Well it’s long been promised, but I’ve finally got around to taking some photos of the new studio space. To share these I though I’d be sane and join up to Flickr. So let’s see what we’ve got:
Edit: Trying out this:
How exciting! I’m up on Bandcamp. Check it out!
To start things off I’ve added my 2008 album 3 Smargaid Maerd. So far I’m impressed with what this system has to offer and I’m thinking of using it as my main way of sharing and distributing my music from now on. My existing mp3s and media will still remain on this server to retain linkage, but anything new from now on will be Bandcamp only. I’ll be adding more to it when I can, so I’ll let you all know when I do.
A fair while since I wrote anything here so an update is due.
Well, I don’t want to sound like a whining privileged white boy, but these last few months have been emotionally challenging, tough and at several points broken my resolve. There is something endlessly uneasy and grinding about undesirable unemployment that constantly feeds doubt and confuses your aim and goals. We’ve had good support though and no real disasters like bankruptcy have come about. My partner’s job offer fell through and she has been forced to start looking and applying for work elsewhere, and I’m still unemployed – so the total mood is pretty low. Yes, we know so many people are way worse off, but still that uneasiness remains. And Brisbane’s humidity is plain unforgiving sometimes. Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean nothing has been happening! Far from it…
I’ve been busy earning new qualifications. In January I attended a 2 week intensive training course at Carson Australiasia to get a Certificate IV in Workplace Training and Assessment. It was a lot of fun going into the city every day up 23 floors in the old Lennon’s Plaza building. Met some interesting people studying the course as well as enjoying Margaret the trainer help us work through all the material in a really positive way. I dragged out the post-course project much longer than I have ought to, but it’s now all submitted and I’m awaiting the result. If successful, I’ll receive my certificate and I’ll then be eligible to apply for a much larger range of jobs in the training sector. While on the theme of learning new things I thought I might as well follow through get a really serious qualification in a long-time interest area: a specialisation in literacy teaching. So I’ve enrolled with Southbank Institute of Technology in a Graduate Vocational Certificate in Adult Literacy and Numeracy Teaching, which is year-long, part time and online. This coupled with my Cert IV and teaching experience means that I’ll be able to try out some work with helping people with these sorts of problems, both adults and teenagers. It’s been a while since I’ve studied formally, but some old ideas and ways of thinking are floating back to me from my university days. I’ll keep you all posted if I finally get some work.
In a somewhat hopeless attempt to get at least some income happening I’ve been doing some mixing and mastering work for clients. Despite achieving a lot already and helping some people make some solid ground with their productions, I’ve not really earned much money. It’s a concern, but given that I’ve got time on my hands I’m really enjoying seeing people happy with the end results. A few to mention: An EP by Helvetikone (Taktik of the Renoise devs) – some really unique electronic dance music with a junky textual edge. That one ended up being a straight digital master! We went for a very precise digital sound due to the tape just not being transparent enough for the style of music… Another artist from France with a few tracks with a synthy early-Cure sort of sound… And lastly: working with local artist Distaudio very closely to co-produce, co-mix and master his debut album project. It’s been really exciting working on a project with vocals and I’m drawing a lot from my own production ideas as well as the experience with Hunz last year. It’s also involved me getting my head around Ableton Live to mix the songs. Lots of good ideas in that program, but surprising with how buggy it is! I guess I’m spoilt with how good Renoise is.
I’d take some photos of my tiny little room where I have my make-shift studio set up, but we still can’t find the card reader for the camera. I tried to buy another one, but of course when I got home I realised that it was the wrong reader. I may just cave in and try and buy yet another one.
I’ve not really done much on my own music due to being in a share environment, and not really feeling that comfortable to get into the required mental space to either create songs or record stuff to finish existing ones. I’ve laid down a few ideas, mostly so I don’t forget them. I’ve had itches to work with Alex Strain again and make some really out there stuff. And Mick Rippon has been very keen to continue our collaborations in a more serious and dedicated way. As usual I’m bursting at the seams with ideas but I feel a little muddled about where to put my energy. The spread on the toast is thin, so the toast doesn’t taste like much. I guess once I get a job, move out and have a private setup again with a routine the production will start to flow again.
Saw Porcupine Tree at the Tivoli last week – which was awesome! Some other gigs lined up too in March: Devin Townsend at the Tivoli again; and Massive Attack at the Riverstage. That’s one benefit of living in a city: just so easy to see gigs. I’m keen to check out more of local stuff though as the year goes on, especially anything arty, different, and special.
Ok, well I think that’s all for now. Sorry for the negative mood in this post, I guess this is this is the way it is right now in this transition. If you’d like more up-to-the-minute updates on all things MMD I’m still very active on Twitter. Like always, stay tuned – more to share later.
