Involuntary Verbal Melisma

Milanese - Billy Electron (Venger Remix) - LYRICS

2011-04-20T10:04:00.001-07:00

huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh…
yeaah-yeeah-yeaah-yeeah…

come on - come on - come on - come on…

yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah…

imm nash
hahahaha
really-man faaaaaar
fye-yah
wiv night-ah
jopman jossila
yeeeah
wrap them down
woul-bakh
miyaloimikkila bushurduff woosh!
wiya bab mannaaaah
wyahwaah ziffi
roh bagolon

yeaah-yeeah-yeaah-yeeah…

(eesh-eesh-eesh-eesh…)

send him in stone
roar commoh
ivunu waa
you really ook
zeevul zwah
aaaaaaaa-you
laaaaad what you know?
yeeeah

y'ar soolawide
rrrrado-eenawak
ree hee hee
cool man, ree hee!
are you the bag why
ilwiliwuwawaddeh
il vidda
wond wond wond wond

come on - come on - come on - come on…

huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh…
yeaah-yeeah-yeaah-yeeah…

some thoughts

2011-04-05T13:09:00.000-07:00

1. More interaction. Jay mentioned that we were like three soloists, all working inside our own virtuosic sonic silo. He said that was part of what made us great, and I think instinctively I agree with him. But there is scope for stripping back and unifying things a little bit. (Remember how bass and guitar interacted in Seventh?)

2. Maximum one laptop. (No laptops?)

3. “Backing tracks = unacceptable” ...should we revisit this notion? There is a difference between us being in control over everything and stuff happening without us “triggering” it in some way, but is this ever really noticed by anyone else? If you press ‘play’ ever, you’re already doing something which sounds like a backing track. Does this psychological control-freakery contain and constrain us? (Not saying I know the answer to this)

4. Live drums???????

Tuna steaks with lemon and herb rice and red pepper bravas salsa

2010-09-10T09:34:00.000-07:00

2 large tuna steaks
1 cup basmati rice
1 red pepper, chopped into thin strips
Juice of half a lemon
1oz mascarpone
2oz plain yoghurt
A few leaves chopped basil
1oz tomato purée
1 red chilli pepper, very finely chopped
1tsp oregano
1tsp caraway seeds
1/2 tsp sugar
Sunflower oil or other light, non-flavoured oil
Salt
Pepper

Wrap tuna steaks in foil, cook in middle oven for 20 mins on gas mark 6. When almost done, lightly brown each side for 2-3 mins in a hot sunflower oiled pan and set aside in a warm place. Keep the oil in the pan for the salsa.

While tuna is in the oven, boil the rice until al dente, then drain and rinse through with boiling water. Return to a low heat and stir through the mascarpone, yoghurt, basil and lemon juice and gently warm through. Season lightly and take off the heat.

Also while tuna is in oven, make the bravas paste by stirring together the tomato purée, chilli, oregano, and sugar. Season well and add black pepper until the chilli and black pepper are roughly equal on the palate.

In tuna oil pan, fry the peppers with the caraway seeds on a medium-low heat for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Turn up the heat and add the bravas paste, stirring for another few minutes until the bravas paste just starts to brown.

Put the rice in the centre of two plates, rest the tuna on the rice and pile the salsa on top.

lyrics

2010-04-08T07:57:00.001-07:00

Here is a list of all of the songs I've written:

Chimes
Seventh
Broken wings
The storm
Coldskin
Holding on
Iamthebeater
Four cycles
Open your heart
Tape riser
Your turn
Fake out, shuffle off
Contradiction
Borderline
Don't rush
Dark song
When you're there
Plunged head first
Harpzn
Unprotected
Wake me up
Be careful
Coldfingers
8fold
Secret sound
Another day
Hopeful / lonely
Real when shared
This present moment
Potoo's requiem
Kite
White Walls
Airstrike
Heart suture
Far away
Lightshow
Lydia

LOTS

my 16pf results

2009-02-26T11:10:00.001-08:00

Cattell's 16 Factor Test Results

Warmth	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	78%
Intellect	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	86%
Emotional Stability	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	66%
Aggressiveness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	58%
Liveliness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	66%
Dutifulness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	58%
Social Assertiveness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	82%
Sensitivity	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	22%
Paranoia	\|\|\|\|\|\|	14%
Abstractness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	54%
Introversion	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	34%
Anxiety	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	46%
Openmindedness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	90%
Independence	\|\|\|	10%
Perfectionism	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	74%
Tension	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	38%

Factor low score high score
Warmth cold, selfish supportive, comforting
Intellect instinctive, unstable cerebral, analytical
Emotional Stability irritable, moody level headed, calm
Aggressiveness modest, docile controlling, tough
Liveliness somber, restrained wild, fun loving
Dutifulness untraditional, rebellious conforming, traditional
Social Assertiveness shy, withdrawn uninhibited, bold
Sensitivity coarse, tough touchy, soft
Paranoia trusting, easy going wary, suspicious
Abstractness practical, regular strange, imaginative
Introversion open, friendly private, quiet
Anxiety confident, self assured fearful, self-doubting
Openmindedness closeminded, set-in-ways curious, exploratory
Independence outgoing, social loner, craves solitude
Perfectionism disorganized, messy orderly, thorough
Tension relaxed, cool stressed, unsatisfied

Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year

2008-12-27T05:43:00.000-08:00

To whoever is reading this, here's to the good times.

