So, you take a Yorkshire wurzel who loves to write songs but hasn't got the equipment, patience or actual ability to record them well. Then, you need to add the North East's answer to Miles Davis (in trumpeting ability, not in terms of serious intravenous drug abuse) who has equipment, and patience, and bucketloads of ability to record songs, but isn't as keen on writing them. You stick them together, add ridiculous amounts of laughter, and quite a lot of playing FIFA and swearing at the computer for giving ridiculous free kicks against you and what do you come out with? Various States of Undress, that's what! Recorded in Newcastle over the summer of 2011, the album really brings together the best of both Pauls, and basically if you enjoy this album even half as much as we do, then we enjoy the album twice as much as you! Hang on, that doesn't sound right.
It says on here that I have to tell you as much as I want about my music. I don't know what to put, really. I've been told it really fuses all my influences, which mainly revolve around The Beatles, Queen, Beach Boys, and Billy Joel. But they're not the only artists I've ever listened to, or been inspired by. I'm always on the lookout for new ideas, always trying to push my own creative boundaries while echoing the music I loved as a kid and grew up with. I think I've achieved that on this album, and it also ties in with the first time in my life I've felt comfortable enough to write happy, laid back and high-spirited songs. So now, what I want is to share them with, well, you! So...you know...what are you waiting for? Buy my album! I only need six or seven million people to buy it before I can jack in my day job and call it a day...why not make a humble northern yokel's dream come true?! :-) Hope you have as much fun listening as we did recording it - cheers for dropping by!
Paul
All songs written by Paul Staveley
All songs produced by Paul Riley-Gledhill
All guitars, pianos, basses, woodblock solos, triangle quartets and Didgeridoo symphonies played by Paul Staveley.
Dirty Trumpet on Desire by Paul Riley-Gledhill.
All drums programmed by Paul Staveley and Paul Riley-Gledhill. (Mostly Paul Riley-Gledhill. Like, 95% him.)
All vocals (even the high bits) by Paul Staveley.
Special Thanks to:
Sarah – raison d’etre.
Paul RG – Patience and genius personified.
Steph – Liebowitz’s day is done.
Sandy Z – distant relative, Twitter buddy, album name inventor.
Mum - I literally couldn't have done this without you!
John, Paul, George, Ringo - Apotheosis.
Billy Joel - You may be right, I may be crazy.
Thanks to:
The nice people at CD baby for distributing this
Hal Stewart for his incredible beard
Ian Dolamore: satisfactory, but odd.
My hilarious, awful, wonderful and terrible primate of a sister, I love you despite your face
My nephew Sammy (look at what your daft Uncle Paul did!)
Olympic Florence
Silk and Tugboat
The Diplodocus. What a dinosaur.
Monday 14 November 2011
Sunday 6 November 2011
Why I would sell out...probably.
I started off writing a blog about something else. I’ve got an album coming out, and someone asked me what I would consider a “success” for it. I don’t really know how to answer that, and my first instinct was to say that I already consider it a success, because I’ve recorded an album and I’m releasing it on itunes for people to listen to, and hopefully enjoy. Regardless of how many copies it sells, I will have actually recorded and released a proper album, instead of the home-spun charming, but amateurish stuff that’s currently available online. That is success, to me – and I’m delighted about it. I’m also bulletproof in terms of how it’s received, because even if everyone who buys it thinks it’s rubbish, I don’t. Of course it would be a shame to work so hard on something and then have everybody who heard it think it was awful, but it would be even worse to compromise and sell it out, and STILL have everyone hate it. I looked at what some people consider success, and had a think about it.
Justin Bieber has 14 million followers on Twitter, Rebecca Black had 167 million views on YouTube, Westlife had 14 number one singles, Ke$ha has sold more singles than The Beatles did in the USA and yet I wouldn’t want to be any of them, not for all the tea in China. I don’t drink tea, actually, but you get my point. I would gladly have their money, and more than gladly have the chance to have that many people listen to my work, but I wouldn’t want it at the price that they have paid, ie people like me having the opinion I have of them. I wouldn’t sell out to get fame and riches. I thought.
But then I thought again. Wouldn’t I? Believe me, I have a very strong sense of my artistic identity and what I want to achieve. I also have a very strong personality when it comes to being challenged and having my vision questioned. I have a huge ego, mixed with occasionally crippling crises of self-confidence. I feel artist-y. I feel like I wouldn’t make sacrifices to achieve financial gain while losing my personal integrity. There are definitely songs that I wouldn’t be caught dead singing. Yes, Justin Bieber has had a lot of success but Jesus Christ, the kid’s a tool. I mean, come on, he is. And the songs are awful. I checked, just to be sure. I didn’t want to be one of these people who just hated him without having actually listened to the songs I professed to hate. But yeah, they’re terrible. My immediate instinct is to say that I would have too strong a moral code to ever lower myself to singing bilge like that. But would that moral code really cause me to turn down commercial success, at that kind of level, if all I had to do was sell out a bit?
It’s a difficult thing to say for sure. I think that absolute refusal to sell out under any circumstances is nice and easy for people to say once they’re already rich and famous, but really, how many struggling musicians who have an audience of about 40 wouldn’t rather be playing to thousands of people and making absolute sack loads of money? It’s all well and good sticking to your guns and gallantly failing, staying in obscurity for the rest of your life cuddling up to the fact that at least you never sold your integrity even a little bit, but does it really make it alright?
I’m 29 now, and I really don’t have any illusions about the avenues that exist for me in the music industry. They are few, and far between. It’s also hard to properly balance reality with your dreams. It’s extremely easy for me to play the card of “well, I know I won’t sell a million copies of my album, but what really matters to me is that the people who do buy it like it” – and that’s true. From the bottom of my heart, I would much prefer it to be 20 people’s favourite album of the year than a million people’s 20th favourite album of the year. But of course I still have that little part of me that wants word to somehow spread enough that I sell loads more copies than I ever thought I could. It’s not financial either – well, not primarily. I want more people to hear it, because then maybe more people will like it. Maybe people will want me to make another album, and maybe I will be able to. Obviously, the financial side of it would matter too, the more copies I sell, the more money I make, but fundamentally the money is secondary.
But what if I could cash in? What if somehow, someone offered me the chance to release an album that brought me financial security? Would I really be able to turn it down? You don’t hear much from Ashanti these days, for example, but when she turfed up with those bloody awful songs, she sold over 10 million records. If I’m lucky, I will make approximately £1.20 from every £5 album sold. Extrapolate that to the usual retail price of an album, and she is looking at the best part of $25m. Wouldn’t it be worth being terrible for that? If I had that much money, I could make all the albums I wanted, preserve all the artistic integrity I needed for the rest of my life. Justin Bieber is apparently worth $80m and he’s not even 18 yet. Couldn’t he call it a day and work on turning himself into a proper artist? You look at some of the most artistically appreciated musicians to have ever walked the earth, and a massive number of them started out singing songs that weren’t their greatest musical achievements. Listen to “Love Me Do”, or “Great King Rat”, or “Why, Judy, Why?”. Look at how Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix got started. The hardest thing about any of this is definitely getting your foot in the door. I have a high enough opinion of myself to believe that if I ever did get a foot in the door, and make some kind of name for myself, I could stay there. My passion for music is all-consuming, I’ve never yet run out of ideas for songs to write, and I love performing and playing. But how do you start? START?! It’s so frustrating, and if a way out was offered to me, if someone rang me up to say, “Hey, I loved that rubbish song you wrote, would you fancy giving it to Justin Bieber, or some other such bloody disaster of a musician, so he can take it and ruin it but you get 20% of the royalties,” what possible part of me could say no?
