The Official Rob Rideout Christmas Blog!

Hello from back in little-old Bolton!

Well, there is big news on the Christmas front, so I’m going to start from the beginning. I finished the Christmas song! Jenky Aid is now out, advertised in a very minimal way and up for grabs. It even got a small amount of radio airtime on RadioHUDD, courtesy of Mr Dean Morris and Adam Findley. I’ve never been on the radio before...

It’s Proper Exciting.

But now that project is off, all I need to do now is see how it goes. And due to an unexpected and VERY welcome intrusion by the good sir Marti March it’s now looking as though it could raise a reasonably be-proud-of-myself amount of money for the Make A Wish Foundation.
Basically, upon hearing I was doing a bit of charity work, he was eager to jump on board, because a part of his course requires him raising at least £50 for charity. So I let him use me as a medium through which he can get his work done, and it turns out it’s making a massive difference in the number I’ve sold! Because it’s for his course, he’s flogging one to pretty much every member of his family, and so are all the other people in his group, including putting a fiver in each! So this has been a boon to my project meaning it’s going to raise a bare minimum of £50 which is much more than I expected, and recent news suggests £100 is easily within reach. So today in celebration I bought myself a sausage roll.
So today, Monday the 14th of December my single is officially out for public purchase. I’m printing out the low budget coversheets as we speak. (Well, as you read. Unless you’re reading this from some time in the future in which case robots have probably taken over the world, and I have long forgotten my toiling.)

Here’s the sleeve for it:

And for those who are hard of sight, or if I just uploaded it badly here’s the notes at the bottom:

“This whole record was fantastic to work on, and my whole-hearted thanks go out to all involved, all the singers, the people who gave me ideas and the people who were unable to participate due to illness or other misfortune.
All proceeds from the sale of this single are going straight to the ‘Make A Wish Foundation in the hope that we can help others to have an equally rockin’ festive season!
Thanks, also to the people at uni for letting me persistently borrow their equipment and rooms and helping me during times of epic computer meltdown! For more details of the recording process and other musicy things please visit http://www.robrideoutsprogblog.blogspot.com/
I Genuinely hope you all have a very merry Christmas and a positively spiffing new year.
Jenkinson A is on a Boat!
Copyright 2009 Rob Rideout & Jenkinson A & Captain Fantastic & his Epic Robot Army”

If anyone outside of Huddersfield wants a copy I won’t be able to charge you for it, because I lack the technical prowess to set up a Paypal thing. So if you email me I’ll send you the MP3 and in return you must promise to be very nice. And give a pound to a charity at some point. :P pinky swear!
Also today I finished all my uni coursework until after Christmas, and consequently rewarded myself with a kinder egg. The toy was admittedly disappointing as there was no assembly required but my general feeling of elation negated that as I chomped happily upon the egg itself. Fantarstic.

I have a feeling, my friends that the next blog will be uploaded sometime next decade, but thankfully that isn’t long off! Gawd il be twenty soon. I can smell mortgage...

Merry Christmas, and a Happy new year!
Prog bless us. Every one.

Rock and Roll and Ebay.

In the words of the late great Geoffrey Chaucer, all good things must come to an end. And my Christmas project is in deep danger of coming to an end. God knows when this is finished I might have to do some actual university work. It’s all recorded, mixed, mastered, signed and sealed all that remains is to deliver it to Dean for his radio show next Monday and it’s gonna hit the airwaves harder than a drunk Scotsman. I found out the other day that it’s possible to borrow a HD video recorder from the tech room, so depending on the state of my actual coursework at the outset of this week I might make a start on the video!

I’m starting to get that odd feeling of Stockholm Syndrome with this song now in that I keep tweaking the mix. Things never really seem to be final anymore but I realised I should really stop messing with things after I tried putting a vocoder on the master track. This failed to give me any kind of increase in sound quality other than to make the record playable on some kind of dalek radio, I don’t even know what possessed me to think that would be a good idea. There was a strange insight into my musical world the other day with the release of this (http://the-doncastrian.tumblr.com/post/271144157) from Dean. It’s essentially his blog explaining this whole process from the point of view of someone who’s never been in the studio before. It’s quite refreshing to see someone so excited by all the knobs and buttons. All the people who recorded their voices on this record were uniformly amazed at the faders that moved themselves. It never ceases to make me chuckle.

