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April 24, 2022 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

It has been some considerable time since I last gave an update within these pages on the progress of my musical collaboration with The Chanteuse; the which goes by the soubriquet of Anam Danu. In fact, looking back (with some trepidation) at the archives of this blog, I can see that it is longer than I thought since I made any serious reference to such matters. Apart from a brief mention at the turn of the year the last time that I turned in a proper report was back in August of last year – when I celebrated our return to the studio.

High time that I brought things up to date.

Last August I wrote that we had made a good start on putting together a new collection of songs, aiming to record a third ‘album’ to follow on from ‘Winds of Change‘ and ‘Winter Blue and Evergreen‘. Whereas we had indeed made a good start – having at that point penned half a dozen new songs – it has subsequently taken longer than perhaps expected to complete the collection.

It seems that I am currently able to write and produce tracks at a rate of about one a month. For an album we like to have a good ten tracks but in this case I wrote rather more – around fifteen – before we felt that we had the best combination for the new release. We are both quite picky customers and are keen to make this as good as it can be. This should give you some idea as to why these things can take a fair bit of time.

Anyway – we now have our ten tracks and we are currently recording the vocals for the final one.

So – what happens next? Well – this does:

  • We carry out the musical equivalent of snagging – going through everything with a fine tooth-comb and fixing anything with which we are not completely satisfied
  • We instigate the process of getting album artwork designed
  • We do the final mixes for each song – which can involve a number of iterations
  • We solicit feedback from a number of trusted souls – this with the particular aim of:
  • Finalising the running order – which, once done, can lead to the process of:
  • Mastering the album

Once we get to that point we have a ‘finished’ product and we can start work on all the other essential tasks, such as deciding our release strategy. Right now – however – that is looking a little too far ahead.

Our aim is to have our new creation ready to go for the summer!

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Nothing without work

October 24, 2021 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

“The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work”

Emile Zola

I am currently reading “The Gift”, by the estimable Lewis Hyde. I shall have more to say about the book once I have finished it, but already all manner of fascinating thoughts and notions have been triggered thereby.

Sadly, as befits my increasingly elderly status, I cannot now recall exactly how I came to the book in the first place, though I feel certain that it must have been referenced in something else that I was investigating. That is normally the way these things happen – to me in any case. I do know that I was greatly attracted by this quote from the foreword by Canadian icon – Margaret Atwood:

”[A] classic… If you want to write, paint, sing, compose, act or make films – read ‘The Gift’”

One motif from the book has already attracted my attention and formed itself into the outline of a song. I certainly did not set out with this in mind, but the muse – as we all surely know – works in wondrous and unexpected ways…

…as became all the more apparent late one night last week.

I find quite frequently that one of more elements of a new song will unfurl themselves relatively rapidly and without my having any real idea as to how this has happened. At this point I might well get stuck – with no idea how the piece will proceed from its temporary conclusion.

My normal procedure – with a view to jump-starting proceedings – is to play/sing repeatedly that which I have already written, in the hope that the next part of the composition will suddenly reveal itself to me by emerging organically from the elements that I already have. This sometimes has the desired effect but as often as not simply results in my straining way too hard for a result and ending up with nothing of any use.

Now I am a night owl. The Girl heads for bed reasonably early but I often get in a couple of hours work before I follow her. This I was doing the other night, in my search for a suitable chorus for the new track. I could feel that my efforts were going nowhere and – having an early start the following morning – I decided to call it a day.

I shut everything down in the studio – doused the lights and tip-toed upstairs in the dark. No sooner than I had emerged onto our main floor than the whole chorus arrived in my head – out of nowhere! Not only did I get the melody and the phrasing but also the harmonic progression and half of the words.

Now – how did that happen!

Of course – to ensure that my flash of inspiration was not lost to posterity I was obliged to scuttle back downstairs, to power everything up again and to rapidly commit this latest gift to my recording software – lest I should forget it again overnight…

What a wondrous thing is the creative process!

Thank you…!

 

 

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Dreaming and doing

September 6, 2021 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

“What turns me on about the digital age, what excited me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing. You see, it used to be that if you wanted to make a record of a song, you needed a studio and a producer. Now, you need a laptop.”

