professionally mastered, and he
immediately suggested a long-time mate of his who he thought might be perfect for the job.
So several phone calls and emails later, I'm happy to announce that Fantasy Bridge is being
mastered by Mr John Cornfield.
Last week I uploaded the 24 bit mixes, paid the deposit and held my breath. To have a
world class engineer like John working on the files is huge! I just hoped that he would find
my little home-produced mixes worthy of his expertise.
World Building
Feb 24, 2011 @ 13:13
I awoke to find myself on a bridge across an endless ocean, which seemed to go on forever in
both directions. Where does it go? Where does it come from? And perhaps, more importantly…
How did I get here?
I used these words to provide a myself a word picture for Fantasy Bridge. I always had an
image in my mind regarding the look of the world which the Fantasy Bridge songs inhabit.
It's not by any means a concept album, but all of the songs have quite a strong thematic
connection to that original image. Whether it's the endless bridge of the title track, the
fantasy planet of the forgotten sun, or the parallel worlds in Don't Give Up On Love.
As I've been developing the songs and recording them, I've been using some 3D modelling
software called Carrara to create images that reflect my thoughts on the songs in a visual
medium. You will have seen a number of these as adjuncts to many of the posts on the blog.
So, with these images in place I've been working on the look of the final artwork and
graphics for the album. There will be a big widescreen vista for the digipak gatefold cover
derived from the image above (but sneakily, it's not the image above - for that you are going
to have to wait for a bit longer!) another widescreen vista for the inside of the digipak - part of
which will make up the on-disk printing. As I wrote in a previous entry, I really like Digipaks,
they remind me of those lovely gatefold album covers of the 70s. And that vibe is exactly
what I'm looking for with the album.
Then there will be various images dotted about throughout the 8 page booklet to break up
the lyrics.
All of which go to create the world of the Fantasy Bridge.
Strike a pose...
Mar 10, 2011 @ 22:40
Last weekend we had a bit of a photo-shoot here at MarkOneMusic. I had borrowed some
studio lights from a guy at work with a backdrop and we set things up in the lounge. Andy,
Adam and Paul came around, and Sue got out the DSLR and went to work. We got loads of
good shots, from which I can choose pics for the CD booklet.
Then it was Sue's turn to go in front of the lens, and for her shots we braved the March
temperatures and took advantage of a lovely early spring day.
Wim and Steinar had already provided me with pics and yesterday, I got one from Nick. So
we are all set with photos, and the cover design is all but complete. Next step - get a
barcode to complete the cover design and then generate the PDFs of the cover and the
booklet pages.
Things are shaping up nicely for an April release. I'll post about the release plans soon. In
the meantime: Smile please!
Planned Release Date
Mar 17, 2011 @ 13:34
Things in Fantasy Bridge Land are moving apace!
I have the PMCD master disk, plus safety copy back from John Cornfield - he has done an
amazing job of mastering. I have all but finished the last revisions to the artwork, the official
EAN barcode has been acquired and the album has been registered as a product with PPL.
So the whole package should be ready to be sent to the CD manufacturer by the end of
next week. (Although that might be delayed by another week as I have a day-job business
trip to Singapore next week). So although we will be somewhat at the mercy of the CD plant
schedule, a release date of the last week of April looks pretty likely. I will of course let you
know. I've also created this rather fun Fantasy Bridge banner ad, which also now graces the
front page of this very website, and will also be on the Myspace page, Soundclick and, when
we get to it the Facebook page.
Following CD release I will be deciding on the digital release schedule - and indeed the
distributor for that release, but I expect iTunes and Amazon releases to follow at the end of
May.
As always... Watch this space
All systems GO!
Apr 1, 2011 @ 15:51
Well... It's out of my hands now. The PMCD, the DVD ROM with the artwork files, the
permission to duplicate and the IPR declaration form, have now arrived at the disc
replication house, Disc Wizards. These guys seem pretty on the ball too because I've
already received PDF final proofs of the artwork for approval.
So now all that lies between the official release of Fantasy Bridge is really time. What they
have at Disc Wizards, is what you'll get.
For better or worse.
I'm really quite excited about it! I hope you are too!
The planned launch date is currently 25/4/2011. Put it in your diaries.