And now onto a totally new uncharted piece of life I have moved into. Some things you always hear about as both good and dangerous. It’s apparently highly addictive and I can see why because it’s such a rush when you finally get what you want out of it. Don’t worry kids, I’m not on drugs. I’m talking about that superbly stunning stack of stuff that is the sultry world of Ebay. Not least because you can own something new without having to go to any kind of shop, or even move. Not even because it’s so fantastically cheap. But because of the clever use of the word ‘win’. Now in my understanding of shopping buying something has always been something of a mundane activity, but once you have bought something, it delights in informing you that you have ‘won’ it. Which instantly leads you to think: ‘won? Me? Fantastic! ... Let’s play again!’ which is a bad road to go down. So I now own a thoroughly awesome J rock jacket which is currently hurtling through the air to find me. Sensational. On a rather final note, I have contacted the lovely people at the Make A Wish Foundation about making the donation so there’s no going back now. I just made the little sleeve I intend to provide the CD in so the admin is now dangerously close to the ‘all done’ stage. I’m going to miss this when it’s gone.

Here’s a little preview of what the sleeve will look like:

(I know you can't read it, il put a better version up once it's finalised and out there to purchase.)

And I intend to add a little design on the front, of which I will ask the lovely Miss Sarah Lowe, as her artistic skills far surpass my own. I wonder how good she is at drawing reindeer...

Bye, all!

The Nearly-done Stage!

Well HI!

Good news, prog fans! Well. More Christmas fans.
First of all on the agenda, all the vocals are done! And you all know what that means...

Thar be a ticking afoot!
Ah that’s better... but wait... there’s another box to tick! And it’s a biggun!

So that’s done now. And although it was stressful, time consuming and ultimately tiring it was also thoroughly marvellous. i got to know a few people around Jenkinson a bit better, found out that some people are fantarrrstic singers, and had an all round awesome time. This is without a shadow of a doubt the best thing I’ve done since being at Uni. I can’t stop listening to it back now and it I chuckle every time; it makes me feel like this:
Also, in the age old tradition of the Christmas single, I needed something else on here. For a while I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, it just didn’t have enough Christmas flavour. And today after hunting high and low I found it. Sleigh bells! So now with them on the track it’s sounding entirely festive! Ooh I could have a bit o’ mince pie right about now.

So that’s all the instruments recorded, all the vocals recorded and everything is nearly mixed. I thought id struggle to meet the deadline, but I should be finished by the end of this week! What could I possibly do with the time spare...

Did someone say ‘music video’? I’ll ask who’s prepared to do one. :D

So now I’m nearly done it might be a good time to have an emotional montage of photos from the studio. Cue the emotional and inspirational music!

Ah. Good times we had by all.

And you know what? I have thoroughly earned this sausage roll.
Now what’s left to do...
Well, I’ve been trying to mix it as I go along, so I don’t have to mess about with it too much and as far as I can tell it’s been quite good, so I shouldn’t have to spend TOO long on that and it sounds pretty good now. So it’s just a matter of very fine tuning, I’m so EXCITED! Meanwhile, in another panel of my Christmas comic book, Rob toils away upon his guitar...

Yep, I got started. I started with stripping off all the tape and taking some hardware off. In short I did everything that was possible without tools. The stripes were a bit stubborn as they’d been there for a while, and decided out of spite to coat most of the surface of my guitar in what can only be described as a traumatic post-adhesive sticky mess. So at the moment I’m in the admittedly dull process of setting upon that with some polish to get it off my precious fretboard. I’m not going to bother taking it off the main body, as I’m planning to sand that down. So logically the next step is to get me some tools so I can actually do something interesting.

Finally, my new band, Cartoon Explosion, has got our first gig on the 17th at Livingstone’s in the Hudd, and it’s going to be awesome. Especially for me, as it’s my drumming debut! I love drums, and usually end up playing guitar or singing in all my other bands, so this will be a very welcome change. It’s a very accepted change of style too, so I’m going to get on writing some more stuff for them which will be a nice change as its more of a rock band so I won’t be able to use my usual 13/8 widdly widdly crazy cacophony of guitars every other bar. Hmm. Power chords anyone?

Bye guys!

xxx