Fundamentally, the question is, Would I be willing to accept commercial success for something that I was not only not proud of, but actually despised myself for? My worry would be...could I afford not to? I hope that people like the album, I really do – and I’m so proud of it because I haven’t compromised my vision for it in any way. I hope I never do, I’m proud of what I’ve achieved and the songs I’ve written, but if you are a very rich and successful record producer and you need me to churn out a two and a half minute piece of utterly awful but nevertheless commercially acceptable pop disaster, please give me a chance.
Justin Bieber has 14 million followers on Twitter, Rebecca Black had 167 million views on YouTube, Westlife had 14 number one singles, Ke$ha has sold more singles than The Beatles did in the USA and yet I wouldn’t want to be any of them, not for all the tea in China. I don’t drink tea, actually, but you get my point. I would gladly have their money, and more than gladly have the chance to have that many people listen to my work, but I wouldn’t want it at the price that they have paid, ie people like me having the opinion I have of them. I wouldn’t sell out to get fame and riches. I thought.
But then I thought again. Wouldn’t I? Believe me, I have a very strong sense of my artistic identity and what I want to achieve. I also have a very strong personality when it comes to being challenged and having my vision questioned. I have a huge ego, mixed with occasionally crippling crises of self-confidence. I feel artist-y. I feel like I wouldn’t make sacrifices to achieve financial gain while losing my personal integrity. There are definitely songs that I wouldn’t be caught dead singing. Yes, Justin Bieber has had a lot of success but Jesus Christ, the kid’s a tool. I mean, come on, he is. And the songs are awful. I checked, just to be sure. I didn’t want to be one of these people who just hated him without having actually listened to the songs I professed to hate. But yeah, they’re terrible. My immediate instinct is to say that I would have too strong a moral code to ever lower myself to singing bilge like that. But would that moral code really cause me to turn down commercial success, at that kind of level, if all I had to do was sell out a bit?
It’s a difficult thing to say for sure. I think that absolute refusal to sell out under any circumstances is nice and easy for people to say once they’re already rich and famous, but really, how many struggling musicians who have an audience of about 40 wouldn’t rather be playing to thousands of people and making absolute sack loads of money? It’s all well and good sticking to your guns and gallantly failing, staying in obscurity for the rest of your life cuddling up to the fact that at least you never sold your integrity even a little bit, but does it really make it alright?
I’m 29 now, and I really don’t have any illusions about the avenues that exist for me in the music industry. They are few, and far between. It’s also hard to properly balance reality with your dreams. It’s extremely easy for me to play the card of “well, I know I won’t sell a million copies of my album, but what really matters to me is that the people who do buy it like it” – and that’s true. From the bottom of my heart, I would much prefer it to be 20 people’s favourite album of the year than a million people’s 20th favourite album of the year. But of course I still have that little part of me that wants word to somehow spread enough that I sell loads more copies than I ever thought I could. It’s not financial either – well, not primarily. I want more people to hear it, because then maybe more people will like it. Maybe people will want me to make another album, and maybe I will be able to. Obviously, the financial side of it would matter too, the more copies I sell, the more money I make, but fundamentally the money is secondary.
But what if I could cash in? What if somehow, someone offered me the chance to release an album that brought me financial security? Would I really be able to turn it down? You don’t hear much from Ashanti these days, for example, but when she turfed up with those bloody awful songs, she sold over 10 million records. If I’m lucky, I will make approximately £1.20 from every £5 album sold. Extrapolate that to the usual retail price of an album, and she is looking at the best part of $25m. Wouldn’t it be worth being terrible for that? If I had that much money, I could make all the albums I wanted, preserve all the artistic integrity I needed for the rest of my life. Justin Bieber is apparently worth $80m and he’s not even 18 yet. Couldn’t he call it a day and work on turning himself into a proper artist? You look at some of the most artistically appreciated musicians to have ever walked the earth, and a massive number of them started out singing songs that weren’t their greatest musical achievements. Listen to “Love Me Do”, or “Great King Rat”, or “Why, Judy, Why?”. Look at how Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix got started. The hardest thing about any of this is definitely getting your foot in the door. I have a high enough opinion of myself to believe that if I ever did get a foot in the door, and make some kind of name for myself, I could stay there. My passion for music is all-consuming, I’ve never yet run out of ideas for songs to write, and I love performing and playing. But how do you start? START?! It’s so frustrating, and if a way out was offered to me, if someone rang me up to say, “Hey, I loved that rubbish song you wrote, would you fancy giving it to Justin Bieber, or some other such bloody disaster of a musician, so he can take it and ruin it but you get 20% of the royalties,” what possible part of me could say no?
Fundamentally, the question is, Would I be willing to accept commercial success for something that I was not only not proud of, but actually despised myself for? My worry would be...could I afford not to? I hope that people like the album, I really do – and I’m so proud of it because I haven’t compromised my vision for it in any way. I hope I never do, I’m proud of what I’ve achieved and the songs I’ve written, but if you are a very rich and successful record producer and you need me to churn out a two and a half minute piece of utterly awful but nevertheless commercially acceptable pop disaster, please give me a chance.
Friday 14 October 2011
Mozart: on form.
Admirer: Herr Mozart, I am thinking of writing symphonies. Can you give me any suggestions as to how to get started?
Mozart: A symphony is a very complex musical form. Maybe start with some simple songs and work your way up to a symphony.
Admirer: But Herr Mozart, you were writing symphonies when you were 8!
Mozart: Yes, but I never had to ask anyone how.
Mozart: A symphony is a very complex musical form. Maybe start with some simple songs and work your way up to a symphony.
Admirer: But Herr Mozart, you were writing symphonies when you were 8!
Mozart: Yes, but I never had to ask anyone how.
Sunday 9 October 2011
John Lennon: some thoughts
Today would have been John Lennon's 71st birthday, and really by rights it should have been. He was taken away pretty young, 31 years ago in New York.
That being said, a lot of people have commented in the past that at least he had achieved all the great things he was going to achieve in his lifetime, and by that I presume they mean the incredible years as a member of The Beatles - officially the greatest band that this or any other country has ever produced.
But to me, the real sadness of his death is the human side of it. Obviously, I never met John Lennon. I was born two years after his murder, so I never even walked (or crawled) the same earth that he did, but I have read and read about both the man and the band he created over the years and while I would not claim to be an expert, I know my stuff. It seems to me that, finally, after a childhood that, while happy, was not without its deeply traumatic moments, and an adolescence marred by the death of his mother, and taken up with the pace of rock and roll, Hamburg, drugs, sex and becoming a quarter of the biggest phenomenon music had ever known, Lennon had spent a lot of time looking for a real sense of identity. It's clear from reading even the most basic account of his life that he hadn't found it in The Beatles, in his friendship with Paul McCartney or his marriage to Cynthia. It's also clear that he had, in later life, managed to find some semblance of identity. Maybe not peace, but certainly getting there. Listen to his later interviews around the time of Double Fantasy - there's no mistaking it. Then, on December 8th, a mother whose 5 year old son was waiting upstairs had to watch her husband murdered in their own front yard. There's no escaping just how tragic it was.