My new year's resolutions…

- love, don't fear

- don't be a hypocrite or a liar

- follow the noble eightfold path :)

Everything else, like doing more music, finding a new job, losing weight, etc etc. can happen in their own time.

Bon voyage

Logic Pro: the Sample Delay plugin demystified

2008-10-01T09:46:00.000-07:00

Logic has lots of different delay plugins, but one rather overlooked and misunderstood little plugin is our little friend, the Sample Delay. Put simply, the Sample Delay works by delaying its input by a set number of samples, specified by the sliders. You can delay the left and right channels independently, or you can link them together. You can also type in the box and enter your values manually instead of using the slider.

So, what's it for?

Well, it's really to compensate for the delay that certain plugins can exert on your audio pathway. In the days before plugin delay compensation, if you put a big beastie like the PSP Vintage Warmer on, say, your drum stem, you'd immediately hear that the drums were late, as the PSP takes a few milliseconds to process the signal. This is called plugin delay, and you could compensate for the tiny delays caused by plugins with the Sample Delay plugin.

You could also use it for compensating for delays caused by certain outboard processors, or for any ADC or DAC conversion that you do… but don't worry, we're not going to get into that here! I really want to talk about how to use the plugin creatively. But first, a tiny spot of maths. Logic works at 44.1kHz by default, which means 44100 samples per second. So, if you delay a signal in the Sample Delay plugin by 44 samples, we are delaying the signal by roughly one millisecond. So, this clearly isn't the same beast as a conventional delay plugin… it's the really tiny stuff we're dealing with here!

Milliseconds are massive

Milliseconds sound like tiny imperceptible units of time, don't they? Wrong. A millisecond is a huge amount of time. Considering that sound travels at 343 metres per second, it takes only 3 milliseconds for a sound to travel one meter. Our brains know this, and process this information constantly to tell us where sounds are coming from. In fact it's these tiny, fractional-millisecond delays between a sound hitting the right ear and left ear that the brain uses to work out where a sound is coming from. Don't let the fact that a millisecond is only one thousandth of a second long fool you – these are useful little things!

In terms of Logic's Sample Delay then, you might find it helpful to bear in mind that 120 samples relates to sound travelling one metre. If we say that the distance between two ears is 20 centimeters, this relates to approximately 24 samples. So we can use this to trick our brains into thinking a sound is panned when it's not. For instance, a sound that hits your right ear 24 samples before it hits your left ear can sound like it's coming from your right, all without the need for panning, which can often ruin the balance of a mix.

Making space

Another use for the sample delay plugin is in conjunction with reverbs. Delaying a reverb bus by 1200 samples will move the imaginary 'room' 10 metres away – great for separating out reverb from drums / strings to avoid a crowded mix and give a nice sense of space. (Actually, most good reverbs come with a pre-delay feature to make this easier, which is normally dialed in by the millisecond, so remember 1 metre = 3 milliseconds = 120 samples.)

If you want an alternative to reverb, then why not try delaying a dry bus by 1200 samples? This will simulate an artificial space 10 metres across, which you can blend into your sound for more 'body' without waving the reverb flag. Mathematically, this sound is a perfect reflecting sphere around the mic, so if you try this you may not like the results straight away. Experiment around with equalisation to make this sound useful, but watch out for phase interactions as these can affect mono compatibility – try removing some of the low end from your delayed bus to correct any phase issues (remember to use the Linear Phase EQ for this!).

Middle and sides

Another use for the Sample Delay plugin is to simulate a MS mic configuration. MS stands for middle and sides, and is a technique for miking a sound source (such as an acoustic guitar) to give it sense of space, without the mono compatibility problems that can arise when using other stereo mic configurations.

The technique involves using two microphones, one pointing directly at the sound (M for middle), and one figure-of-eight mic pointing 90º off axis, picking up the 'room sound' on both sides of the direct mic (S for sides). This is then fed into an MS decoder (Logic's Direction Mixer, for instance) to translate the MS microphone signals into left and right channels, with a nice sense of stereo space and image. The advantage of this approach is that due to the clever MS decoding process, when you sum the mix down to mono, the S signal cancels out, and you're left with just the M channel, a perfect mono signal.

The good news is that you can cheat your way to your own MS sound without the need for two microphones. To do this you need to send some of your mono recorded signal to a stereo bus, which we will use for the S signal. Insert a Sample Delay plugin and a Gain plugin onto this bus. (It may help to insert a Linear Phase EQ also.) You then invert the phase of one of the channels (doesn't matter which) using the Gain plugin. Now make a decision about how big the live room was, and dial the appropriate figure in samples into your Sample Delay. (Remember 1 metre = 120 samples.) Make sure you have linked L and R channels in the Sample Delay. And – hey, presto! – you have your own S signal, all without buying any more microphones! Now, EQ to taste.

Important note: Only use the above MS configuration on dry, mono signals. After setting up the MS configuration in Logic, it's important to route both the signals from your M channel and S bus through to a new stereo bus, and do all processing (EQ, compression, etc) on this new bus. Any processing, especially time-based processing (such as reverb, delay or chorus) on your dry M or S signals will have a negative effect on the realism of your MS processing, and may cause all kinds of phasing problems that will negate the mono-compatibility advantages of this approach.

Delayed reaction

I hope you can make some use of the above processes, and if you do, you'll discover that the Sample Delay plugin is a powerful and overlooked tool in your creative arsenal. It can be used to give sounds their own space in your mix, to fill out a dull mono recording, and once you start playing around, you will find it has many other useful applications. In fact, you'll wonder how you ever did without it.

