The week that wasn't. mondays post... up on tuesday.

Hullo readers! :D

It has been a WHILE since my last entry so I’ll have to play catchup for a while until i manage to get to what i did today, fortunately for the impatient amongst you; the rest of last week was painfully slow, compared to how productively it started. In the interest of fairness to all other forces involved, it was mainly my fault that much didn’t get done after that, due to a generally good time being had in the flat and a positive wad of good stuff on and around the television. As you may have seen I finished the piano part and last week I bounced that all to audio, which means that that’s done and dusted and I don’t have to touch that now until the mixy-mixing stage.

So that’s 2 Piano Lines and a very minimal String line finished. Holla! That’s another crossout! Also I bought potatoes and decided to make it a download, rather than a CD to cut expenses and make it easier to get, so I can cross those off too! Let’s go over to the chart...

As I was feeling so very ahead of myself at the end of last week I decided to get started on what I had scheduled for this week, which proved nothing other than the fact that I am useless at following schedules, even when I make them myself :S, although I did get a massively satisfying chunk of this week’s work done in the aftermath of last weeks work-void. So looking back on the timetable I made:

It should now look something more like this:

Now you add a few lines...

Voila! Frank Zappa. Prog is truly everywhere.

Due to this mass of overlapping and cunningly hidden moustaches I have now programmed all of the drums, completely doing away with the rubbish ones I did on the guide tracks with a familiar ‘what was I thinking?’ fervour. Made a drum line? Programmed a drum line? Let’s see if it’s on the chart... Woo! More crossing out. I really should have instituted some kind of gold stars system.
So that’s all the catch-upping done, with a bit of drumming on the side for good measure. I was pleasantly surprised this week to find that the studio I booked was the very same one me and Dean had filmed in a previous blog, which gave me one of those lovely familiar homey feelings, and for old time’s sake I decided to invite Dean to join me to witness some more of the chaos that this project is turning into. Mind you, it’s the good kind of chaos, like falling out of a helicopter into the playboy mansion.

((//picture censored//))

(dont worry, that was a joke, im not trying to blog porn.)

Although after a while the devil took over and I picked up my trusty guitar and had a lovely noodle over the track. I have a feeling it’s not going to be in the final mix, but who knows, I might release bonus tracks featuring unnecessarily LARGE solos. This did give me insight into the lead guitar part for the end, though and after messing around with the little guitar line over the last chorus I decided to harmonise it Queen style. Which meant working out a four part harmony line and playing them all in. I won’t lie, it sounded ace. I’m seriously considering whacking it in, as I had an epiphany at the end of today’s session and decided to keep the ridiculously epic huge ending section with the fabled MS patch and a brilliant sample I found called MIGHTY ORGAN! This is gonna be so loud it’s going to shake the actual concept of Christmas.

Peace!

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...