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.
I was going to spend ages writing my own little pseudo-press-release for this thing, but…. basically, if you own Reason, you owe it to yourself to check this out.
Now, I know my way around Reason, but Tom Pritchard takes Thor to a whole other level. I’m honestly struggling to describe this Refill – I’ve worked on three Thor-based Refills and, honestly, this puts me to shame (damn you!). This is a guy who knows how to make fantastic, usable sounds and who knows Thor inside-out. It’s like working with an extra instrument in Reason. Just… listen to it.
If you use Reason and you don’t find anything in there that suits you then you’re doing it wrong.
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.
Quite a while back I contributed vocals to a track by Refracture (whose music I’m a big fan of – his blend of melodic breaks and sheer energy is right up my street) called Redemption which, as it happens, was released on Beatport a couple of days ago. Since then it’s been featured at #1 on Beatport’s “10 Must Hear Breaks Tracks” for the week of its release which was both a bit of a surprise and, needless to say, quite nice! You can check out the song on Beatport by following this handy link. It was great to work with Refracture and I’m really pleased that it’s going down so well.
On a somewhat different topic, you may (or may not) recall that I mentioned that I was working on an album of selected ambient works a month or so ago. Well, the album itself has been completed and I’m currently in the process of trying to find a home for it. Given my total lack of skill regarding the fine art of blatant self promotion, this might be tricky. The album itself is currently going by the title of “And All Is As It Should Be” and features a mixture of reworked and original songs. Rest assured that, one way or another, it will be seeing a release in the (hopefully not-too-distant) future. Just to clarify though: this release has absolutely nothing to do with album #3 (to be released through Distinctive) and came about simply because it was something I really wanted to do. I’m still very much plugging away at album 3 and I’m really liking how it’s turning out.
While on the subject of other musical projects, I’m currently working on a selection of tracks which are considerably heavier than my usual output for the purposes of licensing. So far I’ve got a decent selection of tracks going and it’s a pretty hefty contrast considering the decidedly mellow nature of the ambient album I was working on.
So, yes, I’ve got a fair few bits and pieces going on at the moment. No rest for the wicked!
Earlier in the year I started working on a selection of atmospheric ambient songs – more specifically, ambient re-workings of songs from Lightfields. I was between projects (album 3 notwithstanding – I’m still working on that!) and I’d been wanting to get back into writing something really “visual” and atmospheric for a while. I didn’t really have any particular goal in mind when I started out – I toyed with the idea of getting an EP’s worth of material put together and released, but I had no idea how or when.
Since then, this ambient EP has grown considerably and is now coming in at about 50 minutes in length with a mix of ambient re-workings and original songs. What started as a project purely for the sake of writing music that I wanted to write has kind of taken on a life of its own, and I’m really happy with how it’s all turning out. I’ve got some artwork ready to roll (courtesy of a photo taken by Tom Pritchard in 2010) and right now I’m still writing music for this project. As for how or when I’m actually going to release it, I honestly have no idea. Right now I’m focussing on getting it completed – once it’s in a finished state I’ll have a good long think about how best to go about releasing it.
Below is one of the original songs from the EP/album/project – I’d love to know what you think!
I’ll post more news regarding this project once I have something more concrete in place.
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.
Nucleus Soundlab‘s Pantheon III Refill for Reason 5.0 has been released, featuring more than a few patches designed by myself (and a plethora of other incredibly talented sound designers), and an original demo track produced by me is also included with the Refill.
This marks the third Pantheon Refill I’ve worked on with Nucleus Soundlab, and – having seen the final result – I am incredibly pleased with how it’s all turned out. It really is an invaluable tool if you compose music with Reason, and for anyone wanting to inject a bit of warmth or flavour into their work then you can’t really go wrong with it. Detailed documentation is provided along with the Refill itself, so for anyone wanting to take the sounds apart and add their own twist to things then you’ll have an absolute field day with this.
Below is the demo track I produced for Pantheon III, utilising synth sounds exclusively from the Refill itself and drums from the Reason Factory Sound Bank. The track is included with the Refill.
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.