Found this hiding in some old paperwork…

2008-08-04T12:27:00.000-07:00

OPEN YOUR NO !

fade out, shake out of your dusty dream sleep

sunlight in bloom

— ?

fullest openness of selfless care

share in my art

spring rain leaves a mist upon your hair

go with your heart

open your heart

[Stresses]

[who dares to wake me, Prince from the biomass?]

is it always like this?

chasing a particular neurosis?

following your brain's pathways

towards the ever receding horizon

of thought / feeling?

is adulthood the full realisation

of stasis? is it the ability to

stand still? take root? become

oneself – accept that you have

become everything you intended

never to become. Each fear

hides a wish. .

Electrodynamic intimacy

meta-cunts : evolution of the off-switch

invasion of your backyard by the other people

all you ever care about - you

salivating wreck of senses and urges!

you counteracted in new and unusual

ways… why did do you do it?

You'll never rid your self of your self of yourself

circumference + diameter abound in you.

a better ratio of life to death, please,

a more appropriate balance of of possibilities

[ in a more extreme form of moderation

all that's required. and only going

"above and beyond", never above,

never beyond. Never above, never beyond.

[Fuck all you cunts –

Open your heart]

will it always be like this, love the heart in command?

chasing each & chasing every neurosis, chasing your never to become

circumferen every fear hides conceals a wish, feet on the ground

Teach ourselves to hit + miss, learn to find home

A better ratio of bad to good, [ balanced + true / that's never been true ]

— you'll find it at the horizon as the sun sets on you

towards the never reach the horizon

circumference + diameter, all that's required

everything in moderation, never alive

teaching ourselves to sit still

never above, never beyond.

will it alwa is it always going to be like this

the heart in command

chasing every little neurosis

never become

Every fear conceals a deeper wish

feet on the ground

Grounded, learning how to hit & miss

learn to find home

NEVER ABOVE

NEVER BEYOND

A better ratio of bad to good

never been true

You'll found find all that shit at the horizon

when the sunsets on you

circumference & diameter

all that's required

everything in moderation

never alive

Warrantless Wiretapping

2008-06-29T19:11:00.000-07:00

Read this first.

Clearly bad news… but it's not just the Americans who suffer this kind of thing. Three of our very own ISPs, BT Broadband, Virgin Media and Talk Talk, have all signed up to this new 1984-ternet.

It's called "Webwise", a new technology created by former spyware makers Phorm. Webwise listens in on your broadband connection, and logs all of your browsing habits. And the point? Adverts. They can be directed straight down the phone line and into your internet browser, and tailored to match your behaviour on the web.

Clearly this is a massive breach of users' privacy, but the real news is that BT have already been testing Webwise on its customers… without their knowledge! It's a modern cold war nightmare. Also, you can't control it: no firewall, pop-up blocker or browser can reach along your BT landline, from where Webwise sits and watches all times.

Up to now, it's not technically illegal. Or is it? Well… in Britain, we haven't made our minds up about whether the Webwise technology should be legal or not: after all, it's a "robot" doing the watching, not a person. See, the issue is new, and the laws aren't written yet. Companies like Phorm and BT are setting the precedent, though, and very few people are really challenging them.

Plus, cha-ching! Think of the economic growth! People get profiled, browsing patterns become big profits. ISPs can't believe their luck: they're about to cash in on all those expensive "unlimited broadband" deals! New laws are being written as we speak to protect an ISP's right to snoop, and everyone wants to get in on it.

And if that doesn't work, there's always the good old "public safety" issue to fall back on. We don't appear to mind too much when our civil liberties being eroded, as long as it's in the name of keeping the bad guys fenced in. After all, we've already decided to protect ourselves from music and porn, and I bet you didn't even know that!

https://nodpi.org/2008/05/30/protest-at-the-barbican/

Could be a laugh.

MY NUDE REMIX.

2008-04-09T05:42:00.000-07:00

Dunno what sort - think it's just a standard Nude.

Intravenous Pea & Mint Soup

2008-03-30T10:20:00.000-07:00

You need:

a big saucepan
a hand blender

1oz butter
2 cloves garlic, chopped
800g frozen peas
one small onion / half a large onion, coarsely chopped
handful fresh mint leaves with the larger stalks removed
1L vegetable stock (use a good quality stock cube, not OXO)

METHOD

Melt butter in large pan.
Add onion and garlic and fry until onion soft, but not brown.
Add the peas and stir continuously. You may need to add the peas in stages.
Continue to cook until the mixture has warmed through.
Shred the mint leaves into pea mixture and stir through. Immediately pour in stock.
Bring to the boil, then simmer for 10 minutes.
Blend the soup using the hand blender, reduce the heat and cook for a further two minutes.
Season to taste and serve immediately with crusty bread and parmesan cheese.

CONCLUSION

Goddamn. That's some nice soup!

ANNUAL MUSIC REVIEW: The Best of 2007

2008-01-31T14:32:00.000-08:00

Everyone's got one of these. Mine's come later than the rest, cos I'm (a) lazy and (b) rubbish at blogging without an internet connection at home.

So here we go then, in no particular order...