I wonder sometimes why Lennon and The Beatles still hold such a hypnotic effect on the world's media, and the fans of their music. I am fairly publicly a huge Beatles fan, but they're by no means the only band I like, or the only type of music I adore. And yet, above every other, they have fascinated me for my entire life, and I predict they will continue to for many years to come. I wonder why it is. On some level, it's obvious - their story was a wonderful one, childhood friends who pulled together and struck gold by happening to be incredible songwriters and performers. Not only that, but it had a tragic element, like all good stories do. A sad inevitability that familiarity began to breed contempt and soon enough, what had once existed no longer did, and seperate ways were gone. I also think it's fantastic that they never got back together. Of course, it has been impossible since 1980 that they would, but you have to say - with the possible exception of Take That, bands that get back together very rarely hit the same heights that brought them the army of fans they were destined to disappoint in later years. The memory of The Beatles is forever young, and forever golden. They released some awful songs in their time, but they went out on a high and they never came down.
But the individual personalities of the group have always been the glue that held the magic, to me. I don't think I'm alone, either. Look at the media coverage of Paul McCartney's third wedding today, or the fuss being made about Martin Scorcese and his desire to bring the life of "the third Beatle" to the screen. Three and a half hours, the film is, and people are flocking for it.
Ironically, it wasn't until AFTER the Beatles split up that the real personalities of the four began to manifest. McCartney, so often painted as the cute, friendly, soft, bobby headed one, began to get a reputation for hard nosed business dealings and insufferable perfectionism that made him sound impossible to work with. Harrison, the "quiet" Beatle was the first to produce a "great" solo album, and in my opinion, the only one to actually produce an actually great solo album until McCartney's "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard" in 2004. Ringo Starr, so often relegated to "punchline and sympathy vote" status, got taken seriously as an actor, had a solo number one single and album before any of the rest of them, and was re-evaluated into one of rock's greatest drummers for his musical intelligence and subtle brilliance. Lennon, though, really shocked people. His apparent complete change of personality from the loveable moptop into a bag wearing peacenik shook people and angered them, so did his marriage to Yoko Ono, an unattractive Japanese woman, so unpalatable to 1960s Britain...why HAD he left that nice blonde Cynthia?
But in fact, the more you study Lennon's life before and during The Beatles, the more obvious it becomes that this was not him losing the plot, but finding it. His youthful distaste for authority was given free rein, a rein it had never truly been allowed in The Beatles, and for better or worse, he used that freedom. When it worked, artistically, it was a beautiful thing. When it didn't, it was like listening to a car crash, but at its core was a very human artist, who was not afraid to act like a human in a world expecting something god-like.
Lennon's humanity, and vulnerability is something that the other Beatles never truly displayed. Harrison was a fiercely private person, who revealed much about his beliefs in some things, and almost nothing about his personal feelings except for occasionally lashing out at those he perceived to have wronged him, specifically McCartney. According to those who know him, and to the man himself, McCartney's approach to public displays of emotion is to avoid them at most, if not all, costs. This dates back to when he lost his mother, Mary, at just 14. Yes, McCartney is still the most publicly active Beatle, and this was true long before Lennon and Harrison died, but how often have we ever really seen him with his guard down? Not that often. Hardly ever, in fact. Ringo's story somehow seems intrinsically less interesting than the others, but then that - I think - is because he is not as complex a character as the others. That's not a slight against him, I hope, but I think it is true.
The fact seems to be, that Lennon was simply not made for the world that brought him up. Desperate to be a hard man, masking his true feelings with either humour, or if alcohol was involved, violence, he fit the cliche of the angry young man that we still see played out on many streets in every city in the country to this day. After all, brought up in Liverpool in the 40s, he cannot have had easy access to the things that would one day bring out his true sense of self. Love, genuine affection, a lack of judgement, and an artistic and creative freedom that somehow, being British simply doesn't allow. But he needed it, and he needed it badly. When it arrived, the outpouring was hard to listen to, but it was a catharsis of massive proportions in Lennon's life - and the aftermath was a joy to behold. He might well have painted himself as the rock and roll force of the band, but in actual fact, that was McCartney. Lennon loved rock and roll because of the escape it offered him, but when he was left to his own devices, he wrote songs of complex emotions, insecurity and longing for love. McCartney wrote these as well, but while the bobbly headed soft balladeer was writing Can’t Buy Me Love, Helter Skelter, Birthday, I’ve Got a Feeling, She’s a Woman, Why Don’t We Do It In the Road, Sgt Pepper, Drive My Car, & I’m Down, to name but a few, Lennon’s writing credits include Julia, Girl, Across The Universe, Ticket To Ride, I’m a Loser, Norwegian Wood, Goodnight, In My Life, Yes It Is, This Boy and If I Fell.
Lennon's lyrics weren't always better than McCartney's (an oft quoted myth that forgets songs like Eleanor Rigby and She's Leaving Home, not to mention Blackbird and Fool on the Hill) but they were infinitely more personal. Across what has become an incredibly varied, and well loved output, McCartney very rarely accesses his own emotions in a raw and unsanitised way. This is why he's become known for mushy ballads - because even a simple declaration of love seemed to need a giant swamping orchestra to dilute it. That's also why people love "Maybe I'm Amazed" so much - it doesn't have that. It is from the heart. This pattern started early - when McCartney wrote a simple and beautiful guitar ballad to a lost love, he still added a string quartet. Lennon wouldn’t have. That’s why Yesterday has been named the most successful song of all time, and why Lennon once said he’d never wished he’d written it.
Lennon, on the other hand, allowed the listener in. His voice, while not the best in the universe, had an incredibly open and vulnerable nature. Listen to him sing "Girl" - I don't know who it's about, and I'm not sure Lennon did - but my god, he sings it to us like a broken man. It's the same on songs like Julia and This Boy. It's emotion at its rawest, and there's something irresistible about it. This tradition continued, and then some, on songs like “Mother” and into his later solo work. It’s still there on his Rock and Roll album of 1975, where Stand By Me and Slippin and Sliding get the full Lennon vocal treatment – you can almost feel the demons come out when he sings. He loved Rock and Roll because it was his only kind of therapy. Listen to the scream that introduces the solo of “Slow Down” or the entire throat tearingly fantastic vocal on “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” – he leaves nothing behind.
Despite that, living at 200 miles an hour wasn’t the real Lennon that he longed to be. In his final interview, given a few hours before his death, his enthusiasm for what he is talking about seemed to reach levels it hadn’t previously. That’s not some crappy nostalgic poignancy talking – it’s actually true. He is articulate, and boundlessly enthusiastic about things without any trace of the anger and bitterness that seemed to occasionally mar his efforts for peace in the early 70s. He had found himself – and he was ready for what was next, or so he thought.
People have often wondered what a music industry with Lennon still alive would be like. Obviously I don’t know. He’s not still alive, so I suppose it’s a redundant idea. That being said, I think it is very noticeable that we don’t have anyone like him now. Lennon was dramatically complex, and publicly so. He wasn’t doing it to appear interesting, as so many others since have done. He was not always a nice guy. In fact, in some ways, it’s generally agreed that Lennon could be an insufferably cruel piece of work. Not just in that “oh, it’s just banter” way either, but in a very real and genuine sense. He seemed to have lost this edge by the time he died, but the John Lennon that roamed the world from 1955 to 1975 was not someone I personally would have wanted much to do with, however good his songs might have been. But for all that, he spoke loudly and well about issues that other pop stars would not have touched with a barge pole. He might not always have been on the money, but he was prepared to walk the walk, not just to talk the talk, and what he said about freedom of religion shortly before he died really shows the kind of mindset that I wish more people had. It’s the quote at the end of this piece, so chosen because in all his lyrics, he never said something that spoke to me more. John Lennon’s death might have left a hole in the world of music, but realistically that hole is nowhere near as big as people make out. But the man we could have had, the elder statesman of music would have been someone worth listening to, I think.
