Tag: music

Posted on

John Peel: A Life In Music

Just finished this book, by Michael Heatley and have come to the conclusion that, should the body of work exist to support such an endeavour, I could happily read about John Peel for the rest of my life.

I say happily – I get the most jumbled mixture of feelings when reading about Peel, ranging from nostalgia for the late 80s, gratefulness that someone like him ever existed and dread for what the music world could descend into in its post-Peel state, all underscored by an aching sadness that he’s gone, and disappointment that I never met him. (He did walk past me once, outside Broadcasting House – maybe I should’ve stopped and said something. I think I was probably lost for words though…)

I can’t think of the death of anyone else that I haven’t actually met that has affected me as much – the more I think about it, the clearer it is what an influence listening to his show had on me in Berwick in the late 80s/early 90s. You’d have to spend a good couple of years in Berwick, without the internet or freeview, to fully understand the significance.

And the weird thing with Peel – and a testament to his broadcasting uniqueness – is that they can’t rebroadcast his shows. It wasn’t about ‘legacy’ music, or playing ‘classics’. It was about playing what grabbed him now. As much as i’d love to listen again to those shows from the late 80s, filled with Cud and Bongwater, Napalm Death and the Bhundu Boys, The Pixies and Marta Sebastian, Kanda Bongo Man and BoltThrower, they aren’t what Peel would play now, and repeating them isn’t what he was about. When Ronnie Barker died, his legacy was palpable, celluloid, archived and repeatable. Peel’s is wrapped up in the experimentation of hundreds of thousands of bands through the last 50 years, inspired to say ‘bollocks to convention’ and try something new, something that mattered. You can’t turn that into a retrospective series, beyond getting endless bands to say ‘yup, without Peel, I’d be driving a van’. And they queued up to do so when he died. Genuine tributes to the man who handed them a career.

In this book, I’m reminded of how so many of those people that I listen to, so much of the music I love was launched on listener’s ears by Peel. Just about every non-jazz influence I have can be traced back to Peel’s patronage.

Anyway, it’s a fine book – read ‘Margrave Of The Marshes’ first, but get this one to fill in a lot of the geeky musical info.

Posted on

singer/songwriter genius shows Street Team how it's done…

Juliet Turner, fabulous singer/songwriter and Recyclist from Greenbelt, sent this out to her mailing list yesterday –

“Hey. For any of you who are in London, try and check out this gig. Super amazing bassist Steve Lawson gathers together GREAT musicians and they play off the cuff/of the moment/who knows whats going to happen next/ music. I did some singing with Steve at the Greenbelt festival this summer which was a lot of fun. There’s a Recycled gig on the 21st Sept at 182 St John’s St. Clerkenwell, London when Jason Yarde (saxophonist, very celebrated jazz musician) and Leo Abrahams (guitarist, Brian Eno, Ed Harcourt, Roxy Music) will be joining Steve. The music will be extraordinary. More details on their myspace site.”

How lovely is that? The date is a day late (MySpace quite often lists gig dates a day late for some reason – always click on the gig and check the ACTUAL date of any gig you get off MySpace), but that’s the kind of support and encouragement that any musician craves but rarely gets.

As I’ve said numerous times before on this ‘ere blog, you REALLY need to check out Juliet’s music – her website is julietturner.com and her myspace address is myspace.com/burntheblacksuit – all three of her albums are beautiful, and her new single is utterly gorgeous (if you were at the Greenbelt RC gig, you might recognise the words to ‘Joy’ as she used it as the basis for the improv she did with Harry Napier, Huw Warren and I.)

Posted on

Making loops interesting…

There’s been a long thread over on Looper’s Delight about making loops interesting. A lot of the discussion has been around things to do to your loops, or ways of playing that will make them interesting. All good stuff, but missing something… Here’s my reply to the list of about 5 minutes ago –

“Some interesting stuff coming through on this topic (that which I’ve had the time to read, anyway).

My own way of dealing with this, philosophically is to not think about the looping aspect of it unless I have to, but instead to try and conceive the ‘music’ first in an of itself. Having spent a lot of years playing loop-based music, I already quite naturally hear form in a loop-influenced way, so don’t tend to need to force things. Occasionally I’ll be looking for a different kind of arrangement, and then I go to my tools at hand to see if it’s going to be possible… the ever-growing feature-list of the Looperlative certainly helps in this area.

But I have, for the most part, avoided self-consciously labeled ‘loop music’. There are some people who do much more ‘loop-essential’ music than I that do it incredibly well – Bill Walker, it seems to me, exploits his looping boxes in a more obviously loop based way (especially his ultra-rhythmic synced stuff), but his boundless musicality comes through in a way that makes it sound like the technology was made for him. Likewise Claude Voit – quite obviously loop designed music in the rhythmic/repetitive mode, but not even remotely ‘dull’ or ‘tedious’ – just great music making use of the arrangement possibilities of his chosen hardware.

What’s most notable is that great music is unhindered by tech or lack of. The great musicians are the ones who enslave the technology to their musical ends, but also allow it to liberate their musical sensibilities into otherwise impossible arrangement options, but still hear it and present it as music, where the fundamentals of music, be they melodic, rhythmic, textural, cultural or onomatopoeic, carry through to the audience, and the geekability of the loopage is an added bonus not a necessary diversion from the unsatisfactory listening experience.

just a thought or two… “

It’s all about the music, peoples. Experimenting with looping possibilities makes for a fun (and personally rewarding) science project, but those techniques then need to be forgotten and committed to the subconscious so that the music can flow unimpeded. It’s a constant struggle, especially when one gets new toys, but one that must be resisted.

Posted on

Things looking up for traveling musicians…

Looks like those really stupid hand baggage laws that were introduced a few weeks ago are about to be relaxed. And not before time.

