Freak

Technology! I am sure it’s going to be the death of me. I have almost certainly racked up more stress hours in front of my PC and synth than in any other place in my life.

Just when you think it is safe to go back into the studio, it all changes again. ME to XP, XP to Vista, and now, Vista to 7. No! I am not going there, getting Vista upgrades has been bad enough, I will tolerate no more.

I am in the process of redesigning my set-up before I have even begun because of Vista compatibility issues. Out goes my CMI PC interface and PC-200 keyboard, because of those darned latency / compatibility problems, and in comes an Edirol sound interface unit and using the Juno G as the mother board.

Back when it was a mono synth, a beat box, and a Tascam 244, the only thing we had to worry about was background hiss and putting the tape in the right way up.
So not all progress is good, and I am of an age now where simple bugs can seem like giant monsters. But I will get there even if the budget has taken another £70 hit, and one day soon I might just start making some music again.

So what have I been inspired by today. Well sadly I looked up one of Heaven 17’s less know albums on Spotify and got totally hooked. This one came along quite a while after they had been mega famous, and almost slipped under the radar. It has all their classic licks and touches, but now with a maturity I hadn’t heard from them before. The album is called ‘Bigger than America’ and is quite anti ‘that great continent’ in a lot of places, but hey its music not politics so what do I care?

Track of the day is ‘Freak’, best played loud and fast at the end of a hard day in work, with the windows down and the shades on, and a finger proudly flipped at my place of employment. This track is H17 at their best, full on, silly lyric, and brilliantly put together, and dare I say it, it knocks spots off ‘Temptation’

New In Town

Just a quick entry to say my daughter finally read the book I wrote for her.

Rather amazingly she didn't put it down once she had started, it took her a fair few hours but she finished it all in one day.

Initially she didn't believe I had written it (compliment or shame?). I was so nervous about how she felt about it, I had invested over three years into this just for her.

Her response was flattering, but I am used to taking pinches of salt with appraisals from the nearest and dearest.

What really gives me a buzz is the fact that she now keeps talking about it, like she had just watched a film (she also asked if it could be made into one, which is cool). And she remembers so much of it.

Time to find an agent maybe, no rush though, other fish to fry, original intention has been realised.

In honour of Holly the song for today is one we both love.

Perfect modern pop pulp..... 'New in Town' by Little Boots is infectious and bouncy with a respectable dollop of synths.

Classic!!!!

Me Fui

So it's Friday again and I though I would spend a moment to try and at least get one blog entry completed for this month.

Lots of weird stuff happening around the world at the moment, a reason why I am so keen to lose myself in Sci-fantasy and the silliness that is TV. I have been in admiration of Russell T Davies’s writing this week and it spurs me on to get my own efforts to a publisher to at least give them a chance of a public airing (otherwise I will never know).

Music has been brilliant over the past few weeks, getting well into Little Boots, La Roux and Robyn. Not forgetting to visit some old fogies along the way. A-Ha’s Analogue album being one fine example of that. It’s a good time to fill my head with new sounds to try and cleanse my pallet before I start to cook again.

THIS PARAGRAPH IS FOR MUSIC NERDS ONLY !!!!!

To the Tascam generation I give you a nerdy rundown of how I have set up my new studio. So the beating heart is fabulous Juno G (as a writing tool), squeezed through a CMI – 106L sound card interface to my lap top. Sound output is handled either by my Cambridge Soundworks monitor speakers, or though my Sennheiser head phones. I have a Roland PC200 as a Midi controller for the soft synths and a Korg Toneworks AX3G for passing my Crafter 6 string guitar through prior to the laptop. Vocals handled by a T-Bone GM55 mic through a Behringer MIC800 Modeling Preamp. The laptop uses Sony Acid 7.0 Pro and Soundforge 9.0 for music production / recording / sequencing, and a very carefully chosen set of soft synths to back up the Juno comprising KORG (Wavestation / Legacy Cell / Poly Six), Minimoog 5, PRO-52, Yamaha FM7 and I am trying to get Spectrosonics Atmostpheres to work on Vista but I am having no luck.

Low budget I know, but enough to play around with.

The plan is to build songs various ways to get a good mix of sound, some on the Juno, some hard sequenced on the lap top, some built up from wave files, so it should be interesting.

NERD ALERT OVER!!

Song for today is off an excellent new album by BEBE titled Y. It’s in Spanish but needs no translation. The track is called ‘Me Fui’ and is a brilliant example of modern Spanish pop, absolutely fantastic.

Spotify this album now, then go out and buy it, we just don’t hear music this good everyday.

Happy listening