Our loss is one thing. Lennon was a public figure and to many different people, meant many different things. But the real tragedy, to me, still – is that he finally meant something to himself, which had paved the way for the future to be bright. Somebody took something from him that wasn’t theirs to take, something he finally wanted to keep. He was stolen, and he is missed.
RIP Winston O’Boogie.
"The concept is imagining no religion, not imagining no God, although you're entitled to do that too. Imagining no denominations - that we revere Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Krishna, Milarepa equally...we don't have to worship either one if we don't want, but imagine if there was no Catholic v Protestant, no Jew v Christian. Freedom of religion for REAL...would it be so terrible?"
-John Lennon, December 8th, 1980
That being said, a lot of people have commented in the past that at least he had achieved all the great things he was going to achieve in his lifetime, and by that I presume they mean the incredible years as a member of The Beatles - officially the greatest band that this or any other country has ever produced.
But to me, the real sadness of his death is the human side of it. Obviously, I never met John Lennon. I was born two years after his murder, so I never even walked (or crawled) the same earth that he did, but I have read and read about both the man and the band he created over the years and while I would not claim to be an expert, I know my stuff. It seems to me that, finally, after a childhood that, while happy, was not without its deeply traumatic moments, and an adolescence marred by the death of his mother, and taken up with the pace of rock and roll, Hamburg, drugs, sex and becoming a quarter of the biggest phenomenon music had ever known, Lennon had spent a lot of time looking for a real sense of identity. It's clear from reading even the most basic account of his life that he hadn't found it in The Beatles, in his friendship with Paul McCartney or his marriage to Cynthia. It's also clear that he had, in later life, managed to find some semblance of identity. Maybe not peace, but certainly getting there. Listen to his later interviews around the time of Double Fantasy - there's no mistaking it. Then, on December 8th, a mother whose 5 year old son was waiting upstairs had to watch her husband murdered in their own front yard. There's no escaping just how tragic it was.
I wonder sometimes why Lennon and The Beatles still hold such a hypnotic effect on the world's media, and the fans of their music. I am fairly publicly a huge Beatles fan, but they're by no means the only band I like, or the only type of music I adore. And yet, above every other, they have fascinated me for my entire life, and I predict they will continue to for many years to come. I wonder why it is. On some level, it's obvious - their story was a wonderful one, childhood friends who pulled together and struck gold by happening to be incredible songwriters and performers. Not only that, but it had a tragic element, like all good stories do. A sad inevitability that familiarity began to breed contempt and soon enough, what had once existed no longer did, and seperate ways were gone. I also think it's fantastic that they never got back together. Of course, it has been impossible since 1980 that they would, but you have to say - with the possible exception of Take That, bands that get back together very rarely hit the same heights that brought them the army of fans they were destined to disappoint in later years. The memory of The Beatles is forever young, and forever golden. They released some awful songs in their time, but they went out on a high and they never came down.
But the individual personalities of the group have always been the glue that held the magic, to me. I don't think I'm alone, either. Look at the media coverage of Paul McCartney's third wedding today, or the fuss being made about Martin Scorcese and his desire to bring the life of "the third Beatle" to the screen. Three and a half hours, the film is, and people are flocking for it.
Ironically, it wasn't until AFTER the Beatles split up that the real personalities of the four began to manifest. McCartney, so often painted as the cute, friendly, soft, bobby headed one, began to get a reputation for hard nosed business dealings and insufferable perfectionism that made him sound impossible to work with. Harrison, the "quiet" Beatle was the first to produce a "great" solo album, and in my opinion, the only one to actually produce an actually great solo album until McCartney's "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard" in 2004. Ringo Starr, so often relegated to "punchline and sympathy vote" status, got taken seriously as an actor, had a solo number one single and album before any of the rest of them, and was re-evaluated into one of rock's greatest drummers for his musical intelligence and subtle brilliance. Lennon, though, really shocked people. His apparent complete change of personality from the loveable moptop into a bag wearing peacenik shook people and angered them, so did his marriage to Yoko Ono, an unattractive Japanese woman, so unpalatable to 1960s Britain...why HAD he left that nice blonde Cynthia?
But in fact, the more you study Lennon's life before and during The Beatles, the more obvious it becomes that this was not him losing the plot, but finding it. His youthful distaste for authority was given free rein, a rein it had never truly been allowed in The Beatles, and for better or worse, he used that freedom. When it worked, artistically, it was a beautiful thing. When it didn't, it was like listening to a car crash, but at its core was a very human artist, who was not afraid to act like a human in a world expecting something god-like.
Lennon's humanity, and vulnerability is something that the other Beatles never truly displayed. Harrison was a fiercely private person, who revealed much about his beliefs in some things, and almost nothing about his personal feelings except for occasionally lashing out at those he perceived to have wronged him, specifically McCartney. According to those who know him, and to the man himself, McCartney's approach to public displays of emotion is to avoid them at most, if not all, costs. This dates back to when he lost his mother, Mary, at just 14. Yes, McCartney is still the most publicly active Beatle, and this was true long before Lennon and Harrison died, but how often have we ever really seen him with his guard down? Not that often. Hardly ever, in fact. Ringo's story somehow seems intrinsically less interesting than the others, but then that - I think - is because he is not as complex a character as the others. That's not a slight against him, I hope, but I think it is true.
The fact seems to be, that Lennon was simply not made for the world that brought him up. Desperate to be a hard man, masking his true feelings with either humour, or if alcohol was involved, violence, he fit the cliche of the angry young man that we still see played out on many streets in every city in the country to this day. After all, brought up in Liverpool in the 40s, he cannot have had easy access to the things that would one day bring out his true sense of self. Love, genuine affection, a lack of judgement, and an artistic and creative freedom that somehow, being British simply doesn't allow. But he needed it, and he needed it badly. When it arrived, the outpouring was hard to listen to, but it was a catharsis of massive proportions in Lennon's life - and the aftermath was a joy to behold. He might well have painted himself as the rock and roll force of the band, but in actual fact, that was McCartney. Lennon loved rock and roll because of the escape it offered him, but when he was left to his own devices, he wrote songs of complex emotions, insecurity and longing for love. McCartney wrote these as well, but while the bobbly headed soft balladeer was writing Can’t Buy Me Love, Helter Skelter, Birthday, I’ve Got a Feeling, She’s a Woman, Why Don’t We Do It In the Road, Sgt Pepper, Drive My Car, & I’m Down, to name but a few, Lennon’s writing credits include Julia, Girl, Across The Universe, Ticket To Ride, I’m a Loser, Norwegian Wood, Goodnight, In My Life, Yes It Is, This Boy and If I Fell.
Lennon's lyrics weren't always better than McCartney's (an oft quoted myth that forgets songs like Eleanor Rigby and She's Leaving Home, not to mention Blackbird and Fool on the Hill) but they were infinitely more personal. Across what has become an incredibly varied, and well loved output, McCartney very rarely accesses his own emotions in a raw and unsanitised way. This is why he's become known for mushy ballads - because even a simple declaration of love seemed to need a giant swamping orchestra to dilute it. That's also why people love "Maybe I'm Amazed" so much - it doesn't have that. It is from the heart. This pattern started early - when McCartney wrote a simple and beautiful guitar ballad to a lost love, he still added a string quartet. Lennon wouldn’t have. That’s why Yesterday has been named the most successful song of all time, and why Lennon once said he’d never wished he’d written it.
