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That said I spent pretty much 3 full days last week editing drums for 20 tracks - mostly slip-editing, which is probably my least favourite chore. Some didn't need much, a couple I really had to go to town on! I was hoping I wouldn't have to bother, but some things were starting to annoy me about the performances so needs must!
Then yesterday I recorded some acoustic instruments at home - my practice studio where I do all the loud stuff has carpeted walls and really sounds a bit dull for acoustic guitar, whereas my back room at home with painted walls, bookshelves etc sounds a lot more alive; particulary for my little Taylor 6-string, which being a parlour guitar seems to thrive in smaller rooms.
I was going to ask lady Cirrus to take a picture, but she wasn't being very cooperative - something about being banished from the back room for an entire day apparently. So I did a selfie, Chrismas jumper and all. Still amazes me how difficult it is to properly demonstrate a mic's position in a photo - this one looks like it's basically resting on the guitar, but it's really not. It's an AT4050, set at just above chest height, maybe 30cm in front of my shoulder in my usual slouched playing position, pretty much directly in line with and pointed straight at the bridge of the instrument. With bigger, boomier guitars I'd probably start with the mic outin front of the 12th fret, but with this little player's guitar having the mic over the body and on the bass side gets a balance I prefer.
There was also some 12-string (ok, 11 string... I broke one of the B strings almost immediately!) action, and TBH I was kind of lazy there in that when I strummed a bit to start with I liked the sound fine, so I didn't bother moving the mic. But again, the 12 string is quite a bright and jangly instrument whereas with some full size acoustics there are annoying body resonances and woofy soundhole artifacts that mics are really sensitive to.
Then, finally, I recorded this little beauty for a couple of tracks;
Inherited by a friend, this thing is a bastard to tune, especially when your songs are recorded a semitone down from standard. (And the strings are likely older than me! But, it's got such a cool sound! Especially with a plectrum, I was getting an almost zipper like raked strum over chord changes. Stuck through an almost oscillating Delay plugin I managed to get the sound a bit away from 1900's folk, too. >- It's a pretty quiet instrument so I had the gain turned up pretty high at the mic preamp; at the end of one song I noticed I could hear the kitchen clock ticking under the final sustained chord. Decided to go with it since the song's kinda about time.
An interesting aside about the Autoharp - I started off playing it on my lap, but then by chance I held it up while strumming and noticed how much more open and resonant it sounded when the underside panel was free to resonate. So, I sat it on its little rubber feet on the desk so it'd be able to. I've no idea how they were supposed to be played!
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Look up PJ Harvey playing The Words That Maketh Murder, she plays one on it.
Bandcamp
Spotify, Apple et al
Bandcamp
Spotify, Apple et al
Bandcamp
Spotify, Apple et al
Bandcamp
Spotify, Apple et al
http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/comment/1376511#Comment_1376511
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The Saga of the non-professional musician.
As of my last post 18 months ago, I had the 12 track album ready to go. I never released it because my band was kind of starting to fail so I was trying to inject life back into that. Then I started practicing some of these 12 songs with drummer and bassist from my band, and lost a lot of confidence because I couldn't actually sing them and play the guitar parts live, just didn't have the physical stamina since it's all right at the top of my range.
So last summer, I re-recorded 7 of the songs in lower keys - between 1 tone and a third lower - and this time got my band's drummer to lay down the beats in a commercial studio over two days. That was really good fun.
Those 7 tracks were ready to go at the beginning of this year, meanwhile my band was in its death-throws, which made things politically quite fraught. I still wanted the drummer and bassist to help with this project. And we had three months of practices, but eventually the drummer admitted he just doesn't have time for it any more meaning this project came to a grinding halt and my band of 10 years came to an end.
However.
Seeing the writing on the wall, I feverishly recorded and mixed yet another album of new stuff between March and the end of June - made the final mix tweaks about a month ago. And it's better than the album I was writing about in this thread. It's more me, it's played and produced better, I've been really pushing my singing and feeling much more confident about that.
So now, with my drummer packing it in and my band falling apart I'm in a funny place.
I've got no rehearsal/ recording space (we moved out last weekend), no band mates. I've got an album that I want to release, probably the most proud I am of anything I've ever done musically. And then this curious mis-mash of a project from over the last three years; 12 tracks that were ready to go in Feb 2017, then 7 of those re-recorded and ready to go in Jan of this year.
Last week I realised that thematically, they can be split quite neatly in two.
6 of the original 12 tell the story of a migrant forced from their country by war, travelling across the med to Europe, then many years later returning to their home country and trying to come to terms with their past - the family they lost etc.
5 of the 7 I re-recorded look at the varying attitudes to migration that we have in the west.
So, fuck it. Next Friday, the first 6 tracks are going up on Spotify, iTunes, Bandcamp etc. They're the original 2-year old mixes and bits make me cringe, but I spent months of solid work on that project and I might as well put it out into the world. As much as I think I could do the production better today, I'm also proud of the songs, the lyrics, the feeling that I put into it.
So, here it is. Oh, and I talked to someone at Nasa to make sure I could use this picture of the Northern Sahara taken from the ISS;
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As an old boss said to me "The man that made no mistakes, made Fuck All". Good on you for getting it out there.
Am looking forward to giving them a blast next weekend!
cheers
andy k
https://horizoneer.bandcamp.com
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Really enjoyed it. Way too good to be left on a hardrive somewhere and not 'out there'
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