Bono

Bono is not wrong, of course, and it is little short of a miracle that what – when I started writing and playing way back in the very early seventies – would once have required a lot of money on studio fees and equipment and such, can now be achieved with a simple electronic device to which a great many people have access.

That having been said, musicians (and other creatives) tend to be restless souls – always stretching themselves and grasping at some notion of perfection that is, by definition, well out of reach.

This is by way of admitting that the splendid new window was not all that was added to my little studio over the summer – and that the round of domestic improvements on which I commented in my last post also included some other tweaks inside the studio itself.

This is what it looked like when I first set it up:

…and this is what it looks like now:

Quite apart from there now being rather more ‘stuff’ in the room than there was before – and not to ignore the splendid new rug – there are now several more layers of acoustic treatment (bass traps and suchlike) in an attempt to contain some of the wilder room nodes and to achieve something like the flat response that makes for a good recording studio.

The main reason for these endeavours, of course, is to enable us to record the Chanteuse’s voice in all its glory in the best possible environment – now that we can finally work together in the same space again. We don’t have a vocal booth, but we do have a vocal ‘corner’:

This is what it looks like from the Chanteuse’s angle:

We don’t normally record her with multiple microphones but we were carrying out some comparative tests in our endless search for the perfect sound.

We look forward to sharing the results!

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Back in business

August 17, 2021 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Whereas the Chanteuse and I were quite delighted last year to have discovered a method of remote working that enabled Anam Danu to record (in real time!) our second collection of songs – “Winter Blue and Evergreen” – whilst safely ensconced within our own creative spaces, we knew at the time that it was unlikely to be an optimal solution – and certainly not in the longer term.

It is perhaps because we are both a little ‘old school’ (we like to work face to face – to hear properly and without any annoying delays what we are doing – to not be subject to random audio artifacts – to indulge in all of the essential non-verbal communication that is the norm for human interaction) that everything seemed a bit of a struggle. Using the Internet as a recording tool is indeed a splendid boon to which, of course, previous generations did not have access, but it is far from being perfect.

We were extremely happy that we got to make an album safely in the midst of a pandemic; we hope not to have to do so again.

The really good news is that as a result of recent relaxations in restrictions – thanks largely to the Canadian vaccination program – this last week we were able to start working together again for the first time in a year and a half – here in my studio. We are already well on our way to having a decent collection of new material and we are now able to start recording it in earnest.

I think a good sized ‘Hoorah!’ is in order…

Now – should any gentle readers wish to be kept in the loop with regard to the release of new material, navigate to the Anam Danu website and enter your email address in the box at the bottom of our contact page and you will be kept informed of the latest developments.

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Flying the nest

December 21, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Artwork by Martin SpringettSince my last update on the subject of the eagerly awaited new Anam Danu album – “Winter Blue and Evergreen” – much has occurred.

The tracks have passed through the mastering process described in my last update and have been assembled into an album. Final tweaks were made and all is now as good as we can get it.

We now have a splendid and beautiful cover for the CD – the which you can see at the top of this post. This lovely piece of work was created specially for us and I will pass on the full story of how it came to be in a subsequent post.

All of this goodness has been bundled up in the approved fashion and shipped off to our Digital Music Distributor of choice. All we can do now is to sit back and wait, because the process normally takes around three to four weeks. With Christmas looming it may even take a little longer – but as you all know: “All good things…”

Once all has been through the approval mill the album will become available through all the usual digital channels.

Finally – Anam Danu now has its own website, which can be found at:

Anamdanu.com

We are pretty pleased with the way that the website has turned out, but is is conspicuously lacking in any of the usual atmospheric band shots. The reasons for that are sadly obvious; in times of pandemic trying to organise a photo shoot runs that gamut from difficult to downright foolhardy.

The website will be kept up to date with all manner of musical goings-on as things progress. Needless to say one of the first things to look for there will be the firm release dates – once we know them – as well as details as to where to find the album.

The music on this album was very much born out of this most unfortunate year. Our hope is that in this manner (as of course in many others) something good will come from it.

