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This post is an apology of sorts. I somehow have got involved with quite a few collaborative projects and all of their members deserve a ’sorry’. I am dragging the chain. Life is full of a myriad of necessary daily rituals that chew up the small amount of left over time to work on music. Add to this work at UNE being crazy busy with semester recordings. Also add time spent just being dead on my back catching my breath from endless early morning starts and late night retirements. I find it better if I plough head first with every bit of energy I’ve got and I tend to get more done.

Nevertheless work does get done, it’s usually in the form of incrementing small amounts of complexity forward to their necessary destinations. Continued practice with singing has inched forward certainties with melodies in progress. Most projects are held up in this stage.

I’m very close to finishing off a master of a new album I’ve been working on called “3 Smargaid Maerd” – the continuation of the Dream Diagrams project. All that needs is a track listing and artwork to be done. The album is again a counterpoint reaction to working on pop music, and explores free-form improvised music, as well as darker and ambient spaces that popular music doesn’t venture to. More on this soon.

I still have much work to do with Alex Strain on some great curly pieces. I’m sorry to him as these keep getting put on the back-burner.

I have done a remix of a Beatslaughter song “Serenity”, which is yet to be released on a EP we have planned. Our unfinished collaboration “The Objector” is still in my hands. The vocal part is fairly demanding and more practice is required to really nail it. So I’m sorry to BeatS for dragging this on since last November. He has also something very special in progress for a possible release: a remix of one of my songs from 2000. Anyone remember “Can’t Wait”? Prepare!

I have continued contributions to the Renoise Loop Project. There are still many more BPMs to address as the project continues through the year.

Mick Rippon and I have been toying with a few possible collaboration pieces on and off recently. Being an old-school game soundtrack master he doesn’t mind entering online song competitions. It must have been only a matter of time until I got roped into one! So, Round 25 of SDCompo it is. We’ve not long to go, but already we’ve got a really uplifting pop piece trying it’s best to take off and fly. More on that soon (hopefully).

Iain MacKay and I have experimented in pushing our live improvised loop music into techniques used in electro-acoustic music. I’m now actually very keen to keep exploring this both in front of an audience and in controlled acoustic spaces. A few recordings have been made. We could be playing at Uralla’s ‘Get Off Your Arts’ festival, or later at the newly rejuvenated Armidale Club. I’m also keen to approach Iain about introducing a bass player into our playing…

Speaking of bass I’ve bought one last week. A lovely pearl white Ibanez with active pickups has found it’s way into a few recordings and will feature in many recordings in the future. It’s a joy to play!

And somewhere and somehow I’m supposed to continue on other projects that are meant to be be my main focus: The Paradox; and re-release of my old module songs. It’s easy to be comfortable with the explanation that ‘you move onto fresh new songs for a good reason’ – but, I feel these songs still have great ideas in them and deserve finishing and sharing. Perhaps when the slate with all of the above is cleaned these things can be given attention they need.

Oh by the way, there have been ZERO sales of 2 Smargaid Maerd FLACs. Let me know if there’s anything holding you back

A quieter weekend has allowed R to kindly take some photos of my studio space at Galloway Street. These photos are not an extensive catalogue of ‘every single bit of gear I have’, but more or less show the space I work in. You can see more older shots  deeper back into the blog.

So let’s start with a wide shot of the whole setup seen from the back sunroom, which the ‘big room’ opens onto via sliding doors. In these shots you’ll see that I’ve hung material on all the walls to dampen off high frequencies, and a big old couch lies diagonally across the middle of the room to act as a light bass trap. Being a bigger room, it allows for an open sound and is not bad at all for recording vocals in:

Here you can see the three guitar pedal boards all hooked up, my electric guitar, the microphone setup, a midi controller keyboard, the bulk of the other bits that make all the sound work:

The Rode K2 microphone, pop guard (necessary for stopping ugly ‘pop sounds’ when recording the voice), and the sE Reflexion Filter (acoustic housing for the mic):

As above. You can see the high ceiling and the beautiful plaster façade on the room:

You can see the Reflexion Filter acts as ’sound shell’ to filter out the echoes of the room. This makes the vocal takes sound dry, which is desirable for vocal placement in my songs:

Many bits:

My speaker setup is a 2.1 system. The two nearfield monitors are custom designed and have a bright true reproduction. I’m using the two quad-cabs (one is bottom left here) as my sub-woofer. The cross-over for the two ranges is controlled within my soundcard (M-Audio Delta 1010, just right of the screen). Left is our new Denon record player, and a cassette mastering deck (for lo-fi tape experiments). The keyboard is an old DX9 which is mostly used as a basic midi-controller:

The light coming in from the West:

Head of my classical guitar, with the uber-special singing bowl on the music library:

Music collection, and above my live banner that Mum made:

Iain’s drum set as well as his PA speakers, which he uses with his electronic drums when he comes over to jam:

Iain’s drums, with 12 string Kortt acoustic guitar in foreground:

Sometimes in music, pigs do fly:

Loopzilla:

The old FT2 computer, with yours truly strumming away:

Boss GT-8 which has a send-loop connected to my old Zoom 4040 pedal. The GT-8 is connected to Loopzilla, and then from there to my computer:

Loopzilla and the old electric:

AKG D330 microphone, being my preferred live mic, in foreground. FT2 in background:

My main studio computer, proudly displaying Renoise:

If you look closely you can see work being done on “The Objector”:

A small mixer and my trusty old headphones. I use this setup to ‘real time monitor’ my vocals with zero latency while recording. The mixer is fed by sub-outputs from my soundcard and my microphone preamp (SPL Goldmike 9844). The mixer comes in handy for odd routing jobs:

There’s geeky comfort in being surrounded by knobs!

At the top you can see my mic preamp, which is a wonderful combo of tube and solid state technology, and allows for pretty smooth microphone performance. At the bottom of the stack is my old 350W Mosfet amp powering the two quad-cabs for sub-woofer playback:

OK! Now onto my Galloway Street Studio Team! First up we have Rusty. Rusty is a beautiful and mysterious girl of wise experience. She is my creative consultant whenever my songs are needing a touch of elegance or mature subtly:

Meet Gus: he is my roadie! You can see from his large frame he is used to the roadie lifestyle of lugging around large bits of equipment and eating copious amounts of junk food. Whenever Gus isn’t moving my gear for me, he can be found sleeping in some corner, busy not exercising:

This is Harriet – my guitar technician. She can be a little aloof sometimes, but sure knows how to keep perfect intonation on my range of axes. Being young and beautiful, she hope to one day start her own band called ‘A Puurfect Circle’:

Next we have young Nero, the studio engineer. Nero’s excellent sense of smell helps him find all manner of amazing technical solutions for sounds I’ve needed. He has some wild ideas though sometimes: I have to draw the line when he starts digging a hole in order to ‘get better acoustics out of the room’:

And finally we have my Manager, Maxwell. Max and I are close, and have a great working relationship. But with business it’s another matter – just look at this face and ask yourself ‘would you trust Max with all your money?’:

Lastly, just down the hall from the ‘big room’ we have setup a whiteboard. The whiteboard gets used for brainstorming and organisation of ideas and projects. It’s become a very useful tool in keeping on task on the many projects I’m involved with. Thoroughly recommended: