Tag: improv

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Learning the songs…

This is the fun bit – learning the stuff that came out all improv-y and naturally on the recording so that I can play it live!

A couple of the tunes should be fairly easy, given that I’ve had them written for a while – ‘Deeper Still’ (that’s the tune for Eric Roche, it now has a name, write it down so you know what I’m talking about in future) is easy enough to remember, just a bitch to try and play in tune! Scott Peck is fine, cos I know it, though it’ll be odd going back to playing it solo now that I’ve been listening to it for a few days with BJ Cole‘s pedal steel part on it. HappyHappy I can remember, fairly well, as it’s very easy and fairly short.

I’ve just learnt ‘Nobody Wins Unless Everybody Wins’ – a fun little tune with lots of multiply of sync’d loops to get thing to come back a long time in the future. I can play that.

Now I’m just checking out the title track on the album, trying to remember how it goes! Am listening to it at the moment. And have just remembered what happens in the middle. G2 no. 1 routed through G2 no. 2, both of them recorded into the looperlative… the hardest thing to remember is how to set it all up before the tune begins, which aux sends to route to where, which buttons to push to make sure the right things are being recorded into the Looperlative.

In other news, loads of people have been checking out the tunes on my MySpace page – major amounts of plays! MySpace is, indeed, as Imogen Heap’s manager mentioned to me a couple of weeks ago ‘the new radio’.

Right, back to learning these songs!

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Special guest no. 2

Just finished recording a huge improv piece for the new album with singer Julie McKee – I’ve played with Julie quite a few times now, and she’s definitely one of the finest singers I’ve ever worked with (now I just need to get her and Cleveland on stage together!). She’s got a glorious voice, and a fantastic improv instinct, reacting beautifully to the many many layers of her own voice coming back at her.

The vibe is similar to the piece we did at St Luke’s on Good Friday, but with different words. We’ve done three takes, all three of which are useable, and now have to decide which one to use, and whether I’m going to steal anything from the other takes to drop in over the top… The three takes are 20 minutes, 13 minutes and 15 minutes long, so that may have some bearing on which one makes it to the album, given the not-unlimited amount of time one has available on a CD!

It all makes me look forward even more to doing the show at Edinburgh this summer with Julie!

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Recycle Collective gig 5

Another fine ‘n’ fun Recycle gig last night. The run up to it wasn’t good at all – thanks to Arsenal playing at home, we got there 45 minutes later than we needed to, and even then I’d left my laptop at home which I’d planned to set up and record it.

Eventually got set up, but didn’t do a proper soundcheck, so it wasn’t til I started playing that I realised something was wrong somewhere in the system – the problem being that when I’m recording, I use all 6 of the Mic channels on my desk ‘cos those are the ones with insert/sends. When I’m doing a gig like this, I need to free up the mic channels for other things (like mics), and somewhere in the process, I’d managed to unplug one channel of the Looperlative from the back of the machine.

Much sonic struggling ensued through my first couple of tunes – the combination of trying out new tunes and malfunctioning gear was a tricky one – but the improvs with Cleveland and then the trio section went really well, so no worries there.

Leo Abrahams was up next, and play three amazing solo tunes (one called Slippery Jack was particularly amazing). we then did ‘My Song Is Love Unknown’ together, which was fine, but would’ve been better if I’d worked out what that weird minor chord was in the middle (!), and then onto the trio, which was really interesting. Leo introduced it as one of his own tunes, and played the progression from the tune (with a beautiful delay and filter guitar sound that I want to steal!), Cleveland and I responded to it in the way we would any improv, and it soon morphed away from whatever Leo had initially intended, as his first loop faded out, and we transitioned into some amazing space. Cleveland is quite possible the most intuitive musician I’ve ever performed with – his instinct for reacting so clearly to whatever is going on, and taking it to new heights is remarkable.

Third set was Cleveland solo to start – he’s got some new Echoplex tricks up his sleeve, and really knows his Lexicon processor now and put on a really great show. Followed by an equally marvellous duo set with Leo, that went to some very strange places in a beautiful and beguiling way.

The last of the trio sets comprised two beatbox-related tracks, with similar grooves but very different textures, the second of which ended up with some crazy double-time swing section that really ended the gig on a high.

All-in, much fun. ‘Twas nice to try out a couple of the new tunes in front of a friendly audience – need to get them down a lot tighter before next week.