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Distance learning

December 9, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

I am, as I write the introduction to this post, invigilating the end-of-course exam for some thirty students (mostly of Environmental Science) who have this term been studying Computer Literacy.

I am doing so remotely here in the comfort and safely of my studio, which explains why I can be tapping away at a blog entry on the left-most screen whilst still monitoring progress and responding to any queries on the other two. There is something decidedly surreal about about the process.

Having said that – there is (and has been throughout) something decidedly surreal about the whole undertaking this term.

I feel as though I know some of these students a little, having assisted them a fair bit throughout the course, responding to questions and observations, sharing the odd joke… and, of course, they have listened to me quite a lot – maybe three hours a week.

We have – however – none of us met. I have spoken directly to some whilst trying to help them – but other than the few who have their pictures as avatars, I do not even know what most of them look like. Students prefer to communicate with lecturers by chat or email. At the most they may enable audio so that we can talk – but they don’t do video with staff (unless prevailed upon so to do) and frankly I don’t blame them. They do get to see me (should they so choose) as they voted at the start of the course for my camera to be on.

It is the lot of the teacher – of course – to meet transiently and then to wish good and prosperous lives to a constant succession of new faces. I guess it is one of the things that attracts people to teaching – the opportunity to make human contacts (and to give something useful and meaningful in return). Doing so without ever meeting face to face, however, seems somehow inadequate.

Given the alternatives in this horrid year I am not complaining. I can scarcely imagine how any of this (and a gazillion other things that we maybe take a little too much for granted) might have been effected at all some fifteen or twenty years ago – let alone back in the mists of time (as when I was a student, for example).

It may be going a little far to suggest that we are the fortunate ones.

“Tell that to the young people of today. They won’t believe you…”

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A sweeter sound

November 25, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

“Recording studios are interesting; a lot of people say – and I agree – that you should have a lot of wood in a recording studio. It gets a kind of a sweeter sound”.

Paul Allen

I find that I am spending a great deal of time in my little studio these days. There is the music – of course; we are very busy trying to get our album finished and out into the world. I also use the studio for my teaching (and the preparation thereof) – which is all done over the Internet at the moment for COVID-19 reasons. To accommodate these multiple tasks the studio has slowly evolved since the days when it was first set up back in 2016 and I posted the first pictures of it to this forum.

This is what it used to look like:

And this is how it is now:

Nice new rug, don’t you think?

Now – you might think that having three screens is simply overkill. When I’m teaching, however, the conferencing/chat software that we use runs on the centre screen – the presentation (or any other resource) that I am teaching from runs on the left one and the third one is used for looking ahead in the materials, for trying things out or checking details in answer to student queries that come up during the class. A lot of multi-tasking goes on! During Lab sessions this third screen runs a remote desktop session on an machine in one of the College’s computer labs so that I can assist any students who are working there.

It is quite a juggling act – and towards the end of term it all gets pretty tiring.

Roll on Christmas, say I…

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His Master’s Voice

November 19, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

My last update on the topic of the new music shortly to appear from Anam Danu (my now two year collaboration with The Chanteuse) hit the streets (ie – appeared on this blog) about a month ago now. We had – at the time – just sent out copies of all of the tracks in our burgeoning collection to a small number of trusted individuals with the request that they give us their unvarnished opinions thereof.

This they duly did – and lessons were learned!

As a result – and after a certain amount of horse-trading – we ended up with a mutually acceptable running order. Final mixes followed rapidly, exported as 24 bit WAV files (that is in decently high quality versions) and the package completed with a guide MP3 file of the whole album with timed inter-track gaps, fades and suchlike. Accompanied by the necessary documentation – band name, album title, track names and numbers, track times and ISRC numbers for each track – everything was transferred to our chosen mastering company (CPS Mastering of Vancouver) and left in the care of the estimable Brock McFarlane.

Now – for those who have no idea what audio mastering entails, Wikipedia has this helpful explanation:

“Mastering, a form of audio post production, is the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source containing the final mix to a data storage device (the master), the source from which all copies will be produced (via methods such as pressing, duplication or replication).

