a very good day :)

Got a million things done today and had a lot of fun in the process. I hope I have more days like this. Look how happy I am!

Was giving a drum lesson first thing this morning and all seems to be going rather well, the girl is a quick learner and no experience quite gives the feeling of having a drums and keyboard jam when the keyboard is only capable of producing amazing cheesy jazz scat singing noises. So, after many doo-wops, unnecessary drum fills, and a huge amount of ‘bow, bow!’ from the keyboard I retired to the studio in good hope for the day armed with two sausage rolls from Greggs’.
And I LOVE Greggs’.

I meant to just mess around more with arrangements today but found myself diving in and doing a lot of MIDI playing in and editing and by a stroke of luck managed to play the keyboard part almost perfectly, hurrah! So rather than have it as another rough copy to add to my expanding pile I decided to do a bit of quantising and velocity tweaking and voila! Two finished keyboard parts. This served to make me even happier:

Had a bit of spare time after that so I laid down some drum tracks and I’m thinking of using sampled drums rather than recording them all from scratch because it will save me SO much time, and ultimately, given my thoroughly mediocre recording skills it will probably sound better. But it’s still a head-scratcher, really as I really want to play live drums for this album so I’ll probably end up recording it anyway and seeing how it goes. But at least i have a detailed, legitimate written out in full drum part now, so that’s another thing off my list!

With that done and a spare half hour I put in a tiny twinkly strings line. I tried to use the infamous ‘Megafat Superstrings’ patch but I fear I may need something more delicate, because even one note played by the MS patch is the audio equivalent of being gang raped by the London symphony orchestra, Bassoons and all.

So there, happily I’m already ahead of schedule. If past experiences are anything to go by, though, it won’t last so I‘m taking time to smell the roses now, while this lucky streak still stays with me.

peace out, motherproggers!

The weekend before the charge...

I’ve had a small break from Christmas songs this weekend, to work on some of my more personal projects, and have just about managed to finish off the 3rd song for my album whenever that manages to get done. Jeez, I always thought this Christmas lark would be hard but when I finally get round to recording that I’ll have to find a way to ship the geniuses that are Mr Dale Cross and Dr Benjamin Wareing up here to put down some beats and bassage that mere mortals like I can only dream of. Daym, that’s gonna be a confusing month or so. But now the final bastion of defence against the jingly jangly sleigh bells of approaching deadlines has fallen and I must once again get my Christmas thinking hat on.

What a thoroughly scary face that man has.

No more progress with the original Christmas song, though. I seem to have hit that lyrical wall that means I can think of nothing beyond what is immediately obvious. And i have resorted to doing the old, old method of playing the intro a million times, and getting ready to sing... and then seeing what comes out. When it comes to Christmas songs, though I think it’s impossible to avoid the cheesy lyrics so I might just end up biting the bullet and end up writing something along the lines of...

"Whoopee, it’s Christmas! Let’s all be nice!
I made some cake, who’d like a slice,
It’s time to wear your winter coat,
‘Cuz jenky A is on a boat!"

Its not... ‘Bad’ I suppose. Hahaw.

Anyhoo, gonna book me some more studio time tomorrow after I’ve finished my drum lesson because my calendar tells me that this week is arranging week. Hopefully, the arranging itself shouldn’t take me more than a couple of days, so I could potentially be ahead of schedule before the end of the first week. And I do love being ahead of schedule.

Night all!

21st October – recruitment!

Put the poster up today to try and get some people to start bagsie-ing lines in the song, and a big sheet explaining it. I’ve a slight fear if this keeps up I’ll turn into one of those note-leavers. And no one likes a note-leaver.

There are a couple of names on the sheet already. It’s looking good! I’m wondering if I have time to try and record a B-side of an original song... hmmm..... I think I feel a noodling session coming on...

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Score! Got a nice jangly guitar riff. But alas I feel as though it may be time for bed, so I’ll make a quick digital note of it on my best friend guitar pro and hope I have something constructive to write about tomorrow.

Goodnight world!

20th October – The fiddly First bit

Good morning!


I really am feeling the nerves of this it’s the first time I’ve worked on something this big. (hehee.) I’m raring to go so I’ll fill the rest of this in when I get back!


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Well that was certainly odd. I expected a lot of lonely studio time but met up with Dean just before I went in so I ended up dragging him along for the experience, and I’m very glad I did. Got a very basic piano-ey line down now throughout the whole song it’s a bit sketchy but at least I know what I’m aiming for now. That’s something I can tick off the list! Wooo!


Got a rudimentary drum groove going too, but I think I did a good amount of cheating with copy, paste, and quantise, so I won’t consider that job polished off just yet. Also the spectator of this whole process egged me into adding a pipe organ, Gregorian choir synth, orchestral harp, and just as we thought it couldn’t get any more ridiculous we found a string patch called ‘megafat superstrings’! It would appear the gods are on my side for this one...

Managed to have a lovely singalong with the ending too. I say singing, we weren’t at our best, vocally. But its only day 1, and Dean decided to capture it on the miracle of videotape. And it goes a little something like this.



I love technology.

19th October – Introductions!

Well, hello there, people!

Its official, there’s a release date marked on my calendar and a whole load of ideas flying around Jenkinson A this festive season, I can’t wait to start and I’ve been through this songwriting joy before and inevitably there will always come a time where I regret even having the idea, so dash it all I’m going to enjoy this fluffy Christmas feeling of excitement while it lasts. :)

After watching in awe as a certain Mr Jem Godfrey blogged Frost*’s journey from concept to album I thought I’d give it a go, if not for the actual blogginess then so I have a record of what I’m doing, because I have never been any good at planning and this might make it more organised and exciting! But not this time, I’ve made lists and everything! Are you proud of me? You know it.

Got studio time booked for tomorrow to start everything where It’ll just be me, a midi keyboard and a reasonably sophisticated studio to bang some ideas together with my good old idea hammer, guitar pro 5. I tell thee, I’m feeling the jingle bells coming on already...