Last minute delay
Apr 15, 2011 @ 12:50
Things never run quite to plan do they?
So this week, I got a phone call from the CD manufacturers. The plant they use had some
machinery problems. The result of which is, my CDs are going to be delayed until the end of
the month. Add in the Easter holidays, and this means that 25th April is no longer going to
be a viable release date.
Of course there is nothing much the Disc Wizards guys can do about this, it's their
subcontractor that has had the problem.
Anyway, what is to be, and all that. So, with that in mind we are working on the new release
schedule. And also looking at the surrounding release activities, to try and make a bigger
thing of it.
As soon as I know more, I will of course let you good people know too.
Stay tuned for more info.
Rethinking the launch
Apr 24, 2011 @ 15:34
It was Sue's idea. If we've got to delay, we might as well do something a bit more 'special' to
launch the album.
We decided that playing the CD through and me having a go at some 'unplugged' versions
of a couple of songs, in the back garden with 20 or so friends over Easter would have been
nice, but we could think a bit more ambitious. Adam was up for it, as was Paul (the two
'local' musicians on the project). So we got together and started trying out some of the
songs. Yes it was working, but we could really do with a guitarist too. Andy unfortunately
had to rule himself out due to work commitments, and of course Steinar and Nick are in
different timezones!
But Paul and I thought of a friend from way back who is a good guitarist and who might be
up for a jam. To cut a long story short, I'd like to welcome Brendan Dykes to the Fantasy
Bridge family for the launch gig. Rehearsals are very much under way, and I'm pretty
pleased with the way it's sounding.
Then our attention turned to the venue.
So having thought a bit and explored a few avenues that seemed to get closed by either
cost, or people not returning emails, Paul happened to mention his neighbour owned a live
music venue, and might be worth contacting. Sue and I went to visit Daren of DBs Music Bar
in Weston, and he is a really nice guy, with a cool venue, replete with sound system, stage,
lighting, bars, and more importantly a free night on June 3rd.
So we will be presenting about half the album, live to an invited audience on that night,
followed by a play through of the CD and some fine retail opportunities.
The countdown to the launch party begins!
We have T-Shirts
Apr 28, 2011 @ 11:25
Every good album launch event needs t-shirts. Right? So we decided to push the boat out
and get some shirts made.
The design is based on the CD on-body image, with the 'Bridge' coming out at the viewer.
I'm rather pleased with how it's come out.
We found a guy locally who would do short-run jobs called RM Signs and Textiles and he was
a really nice guy. Really switched on and, happy to advise on the best print method for the
job. He even had to do a small edit on the design where photoshop had clipped the top of
the circle, which he's done really well.
So now we have a large pile of t-shirts which I think have come out rather well, and they will
be available on the night at DBs alongside the CDs themselves. More about which, very
soon.
Let's Harmonise!
May 2, 2011 @ 12:53
We had a first full rehearsal of the Fantasy Bridge live band, and Sue and I both thought that
one element that wasn't translating well, was the vocals. As you might have gathered the
album features quite a lot of vocal harmonies, and it was clear that I needed to do something
to try and replicate this live.
Technology to the rescue! Boss, the effects pedal company, and part of Roland make this
little beastie called the VE-2o Vocal Performer. Among it's party tricks, it can add reverb,
delay, compression, vocal enhancements, effects, like flanger and distortion, and of
particular interest to me, harmonies!
You tell it what key you are in, what the intervals you want are, and then sing...
Suddenly there are three of you on the stage singing perfect harmonies. Well, if you are
singing in tune there are!. It can also do a rather nice double and 3x vocal stack effect which
is great too.
Once again I have to give a big thank-you to Ian, the Roland guy at PMT Bristol for his
patience, product knowledge and the great demo of the little red beastie.
The Album Cover... Revealed.
May 6, 2011 @ 15:16
So, now I've announced the official launch date as 3rd June, I decided it was time to reveal
the album cover.
And here it is. Fantasy Bridge.
It is of course only half of the actual image, since, as the regular readers will know, the cover
is a digipak gatefold design.
The design itself was created using Carrara Pro, a 3D modelling and landscape design
application. It's a big image with a lot of detail - The seascape is a transparent solid that
interacts with the ambient light as water, so rendering took hours!