BURIAL – Untrue

A vibe that cuts so deep that it sometimes physically hurts you can be matched only by this anonymous Londoner's formidable arsenal of the most incisive and natural-sounding grooves around. While Burial's debut was mainly for the dubstep scenesters, genre classification of any kind is utterly irrelevant here. This is the sound of being alone, at night, outside, in the urban coldness. And it's frighteningly good. Half-distinct vocal refrains of half-forgotten singers weave their way through the cracks in the fractured beats, and swathes of string samples swell up out of the crackling sounds of old records, log fires and rain. It's a trick not to get so far dragged into this dark and compelling territory that you can't come back.

Stand-out tracks: In McDonalds; Etched Headplate; Archangel

ULRICH SCHNAUSS – Goodbye

The splendid German is back with this gem. See my previous review!

Stand-out tracks: Goodbye

STARS OF THE LID – And Their Refinement Of The Decline

(OK, so I didn't really get on to this until 2008 but hey. My list: my rules!)

This album sounds like the moment of your own death, slowed down to an almost stationary pace, and the whole thing transcribed using the sounds of your subconscious mind by the ancient and mysterious orchestrator of life and death himself.

Stand-out tracks: Don't Bother They're Here; Apreludes (in C# Major)

MODESELEKTOR – Happy Birthday!

A remarkable second album from the boys from Berlin. Stunningly well-produced dance-floor stomps provide the perfect backdrop to a struggle between the most sublime sounds imaginable and the most ridiculous decisions you've heard this year. It works too: however this music makes you feel, you'll be grinning and grooving along in no time. To nitpick, their ideas can be pedestrian at times – the album is perhaps half-a-dozen tracks too long, and some of the guest appearances are rather 'token'. But if you don't mind skipping a few, there's enough on here to make this a consistently stronger, fuller and more proficient effort from the German duo, and is recommended to anyone who appreciates a good beat.

Stand-out tracks: The White Flash (feat. Thom Yorke); Let Your Love Grow (feat Apparat and Paul St. Hilaire)

WORTH MENTIONING:

UNDERWORLD – Oblivion With Bells

Almost didn't make the list, as it's genuinely weak in many places, but Crocodile into Beautiful Burnout makes it all worthwhile.

RADIOHEAD – In Rainbows

Don't get any big ideas. This record misses far more than it hits... but I'd say it's probably (just) worth the £0.00 I paid for it. What I liked: Jonny's lusciously dated-sounding string arrangements. What I disliked: Rock-idiot Ed O'Brien is clearly in the driving seat now, elderly Phil Selway just can't drum anymore, Thom's voice is BLOODY AWFUL and you can't even hear Colin. Oh, and the desecration of Videotape is just a little too hard to forgive.

KLASHNEKOFF – Lionheart: The Tussle With The Beast

Hip-hop appears to be at last starting to shake free of its oversized bling booty, and this record from the British rising star is as hopeful a sign as any we've yet seen. Rousing, occasionally tragic and always extremely personal poetry is set against Joe Buhdha's phenomenally slick production... this is strong, moving and inspirational stuff. Just the way hip-hop should be.

impressionist

2007-11-18T12:18:00.000-08:00

Rubbish electronica strikes again! Here's a track I made this evening.

It's called "Impressionist", and it's loosely based on the chord structure of My Life of Loving Ghosts by The Flashbulb. All the sounds in the track are made with my voice (although you probably could have figured that out for yourself).

The words are:

breathe along the warring tidelines
warmth umber laugh
trees and fauna land
you probably tried sometime ago
the red flowing wine
time to fall asleep

Nope, they don't mean anything. It's not supposed to be good!! But I thought I'd share it anyway.

UPDATE: Player doesn't appear to be working for me.
Here's the link: LINK

UPDATE 2: New player installed, thanks Rob!

all my vocals are finished!

2007-11-17T17:26:00.000-08:00

Well... it's been a challenge and a half... but today I finally ticked that big box marked 'Ben's vocals'!

I gave my last vocal performance for the album this evening. I'm really pleased with this one in particular, because it's a very difficult track to sing:

Lots of long phrases with loads of words sung in quick succession
Not very many places to breathe
A difficult lyric to get out clearly and intelligibly
Quite an uninteresting vocal if sung wrong, so it requires maximum effort at all times to keep the moods shifting and the vibe going
Almost every line ends with the same (incredibly difficult) vowel sound
Loads of evil pitch jumps in there, whole tone scales and octave leaps
The whole thing is pitched a good bit too high for me to sing comfortably!
I'd already tried to record it before and failed miserably.

But today I nailed it. The key? About 4 months of practise!

Not all the tracks have been so difficult though. There were two in particular that were just so easy to sing that I nailed it in the 'demo' vocal take for both of them. And there's another particular track where the vocals are not central, so they didn't need to be so carefully prepared.

There was one bastard track that required waiting until exactly the right moment before I could sing it. A real emotional beating. Not one you can just do on a work night when you've got a couple of free hours. It took weeks before the right moment arose. After recording it, I didn't even listen back to it. I just knew that the perfect moment had been captured. It took 2 days before I could bear to approach it again. And... well... I... yeah.

I, Yeah!

Other than that, there are a couple of duets on there, which needed a fair amount of work beforehand to make sure I wasn't going to embarrass myself in front of a 'real' singer!

And that's about it really!

Now all that's left for us to do is carry on paring down the 'to do' list, and wait for the fourchoircles recordings to start trickling in.....

Horrible

2007-11-11T06:41:00.000-08:00

http://www.reuters.com/news/pictures/slideshow?collectionId=1272

Horrible. Those poor people. That insincere bastard.

