I’ve been talking a lot about a heavy production album that I’ve been working on since late last year. I finished working on the musical aspect of the album last last month and, handily, since then it has found a home thanks to the kind folks at Liftmusic. What this means is that it will be fulfilling its original purpose and should be available to music supervisors and producers for use in TV, film and advertising. Which is great!
However, since I started talking about it (and started posting snippets on-line) a few people had expressed an interest in listening to it. Alas, due to the nature of the release it will not be seeing a public release.
Also, I’ve just completed another remix for Solarswarm which I’ve just submitted and I’ve been getting some incredible feedback so far. I’ll be sharing more news once everything’s finalised but I’m really excited about this one as I genuinely think this is some of my best remix work to date. Stay tuned!
Hello! If you’ve visited this site recently then you might have noticed that I’ve had a bit of a re-shuffle – I like to keep things mysterious and hidden like that.
Actually, the reasoning behind moving everything about is a bit more logical than that, but just to let you know where everything’s living these days and what’s changed…
The Bandcamp player widgets have been replaced by some sexier Soundcloud alternatives. Not that I had anything against the Bandcamp player, but the Soundcloud player just looks SO MUCH BETTER. Functionally they both operate in the same way, only now you can leave me timed comments/dirty messages on all of my uploaded music as you listen to it. Which is always fun.
My solo/artistic works (i.e. singles, albums, EPs) can now be found via the handy drop-down “solo works” menu at the top of the page. You’ll be able to check out previously released material (sometimes in full) via the included players on each respective page. There’s also a handy front-page if you simply click on the “solo works” button.
My production music/licensing information can now be found via the “production music” button at the top of the page. Production music is music that has been written for a specific purpose (film/TV/adverts and the like) and should not be confused with my solo/artistic work – not that I consider my production music to be lacking in artistry (far from it, in fact!), just that they are both written with very different audiences and uses in mind. As such, I figured that they could do with separating out so as to avoid future confusion. The production music page is still very much a work-in-progress, but will feature a more complete portfolio in the near future. In the mean time, if you’re interested in licensing any of my music for commercial purposes then this is the place to start.
All Civil Protection/band-related shenanigans can be found via the “Civil Protection” button at the top of the page. Again, my work with Civil Protection is targeted at a very different audience than my solo or production material, and decided to provide it with it’s own space. You can also find out more about Civil Protection at the band’s official page.
As I’ve stated, the reason for a lot of these changes is to prevent future confusion. I can’t be dealing with using a different musician name for each song I release (hence why I tend to just release everything under my real name), and this is my attempt to keep everything vaguely organised without having to resort to using fifty different musician names for different types of music.
Feel free to say hello over at Soundcloud as well!
Figured it was about time I updated this site to something a bit more relevant than a post about the approaching new year… although, I guess, I could have just left it for a year and it would have been vaguely relevant again, all mentions of 2012 aside. Hmm, I can’t help but feel I haven’t thought this one through particularly well.
To be honest, as far as starts-of-years go it hasn’t exactly been the best here. Definitely not going to dwell on it too much, though, and – all things aside – despite not being a particularly productive month in terms of original musical output, it has been a productive month in other regards – which should give me more time in the coming months to actually work on, you know, music. Which is always a good thing!
Speaking of music… although I haven’t been writing a massive amount of music this month (besides Monotribe-heavy acid…), I did take some time out to write this chilled out number. There’s something quite therapeutic about obsessive drum edits that I just can’t quite put my finger on.
[update: sorry, this song has been removed from Soundcloud]
At any rate, I’m looking forward to seeing what’s in store for the rest of the year!
Well, 2011 is starting to draw to a close and I’m going to be out of the studio until 2012. I’ve got plenty of stuff lined up for the new year and I’ve got a few things to take care of before then so it looks like I’ve got plenty of fun ahead!
Merry Christmas/holiday-of-choice/whatever to you all and a Happy New Year! Here’s to 2012, apocalypse notwithstanding.
