Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Early morning with Tamira on English Breakfast Radio



I set my alarm clock for the first time since I left the office job today. Tamira had scored an appearance on English Breakfast Radio. The drawback was that we had to cycle out to the docks at the north of the centre just after 7 in the morning. Tamira surprised me by being wide awake!!! The truth was that she hadn;t been to bed which seems to have been the way to go... she was a lot more awake than I was.

There are real benefits to getting up this early.... the weather was lovely and the sun was just rising:


We went in and met Neville and he introduced us to the other guys. It was much more relaxed than our last radio appearance. The guys really welcomed us in and were keen for us to get involved in all aspects of the show. I think I embarassed Tamira by being a little too candid about some of the songs about her love life, but I think it made good radio. The guys were great. They played two of the tracks from Tamira's CD. There was lots of banter and they put us on the spot a few times but I think our 'eh's' and 'um's' fit in quite well the atmosphere they create. We also played one of Tamira's songs live and did our cover of Crazy Train.

By the end of the show I;d had enough coffee to feel human and we went to a cafe and had a chat with the guys. All in all a great experience. I'll probably need a siesta after my early start though.


You can stream the show from here

Sunday, April 10, 2011

My Dutch TV debut

At last week's Jam a great guy came in called Alex. He was Malaysian but had spent a lot of time in Australia and he had the best of both destinations. He was a singer, guitar player and songwriter and he was over in Amsterdam as part of a TV series called Vakantieleifdes(Summer Love) The program reunites holiday romances to see if love blossoms on home turf. As part of the program they had decided to film Alex plying his trade in Amsterdam, so they chose a few of us to come back to CC Muziek Cafe on Saturday and be filmed playing with Alex.

On the Saturday I turned up, not quite knowing what to expect; it was very much off the cuff. The TV crew turned up. They were all great people and it was good fun watching how these things come together behind the scenes. We were snatching 15 minutes between the main bands to quickly run through a few songs. We'd decided to do one of Alex' songs, Another Brick in the wall and Hotel California. Luckily Ali came in, as he;s a much better guitarist than I and he can do the Eagles solos justice.

We got set up and Alex started playing his own song. I was playing along before and they were filming before I'd even worked out what key he was playing. It sounded great, but from my perspective I wasn't doing much. Ali took over and did Another Brick in the wall and Hotel California.

A few weeks later it was on the telly. Watching it online, it was edited very well and my fear that I looked a little useless was unfounded.

You can watch it here.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Jamming with Sandra and Manuel

Sandra and Manuel joined us this week in the Jam Session. It gave it a great boost. We did an excellent version of Ramble On by Led Zeppelin. I played bass and made the mistake of knowing the bass part. I don't play bass often, so my Bass playing finger stamina is pretty low. We kept it going for about 15 minutes and because I knew the bass part, I hadn't worked out the underlying chords, so I had to just keep playing through the pain.....

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Day 2 - Mixing Fonz

I'm back in the control room. The control room is a big comfy seat in front of my speakers with the laptop on my knees. I've got 4 tracks to mix for Fonz and then 6 to master. I was a little apprehensive as I've never done this for any type of music other than rock and pop, but luckily everything still works out the same and they are sounding great. The electronic element means I can get away with a little bit more production in the vocals without it sounding too polished.

I think the result is really good. It is still rough and human like my other stuff but it's applied to a genre where things are often a little smooth.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Sandra's back!

The sun has returned to Amsterdam and Sandra has come with it! She's on good form, having learned some great songs to play with her wonderful guitar playing boyfriend Manuel. Look out for the three of us doing a great version of Ramble on by Led Zeppelin in pub near you(If you are in Amsterdam that is)

Monday, April 4, 2011

Day 1 - Recording Fonz

It feels great turning the living room into a recording studio again. I have great memories of recording Sandra and then Tamira in a similar setting.

First up is the guitar:


He's using a virtual amp and effects, so we don't need to worry about microphones and isolation. This means we can monitor the whole thing on a wedge monitor as he's playing and get a bit more feeling about the playing. Headphones can be annoyingly restrictive.

Alfons is a pretty good guitarist, so it;s a pleasure to watch him exchange 80's metal riffs with more modern hip hop beats. We decided to record various guitar elements for all the songs and then build a guitar part from what we like later:


It's going well, and we're flying through the tracks. Once the guitar is recorded, we move onto vocals. This is always a tougher affair. Most of the tracks have a rapping section, which are quite challenging at the best of times. Eventually once we find our groove, we're getting full takes without mistakes.



Before we know it, it's 8 O'clock and we've been working hard for 7 hours solid. The rough takes are sounding good and we think it's best to call it a night. I can't wait to get the tracks mixed and see how good I can make it sound. The type of music(Hip hop/Rap/crossover) is a far stretch from what I'm used to working with so it;s a real challenge.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

New recording project - Fonz Fonzarelly

Starting as I mean to go on, I went to Melody Line today for a meeting with Alfons. I know him through Tamira, and he's been to a few of the Jam Sessions. He's a multitalented guitarist/singer/rapper. He's keen to pull together various music endevours into a mix tape that he can promote both virtually and physically to bring his music to wider audiences and hopefully move up to the next level.

He has some backing tracks, but needs my help to play guitar, rap and sing over them and mix and masters the results, so we agree to meet at Wagging Tail Studios(My living room) the next day to see what we can get recorded.

Friday, April 1, 2011

Pastures new

I'm now officially redundant. It's been a tough year so far, mostly spent sitting in an office where everyone knows that there is a big changing coming up. I decided that the sooner I got on with life the better. This equated to stopping working on the 1st of April. My plans??? I don;t really have any. I'm going to finally get rid of time as an excuse for not doing music. When I get bored or the money runs out I'll think of the next stage. This will be the longest period of my life without working since I was about 16.
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