Tag: cds

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iPod generation?

I keep hearing all over the place about now being the iPod generation – where our music listening is governed by homemade playlists, shuffle functions and genre-specific online radio… Does anyone else still listen to whole albums?

While I do occasionally listen to odd tracks (or even buy odd tracks on iTunes – the latest one was Carly Simon’s ‘Coming Around Again’ – just had an urge to listen to it, for some reason!) I’m still a big fan of the art of constructing an album, programming the tracks in the right order, developing a musical or lyrical theme and packaging it in a way that makes sense. Music just doesn’t seem to have the same significance in a disembodied ‘shuffle mode’ MP3 context.

On the flip side of this, I’ve always been a big fan of Greatest Hits albums, more because I’m looking forward to the day when I’ve got 10 or so albums under my belt and can cherry-pick the best tracks to go on a best-of. That feeling of looking back over your career and seeing how many great tracks you’ve made must be a very satisfying one.

so, my top 5 fave Greatest Hits albums –

  • The Cure (Greatest Hits)
  • Paul Simon (Negotiations and Love Songs)
  • Michael McDonald (Sweet Freedom – the best of)
  • Tom Waits (Asylum Years)
  • Prefab Sprout (Life Of Surprises)

The other great packages of a lifetime’s material are live albums and re-recordings – my faves of those would be

  • James Taylor (Live – mid 90s)
  • Joni Mitchell (Travelogue)
  • Kings X (Live)
  • Bruce Cockbun (Live – late 80s)
  • Dave Matthews/Tim Reynolds (Live at Luther College)

So here’s to the magic of the album, long may it continue as an artform…

Soundtrack – Stevie Wonder, ‘Hotter Than July’; Tom Waits, ‘Nighthawks At The Diner’.

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Manic Compression

I’ve just been listening to ‘Absolution’ by – the songs are great, the playing’s great, the sounds are great… but the mastering is SOOOO harsh!! The whole album is flatlining at close to 0dB all the way through – so little light and shade, distorted vocals, squished drums… MAKE IT STOP!!

Why do bands do this? At least one track on the new album by The Killers is like this too – Glorious Indie Rock ‘n’ Roll is so over compressed I get major ear-fatigue after about two minutes. It’s a shame, cos it’s a great song.

This kind of mastering job used to be reserved for single edits of songs – it makes tracks sound great on small cheap radios (think ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ or ‘Bartender And The Thief’ by Stereophonics). But to mix a whole album like that is just painful – stop doing it!!

Mastering is such a sensitive part of the recording process – it’s what happens after the tracks are recorded and mixed – you send a Cd of the mixes to a dedicated mastering person who then compresses and EQs the tracks to make sure that the level is consistent between the tracks, and that there are no rogue peaks in the audio that means the rest of the track has to be really quiet to accomodate them. In more extreme circumstances, the whole track can be really obviously compressed to bring the average level right up. That’s what’s happened here, and it really hurts your ears listening to it on good speakers.

the mastering on was done by – a hugely experienced and skilled mastering engineer who got the job on my stuff because he’d mastered albums, and also ‘Spirit Of Eden’ by Talk Talk – one of my favourite albums, and one of my favourite sounding albums.

He did a great job of taking my pre-mastered mixes and doing the compression and EQ magic required to bring the overall level up a bit without losing the dynamics on the tracks. There’s some serious audio-voodoo involved in mastering, and Denis has clearly got the mojo. I’d recommend him highly if you’re wanting to get a record mastered.

Soundtrack – Muse, ‘Absolution’; Tommy Simms, ‘Peace And Love’.

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Composition famine…

I’ve not written any new music for quite a while. It’s not a problem – most areas of music tend to happen in terms of flurries of activity followed by plateaus, whether it be technique, concepts, composition or whatever. And right now, I’m working on arrangements of other people’s tunes – something I’ve done very little of as a solo player. I used to do a short version of ‘Fly Me To The Moon’ to finish gigs, and these days do ‘People Get Ready’, and now have just worked out a lovely solo arrangement of ‘What A Wonderful World’. I’ve also been working on a version of This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody), the Talking Heads track, which sounds great, but is really hard to play!! I need to make sure it’s well hammered into my skull before I attmept it live. It involves some pretty tricky looping (well, tricky for me…)

So I’m having fun with other people’s tunes (and maybe I’ll finally get round to having a go at ‘The Fish’ – something I’ve had a number of people nagging me to do for a while (yes, you, Catherine Street Team and California Bob!)