EDIT:

While we're on the topic.

I heard recently that, destabilised as the city is, Basra's murder rate is half that of Washington D.C.... Makes you think, doesn't it? What the hell are we doing? Stupid humans

Moment of the month...

2007-11-10T04:04:00.000-08:00

Thom Yorke starting his DJ set with Near Dark by Burial last night.

...i can't take my eyes off GROOVE!!!

Yay! very happy :-)

Help!

2007-10-30T10:15:00.000-07:00

A more powerful computer is required!

For some reason, my computer is finding it a little bit difficult to deal with one of the tracks on "I, Yeah!"

This particular song uses 238 plugins. (Not including bypassed plugins.)

Is that too many?

A LATE ONE

2007-10-23T20:05:00.000-07:00

Bad time to be mixing!!

five past four on a wednesday morning!

Brain has gone a little bit to jelly. But this sounds incredible!

How bacteria nearly destroyed all life on Earth!

2007-10-20T05:51:00.000-07:00

Read this!

It's damn interesting, and serves as a kind of parable.

Bit like Easter Island. The people of Easter Island cut down their all their trees just because they needed wood to help build their statues. Every last tree was felled. Then, when the rains came, there was nothing to hold the soil in place and all the crops failed. Almost all of the islanders starved to death.

Who's on Facebook?

2007-10-17T16:48:00.000-07:00

Get some Glow on your profile.

The path to recognised genius...

2007-10-09T10:23:00.000-07:00

I wanna write real songs, about girls and work and mates and the pub and taxes and sex and dating and dancing and shopping and wishing you were still young.

I wanna play everything through an old 4-track recorder and lay everything down loads of times to make it sound really fuzzy and shit. I want to use loop pedals, cheap equipment, soft beaters on glocks, broken guitars, out-of-tune pianos, plastic flutes and recorders, bad microphones, dictophones, telephones. I wanna lose my capo. I wanna unlearn the guitar. I wanna unlearn music.

When recording, I will get so drunk that many of the notes are wrong, or perhaps the whole thing gets accidentally erased.

I will use bad reverb units with the fx level too high and crappy 2-band eq with loads of hiss. I will put the gain up full and perform really quietly, then pop open another can as the noise floor overtakes the entire sound. I will use chrome tape in a tape machine that doesn't support it so the bias is all fucked and wrong. I will deliberately turn stuff up too loud so it occasionally goes into the red.

The next day I will mix this, sat in the passenger seat of the car. The 4-track will run on size C batteries that are almost dead. I'll have to change them regularly, which may warp the tape. When I've had enough, I will bounce everything down onto a standard C-60 cassette tape and I'll drive around with it on full blast to drown out my hangover. That evening, I'll put a big jumper on and go out into the cold. I'll stand on a hill and watch people's living room lights come on. I'll smoke a ciggie and scratch at my stubble.

I'll take a picture of the sunset on my camera phone.

The coloured cardboard cassette label will be turned inside out and the words "Fuzzy Warm Sounds" will be written on the side.

After that, I'll take up painting - but instead of using my fingers to hold the brush, I'll just strap the paintbrush to my foot and kick the canvas around the room.

What now?

2007-09-25T17:11:00.000-07:00

Ulrich Schnauss - "Goodbye" - a review.

2007-09-23T16:20:00.002-07:00

Ulrich Schnauss is the grandmaster of big soundscapes. Simple melodies and sparse drum machine tracks pave the way for and ultimately yield to massive washes of sculptured guitar and synthesised joy. Listening to Schnauss has always been a reliably pleasant experience, and, though at times he can be a little too unchallenging, a private listen on headphones in the right setting will likely leave you grinning from ear to ear.

But oceans of headphone bliss aside, one of the most appealing things about both Far Away Trains Passing By and In An Isolated Place was that Schnauss' melodies and hooks added a familiar lightness of touch into even the deepest rushes of sound, and it was this comforting familiarity that made his records agreeable enough to just 'put on' in social occasions without worrying about offending anyone's tastes.

The good news is that awesome soundscapes are back in full force with this year's Goodbye. Schnauss' synth-mastery has been tweaked to an even more intense pitch: on occasions here he propels you through the smoky haze of reverberation as though you're rushing through space, at other times he conjures up cathedral domes of sound that shimmer with the voices of angels, or sometimes his arpeggios appear as alien lifeforms, communicating some secret ancient message.

As pleasant as this all is, it's not really anything new, and it's not the main attraction of this record. One criticism of his earlier work is that, structurally speaking, he hardly ever seemed to develop any of his ideas. The tracks often lacked direction: he put you into a specific space, left you there for a few minutes, and then he just got on with painting the next picture. Which is why for me this album's real appeal lies with the promise of some new tricks, notably a more distinct guitar presence and the featured vocalists, both of which point to a departure from the ambient impressionism we have come to know and love.

In terms of one looking a progression from previous work, the record certainly offers something new. There is a definite maturity here: many of the tracks feel more tightly constructed, more carefully considered. This is reflected in slightly more adventurous production decisions, greater harmonic complexity and so forth; but is visible more clearly in the inclusion of several actual structured "songs" in the record - songs that you might actually catch yourself humming along to and getting involved with.