Lennon, on the other hand, allowed the listener in. His voice, while not the best in the universe, had an incredibly open and vulnerable nature. Listen to him sing "Girl" - I don't know who it's about, and I'm not sure Lennon did - but my god, he sings it to us like a broken man. It's the same on songs like Julia and This Boy. It's emotion at its rawest, and there's something irresistible about it. This tradition continued, and then some, on songs like “Mother” and into his later solo work. It’s still there on his Rock and Roll album of 1975, where Stand By Me and Slippin and Sliding get the full Lennon vocal treatment – you can almost feel the demons come out when he sings. He loved Rock and Roll because it was his only kind of therapy. Listen to the scream that introduces the solo of “Slow Down” or the entire throat tearingly fantastic vocal on “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” – he leaves nothing behind.
Despite that, living at 200 miles an hour wasn’t the real Lennon that he longed to be. In his final interview, given a few hours before his death, his enthusiasm for what he is talking about seemed to reach levels it hadn’t previously. That’s not some crappy nostalgic poignancy talking – it’s actually true. He is articulate, and boundlessly enthusiastic about things without any trace of the anger and bitterness that seemed to occasionally mar his efforts for peace in the early 70s. He had found himself – and he was ready for what was next, or so he thought.
People have often wondered what a music industry with Lennon still alive would be like. Obviously I don’t know. He’s not still alive, so I suppose it’s a redundant idea. That being said, I think it is very noticeable that we don’t have anyone like him now. Lennon was dramatically complex, and publicly so. He wasn’t doing it to appear interesting, as so many others since have done. He was not always a nice guy. In fact, in some ways, it’s generally agreed that Lennon could be an insufferably cruel piece of work. Not just in that “oh, it’s just banter” way either, but in a very real and genuine sense. He seemed to have lost this edge by the time he died, but the John Lennon that roamed the world from 1955 to 1975 was not someone I personally would have wanted much to do with, however good his songs might have been. But for all that, he spoke loudly and well about issues that other pop stars would not have touched with a barge pole. He might not always have been on the money, but he was prepared to walk the walk, not just to talk the talk, and what he said about freedom of religion shortly before he died really shows the kind of mindset that I wish more people had. It’s the quote at the end of this piece, so chosen because in all his lyrics, he never said something that spoke to me more. John Lennon’s death might have left a hole in the world of music, but realistically that hole is nowhere near as big as people make out. But the man we could have had, the elder statesman of music would have been someone worth listening to, I think.
Our loss is one thing. Lennon was a public figure and to many different people, meant many different things. But the real tragedy, to me, still – is that he finally meant something to himself, which had paved the way for the future to be bright. Somebody took something from him that wasn’t theirs to take, something he finally wanted to keep. He was stolen, and he is missed.
RIP Winston O’Boogie.
"The concept is imagining no religion, not imagining no God, although you're entitled to do that too. Imagining no denominations - that we revere Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Krishna, Milarepa equally...we don't have to worship either one if we don't want, but imagine if there was no Catholic v Protestant, no Jew v Christian. Freedom of religion for REAL...would it be so terrible?"
-John Lennon, December 8th, 1980
Saturday 10 September 2011
Summer Holliblog Part II
Recording things “properly”
It’s difficult to know what to write when coming to the subject of how to record things “properly” after having blogged about the amateurish, and yet satisfying and sort of “Aw, gee Ma” feeling of recording at home. The main reason for this is, well, it’s kinda boring. Don’t get me wrong, it has a lot of merit, especially when doing it with a good mate doing all the producing, and thank god I have one, but in actual fact, there’s a cleanliness and surgical feel to it which does take away some of the manual dexterity, reaching in and getting your hands dirty air of my old style of recordage.
Like I mentioned before, there’s something about the feeling of having to play every last keystroke yourself that gives it a real home-made and idiosyncratic feel. For example, on the demo of one of the new songs, “Tori”, there’s a drum pattern that I played in live myself. Not on the drums, but on the drum synth on my keyboard. Now, the bad thing is that I had to play it over and over again until I got it basically right, and it wasn’t programmed with clinical fidelity to the beat. Despite being good at music, and having a fairly accurate sense of both rhythm and time signatures, I’m not always absolutely bang on. But, I’m good enough for it to be good enough, you know? By the fifth or sixth time of playing it in, there were a couple of mistakes, but they were very “background” and in fact, the odd mis-hit cymbal strike or slightly out of time snare roll added something individual and quirky to the song without spoiling its overall aesthetic. When we came to record it “for real”, it was much quicker to do the drums. I said to Paul, “basically mate, it goes ‘boom-boom-ching’ and there’s a kind of ‘pish-fsss-pish-fssss” in the hi-hat, and it goes right through it.” Paul clicked a few buttons, and bang, there we were. Of course, this wasn’t right. I mean, it was, but I missed those little personal touches that made it sound less like a programmed pattern, and more like a real person was playing it. So, we got to work putting them in, but of course it’s quite hard to recreate something spontaneous and still make it sound spontaneous. This was a problem we fought quite a bit, and I’m pretty happy that we overcame it in the end, but it wasn’t easy and of course, the more and more you work on something “spontaneous”, the less and less spontaneous it both sounds, and basically is.
Overproduction is a real problem if you want to make fun sounding records. The Eagles struggled badly with this on “Hotel California” – something I touched on in an earlier blog – and I was extremely keen to avoid it on this album. Of course I wanted it to sound more professional than my home recordings do, but at the same time I didn’t want everything to be so clinical that there was no personality left in it. With this in mind, I purposefully tried to limit the number of takes I would do on any given part, and occasionally left mistakes in (so long as they weren’t big ones, obviously) to keep a sense of enjoyment to it all. I’m really proud that this has worked, because at no point of any song do the mistakes sound like mistakes to the untrained ear. Well, I say untrained, I mean “ears that aren’t mine or Paul’s.” The drums, though, are another kettle of fish. You can’t make mistakes on a drum track that you’ve programmed in, so you have to put them in on purpose, which surely defeats the entire point of it, n’est pas? To avoid this, and give a sense of freedom and occasional randomness to the percussion tracks, we would leave bars that needed a drum fill in, and I would instruct Paul to simply click on whatever note he wanted for x number of beats, to make the fill genuinely random and completely mental in some cases. The song “Talk No More” is a perfect example of this, I absolutely love the drum fills on it, probably more than any other song on the album, because we did them ourselves and they are done at random and for fun.
You have to pick the things you’re going to take seriously in life. Personally, there’s nothing I take more seriously than producing music of which I can be proud. That being said, there’s nothing I’m prouder of than my strict belief that you should take being silly and having fun extremely seriously. So, when we’re sat around discussing what best to use for a solo on a track, I believe firmly in looking up the requisite instruments for a symphony orchestra on my phone, and picking the one that feels the most random. In this case, a xylophone. How often do you hear xylophones on pop records these days? Like anything in my life, when I want it done a certain way, it has to be that way or I will get cross and probably throw a strop, BUT if I don’t have an extremely specific vision in my head of what I want, then what I want is something interesting, something different, something that I haven’t done two hundred times before. This is why I like writing songs more than I like videogames. Once you’ve played Fifa once, let’s be honest, you’ve played it a million times. Not that it doesn’t have its place, but it’s not the same as writing a xylophone solo, or even discussing whether or not it would go well with a flugelhorn counter melody.