Anyway, I am really happy with the final image. I think it really captures the vibe I had in
mind for the album and the project as a whole.
In other news, I've also updated the website main page with the same picture and I've begun
construction on the Fantasy Bridge 'Shop' page too, but this won't be live until the 3rd June.
(By which time I hope to have sorted out creating the Paypal payment widgets, making sure
they work, and so on).
The live rig
May 24, 2011 @ 11:31
Rehearsals for the live launch party continue apace. Last night we rehearsed without having
to cram into the MarkOneMusic studio (big thanks to Milton Baptist Church for the use of
their building) so we had a proper PA, backline, and could be loud.
It was also a chance for me to properly try out the live rig I'm intending to use on the night.
At it's centre is the Roland Fantom G7. This is sat atop the lovely (and sadly discontinued)
sci-fi looking Ultimate Support VS-80 V-stand. From the Fantom I'm getting most of my
keybaord sounds, and I'm also using it's sampling capability to trigger samples from the
sample pads. This will provide some intros, and some special effects to spice up one or two
songs.
The Fantom's live mode allows me to layer up to 8 parts, and I have created a live set per
song. I'm then controlling it all, selecting, layering, and augmenting the sounds with Apple
Mainstage running on a Macbook Pro. The Fantom can act as an audio interface for
Mainstage over USB. I'm then controlling the actual patch changes using a foot-pedal.
(This is essential, for instance, in Don't Give up on Love there are 9 separate patch
changes during the song - I now know why Rick Wakeman likes to have 9 keyboards!)
This pedal operation was supposed to be easy as the Fantom has two definable foot-pedal
sockets, but I discovered a little bug in the Fantom software, where it doesn't send a clean
on-off message over MIDI when you press the pedal. In fact Roland's tech support guys are,
as I write, trying to figure out the problem. On the assumption they can't, I have come up
with a plan B. You might remember a while ago I got a little Behringer UMA25S controller.
This has a pedal input and can connect to the Macbook via USB too. It's pedal control does
give a clean On-OFF, so although I won't actually be playing the UMA25 it will remain tucked
away under the keyboard rig just to route the pedal signal.
So the patch changes are managed with the left foot. Then on my right there is the Boss VE20 vocal processor for the vocal harmonies and effects, into which I have my EV
N/D767a vocal mic plugged - Much nicer sound than the ubiquitous Shure SM58 in my
opinion.
So between controlling patch changes with the left foot and harmonies with the right and a
sustain pedal in the middle, there are times when tap dancing might be a useful skill to have.
Anyway, I can report that baring a few small teething problems, the rig works like a dream,
and sounds incredible. Of course this assumes I will be playing and singing all the right
notes - Or at least, most of them! But that's another story, and one I hope I can nail with
practice in the week and a half left until the gig.
Rehearsals
May 26, 2011 @ 13:01
With 3 of us working full time jobs, and two of those (Brendan and I) working for companies
that insist on sending you to 'Forn Parts' (As I write this, I'm in Paris, and Brendan got back
from South Africa last week), the third running his own small business - you can imagine the
hours that entails... and the fourth just finishing up his degree, finding evenings where all of
us are a) in the same time zone, b) not embroiled in complicated paperwork, essays,
powerpoint or invoices, is as complicated as juggling. Juggling angry cats.
However, despite this we are getting together reasonably regularly. The songs are coming
together and amazingly, we are starting to sound like a band. With just over a week to the
gig, we have been amazingly lucky. Next week, like some bizarrely complex piece of
clockwork, our itineraries have aligned, and we can rehearse on two evenings. Then it will
be Friday and the gig will be upon us.
Exciting... Isn't it?
It's official!
Jun 4, 2011 @ 14:26
Well, here it is...
The culmination of nearly 2 years of work. The CD, Fantasy Bridge is now available to buy
from the MarkOneMusic webshop. Last night we had the launch party at DBs, here in
Weston-super-Mare, we had a great evening and once I have the pics back from everyone,
I'll post a blog entry specifically chronicling the event.
I feel exhausted and elated. It is the fulfilment of a lifetime ambition. I am very proud of it,
and of all the people who contributed to it's becoming a reality.
I hope you like it too.
A Little Celebration
Jun 14, 2011 @ 10:26
Well, as you might have guessed, we had a bit of a party to celebrate the launch of the CD.
And played some tunes.
It was a hot June evening, and everyone seemed to be in a mood to party. It was great to
catch up with so many friends from all over the place.
You can see some photos from the event by clicking here. As more pics come in from the
various people who were snapping away, I'll add them to the album.
I have to say DBs Weston did us proud with the PA rig and the lighting. On the whole, I
have to say it was a brilliant night. Notwithstanding the problems I had with the mainstage rig
and the monitors. We got through the first half with half my keyboard sounds missing, but it
didn't matter. We just had a great time.
The set list was as follows
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Fantasy Bridge
Together on the Shores of Time
Autumn Rain
Endless Ocean
Quiescence
Don't Give up on Love
Ode to Joy (encore)
I would like to thank Daren from DBs, Sue for all the help in organising it, and putting up with
me in the run-up to the party, and of course Adam, Brendan and Paul for helping create the
Fantasy Bridge live sound.
Things learned along the way
Aug 18, 2011 @ 14:55
Well, it's been a couple of months since the official release of Fantasy Bridge, and I haven't
blogged at all since reporting on the big day, so I thought it was high time to take stock, and
reflect on the whole make a record process, and the immediate aftermath thereof.
First up: I am really proud of the album. I still have an emotional connection to all the songs,
which has to say something, since I have now heard the all rather a lot of times. The whole
recording process has been life affirming, everything about the project has either met or
exceeded my original expectations.
Secondly: I couldn't have done it alone. I listened back the other day to one of the demos I
did of Don't Give Up on Love a number of years ago, and frankly it was rubbish. (and at the
time I did it I thought it was pretty much release ready!) So without the collaboration of the
following people, Fantasy Bridge would not have come close to being what it is: Ted Barrett
from Phoenix Arizona, whose lyrics for Children of a Forgotten Sun made that song actually
possible in the first place. My nephew, Adam Chinn who played the bass throughout. John
Cornfield, whose deft touches in the mastering suite took a mix I was pleased with to
something altogether amazing. Nick Crosby from New York for much of the guitar work. My
long standing friend and often-times bandmate Paul Fuller who dragged the Premier kit out
once again for all the drums, Steinar Gregertsen from Norway, for providing the blistering
guitar work on the title track, Wim Koopman from the Netherlands whose sax work took the
track Quiescence to a whole different level. My friend Andy Ullyott who provided some lovely
acoustic and electric guitar on Together and Day by the Sea, and of course, my wife Sue, who
not only provided the electric violin lead on Ode to Joy, but who was, I know, very long
suffering over the nearly 2 years that I spent obsessing about the project, and without her
support, and encouragement, it just wouldn't have turned out like it has. While I'm thanking
people, I should give a shout to the guys at Disc Wizards who took my graphics and created
the most stunning packaging for the CD.
Thirdly: You have to learn all kinds of arcane things to make an album. It's not enough to
play an instrument and sing a little, and know how to work a recording device of some kind.
The artistic and engineering skills required are just the start. You need to know about
copyright, and ISRCs and barcodes, and CMYK and PDFs and paypal and web-coding and
.. the list goes on.
Fourthly: it doesn't stop when the CDs are delivered. Assuming you actually want to sell
some, you have to turn yourself into a marketing professional, you have to prepare a press
pack, spend hours searching the web for contact addresses, and emails for likely contacts in
print media, radio stations, web sites etc. It's two months after release and I'm still working
on who else I can send promos to or point the the press/media pages on the website.
Currently I'm investigating Facebook ads and Google Ads, as a means of adding to the
whole promotional activity, but they are both equally arcane areas to learn. Then I also have
to sort out the iTunes question and get the album available there too.
Fifthly: This is hard, and frustrating. You have to realise that most people you send stuff to
will not respond at all. Did they get the package? Will they actually listen to it? More
importantly, will they do something about it? (And in most cases, the answer will almost
certainly be 'no') For the most part, that's all out of my hands. Though I always said that if I
ended up with a cupboard full of coffee coasters shaped like CDs, that would be OK, it would
be more OK if lots more people got to hear the music, and possibly like it as much as I do.