For those of you asking for recordings, i’ve got some of it on the laptop, but it crashed three times (my guess is that trying to run a firewire powered soundcard and the laptop itself off the same battery is a bit much for the machine) – so I’ve got a few bits, and I’ll fire it up later to find out what. But the distraction of faffing with it reminded me that if we are going to record these things, I really need to a) get there a lot earlier (like we’d planned to without the Arsenal traffice) and b) DELEGATE.

Next RC gig is May 18th – see you there!

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Not only a good write up…

…but a ‘Critics Choice’ listing as well!

Says much the same thing –

‘Improvising jazz and soul vocalist explores loops and sampling with Brian Eno sidekick Leo Abrahams and bassist Steve Lawson.’

Now I’m a v. happy bunny. :o)

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Should've blogged this a week ago…

It’s normally the first thing I do when Time Out arrives around the time of a Recycle Collective gig – check the entry. But I only got round to looking today, and it’s been in for a week. This is what it says –

*Cleveland Watkiss/Leo
Abrahams/Steve Lawson Recycle
Collective at Darbucka, EC1: 7pm; £7 concs
£5. Superb monthly concert series that
explores the relationship between live
improv and live looping (ie recycling the
song as it unfolds and using the created loop
as part of the unfolding piece). Tonight with
superb singer Watkiss, Brian Eno sidekick
Abrahams and bassist Lawson.

that’s rather nice isn’t it? No reason for you not to come along now. :o)

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Easter Improv

just had a great fun gig at St Luke’s. Every Easter, the church is turned into an art gallery, housing various ‘stations’ – works of art based on bits of the easter story in varying levels of abstraction, dotted around the church, and used as a focal point for meditation/prayer. There’s a launch on Good Friday lunchtime and then the art is left up for the next week or so.

This year, Julie McKee and I were approached by a woman in the church to provide a soundtraack to her piece. She’d originally wanted something that ‘sounded like Handel’ i think was the request… clearly not going to happen, but mellow ambient loopy improv goo we can do. And we did.

So we set up in an inconspicuous place in the corner of the church, and improv’d to our hearts content. The words were taken partly from some stuff that Judy the artist has sent as being her inspiration, and partly from a prayer/poem written by the ever-wonderful Martin Wroe, taken from his book, When You Haven’t Got A Prayer – here’s the prayer in question;

God
within
and
without

God
underground and overground
everywhere and nowhere
always and never
sometimes and all times

God
inside
and
outside

God
here
with
us
now.

That’s it – very simple, and easy to sing. Strangely enough, it’s the second time I’ve played on a musical setting of these words, the last time being on a demo by Steve McEwan… but anyway.

So I was looping and layering my own ambient loveliness and Julie’s voice, so the words were tumbling over one another in and out of layers of bass goo. Sounds pretty damned fine listening back to it.

Oh yes, I finally got round to recording an improv gig – yay for me! I recorded it direct into ProTools M-Powered, and am now bouncing it down so I can export it to my PC and edit it in Adobe Audition. Much as ProTools is proving useful for this kind of recording, it is a total pain in the arse to use. For one, it saves the stereo audio as two mono files rather than one stereo one, so I can’t just drag the raw data across. Secondly, in order for the program to even start up, I have to have both my M-Audio soundcard and the iKey plugged in! I had hoped that I’d be able to export multitrack sessions to my laptop from the PC and mix things in ProTools, but that’s clearly not going to happen… I definitely prefer Adobe Audition.. and when I eventually get an Intel-Powered MacBook Pro, I’ll be running Audition on that for sure…

For now, I’m currently bouncing down the audio from the two mono files to a stereo file (which happens in real time so is taking a full half an hour!!! what a pain!! grrr), and will then do all the loveliness that needs doing in Audition on the PC.

Anyway, depending on how good it gets when I’ve tweaked it, it may end up being available for download via the shop. It is rather lovely…

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Naming tunes…

The process of naming tracks is always a tricky one. A lot of tracks start of with descriptive names… it’d be fun to actually release it with those – ‘the bluesy one’ ‘the miserable sounding one’ ‘harmoniser and delay thingie’ etc.