This, though, brings its own problem. It’s not really a problem, or at least it wouldn’t be if music was my actual job. But, as it’s not, it does throw up something of a conundrum. Now, my keyboard at home has a set number of instrument synths on it. For example, it’s got about 6 drumkits, 3 different good piano sounds, and some other things. At any rate, they have a finite, and usually single-digit number of options available. If you can’t find the sound you want, tough shit. Use what you’ve got, or don’t use anything. Yes, it can be limiting, but at least you know what you’re working with. But, on the professional equipment that Paul uses, they have data banks that just list thousands of options. For example, Paul has access to over 6GB of piano sounds. That’s just outrageous. For drums, you can select each individual drum and cymbal from about 4 different kits, and then you have the choice of probably 200 different drum patterns, each with about 15-20 fills attached that you can choose from. On guitars, there are maybe 25-30 amp/pedal setups you could use in differing configurations and the differences are often subtle but undoubtedly there. So, when I wander in and say “I want a piano and a guitar”, I think that’s easy, because when I want that at home, I know what it’s going to sound like. But it’s a very different story when recording “properly”, because now a whole world of choice is opened up to me. While that’s creatively very rewarding, and we have come up with some really good sounds because of it, it also means that you can spend an hour and a half finding a cymbal sound you’re happy with. Too much choice sometimes feels like a bad thing! And, like I say, if I had nothing else to do but scroll through the cymbal noises to pick the one I wanted, then that would be a bit easier, but I’m just not used to that kind of choice on my kind of time budget. I’m hoping that the next album will have a much more varied and interesting sonic landscape, but I’m not promising anything, because I’m just not sure that part of my personality can bear the thought of scrolling through 40 electric guitar sounds finding the one that’s just right.
BUT, there are benefits to recording this new way that outweigh any negatives by about 200 to 1. First and foremost, I HATE producing. Playing things is what I do. I can’t produce anyway, I can just about shine it up so it doesn’t sound too turgid, but it’s never been my strong point. I’ve recorded countless songs that are good, but sound terrible. Now I have someone else to do that bit for me. Not only that, but he’s a great mate, so when we’ve worked on something for a while and need a break, we can watch TV, or play video games, or basically have a laugh to break up the monotony of playing the same bass line 6 times. ALSO, he’s not only a great mate, he’s a great producer. He has the crucial things that any good producer would need. He’s brilliant, for a start, and makes it sound like a proper musician recorded it, and not just me. He has real patience with his artist and an extremely keen ear and eye for finding the right sound at the right moment. I’m no good with sounds. I have come to him and said things like, “I want the top piano thingy bit to sort of twinkle a bit, sort of on top but like a sort of icing on a cake thing.” This is akin to basically being retarded. However, Paul has – either through instinct or trial and error, found what I was looking for. He’s also very musical, so we can discuss at length the appropriate depth of string quartet or arrangement of guitars, or dynamics for a ride cymbal, or tambourine patterns. This is crucial, as I’ve always believed that any artist needs to be reined in sometimes in order to produce their best work. There’s no better example of this, in my opinion, than Paul McCartney. Now, I’m not the songwriter that McCartney is, for sure, but the rules still apply. How many bands can you think of that produced their most focused, artistically interesting work earlier in their career when they had someone at the helm to just curb the furthest reaches of their whims? Queen are a great example, if you compare “Sheer Heart Attack” with “A Kind of Magic” or “The Miracle”, the relative artistic merit of the two albums is clear. The Beatles don’t fit this mould, but then they didn’t fit many moulds, and even then – they still produced much better, more focused work when under the tutelage of George Martin. Listen to Revolver, Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road (which Martin produced) vs The White Album and Let It Be (which he didn’t) – it’s a clear demonstration of the importance of a good producer.
Secondly, if I mess something up (which you might recall me saying I do, a lot) then I don’t have to re-do the entire thing. I can start from where I went wrong, and it still sounds like a smooth take and while I do consider it cheating, I also know that I’m someone who gets very angry with himself if he has to play something more than twice. It’s an ego thing, I think. Well, let’s be honest, it’s a definite ego thing. And a lack of patience. Both things I’ve struggled with my entire life, but have decided recently to just give in to. I think I must be inspired by some of the kids I teach. After all, if you’re not great at something (in my case, being patient, not having a big ego, and many other things) why not just say “screw it,” and give up? Score.
Anyway, that’s a bit of an insight into how we’ve recorded this album. It’s been a lot of fun, given how fraught recording sessions can often get, I think we’ve not only produced a really good piece of work, but also stayed friends throughout! Well, I say that, I still like Paul but I wouldn’t bet the farm on him still liking me! There are one or two songs on there that we really went through the mill for, basically involving me saying a lot of things like, “Well, it’s still not right, but then I don’t really know what I want it to sound like.” Which is not, let’s face it, even slightly helpful. But we got there, somehow! I can’t wait to release it, I’m so SO proud of what we’ve done together, I just hope people like it now! But then, by the same token, I don’t care all that much. That will be the next blog though, I’m tired now.
Px
It’s difficult to know what to write when coming to the subject of how to record things “properly” after having blogged about the amateurish, and yet satisfying and sort of “Aw, gee Ma” feeling of recording at home. The main reason for this is, well, it’s kinda boring. Don’t get me wrong, it has a lot of merit, especially when doing it with a good mate doing all the producing, and thank god I have one, but in actual fact, there’s a cleanliness and surgical feel to it which does take away some of the manual dexterity, reaching in and getting your hands dirty air of my old style of recordage.
Like I mentioned before, there’s something about the feeling of having to play every last keystroke yourself that gives it a real home-made and idiosyncratic feel. For example, on the demo of one of the new songs, “Tori”, there’s a drum pattern that I played in live myself. Not on the drums, but on the drum synth on my keyboard. Now, the bad thing is that I had to play it over and over again until I got it basically right, and it wasn’t programmed with clinical fidelity to the beat. Despite being good at music, and having a fairly accurate sense of both rhythm and time signatures, I’m not always absolutely bang on. But, I’m good enough for it to be good enough, you know? By the fifth or sixth time of playing it in, there were a couple of mistakes, but they were very “background” and in fact, the odd mis-hit cymbal strike or slightly out of time snare roll added something individual and quirky to the song without spoiling its overall aesthetic. When we came to record it “for real”, it was much quicker to do the drums. I said to Paul, “basically mate, it goes ‘boom-boom-ching’ and there’s a kind of ‘pish-fsss-pish-fssss” in the hi-hat, and it goes right through it.” Paul clicked a few buttons, and bang, there we were. Of course, this wasn’t right. I mean, it was, but I missed those little personal touches that made it sound less like a programmed pattern, and more like a real person was playing it. So, we got to work putting them in, but of course it’s quite hard to recreate something spontaneous and still make it sound spontaneous. This was a problem we fought quite a bit, and I’m pretty happy that we overcame it in the end, but it wasn’t easy and of course, the more and more you work on something “spontaneous”, the less and less spontaneous it both sounds, and basically is.
Overproduction is a real problem if you want to make fun sounding records. The Eagles struggled badly with this on “Hotel California” – something I touched on in an earlier blog – and I was extremely keen to avoid it on this album. Of course I wanted it to sound more professional than my home recordings do, but at the same time I didn’t want everything to be so clinical that there was no personality left in it. With this in mind, I purposefully tried to limit the number of takes I would do on any given part, and occasionally left mistakes in (so long as they weren’t big ones, obviously) to keep a sense of enjoyment to it all. I’m really proud that this has worked, because at no point of any song do the mistakes sound like mistakes to the untrained ear. Well, I say untrained, I mean “ears that aren’t mine or Paul’s.” The drums, though, are another kettle of fish. You can’t make mistakes on a drum track that you’ve programmed in, so you have to put them in on purpose, which surely defeats the entire point of it, n’est pas? To avoid this, and give a sense of freedom and occasional randomness to the percussion tracks, we would leave bars that needed a drum fill in, and I would instruct Paul to simply click on whatever note he wanted for x number of beats, to make the fill genuinely random and completely mental in some cases. The song “Talk No More” is a perfect example of this, I absolutely love the drum fills on it, probably more than any other song on the album, because we did them ourselves and they are done at random and for fun.