And as an off-shoot, I’ve got the beginnings of a new tune. It might end up as a solo piece, or maybe in one of the collaborations. This Monday and I met up with a fantastic drummer called Andrew Booker. Andrew has his own duo/trio (recorded thus far as a duo, now have a guitarist as well) called , whose CD is really cool (bass and drums duo, with Andrew singing like a less-heliumed John Anderson).

Anyway, he plays a tiny electronic kit, and adjusts really well to the slight imperfections of my loops, so we’ll hopefully be launching said trio on the listening public before too long – playing the tracks from Open Spaces with a drummer certainly took them into a very different space…

So, despite the famine, much creative noodling is taking place, and many new avenues are opening up…

Soundtrack – , ‘Ghost Town’; , ‘Slow Life’; , ‘Live’; , ‘Stones’; , ‘Polarised’.

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I don't need cheering up…

… but if I did this review would do the trick! – a very nicely written review from one of the guys on Loopers Delight. Always good to get well written reviews, even if they are constructively ‘balanced’. This ones is completely positive so scores even higher. 🙂

Soundtrack – John Coltrane, ‘Coltrane’ (I’ve got more John Coltrane CDs that almost any other artist – it’s between ‘Trane and Bruce Cockburn. I don’t listen to him nearly as often as I should… might be time for a Coltrane-binge.)

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a great week for gigs

So last night was the third night of going to gigs in a row for me, and another fantastic night out. This one, at , was part of the /-hosted night called , and featured Andy, along with and Deacon Blue frontman, .

Cara was up first – blimey, I wish I had that much talent at 19!! She’s obviously heavily Tori Amos influenced and had a batch of really nice songs, sung well. Bodes v. well for the future.

After that was Andy – as the more attentive of you will know, I’ve played with Andy lots, including being on his last album. We’ve even gigged together at the Troubadour a couple of times. Andy was showcasing a whole load of new songs, as well as a handful of favourites, and sounded great, as always. He also flagged up the campaign, and wrist bands were available, which reminded me that I ought to do that with CDs from the shop… Anyway.

The headliner (and the reason tonight’s gig sold out a week in advance) was Ricky Ross – I was a big Deacon Blue fan back in the 80s/90s, and have seen Ricky solo live before, so knew he’d be good, but was still surprised at how good his new material is. He’s apparently been consuming a steady diet of Randy Newman for the last while, as the influence hang low over most of the new songs, but in a really good way. I mean, if you’re going to be influenced by someone, who better than one of the finest songwriters of the last 50 years?

Ricky’s a great performer and story-teller, and I’m really looking forward to his new album coming out.

And then I’ll be back at the troubadour for My gig with BJ Cole next Friday – so I hope to see you there!

Soundtrack – , ‘Season Of The Hurricane’; , ‘Manic Moonlight’.

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Another magical Jonatha gig

Tonight’s gig was at , a half hour set, opening the evening (don’t know who the other bands were, didn’t stick around). Another stunning gig – the room was packed, but as it holds about 45 that wasn’t hard (they say the capacity is 60, but I can’t imagine getting 60 people in a room that size!)

Playing songs from the new CD, from Steady Pull and from Plumb, it was lovely to hear Jonatha do a slightly longer set than at the Bedford. She even managed to play a piano with no sustain piano and make it work, which is pretty skillful, if y’all ask me.

and Not-At-All-Evil-Dan came along, at my suggestion, and were both mightily impressed. Also bumped into Andy Piercy, who produced one of the Johnny Markin records I played on in the mid 90s, which was a night surprise. He loved the gig too. Everyone loved it, she’s a genius.

So don’t miss the rest of the London gigs!

Soundtrack – Dream Ticket on BBC 6 Music (who just read out my mini-review of the Jonatha gig).

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Aha, I think it's fixed…

Well, after much marvellous help from , It looks like the new paypal thingie in the shop is now working! The PHP troubles are dealt with, my paypal account is upgraded to a ‘business account’ and I can now take any old Credit/Debit card orders via paypal without the need for people to sign up to paypal in order to use it! This is marvellous news, believe me! If anyone feels like trying it out please, be my guest. It’s even set up to copy your address details across into the paypal pages, so that you’ve got less typing to do, at least, that’s the idea… Hopefully all of this will mean lots more lovely CD sales for me!

