Viewing: My Ramblings - View all posts

Second wind and thank you

I have said the same thing to myself several times over the years. OK lets get some more music released. Time passes and nothing happens. Then I get frustrated with myself because I failed to release any new music.

I'm not the only one. I hear the same thing from some of my peers. It seems to be a common ailment that artist report. Getting stuff finished like this sente.... . .. .

Recently however due to lockdown, and time alone, I've revisited this topic. I tried tiktok because I was told its a quick…

Riff For The Day #2 and #3 plus a middle finger for Steinberg

Here's Riff for the day number 2 and 3. Apologies for clumping them together but I upload to youtube and then paste to this blog and sometimes I forget. So please jump over to my youtube channel and subscribe.

RFTD #3 is not so much a file from an archive, but a little improvisation to test out a new piece of studio equipment.

But first a dig at hardware and software developers. Stop updating stuff.

Today's riff was jammed after I'd spend literally days trying to solve a recording issue. The bottom line…

Riff For The Day #1

Riff for the day #1. Recorded in March 2010.

Over the years I've used my phone to capture musical ideas. They spend a little time on my phone but are eventually backed up onto memory cards or hard drives. Some mysteriously appear in the cloud? Spooky.

Anyway during the C19 "stay at home" I decided to do an experiment. The premise is simple...

Gather all the musical ideas together and review them for use in future tracks. Simple: Find them then index them.

Stage one is complete and I've found over 700 clips.

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Note To Self: Stop naming new idea files as "new idea"

C19 lockdown has provided me with an opportunity to gather my riffs, melody, lyric ideas into one place. My problem is I've no idea what they sound like so my task is to organise them into some sort of order.

Currently I'm reviewing them all and calling them something like 90bpm-4_4-GV-**-Dark-Note with the ** being the name of AN other artist / band that I think it sounds like.

Year include 2014 to 2020.... OK Next....

Procrastination is the thief but time will tell

OK so some new gear is in the studio, and the website has been updated but I'm faffing. We all do it.... Think I have another cup of tea....

But there are seriously some things I need to get done in my real job. So if your visiting and think the website looks fresh then great, but please bear with the music is a little way off.

However while I rebuilt this website it was surprising just how many places I could find my music. I added a few in the contact section but gave up adding them all. We all leave…

Where have I been?

Be careful what you wish for! I always wondered what that meant?

When I was working at my real job I used to dream of having a recording studio and whiling away the days writing songs, playing the guitar and wondering whether to get dressed?

Then due to the kindness of my pre orders and some family support (thank you mum x) I managed to fulfill that dream. I worked hard, built my little studio and recorded P'dice. It took a little longer than I anticipated but that's because I had no real idea of the work…Read more

Copyright - Copywrong

Copyright - Copywrong. Would you work 20 days for 3 days pay? It's been well over a year since I last blogged but I thought I take a break from mixing and hammer my thoughts down. And yes it's that old chestnut "Illegal Downloads", a topic well discussed online, but when I read most of the articles I note the comments are generally posted from two opposing camps with some of them written from pure ignorance. So I thought I'd have my say. When I wrote my first album I was in full time employment… Read more

The Album Is Dead?

I'm starting to think the album is dead.., well slowly dying?

Now don't go all nostalgic on me and talk of days gone by when you used to queue outside music shops waiting for the latest release, because I'm not talking about the history of the album but more the future.

I have given this a lot of thought and decided to write these thoughts down in order to make sense of them. I am drawing upon my personal experiences as a consumer of music and, in some lesser way, my limited experience as a recording…Read more

Billboard Boulevards

It struck me on the way back from Manchester to York, after a recent vacation in Florida, that there was one fundamental difference between where I was and where I had just been. Soul.

Looking back I think the majority of the urban areas I observed whilst driving around Florida lacked soul. Street after street, and mile after mile, of the arterial network of roads in that sunny state were over decorated in billboards.

I saw "Finding Jesus" beside "Breast Augmentation" beside "Who can I sue?". No theme... no…Read more