Howdy all, just thought I’d let you know that my good friend Rich (aka TONAL AXiS) now has an EP out in the FiXT store! Definitely one for fans of nicely chilled ambience with a good emotional undercurrent – so, basically, if you like my more downtempo output then this should be right up your street. Check it out.
I figured it might not be a bad idea to post an actual update here as opposed to a post dedicated solely to me bitching about DPD! (though I do still hate them with a passion)
Album 3 is still coming along nicely, and I’ve now got a few songs in the bag along with a healthy selection of songs that are ready for a bit of fleshing out. Curiously enough, the end of the album is more or less mapped out at the moment – that’s subject to change, but it’s interesting to see how it’s everything’s starting to fit together. I’m hoping for an interesting blend of progressive/synthpop/atmospheric styles with the finished album. For anyone interested in hearing how things are going, I have a habit of posting clips and snippets from time to time on my SoundCloud page. It’s worth checking there regularly as all kinds of bits and pieces have been appearing there lately and… well… sometimes it seems a bit excessive to post an update here for the sake of a song clip. Sometimes.
I spent a bit of time last week re-installing everything and generally cleaning house, and while doing so ended up going through a few older projects to make sure everything was working properly. In doing so I started messing around with some older songs and re-working them into a more ambient style and ended up with a few interesting ideas – one of said ideas you can check out here. I’ve also been working on a few shorter instrumental ideas over the past month or so, sort of reminiscent of my “sketch-a-day” thingy I did a couple of years ago (for the uninitiated, this involved me writing very quick song ideas regardless of quality – surprisingly, I’m really happy with how most of them turned out) but with a bit more of a polished sound overall. I’ve also been tinkering with Reason 6 for a little while now and, I must say, the focus on rhythmic and distortion effects devices is very welcome.
Update: Before I start, I’d like to say thanks for taking the time to read about my woes with DPD. However, I don’t want to give the impression that this is a website dedicated to consumer troubles – if you’re having problems with DPD or any other delivery company, a much better course of action would be to get in touch with them directly. Taking the issue up directly on Twitter seems to be a very good way of getting a response. While I welcome comments and opinions, this post is quite old now, and I am not affiliated with any delivery company in any way, shape, or form. I have left it up for those interested, but if you’re interested in my work or fancy something a bit more positive then this might be a good place to start.
Update 2: It’s coming up to three years since this happened. This post was originally made primarily to vent at the situation, particularly after getting nowhere after having tried to contact DPD. I’ve had a lot of comments, and I appreciate that people are angry with DPD, but that’s not what either me or this site are about. As such, I have disabled comments. If you have a problem with DPD, then I would strongly suggest at least attempting to contact them directly instead.
Anyway! On with the rant.
So, I’ve been thinking about upgrading my rig with a solid-state drive for a while. Last week I decided to go ahead and order one along with a new HDD and spend the weekend having a full system re-install and general tidy session ready for working next week. My system’s in a bit of a disorganised state at the moment, so I figured it would be a nice chance to completely clean house and upgrade my computer at the same time. I ordered said components on the 25th August for next-day delivery on the 26th with DPD… fair enough. I’d like to point out that I recently had a delivery from DPD (on the 1st July) scheduled for next-day delivery which somehow got completely botched and, as a result, I had to wait an extra weekend for my stuff to arrive – so, already, they weren’t exactly in my good books.
My stuff was picked up by DPD on the 26th August and went out for delivery as planned with an expected arrival between 14:59 and 15:59. Great! Except it didn’t arrive. Apparently the driver got caught up in roadworks (which I’m not convinced actually existed) and it was labelled as being rejected by the recipient (i.e. me). I was a little miffed so contacted their customer services and scheduled a delivery for later that day. Later on, I checked the delivery status and noticed it had been set for 30th August. Apparently the driver returned my stuff to the depot and never tried to re-deliver it. Note that this is twice they said they’d deliver my stuff, and both times nobody actually came to the delivery address. Nobody contacted me (despite me giving them my mobile and landline numbers) and I was left in the dark as to what had actually happened.