You have to pick the things you’re going to take seriously in life. Personally, there’s nothing I take more seriously than producing music of which I can be proud. That being said, there’s nothing I’m prouder of than my strict belief that you should take being silly and having fun extremely seriously. So, when we’re sat around discussing what best to use for a solo on a track, I believe firmly in looking up the requisite instruments for a symphony orchestra on my phone, and picking the one that feels the most random. In this case, a xylophone. How often do you hear xylophones on pop records these days? Like anything in my life, when I want it done a certain way, it has to be that way or I will get cross and probably throw a strop, BUT if I don’t have an extremely specific vision in my head of what I want, then what I want is something interesting, something different, something that I haven’t done two hundred times before. This is why I like writing songs more than I like videogames. Once you’ve played Fifa once, let’s be honest, you’ve played it a million times. Not that it doesn’t have its place, but it’s not the same as writing a xylophone solo, or even discussing whether or not it would go well with a flugelhorn counter melody.
This, though, brings its own problem. It’s not really a problem, or at least it wouldn’t be if music was my actual job. But, as it’s not, it does throw up something of a conundrum. Now, my keyboard at home has a set number of instrument synths on it. For example, it’s got about 6 drumkits, 3 different good piano sounds, and some other things. At any rate, they have a finite, and usually single-digit number of options available. If you can’t find the sound you want, tough shit. Use what you’ve got, or don’t use anything. Yes, it can be limiting, but at least you know what you’re working with. But, on the professional equipment that Paul uses, they have data banks that just list thousands of options. For example, Paul has access to over 6GB of piano sounds. That’s just outrageous. For drums, you can select each individual drum and cymbal from about 4 different kits, and then you have the choice of probably 200 different drum patterns, each with about 15-20 fills attached that you can choose from. On guitars, there are maybe 25-30 amp/pedal setups you could use in differing configurations and the differences are often subtle but undoubtedly there. So, when I wander in and say “I want a piano and a guitar”, I think that’s easy, because when I want that at home, I know what it’s going to sound like. But it’s a very different story when recording “properly”, because now a whole world of choice is opened up to me. While that’s creatively very rewarding, and we have come up with some really good sounds because of it, it also means that you can spend an hour and a half finding a cymbal sound you’re happy with. Too much choice sometimes feels like a bad thing! And, like I say, if I had nothing else to do but scroll through the cymbal noises to pick the one I wanted, then that would be a bit easier, but I’m just not used to that kind of choice on my kind of time budget. I’m hoping that the next album will have a much more varied and interesting sonic landscape, but I’m not promising anything, because I’m just not sure that part of my personality can bear the thought of scrolling through 40 electric guitar sounds finding the one that’s just right.
BUT, there are benefits to recording this new way that outweigh any negatives by about 200 to 1. First and foremost, I HATE producing. Playing things is what I do. I can’t produce anyway, I can just about shine it up so it doesn’t sound too turgid, but it’s never been my strong point. I’ve recorded countless songs that are good, but sound terrible. Now I have someone else to do that bit for me. Not only that, but he’s a great mate, so when we’ve worked on something for a while and need a break, we can watch TV, or play video games, or basically have a laugh to break up the monotony of playing the same bass line 6 times. ALSO, he’s not only a great mate, he’s a great producer. He has the crucial things that any good producer would need. He’s brilliant, for a start, and makes it sound like a proper musician recorded it, and not just me. He has real patience with his artist and an extremely keen ear and eye for finding the right sound at the right moment. I’m no good with sounds. I have come to him and said things like, “I want the top piano thingy bit to sort of twinkle a bit, sort of on top but like a sort of icing on a cake thing.” This is akin to basically being retarded. However, Paul has – either through instinct or trial and error, found what I was looking for. He’s also very musical, so we can discuss at length the appropriate depth of string quartet or arrangement of guitars, or dynamics for a ride cymbal, or tambourine patterns. This is crucial, as I’ve always believed that any artist needs to be reined in sometimes in order to produce their best work. There’s no better example of this, in my opinion, than Paul McCartney. Now, I’m not the songwriter that McCartney is, for sure, but the rules still apply. How many bands can you think of that produced their most focused, artistically interesting work earlier in their career when they had someone at the helm to just curb the furthest reaches of their whims? Queen are a great example, if you compare “Sheer Heart Attack” with “A Kind of Magic” or “The Miracle”, the relative artistic merit of the two albums is clear. The Beatles don’t fit this mould, but then they didn’t fit many moulds, and even then – they still produced much better, more focused work when under the tutelage of George Martin. Listen to Revolver, Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road (which Martin produced) vs The White Album and Let It Be (which he didn’t) – it’s a clear demonstration of the importance of a good producer.
Secondly, if I mess something up (which you might recall me saying I do, a lot) then I don’t have to re-do the entire thing. I can start from where I went wrong, and it still sounds like a smooth take and while I do consider it cheating, I also know that I’m someone who gets very angry with himself if he has to play something more than twice. It’s an ego thing, I think. Well, let’s be honest, it’s a definite ego thing. And a lack of patience. Both things I’ve struggled with my entire life, but have decided recently to just give in to. I think I must be inspired by some of the kids I teach. After all, if you’re not great at something (in my case, being patient, not having a big ego, and many other things) why not just say “screw it,” and give up? Score.
Anyway, that’s a bit of an insight into how we’ve recorded this album. It’s been a lot of fun, given how fraught recording sessions can often get, I think we’ve not only produced a really good piece of work, but also stayed friends throughout! Well, I say that, I still like Paul but I wouldn’t bet the farm on him still liking me! There are one or two songs on there that we really went through the mill for, basically involving me saying a lot of things like, “Well, it’s still not right, but then I don’t really know what I want it to sound like.” Which is not, let’s face it, even slightly helpful. But we got there, somehow! I can’t wait to release it, I’m so SO proud of what we’ve done together, I just hope people like it now! But then, by the same token, I don’t care all that much. That will be the next blog though, I’m tired now.
Px
Sunday 14 August 2011
The Actor's Studio questions
Please feel free to answer the questions yourself - would be interested in hearing your thoughts!
1. What is your favorite word?
Beautiful
2. What is your least favorite word?
Fail.
3. What turns you on?
Intelligence, inquisitiveness, a sense of inner stupidity.
4. What turns you off?
Business jargon. Hypocrisy
5. What sound do you love?
The sound of no inhibitions. Sarah laughing, Long Tall Sally by the Beatles are good examples.
6. What sound do you hate?
People being stupid. People talking without saying anything.
7. What is your favorite curse word?
Bastard.
8. What profession other than yours would you like to attempt?
Actor. I'd love to be a good actor, good enough to do it as a job.
9. What profession would you not like to do?
Something that didn't challenge me in any way.
10. If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?
"You did alright, kid."
1. What is your favorite word?
Beautiful
2. What is your least favorite word?
Fail.
3. What turns you on?
Intelligence, inquisitiveness, a sense of inner stupidity.