Furthermore, there is a noticeably increased emotional range on display. Of course, the trademark magic lightness that characterised older tracks such as "Blumenthal" and "Knuddelmaus" is still here ("Stars", "Einfeld"), and Schnauss still plays to his strengths and gives us that lovely diffuse sound that satisfies all requirements. But it is the new feelings that underpin several of these tracks that leave the biggest impression. The rather fraught vocal performance of band-mate Rob McVey on "Shine" makes the familiar warm synths now sound alien, and the adolescent grunge growl that fuels "Medusa" verges on menacing in an oddly blurred way.

In fact, it's precisely this new depth that presents the biggest problem with the album, and that is that the record feels stuck between two distinct poles of purpose. On one hand, you can't really just 'put on' this record as you could the others: Schnauss here is not such an easy, unchallenging listen. But on the other, in spite of its maturity, it still feels largely stuck in the previous albums' big synthy comfort zone. It's enough of a departure to shift the album off your coffee table, but isn't quite enough for it to stand aside from the other albums as a distinct and vibrant piece of art. If anything, its small differences only serve to highlight just how little distance has been travelled.

But I'm nitpicking. Sure, it's not a surefire quick-win hit with guests like his previous albums, but we already have plenty of Schnauss for those occasions. This record's definitely worth a listen. Might I suggest that it's one for the headphones, and while you listen, you can wonder if the new-found maturity is a sign of greater things to come.

Dream Team line-up #22

2007-09-10T11:28:00.000-07:00

Vocals - Jonas Bjerre
Drums - Steve Gadd
Percussion - Zakir Hussain
Keys - Jon Hopkins
Strings - The Brodsky Quartet

Dream Team line-up #19

2007-09-09T07:21:00.000-07:00

Vocals - David Bowie
Guitar - Larry Carlton
Keys - Boards of Canada
Drums - Jojo Mayer
Bass - Squarepusher
Drum Machine - Jonny Greenwood
Trumpet - Arve Henrikssen

...and mixed and engineered live by Daft Punk!

The guitar

2007-08-08T18:26:00.000-07:00

Probably the most amazingly diverse and useful instrument ever. Probably also the most frustrating too. There's a real love-hate relationship happening, mostly stemming from three points:

Firstly, I lack a great deal of technique that I would like to have. My left hand is pretty solid but my right hand lets me down. I certainly can't do this or this! I get bored of my brand of reliable fingerpicking, and I can't use a plectrum without feeling like I'm doing something I shouldn't. In general I don't get excited by what I can do with the guitar.

Secondly, aside from a select few, I don't really like most guitarists out there. Blues solos? Power chords? In general, no thanks. Truly I find it very difficult to find inspiration. I tend to get inspired by people who play other instruments altogether.

Thirdly, I'm getting more and more into styles of music where you don't find so much guitar, and when you do, it's heavily treated and disguised in some way so it doesn't sound like a guitar at all most of the time. Ulrich, Cocteau, MBV spring to mind.

BUT - in spite of my own limitations as a guitarist, I find it is one of the best tools for songwriting, so I'll keep going back to it. Around half of the songs I've ever written were written on guitar.

AND - it's not all hate! I'm quite digging the tasteful application of guitar in certain songs at the moment, mainly when it isn't the underlying driving force behind the music. Nice lead lines and sustained chords seem to be the order of the day at the moment. Too many people use the guitar as the central basis for an entire sound. Although there is usually a good reason why you would do that (can't play anything else).

ALSO - there are always new things to do with guitars. Alternative tunings, MIDI pickups, finger tapping, software audio processing, ebows, cello bows, twelve-strings, left-handed guitars, custom guitars, etc etc. Plenty of mileage in that lot.

So the jury is out. To lunch. Since 1992.

I love Logic really

2007-08-01T15:21:00.000-07:00

The Environment
Space Designer
Sculpture

Need I say more?

it's all making more sense now

2007-07-31T16:53:00.000-07:00

we can see what we make
but
we can’t make what we see

most artists never transcend

some emotions in music will never be expressed by Classical Western Notation (whatever that is as a static thing!)

some emotions people felt in the past will never be felt again
in a way we're more capable now of depth of feeling - and in another way we're less than capable of expressing Depth of Feeling. It's more primitive than ours because of its Classical nature. Yet it's closer to something which we've now lost.

pull everything closer, like a blanket.

A list of things I hate about Logic

2007-07-30T10:24:00.000-07:00

Bit geeky this one, probably only to be understood by those who've used Logic 7 on the Mac for any serious work. Got to get it off my chest though!

Note: this list is not exhaustive.

WORST: Transposing a note up or down in the Matrix editor after using the 'go to marker' / 'next / previous marker' key commands MOVES the successive markers in the song to the current SPL position, one marker moved per semitone transposed. It doesn't matter if the marker track is protected or if you've got Global Tracks on or not. You can't undo this. You just have to move all the markers back to where they were before.

Demixing a region by event channel automatically creates tracks on the arrange using different audio objects to the one you're working on and puts the demixed regions on those. Not a big problem, because they can be moved, but if those new audio objects happen to have been frozen using Track Freeze, you have to unfreeze them all just to move the new regions off and back to the original instrument, then refreeze them all. Freezing takes ages.

Third party AU instruments' buffers are not cleared by Logic after a song stop, so zeroing the SPL and pressing play results in a buffer discharge noise of whatever sample was loaded into memory while playing before. While this can be cleared by just stopping, zeroing and playing again, it gets caught in the freeze files too - so you have to refreeze any tracks that have the discharged sample stuck in their start. The buffers also get caught in bounces, whether offline or realtime.