Oh one last little thing: Suva, A Renoise friend was joking about my production work with a lot of Renoise community artists and my sometimes overly-opinionatedness regarding production approaches. He made up a little sticker for albums I’ve worked on, and I had a good laugh:
Download Mp3: Take The Red Pill
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A little seasonal gift for you all: a new song! I’ve been recently inspired by the new beta version of Renoise, with stacks of new features that are showcased in this song. In particular a new featured called the ‘Pattern Matrix’ spurned inspiration about the Matrix Movie and Neo’s choice of the red or blue pill – red to face reality and exit from The Matrix, or blue to continue the illusion and remain inside. This is a fairly crazy high energy song and I suppose could be the soundtrack to anyone taking the red pill. The song was written entirely on headphones on my laptop, just after moving to Brisbane. Lucky for some of you that are beta testing the new 2.5 version of Renoise, I’m offering the XRNS file so you can load it in Renoise and see how I did it all:
Take The Red Pill XRNS File (for editing in Renoise)
We’ve been in Mitchelton, Brisbane, for over two weeks. I’m enjoying a little break from the hectic madness of moving house, sorting belongings at a storage facility and finding a new system of living in about a quarter of the space we were previously in. R has already secured a wonderfully promising new job starting next month, whereas I’ve not spotted anything obvious yet to chase in terms of work. Scoring a part time job of a certain quality might be a project for the new year once the silly season is over.
In the meantime I had the itch to do audio production again so I decided to open up my audio production business again. I’ve already locked in one client for mastering and talking to a few other potentials. Even though I have some reservations about the type of work that it is, it is attractive as a form of supplementary income. And, if I keep at it I may build enough reputation with it do align myself with more major name productions, possible in more creative and influential ways as well. To get the ball rolling I’ve had set up a small room here that’s doubling as a storage space! I bought new monitor stands and spent some time orienting the room and acoustically treating the walls with hanging sheets. I’ve got a workable sound and Take The Red Pill is the first finished ‘test’ production I’ve done in this space. I’ll take a picture of it soon and show you what I’ve done.
More to tell soon, but I might stop here and enjoy the evening. Cheers! …And stay safe.
Permit me if you will to rant and rave for a while, I believe I’m overdue a blog in that regard. Things need explaining.
A few months ago my partner and I decided, after nearly a year of discussing it, that we will pack up our lives in Armidale, NSW Australia, to move to Brisbane – Queensland’s capital city. Our reasons for this are numerous and the final decision was not made lightly. One of R’s reasons for moving is to find better opportunities to continue her Psychology Internship, possibly with affiliates of her old Brisbane employer. Seeing that she has grown up in that city she’s a little less excited than myself about going there, but we’re both looking forward to expanded opportunities with our career options as well as having better engagement with the rich and varied cultural events that go on in the city. The guts of my own personal reasons to move fall into three areas:
So, for better or worse, with the commitment to move made and our resignation letters processed – our last day of work is November 27th. That day also happens to be my birthday. We’ve booked a local removalist to come collect the bulk of our stuffs on the 9th of December, for arrival in Brisbane on the 10th. For an undetermined and hopefully not too long time, we will be staying at R’s Mum’s house in Mitchelton, which is in a lovely north-west quarter of the city and has good access to the Ferny Grove train line. We’ll be unpacking and taking a little break to reflect on what we’re doing over the Christmas period, and then starting the new year with job seeking. I imagine R will get something excellent fairly quickly, but I’m not so sure about myself. I’m not even sure what sort of job I want. I do know one thing: I don’t want to end up in the same sort of job that I’m in now: bored, stuck in needless repetition, and under the weather of indecision of a large bureaucracy. I do want an ethical job too. In some ways I’m not sure if I even want to do an audio related job again. Perhaps I should try something new with the Education sector again with literacy teaching, or maybe something to do with youth social work. I’ll scope out my options once I get there. Something may just fall in my lap.
Once we both get decent work we hope to buy a house as soon as we can, possibly in the same area of Brisbane. Being without a landlord finally we’ll be able to modify that house to set up a new studio space for music production, and R can modify things for RSPCA and wildlife caring. Hopefully then I can start organising time to keep on with writing my music as well as finally develop a live act of some sort. I’m really looking forward to getting selectively involved with the music scene at Fortitude Valley, and like my 2BOB radio days I may also get involved with the community radio station up there, 4ZzZ.