Finally: When all is said and done, and I ask the question: Would I do this again? The
answer is a resounding yes! And to prove it, I already have a 20 minute prog epic 90%
written that is likely form the backbone to a follow-up album. And that is a topic for another
day altogether!
iTunes!
Oct 26, 2011 @ 11:49
Today marks the release of Fantasy Bridge on iTunes. This is the first of a series of releases on
digital music stores. Expect to see the album showing up on Amazon's MP3 site, Napster,
Play.com, spotify, etc. in the near future.
I have to confess to a moment of pride seeing the cover art there on the iTunes store. Even
more cool, if you have bought the CD version, and rip it to your iTunes library, not only do
the track names populate properly, but the album artwork downloads as well. Yay!
In other news, there are a couple of reviews of the album on the Prog Archive website, and
more importantly from my perspective, this month's Classic Rock Present's Prog magazine
(Issue No 20) has a review of the album. Unfortunately they don't have an online version, so
I can't provide you a link. I will try to get a transcription for the website soon.
Steinar Gregertsen: 1958-2012
Feb 29, 2012 @ 23:37
Standing Next to a Mountain
I got the sad and unexpected news this morning that guitarist extraordinaire, Steinar
Gregertsen passed away after a battle with cancer.
Steinar will be known to you - in the context of this blog, anyway - as the lead guitarist on the
title track of Fantasy Bridge. His blistering solo on that track elevated it to a whole new level.
And though we never actually met outside of cyberspace his passing has left me with a real
sense of loss.
As I come to write this tribute, it occurs to me how little we actually know about the people
we meet in the virtual reality that is the internet. But nonetheless, that very ephemeral
contact is no less real.
I first came across Steinar online where we were both members of a couple of music
production forums, and where we would both post examples of our music for general
production critique, to help out with technical issues, or often just to chat about music related
topics and life in general. He was articulate, and kind, and always a gentleman.
I was looking for volunteers to provide some lead guitar during the recording of Fantasy
Bridge, and Steinar, looking for a break from mixing his second album, graciously said he'd
have a go. And, what an amazing job it was too, sensitively interpreting my demo tracks and
then enhancing the whole thing with an amazing solo of his own creation.
In the last few years Steinar's passion had been the lap steel guitar. He recorded two
albums, both of which are available at CD Baby, and I recommend you check them both out.
Southern Moon, Northern Lights A series of musical visions, both original and unique
arrangements of some of his favourite songs, inspired by the music of the Mississippi Delta
and the fjords of his native Norway, performed on his acoustic and electric lap-steel guitars.
Standing Next to a Mountain A tribute to the Music of Jimi Hendrix, which Guitar Player
Magazine describe thus:
Covering Hendrix tunes— let alone recording an entire album of them—is risky business. Yet in
this case, the superb musicianship, sublime tones, and superlative arrangements justify the
effort.
Rest in Peace Steinar.
Fantasy Bridge is One - Anniversary News
Jun 12, 2012 @ 16:01
It is, amazing as it might seem, just over a year since the official release of Fantasy Bridge.
Where does the time go? It really doesn't seem that long since we were up to our elbows in
planning the launch gig!
To mark this anniversary milestone, there are a couple of important things I have to
announce.
Firstly, A price drop! Yes, you heard me. The price of the CD is being reduced. Right now,
you can get the CD in it's deluxe digipak from those excellent folk at The Merch Desk for a
mere £7.00!
Secondly, I am really happy to announce that I'm now supporting It's In the Bag The charity
set up by The Bristol Testicular Cancer Service based at the University Hospital Bristol
Oncology Centre to raise awareness of testicular cancer. And so from now on, 20% of all
CD sales will now be going to support this cause.
My being diagnosed with testicular cancer, and subsequent treatment, were in many ways
the reason behind Fantasy Bridge being made at all, and the help, support and treatment
from the team at the UHB Oncology Centre were central to that. Testicular Cancer is one of
those diseases that rarely gets much publicity, and the It's in the Bag are committed to help
raise awareness and hopefully make sure that more guys get diagnosed early like I did, and
get the treatment they need.