This paragraph is especially heartening –
“Musical instruments will also be allowed on board again, after professional musicians complained the measures were hindering them”

Will it make me want to fly round Europe? Nope – gimme the train, fo’ sho’.

But for musos that do fly, it’s a blessing…

Posted on

Reality music TV – is it improved by Rocking Out?

I’ve just wasted the last 20 minutes watching RockStar Supernova – I was mildly interested to see if ‘Rock’ musicians did reality music TV any better than the manufacturers of pop. The answer is a resounding no. Watching losers trying to impress Tommy Lee, Jason Newsted and Gilby Clarke enough to be allowed to be their front person, by playing heinous cover versions with the house band makes for pretty wretched TV, and doesn’t seem to be any more about having anything artistic or creative to say beyond ‘check me out I’m an identikit rawkstar’.

Nope, TV talent shows are just the same as any other lame-assed talent show just with a bigger special effects budget.

Shit on a stick.

Posted on

Get some lessons!!!

The new series of X-Factor have just started. I’ve blogged extensively in the past about the tragic televisual car accident that is ‘reality’ TV talent shows. The thing that I think is most sad about this is that they never seem to say ‘go and get some sodding singing lessons, you moron!!!!’ to the losers that get up there and are rubbish.

Let’s put it simply – if you REALLY want to be any good at something, you need to study at it. Singing ability is VERY RARELY innate. instrumental ability never is. It requires practice, and the techniques involved in singing are just as hard as those involved in instrumental performance. If you want to be a singer – in fact, even if you’re already a singer – you SO need to get some lessons. They’ll protect your voice from the thrashing that bad technique will give it, they’ll give you better intonation, more control, better breathing. There are NO DOWNSIDES WHATSOEVER to getting singing lessons.

So why aren’t these cabbage patch kids-grown-up who come on TV claiming that ‘singing is their life’ getting any fucking lessons?? If I ever decide to launch myself as a singer as well as a bassist, I’ll get lessons. As a bassist, I went to music college for two years. It’s what you do when you want to get good.

Is it easy enough to understand?

And the same goes for those who can already sing but want to accompany themselves. In the right hands an acoustic guitar is an instrument of almost limitless beauty and potential. In the wrong hands it’s an out of tune cheese grater pouring red ants into the listeners ear-holes. So get some lessons! Again, it can only do you good.

I went to a really good gig on Friday night – Christine Collister has quite rightly been described as one of the best female singers in the country. She’s highly in demand as a session singer, and does gorgeous versions of other people’s songs. She’s also a reasonable guitarist. If she studied a bit, she’d be a fantastic guitarist, and would have the whole package. It’s not that she’s bad, it’s just that with a voice that good, it would be fantastic to hear it coupled with guitar playing to match. She can play, it wouldn’t take her long. She’s already come up with some pretty interesting arrangements, but the guitar is very definitely her second string.

So, you want to be the best? It does indeed take the dedication that the marvellous Roy Castle reminded us of on a weekly basis is our childhood. And the single best way to learn that stuff is one on one lessons. I don’t say this because I’m a teacher, I teach because it’s true.

Phew…

Posted on

Another review of 'Behind Every Word'

Just had another review of Behind Every Word appear on line. This ones in Aural Innovations e-zine. It’s a very long-running zine that started out as a printed mag and covers Prog/Space-Rock/Ambient etc. – the sort of stuff Stuart Maconie plays on The FreakZone, which is on now… AND IS PLAYING ME AT THE MOMENT!! Wahey!! That’s the first time I’ve ever switched the radio on and heard me on at that very moment! How exciting!! :o) He’s playing ‘Nobody Wins Unless Everybody Wins’.

Right, that’s over – what fun! Anyway, that’s the kind of thing that Jerry Kranitz at Aural Innovations writes about, and he’s been a good solid Stevie-supporter for many years, and has given Behind Every Word another lovely review. Nice man.

So, two things to do – read the review and listen again to this week’s Freak Zone, then email the show and ask them to play more tracks! Oh, and if you haven’t yet got the CD and are inspired by Jerry’s delicious review, you can head over to the online shop here and buy it!

Posted on

Free music training software

I’ve not tried this out, as it’s PC/Linux only, and I’m on the Mac at the moment, but I found a link on a bass forum to solfege.org – a free downloadable music ear training package. Looks pretty good, well worth a ‘free’.

Posted on

Looperlative update…

Bob’s just released another Looperlative update – this thing just keeps getting better! Two great new features, one being a ‘bounce’ feature, where you can record from one or more channels to an empty channel, to either consolidate loads of tracks into one (to free up track space) or you can sample from the middle of a long loop a much shorter section, but you also get to keep the first loop (unlike a destructive resample function) – coming out of bounce mode mutes the stuff you were playing into it, but the tracks are still there unless you choose to delete them. Very handy for mangling long loops, or imposing rhythmic form onto abstract stuff.

The other new function is a ‘catch’ setting for the volume and feedback controls – so if you’re adjusting the volume on lots of tracks, when you turn one off, then go to the next track, the volume control doesn’t start at ‘off’, it waits until the value of the pedal matches the current value of the track, and only then does it do anything. This is SO useful.

This are fun times to be into looping – lots of great new musicians coming out doing loop things (JazzShark went to see Richard Bona last night and reported back that he was doing some delicious loopage), and plenty of developments going on in the looping technology front too. I still have come across a laptop set up that I’d be happy with, but in the dedicated hardware looper world, the Looperlative is a LONG way out in front at the moment – definitely the way to go. (and if you do plan to get one and you’re in the UK, email me first…)

And if you just want to see what it can do, come on down to the next Recycle Collective gig on Sept 20th!

© 2008 Steve Lawson and developed by Pretentia. | login

Top