It has been a slow process, but my work for clients doing mastering is finally coming to an end. A few months back I decided to limit the amount of clients I would take on because I knew once I moved house I wouldn’t have access to a studio space to do the work. Well, more realisations have occurred since that decision, in particular two very clear ones: 1. I don’t quite have the gear or the professional sensitivity to continue doing mastering on a commercial level. I don’t feel I can give an adequate professional guarantee that the end product will be as good as I’d like it to be. And to continue to improve that professional aspect I’d have to invest way more money and time than I can afford, just to compete with people out there who already do it fantastically. 2. I’m just not interested in doing mastering any more. My problem with mastering is that it is largely an objective and near-scientific sound editing process – so any personal emotional opinion I have of the music I’m working has to be put aside for the sake of the client. It’s been a real challenge to work on some music I’ve stylistically or sonically disliked, and there’s no creative or artistic opportunity in the process to get involve with ‘improving’ the music in that regard. Spending long hours on music I don’t like in a very cold and analytical process has made me think of all the time I could have been spending developing my own music.
I just don’t think mastering as a job suits my personality, and is maybe better suited to someone with an ultra keen ear and devotion to using esoteric audio equipment with perfectionist zeal. So, at this point I won’t be offering the service any more. I may in the future aim to get more involved with other artists as a ‘producer’ so I can explore that artistic side of things. And I think I’ll be aiming to work more with local Brisbane bands and artists on a personal level. But above all else I absolutely need to get back to pouring more energy into my own music, getting better at song writing, recording, guitar, vocals and mixing.
This has meant I’ve also been unsatisfied with how my own songs have been mastered. I must have re-mastered my last few releases 4-5 times now, and I still I haven’t nailed them. Getting very frustrated with things I suggested to Simon (who gives me a lot of continuing advice on audio production) that he could master the songs for me… Well, he was reluctant to do that for technical reasons and convinced me to keep at it by myself next year, making some improvements to my audio equipment. So let’s make a list of what I need:
Yesterday I had an interesting conversation with local artist Rick Hatch, who makes and sells beautiful pottery with his wife Suzanne. Rick has just bought a shop space down town to take the business up a gear, and it has a wonderful creative vibe to it. I told Rick that I was envious of the space and would love to have my own space like it, and he replied saying “Well, I’m 30 years older than you”. That simple statement seemed to sum up so much of where I am at. To make any artistic work of inspirational quality you have to persist with years and years worth of work and refinement to achieve that level. This hits home the fact that I have still so much work to do in order to even begin a public exhibition of my music on a serious level beyond the pedestrian activity of internet sharing and web 2.0 promotion. For me this means less time spent noodling in front of a computer screen, and more time practicing guitar and vocals. Better musicianship means better recorded performances, and eventually better live performances. It feels like I have the ideas, but not quite yet the substance to back up those ideas.
Part of this is learning more patience. I have an album, The Paradox, I want to get done, but wanting it to get done fast isn’t the right attitude or approach. I’ve been working on it since 2004 anyway, so a year or two more shouldn’t really be a big deal. The album is now planned to have 16 tracks, all of which are already written and simply require the best guitar and vocals I muster to be recorded, mixed and mastered. I was thinking for a while that it would be great to release one track at a time as I finish each of them, but I think that could lead to inconsistency problems. I’ve already released First Impressions Always Count, and The Stormformer – so those can now act as ‘previews’. Once I get a better setup I’ll treat the whole album as one big consistent project, and do the mix and master after all the songs are done. I can then release every single track one by one over a period to culminate in an eventual formal release of the album complete. This covers both old and new approaches to sharing music: the old being the album ‘collection’, the new being web 2.0 savvy by releasing a constant stream of high quality media to sustain interest. It’ll be both free and something you can buy. I think this is the way to go for everything from now on. There’s two more albums in my mind after The Paradox, and another collaboration album with Mick Rippon. And who knows what else!
In less musing news, some other things have been going on:
JBL has been positively encouraging about me learning to use a video editor, and he’s been helpful in teaching me how to use Final Cut Express to edit digital video. I’ve been a bit shy about getting into video, much like photography – I can appreciate really good stuff done by pros and I’ve just got no time to get any good at it when I’m doing music so much. I’ve become interested in the idea of doing a simple music video for one of my songs, as well as the idea of doing ‘vlogs’ to get my name out there in the tubes. So, I used iMovie to capture some footage through my laptop camera, and did some rambling about myself and my studio (can’t you tell I’m procrastinating?). Well, some of it was OK, but it largely looked like a dork rambling without a script! Despite doing an edit, I’ve given up on the idea due to lack of time and having nothing really substantial to say. Nevertheless you’ll probably see me get into it after the move.
I’ve recently been inspired by Xerxes to start my very own bandcamp page. So far I’ve only tested one track, and I’ve found that it’s a really impressive system! I might use it in the future as an e-commerce method to sell my music. Speaking of websites, I’ve been working out some ideas with Pilot 7 for a new mmd website. We’re still not sure how it’s going to shape up, but we should have something new next year sometime.
OK, I’ve ranted and raved long enough! Back to packing…
