mmd

Triple J and the AEC would like you to know about Rock and Enroll – an initiative for 17 year olds (an indeed other un-enrolled Australians) to enroll and especially to vote. Every vote counts toward building culture, humanism and consciousness development from the local to the global stage. On the other hand if you give up and not participate you end up giving corruption exactly what it wants: passive slaves.

For those of you unsure of the issues at hand may I suggest some holiday season reading: Common Dreams and Melbourne Indymedia

Had an interesting weekend with Ryan, which resulted in yet another Alloy demo. I’m starting to side with Simon’s point of view that we’re going about song writing in an indecisive manner. He has suggested that we instead build a library of vocal chorus ideas for which to produce songs from. We may follow this up as a project next year.

After our little gig on Thursday night I shall be heading back home to my parent’s place for a 3 week break. I intend to do a lot of fiddling with music, as well as perform some needed maintenance on equipment. I may meet up with Simon in Sydney to try out his microphone arrangement – it could be the solution I’m looking for to adequately record my own yodeling.

Well I never thought I’d be playing live again this year, but it looks like Iain and I are set to see the year off with a electro-Arabic-funk bang! This preemptive strike will feature Iain, under his ‘Osama of Love’ guise, playing electric-acoustic drums while I will make walls of melodic sound using my guitar effects and computer aided frippertronic loops of ambiance. We’re building on what we left in September and the music is taking a much more powerful Arabic influence (especially when Becky joins in on the accordion). There will be some Arabic chill-out music aired between sets too, courtesy of DJ Unterrify.

So if you’re an Armidale local, come down for some free terror on Thursday 21st at where else but the Armidale Club.

To read more about the cause go here.

Fable gave me a visit last night informing me that Coin Side B has been remastered possibly for the final time. The results shone through on my setup, so I am confident to file this under ‘recommended listening’ for your pleasure. I’ve spoken about this song before, but now it would be good to really test this song on naive ears just to see if the well presented clear idea can be as easily digested as we think it can be.

If this is truly Simon saying he’s leaving this song behind we could expect some juicy new material from him next year. He’s got strong ideas about what constitutes good song writing. There a many elements he’s identified that I’m slowly seeking to adopt in my own work, although I naturally couldn’t sound exactly like Simon’s music if I tried. The focus on vocals is probably the central point of it all and by far the biggest challenge.

Just to prove you can make quality audio at home in a space that doesn’t look like Real World Studios I’ve taken some photos of my workspace. I have a range of gear from cheap usable stuff to a few quality items of an expensive nature. As I go along I plan to get more.

After about 8:30pm at night it is very quiet and I can get some very delicate mixing and mastering done. I’m still experimenting with condenser microphones in this space to see if I can get reliable recordings with workarounds. Microphones are the next immediate item on the list of ‘equipment to get’.

For some more pictures of other home studios of a similar nature to mine you can look here.

Some general updates:

I have got around to hacking my way through code and editors to present to you an updated version of www.markdollin.com (or locally known as http://m.thequietrevolution.net). I encourage you to look about, as there are some rather colourful additions and possibly some changes that if I had more dedicated traffic would cause a stir. Also there are many sections, like the shop, that are unfinished in their evolution. I’m slowly laying the foundations for the structure to come.

It is important to note that all mp3 URLs will be changed very soon, as I’m moving them into a new file structure. So if you have any permanent links to my mp3s they will have to be updated. Some of the older mp3s are being removed as to make way for the remastered versions of next year’s podcast of my early electronic songs.

I’ve some ‘recommended listening’ for you because Alex Strain has updated his website.

I am putting some effort into helping conceive of a new section to Renoise’s operations. In epth is a new production blog aimed at exploring the art of making music digitally. It looks like the setup will involve myself being a co-editor and contributor of articles. I will cross post these articles here. It will make for a difficult challenge as I’ll have to carefully put into words the process I unconsciously ‘just do’ and practices that are second-nature. Or I could just take the terse approach and write: “Just make your songs sound good damn it!” – budding song writers beware…