It doesn't chase some automation data unless you play from bar 1. Automation data cannot easily be copied and pasted without nasty methods and often with bad results. The grab area for the nodes is WAY too big so you end up grabbing the wrong one ALL THE TIME unless you zoom right in. You can't make a 'step' without sliding an automation node forwards to the same position as the next node - this can't be done by sliding the next node back into position cos you get a ramp instead. Tempo automation works in a completely different way to ordinary automation - it's way more fiddly and almost impossible to use sensibly (and bizarrely more powerful). You STILL can't do LFO / sinusoidal / exponential / hyperbolic curves - it's parabolic curves only, which is rubbish. And you can't accurately automate a plugin's Bypass control, or master Mute - even with all the 'sample accurate automation' settings turned on. Logic doesn't offer sample accurate automation.

Logic doesn't offer sample-accurate edits of anything in the arrange, including audio. Yes, really.

No decent audio editor. The one in Logic doesn't even display decibel levels on the vertical scale.... well there's a whole host of things it doesn't do actually. It's a piece of shit.

Export selection as MIDI file inserts tons of bars' rest at the start of the file instead of just trimming to your SELECTION as it should. It won't save program changes, but it quite happily inserts cinematic hit points into the file for each marker - why? - and offers no settings for altering any of this.

Using the Close Window key command for an editor FORGETS the settings of that window (zoom, size, link, playback midi etc). If you want it to remember the settings (why wouldn't you??), you have to remember to use the mouse and click the red button. A waste of time, every time.

The vertical zoom levels in the Matrix editor are too wide - you can't get the in-between levels required for easy editing - at points it appears to double in size vertically each time you zoom. And they've moved the handy little zoom telescopes to opposite corners of the screen when they were clearly better placed next to each other! And you can't zoom in on the Environment, a place where you really need to be able to for complex close wiring jobs.

BIG ANNOYANCE: If you open a song, then open another song on top to grab something (eg. a region or a channel strip setting), when you go back to the first song - which is STILL OPEN - it reloads all of the samples for the sample instruments into memory for the ENTIRE SONG. Which can take several minutes, depending on the song. It can take half an hour to copy a few tracks from one song to another because of this, even though you've got both songs open at the same time.

You can set Save Channel Strip Setting As... and Copy Channel Strip Setting up to be key commands, but it's not enough to select the desired track in the Mixer / Environment and use the key command for this to work. The track must be selected in the Arrange, or you'll save the wrong track's settings. Big time-waster figuring this out for the first time, especially when trying to use multiple song files at the same time (see above).

The Physical Input object in the Environment is useless for anyone with a mobile setup, because, while the wiring is all position-stable, the device inputs aren't. So unless you plug in and turn on all of your gear in exactly the same order every time, things will be wired through to the wrong place. Unless you resign to filtering after the SUM (useless for anyone who wants to use more than 16 midi channels), it takes a good deal of time to figure out how to get this to work properly, and God help you if you buy any more MIDI gear because you'll most likely have to rewire EVERY SONG.

It's WAY too easy to slightly misfire when double-clicking the top insert in the Mixer, and accidentally click the little strip settings arrow instead. You'll most likely hit Next Channel Strip Setting with your second click... which then wipes all the plugins out for that channel. You can't undo 'Next Channel Strip Setting' so you either have to revert to a previously saved version of the song or start the mix again.

It doesn't display audio object / track names in the Send selection lists, so you're left trying to remember whether you had your reverb on Bus 17 or Bus 19 instead of just being able to choose "Reverb Bus" (or whatever you've actually CALLED it) from the list. You can rename the Channel identifiers themselves from "Bus 17" to "Reverb Bus"... but this is a global setting for every single song. (You can only ever find this out the hard way.)

The ES2 has a nasty habit of forgetting your sound once in a while and creating its own. The weird thing is that it LOOKS exactly the same as the sound you made - all the dials are in the same places - but it sounds totally wrong. No reason for it - you just have to be sure you've got the plugin settings saved or you're up shit creek. If you use ES2 on stage, the probability of it exhibiting this annoying behaviour at a crucial point in your set is roughly 1.

Logic's handling of MIDI-In data SUCKS. If using a keyboard, the thing sometimes just.............. hangs ...................ANDTHENPLAYSALL the notes at once, often going out of time with itself in the process. This is worse with third party AU plugins, of course, but it happens with Logic's own softsynths too. In fact be prepared to externally clock Logic if you want it to behave when you're using it as a playable synth and sequencer on stage, because it frequently displays the most extraordinary tempo drift (you really notice it if you're running two laptops with Logic and some sequenced material on each).

FINALLY - where the hell are the updates, Apple? Logic 7's been out for YEARS and the other DAWs are way out in front now in terms of usability and stability. If it wasn't for the good stuff (which I should say is REALLY REALLY good), I'd drop Logic in favour of one of the others tomorrow and not look back.

Katya tenderly barters her goods

2007-07-21T10:48:00.000-07:00

Tetris!

An explanation
About Tesla coils

The art of performance

2007-07-17T10:46:00.000-07:00

Should it ever really be this simple?

"Shut the f*ck up, I'm trying to play!! Why bother going to see an ARTIST if you're just gonna talk through my set?" ...and later... "This is my last song. It's dedicated to the woman at the back who has TALKED LOUDLY over every song. Bitch."