Soundtrack – Finley Quaye, ‘Maverick A Strike’; , ‘Shapeshifter’; , ‘Big Dreams And The Bottom Line’.

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A timely reminder.

Was rehearsing with this morning for the couple of gigs we’ve got coming up over the next two weeks, and was reminded once again how much fun playing with Theo is! It really is the simplest most immediately effective musical hook-up I’ve ever had, and I’ve had quite a few others that were pretty painless. When we were trying to remember how ‘Flutter’ goes (the opening tune from For The Love Of Open Spaces), we actually played the first minute of the tune twice in a row – that’s the most work we’ve ever had to do on anything!

Anyway, we were sounding just fine, and it gave me renewed impetus to get more gigs with Theo. He’s a fantastic musician and a top bloke. If you haven’t got his new CD, Go here to get it.

And now I’m listening to – those of you in the US will probably have heard her (she was on Letterman recently), those of you in the UK might have heard of her if you keep up with David Torn-related news (he produced the record), but she’s pretty much unknown on this side of the pond at the moment. She’s a solo acoustic guitarist, in the Hedges/Forcione/Roche/Ross school of playing, and is magic. Writes great tunes and is a great performer. I’m hoping to bring her over for some gigs together this coming summer. ‘Til then, check out her site and buy the CD on-line from the states!

Soundtrack – Kaki King, ‘Legs To Make Us Longer; Steve Lawson and Theo Travis, ‘For The Love Of Open Spaces’; , ‘Matthew Garrison’.

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A like-minded teacher

There are a lot of really really bad bass teachers around. I know ‘cos I end up having to undo their efforts when students come to me with some really twisted ways of thinking about music, and some odd ideas about the student teacher relationship. So it’s great when I find a teacher who is speaking the same language as me.

is arguably the best bass tuition book writer working today. His books are always full of great material, and contain precious little filler material. I recommend them highly. He’s also an amazing player (come on Ed, do a solo album NOW!!), but I’d ever read the page about private teaching on his site before. Go and read it – he says all the right things, and I’m certain he lives up to them. It’s just a shame he lives in Tempe Arizona, or I’d definitely take a lesson or two with him.

Maybe I should start a list of teachers I would recommend. It’d be a pretty short list at the moment, given that I don’t really know that many other teachers, and even fewer whose work I would vouch for.

is another bass teacher I admire greatly, and the only person I’ve had a bass lesson from since I left college. He’s also one of my favourite bassists, and has recently released an amazing CD along with called ‘Get Happy’ – you can get it from Todd’s website – it’s one of my favourite CDs of the last year, and shows just how adept a chordal instrument 6 string bass is – Todd’s bass arguably sounds better than a guitar would along with Kristin’s voice as it stays out of her range, leaving more room for her. Add to that Kristin’s marvellous swinging upright bass playing and Kendall Kaye’s drumming and you’ve got one fantastic record. Again, it’s a shame that Todd’s tucked away in the mountains above Los Angeles, or I’d be getting regular lessons with him too!

soundtrack – McGill/Manring/Stevens, ‘Controlled By Radar’; , ‘Back In The Circus’ and ‘Plumb’ (don’t forget she’s playing a load of gigs in London, starting next Tuesday!!!!); , ‘Grand’; , ‘Entremundo’ and ‘Oriental Bass’ (Renaud is my new bass hero – the most frightening chops and musicality that I’ve ever heard from an upright bassist. Get these CDs!!)

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nothing to write on your blog today? take the old-school BBC approach…

I’m in the middle of reading David Attenborough’s marvellous autobiography, ‘Life On Air’ – which is one of the most fascinating and illuminating looks at the birth of TV broadcasting in the world – David joined the BBC very early on in the life of TV, and as controller of BBC 2, introduced a whole host of elements to the channel that still define its output today.

Anyway, I’ll write more about the book at another time, but one of the things it reminded me of was that time back in the 70s and 80s when TV channels were honest about having nothing to put on, so instead of showing endless reruns or commissioning shite like Kilroy or Trisha, they just played some music and showed the test card… maybe it’s something we bloggers should adopt when we’ve nothing of interest to say… :o)

Soundtrack – Kristen Korb, ‘Where You’ll Find Me’ (a fantastic CD); Armen Chakmakian, ‘Caravans’ (another album featuring Doug Lunn on bass).

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