I usually have a list of possible track titles, cribbed from books I’ve been reading and ideas that have come to me, and sometimes the songs just have their own title that has to be there… Other times, people suggest titles that work. i always ask for people’s title suggestions after improvs on gigs, and occasionally get them. I haven’t used any yet, but it’s really interesting to see how certain tracks connect with people…

Right, back to the process of recording the music… slightly higher up the priority list than the names…

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Fretless struggle…

As usual, most of the new album will probably end up being improv stuff – things that just happen, are lovely, and I’ll then go back and learn them for playing live. However, I have got a couple of things written, as well as the cover tunes, and they bring with them certain er ‘problems’. The big one at the moment is recording the song for Eric – it’s a chord melody piece on a fretless bass, in AbMajor (so I can’t fall back on my usual collection of open strings and natural harmonics to bail me out when it gets tough) – and I’m really struggling with the intonation and phrasing on it. I’m sure I’ll get there eventually, and it’ll certainly be worth the struggle, as it is, in my ever so biased and rose-tinted opinion, one of the best things I’ve ever written. It was certainly the favourite with the audience at Edinburgh last year, and will be the centre-piece to the record (I’m thinking of possibly recording a sister piece to go with it, a big ambient tune dedicated to Eric too – with the recording of Deep Deep Down as well, if that makes it to the record, it’ll be a nice big tribute to a very wonderful and much missed friend).

I’m having the same problem with Deep Deep Down – I’m going to try a version of that now on the fretted bass and see how it comes out. It sounds great on fretless, but it’s just SO hard! I’m not cut out for this actually-having-to-work-at-it way of making an album. They’re usually a breeze, aren’t they? (time to go back and read blog posts from June 2004 to check)

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finally – new tunes!

…no MP3s for you, just yet though!

Been recording these last couple of days, the usual bought of improvs aimed at definining a vibe for the album. I don’t think, on the face of it, this one will be a huge departure from what’s gone before. Though, I am thinking about possibly getting some people in to do overdubs on some of the tracks when I’ve recorded my usual solo bass nonsense. And I am allowing myself some editing for brevity’s sake.

The vibe on the tunes so far is pretty downbeat (apologies to the peoples who’ve emailed saying ‘I really like Shizzle/Channel Surfing/MMFSOG*, which don’t you do a whole album of funky stuff?’ (* – delete as applicable) – sorry peoples, it’s not going to happen.) – I have got ideas for a couple of up-tempo things, but as usual they’ll be the exception rather than the rule. For now, I just have to deal with large scale melodic ambient melancholy tinged with a hopeful, redemptive edge being what I’m best at. And that’s no bad thing, methinks. Will get something up onto my MySpace Page as soon as I can. Suffice to say, the Looperlative is making itself very very useful is ways that won’t be immediately apparent – the three biggies are that all the looping is in stereo, there’s virtually no noise generated by the unit at all (less than most soundcards) and I can have multiple asychronous loops that I can mess with in any order… For the listener, it just means everything sounds a little less linear, and even the linear stuff ends in more interesting ways!

Watch this space…

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RC IV – another great gig

Another stunning Recycle Collective gig last night – me, BJ Cole and Thomas Leeb, with special RC-stylee special guest, Rowland Sutherland.

As usual, I kicked things off with a solo set – the first improv piece was one of those ‘doh!’ moments where I forgot to switch on the minidisc, and it was gorgeous. Really happy with it, will have to try and remember what I did. Followed by a variation on the bubbly drum ‘n’ bass theme that I’ve been working on of late, then did Eric’s tune, after which Rowland joined me for a duo improv thingie. He’s amazing, you really have to hear him. He’ll be back. I finished up with ‘Despite My Worst Intentions’, which I completely forgot the title of, and thought it might have been ‘there but for the grace of God’. duh. Anyway, a nice set, which went down well.

Next up was BJ – I love BJ’s playing, and his approach to harmony. His opening piece was a variation on one of the ‘Transparent Music’ tunes, and sounded beautiful. His second track suffered from all kind of Echoplex gremlins – at least it’s not just me who has EDP nightmares! – but still went through some really interesting twists and turns. He was then joined by Rowland for a lovely duet, and finally by me for another duet. Much fun.

Thomas’ set was spectacular. The thing I think I love most about the RC gigs is presenting musicians to people who they might not have heard before. Tonight there were quite a lot of people there to see Thomas, so for them the joy was that of fulfulling the anticipation. For the others, it was amazement at what was possible with an acoustic guitar. His between song banter was funny, the performance was great, and the setting ideal.

We finished up with a quartet improv, with me looping and processing Thomas as well as myself, to great effect.

This really is the most fun gig for me – great musicians, lovely ever expanding audiences (in number, but for those who partake of the delicious food at Darbucka, in girth as well, no doubt), in a stunning, supportive venue. Don’t miss the next one on April 19th – I’ll announce who it’s with ASAP.

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