4. What turns you off?
Business jargon. Hypocrisy
5. What sound do you love?
The sound of no inhibitions. Sarah laughing, Long Tall Sally by the Beatles are good examples.
6. What sound do you hate?
People being stupid. People talking without saying anything.
7. What is your favorite curse word?
Bastard.
8. What profession other than yours would you like to attempt?
Actor. I'd love to be a good actor, good enough to do it as a job.
9. What profession would you not like to do?
Something that didn't challenge me in any way.
10. If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?
"You did alright, kid."
Wednesday 3 August 2011
A Summer Holi-blog
I'm recording a new album at the moment.
My musical "career" thus far has been recording albums of varying production quality (from pretty bad to really really bad). I've always been incredibly proud of them, and still am to this day, as I feel some of the songs on there are good songs, but there's no denying they all sound like they were recorded by an amateur in his bedroom, which is exactly what they are/were.
So, now, a good friend of mine who knows his way around professional sounding things is helping me record my new collection of songs, and I thought I would blog about the process. And I thought I would start with a quick review of the wonder of recording at home.
The process is long and laborious. The process of recording professionally is also long and laborious, but for different reasons. When you're recording at home, there's just you on your own, and so you have to play everything. That's fine, except it has two major downfalls. Firstly, this is dependant on you being able to play everything. I can't. I can play a lot of stuff, and I'm chuffed that I can, but I can't play everything. So I need a synthesiser, and I don't have a good one, so fundamentally if I want to have drums/strings/something that isn't a guitar or a piano or a bass on a song, it's going to sound fairly crap. That's disappointing because it limits my horizon a bit. I might want to branch out, but I can't. Fair enough.
The other major downfall is that if you're in a band, a 4 minute song playing 2 guitars, drums and bass can be done in 4 minutes. If you're on your own, it takes 4 times as long. If you want three part harmony, and there are three of you, you can do it in one take. If there's one, it takes three takes. Then, of course, there are the multiple takes.
Just to be clear, nobody has ever recorded anything in one take EVER. Ok, they probably have, but I haven't. This is not because I am constantly striving for perfection; although I have high standards, I occasionally say "well, that'll do" when it's a background guitar part that isn't too important. The reason I haven't ever recorded anything in one take is because I mess it up, all the time. Of course I do, it's human, right? When you've written a song that lasts 4 minutes or so, playing it through to a decent standard is probably going to include one or two mistakes.
That, in itself, isn't a surprise. The problem then becomes that you have to start again. When you record professionally, if you play a verse really well, you can duplicate it three times over for every other verse. Admittedly, it's cheating, but hell, there you go. But on my own, I can play 3 minutes and 59 seconds absolutely perfectly but if I mess up a single second (which I do, all the time) then I have to play all 4 minutes again. So, time becomes an issue. So does boredom. You should have seen Paul's face (Paul's the producer friend of mine who is a bloody genius) when I told him that when I do a cowbell or tambourine part I have to do the whole thing. Paul can do 20 minutes of perfectly in-time cowbell in about 35 seconds...it would take me 20 minutes of constantly pressing the "cowbell" button on my keyboard. Urgh.
Then you overlay things, so you stick tracks on top of one another, mix them, add effects, all that stuff - I've boiled it down because it's so boring, but eventually you call it a day and you have a song! And you know the best bit about it all is that you have complete creative control. I don't have a record company saying I need to write x kind of song or try y chord change, and it's freeing. Hugely so.
So, the end result is that you work very hard, and get a sound that isn't very polished but does have a kind of "rough around the edges, spit and grit" feel to it. Every minute of song usually takes about 80 minutes of work. It's a tremendously pleasing feeling, and honestly when I've put together a selection of songs, be it a simple 12 songs that are unrelated like last year, or a 90 minute concept album about youth, childhood, growing up, fear and responsibility like on "Celestial Navigation", I just feel like the King of the World.
BUT, for all that, if I ever want people to listen to these songs and take them seriously, I have to make them sound like "proper" songs. Hopefully recording this new set will bring that about, and people will enjoy them. It's a very different process though! Will blog about that later.
Thanks
Paulo
x
My musical "career" thus far has been recording albums of varying production quality (from pretty bad to really really bad). I've always been incredibly proud of them, and still am to this day, as I feel some of the songs on there are good songs, but there's no denying they all sound like they were recorded by an amateur in his bedroom, which is exactly what they are/were.
So, now, a good friend of mine who knows his way around professional sounding things is helping me record my new collection of songs, and I thought I would blog about the process. And I thought I would start with a quick review of the wonder of recording at home.
The process is long and laborious. The process of recording professionally is also long and laborious, but for different reasons. When you're recording at home, there's just you on your own, and so you have to play everything. That's fine, except it has two major downfalls. Firstly, this is dependant on you being able to play everything. I can't. I can play a lot of stuff, and I'm chuffed that I can, but I can't play everything. So I need a synthesiser, and I don't have a good one, so fundamentally if I want to have drums/strings/something that isn't a guitar or a piano or a bass on a song, it's going to sound fairly crap. That's disappointing because it limits my horizon a bit. I might want to branch out, but I can't. Fair enough.
The other major downfall is that if you're in a band, a 4 minute song playing 2 guitars, drums and bass can be done in 4 minutes. If you're on your own, it takes 4 times as long. If you want three part harmony, and there are three of you, you can do it in one take. If there's one, it takes three takes. Then, of course, there are the multiple takes.
Just to be clear, nobody has ever recorded anything in one take EVER. Ok, they probably have, but I haven't. This is not because I am constantly striving for perfection; although I have high standards, I occasionally say "well, that'll do" when it's a background guitar part that isn't too important. The reason I haven't ever recorded anything in one take is because I mess it up, all the time. Of course I do, it's human, right? When you've written a song that lasts 4 minutes or so, playing it through to a decent standard is probably going to include one or two mistakes.
That, in itself, isn't a surprise. The problem then becomes that you have to start again. When you record professionally, if you play a verse really well, you can duplicate it three times over for every other verse. Admittedly, it's cheating, but hell, there you go. But on my own, I can play 3 minutes and 59 seconds absolutely perfectly but if I mess up a single second (which I do, all the time) then I have to play all 4 minutes again. So, time becomes an issue. So does boredom. You should have seen Paul's face (Paul's the producer friend of mine who is a bloody genius) when I told him that when I do a cowbell or tambourine part I have to do the whole thing. Paul can do 20 minutes of perfectly in-time cowbell in about 35 seconds...it would take me 20 minutes of constantly pressing the "cowbell" button on my keyboard. Urgh.
Then you overlay things, so you stick tracks on top of one another, mix them, add effects, all that stuff - I've boiled it down because it's so boring, but eventually you call it a day and you have a song! And you know the best bit about it all is that you have complete creative control. I don't have a record company saying I need to write x kind of song or try y chord change, and it's freeing. Hugely so.
So, the end result is that you work very hard, and get a sound that isn't very polished but does have a kind of "rough around the edges, spit and grit" feel to it. Every minute of song usually takes about 80 minutes of work. It's a tremendously pleasing feeling, and honestly when I've put together a selection of songs, be it a simple 12 songs that are unrelated like last year, or a 90 minute concept album about youth, childhood, growing up, fear and responsibility like on "Celestial Navigation", I just feel like the King of the World.
BUT, for all that, if I ever want people to listen to these songs and take them seriously, I have to make them sound like "proper" songs. Hopefully recording this new set will bring that about, and people will enjoy them. It's a very different process though! Will blog about that later.
Thanks
Paulo
x
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