Tell you what. I've started to get a bit fed up with singer-songwriter types. I totally get the whole 'captivate your audience' philosophy. Hey, whatever floats your boat, right? But most of you guys think that just because you're on stage singing earnestly about how "he left her in the morning without any warning", then you're automatically doing something a bit more TRUE than other musicians, and therefore are deserving of more respect.

Here's the news. Most of you are automatically boring*. And the ones that have the gall to chastise your audience for making up their own minds about you and voting with their feet are the worst of the lot.

The art of performance lesson #32: COMMAND your audience's attention, don't DEMAND it.

*By 'boring' I don't mean simple. Because simplicity in music is truly something which should be sought after! What I'm talking about is the constant recourse to the same tired old themes, often told from the same tired old perspective in exactly the same way as every other fucker. It's as though as soon as you pick up the guitar, you're suddenly incapable of distinguishing between universal appeal and turgid banality.

love it

2007-06-30T16:15:00.000-07:00

|X--- ---- ---- -X--|
|X-X- ---- ---- --X-|
|-X-- ---- ---- ---X|
|-X-- ---- X-X- -X--|

Bloody Boards of Bloody Canada

2007-06-28T04:46:00.000-07:00

Why do they have to be so damned RIGHT about everything?

Stuff like this:

We've touched upon the theme of lost childhood a few times because it's something personal to me that gives me real inspiration through its sadness. I think sometimes the best way to get inspiration is to face up to the things that make you very sad in your life, and use them.

Software...

2007-06-27T15:52:00.000-07:00

The trouble with using computers for creative stuff is that it's easy to convince yourself that it's the best way of doing things when quite often it just isn't. We make this mistake because:

it's generally a lot easier and quicker to get good results quickly for most creative tasks using a computer. For instance, it's easier to press "Transform > Mosaic" in Photoshop than to actually physically build a mosaic in your living room with loads of little bits of coloured stone.
you can do all kinds of things on a computer that would be physically impossible in real life. For instance, in real life it would be nearly impossible to put twelve grand pianos at the bottom of a wishing well that was trapped inside a giant guitar amp, but you can do stuff like this with a few clicks in Logic.

We were trying to score out some parts on Sibelius 4 today. Sibelius touts itself as the friend of anyone who needs to work with actual written music notes, and is supposed to be the most intuitive and quickest way of putting together professional-looking scores and getting instant and great-sounding playback of your sketches. In their own words, Sibelius himself would have used this program.

It was not fun. First of all, we couldn't get any sound out of it. Then, once that had finally fixed itself, it refused to display the names of the instruments - everything was showing as [] instead. Not very helpful. Also, it was putting stupid video "hit points" all over the score - totally useless as we're not even scoring a film, and they were getting in the way. Total time taken before giving up on the bastard thing altogether: about 1 hour.

End result: get on the piano, grab the manuscript paper and a pencil, and get to work doing it the old-fashioned way. Total time taken for full score: about 15 minutes.

What's the conclusion? Well - in its defense - we will use Sibelius to score out the finished parts because it does some really useful things with transposing instruments and it looks nice and tidy compared to my hand-written scrawl.

But when it comes to instant inspiration and instant results, sometimes it's better to leave the mouse and keyboard alone and just pick up the damn pencil. Or paintbrush. Or guitar, or whatever.

Where the hell did I go?

2007-06-26T19:26:00.000-07:00

Dunno. Glitch in the system, I think.

Looks like I'm back, anyhow. But all previous posts have somehow been wiped :(

Fuck it: it's a fresh start!

Bloc Party - A Weekend In The City - a mini review.

2007-04-02T19:32:00.000-07:00

[23 September 2007 - RESCUED FROM MY MAC!]

In a word: disappointing. This band seem to have lost everything that was good about Silent Alarm in creating this new record. Gone are the shocks of spiky guitar and instantly singable melodies, as are the infectious beats of tracks such as Helicopter and So Here We Are. The fresh sound of the first record has been replaced with a turgid guitar-driven texture which now dominates the mixes instead of punctuating them, and the drummer has been pushed back in favour of further homogenising the sound.

Moreover, Kele's lyrics are weak throughout: gone is the youthful pugnacity and feeling of inner-city torment. It's been replaced with a kind of watered-down plaintive oh-it's-so-annoying-living-in-London pathos that alienates the listener far more frequently than it inspires. Lyrics such as "waiting for the seven eighteen... The Northern line is the loudest" really shouldn't pass any writer's quality controls. These are the words of someone whose newfound comfortable existence has apparently robbed him of all the factors which inspired him to write in the first place.

It's a real shame to be so critical of this record as I had such high expectations for this band. I remember reading something about how the band were looking forward to experimenting with drum machines and progressing their sound for the second record, and I saw a bright future for these boys. Well, there are little bits of inspiration on this record - little bits of evidence of the band trying to progress their art. In particular, in the middle of the album you get a little reprieve from the sluggish vanilla rock: On is rescued by a certain creative alacrity, and alone was enough to warrant returning to this record for the repeat listens.

But it's not enough. Overall, you can't help feeling as though the band who've gone from "fresh" to "fresh out of ideas". This is a band who seemingly have nothing to say, lyrically or musically - they're going through the motions here, as though it hasn't been a difficult process at all. You also get the feeling that if they were to have worked with a producer slightly less prescriptive than Snow Patrol's "Jacknife" Lee, they would perhaps have prevented their slide into the very New British Rock Band-like sonic anonymity which they seemingly seek to rail against.

This is not the album you should have made, boys. Better luck next time.