Another exasperated phone call later and my delivery was re-scheduled for Saturday 27th August between 9am and 1pm. Can you guess what happened next? I’ll give you a hint: it did not end with me receiving the package and cracking on with my plans of upgrading my rig. It did, however, end with me wasting my Saturday morning waiting for this mythical delivery.
Just after 1pm I called their customer support line. Closed for the bank holiday weekend. I tried to call the Leeds depot (where my stuff was being held) and got no answer. I called the Manchester depot and got an answer from an incredibly helpful chap called Wayne. At this point I would like to point out that Wayne is the only good aspect of this series of events – it wasn’t his depot’s responsibility to get my stuff to me, and he was incredibly helpful in trying to chase up my consignment. Unfortunately, it turns out that not only did my package not arrive before 1pm but it looks like it didn’t even go out for delivery at all! The driver of my stuff from the previous day was unreachable, and I’m no closer to getting my stuff. In total, DPD have completely missed THREE scheduled deliveries – four if you include my previous adventure with them in July.
As it’s a bank holiday weekend, I probably won’t be getting my stuff until the 30th August if I’m lucky. Given their current track record, I’m not holding my breath. My entire plan for the weekend has been scuppered, and I’m going to have to sort this out next week when I should really be working on music-related ventures. Here is how things look now (as of 3:27pm on Saturday 27th August):
This is what frustration looks like
Note that the “The parcel was refused by the recipient and returned to the sender” part is a complete and utter fabrication. Nobody attempted to deliver anything to me on Friday 26th August. I’ve wasted an evening and a morning chasing up this thing and I’ve been treated like garbage, and I’m going to have to waste a good chunk of next week sorting stuff out that should have been done over the weekend like I planned. Had I known my stuff wouldn’t have been here until next week, I would have planned my time accordingly… but it seems that me and DPD have wildly varying definitions of the term “next day delivery”.
In summary – my advice to anyone reading this is to avoid DPD like the plague.
Reconstructed Textures is a free Refill available to owners of Reason created using Reason 5. Some of the patches also make use of the ElectroMechanical Refill, which is free to registered users of Reason (if you’re not a registered user, I’m afraid I can’t help you there). You can download Reconstructed Textures here and use it in any of your productions, totally free of charge.
So, what is it? Reconstructed Textures consists of 26 Combinator-based ambient drones, each built using heavily processed samples found in the Factory Sound Bank & ElectroMechanical Refills. But why make a Refill using samples found in the Factory Sound Bank? Well… a little while back I was trying to remember how I created some of the droning sounds featured in one of the tracks on Distant Activity (the track in question being Travelling Light). There are some neat piano drones and reverse effects found in the intro, and – being as I wrote the original version of the track about half a decade ago – I’d forgotten where those sounds came from. After a quick examination, it turned out I’d taken some piano samples from the Factory Sound Bank and processed them. I thought it was a neat idea, so I figured “why not go beyond using just piano samples and see what else I could find in there?”.
All the Combinator patches start with FSB/EM samples – re-mapped, re-pitched, re-looped and layered up in an NN-XT. Then they’re processed with filters, distortion, EQ, compression, reverb, delay or whatever else I fancied doing at the time before being sent to the Combinator’s output where they’re mixed with more layered up, processed NN-XTs. It was an interesting exercise in creating unrecognisable sounds from stock banks as opposed to creating ambient textures from scratch using synths and external devices.
So, first up – the good news! My previously mentioned production album is progressing smoothly, with the bulk of the tracks completed and ready for some further tinkering. I’ve also recently started working on another patch design project and have been working on potential ideas and songs for album #3. You can listen to one of said ideas using the handy player below (or, indeed, here if the embedded player is giving you grief).
(edit: sorry, the preview is no longer representative of how the track sounds so I’ve taken it down -ad)
Unfortunately, I was ill for a few weeks which set me back a bit (glandular fever – which, for future reference, I wouldn’t recommend contracting) but I’m very much back on my feet now. Hooray!
For those of a more geeky disposition, I talk a bit about working with irregular time signatures, percussive sequencing techniques and some simple patch design as I build the foundation for a song from the ground up. I would have liked to have talked a bit about atmospheric effects, but I guess there’s always potential for a future webcast…