One of the key reasons for getting your mastering done professionally is that – being effected in a suitable acoustically-neutral mastering environment –  the end result can be guaranteed to play successfully on pretty much all systems and in all spaces.

Yesterday we received from CPS the first mastered draft of the whole collection. We must now spend much time listening to it on different devices and in different environments to figure out if anything needs tweaking or whether we are good to go.

Then we just need to wait for album artwork (that’s another story!) and the whole can be dispatched to our chosen digital distributor to be sent to the various streaming/digital music providers – and CDs burned as required.

I will – of course – keep you informed of (inevitably slow) progress…

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Out for review

October 22, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

“My congratulations to you, sir. Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.”

Samuel Johnson

In my post to this journal of July 17th – ‘Closer than you think‘ – I described how the Chanteuse and I had contrived – in spite of all difficulties arising from the COVID-19 pandemic lock-down – to start remotely recording her vocals onto a set of ten tracks that I had prepared – and which we hoped to turn into a new Anam Danu album in due course.

My last update on the matter came at the end of a post of August 25th entitled ‘Busy, busy, busy‘ – the which was primarily (unsurprisingly) concerned with just how busy we were… it being ‘that time of year’!

Well – these things do indeed take time – but I feel that an update is due.

We have finished recording the vocals and the tracks are essentially complete. That does not mean that they are ready to be sent out into the world. I have been doing much in the way of post-processing and making initial and intermediate mixes. The next stage is to finalise the mixes, to decide on the sequencing and to send the tracks off to a professional Mastering Engineer to get them ‘mastered’ ready for submission to whichever online distribution company we choose to go with. Much more on that stage of the process later.

There is – however – one more thing to be done before we send our tracks for mastering… and that is to get feedback on them from some trusted and interested parties. That is where we are at right now – and I can tell you that it is a nerve-racking process. Having spent many months in very close proximity to these creations as they have evolved we must now stand back from them and ask others to give us – in their own time – their opinions on our endeavours.

Not much makes me nervous. This – however – does!

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Closer than you think

July 17, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

“The stars up there at night are closer than you think.”

Doug Dillon

‘Twas but a mere handful of posts back that I was bemoaning the sad fact that the Chanteuse and I had been unable to get on with recording the seemingly endless (hopefully!) sequence of songs that I am clearly engaged upon writing at the moment. The latest in a line of tragic circumstances (in this case one that affects everyone – the COVID-19 pandemic!) had put a stop to any prospects of two non-isolation-group souls singing with each other – thus rendering recording impossible…

…unless we could come up with some means of so doing that did not require us to be in the same room (or even the same building)! Well – clearly other people are doing just such things, so it must be possible. Indeed there is a plethora of different technical solutions to the problem, but at first glance nothing that met our preferred and exacting requirements.

What we really wanted to be able to do was to record the Chanteuse’s voice exactly the way that we normally do – with the exception of each being in our own homes rather than together in my little studio. This would involve my playing the track from my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) – the Chanteuse listening to it on headphones and singing the vocal part along with it – and my recording the resultant performance back into the DAW. I would then need to be able to play the ‘completed’ track back so that we could both listen critically to it.

Clearly the best way to effect such a seemingly complex technical trick – given that we don’t have the budget of an international broadcaster or major telecommunications company – was to use the InterWebNet. But how might that even be possible?

Well, the solution that I eventually found – after trying just about every alternative that we could reasonably afford – comes from a German company and is called SessionLinkPRO. It is a web application that works – joy of joy – using just Google’s Chrome web browser and has a splendidly simple but effective interface that enables two computers – one running the DAW software and the other equipped with an audio interface and studio microphone – to send and receive simultaneous digital audio streams at studio quality. Sweet!

We had our first online recording session this week, finishing off a track that we had started recording back at the beginning of March. Though SessionLinkPRO also offer video links if required we chose to work simply with audio and we were naturally a little worried at first that not being able to see each other – and the inevitable slight audio delay in the round-trip signal – might make the session awkward. We were, however, rapidly into our stride and in discussion afterwards decided that – since we don’t really look at each other whilst working anyway –  the task at hand was no more taxing than it normally is.

The proof of the pudding is that – having done the first mixes of the track concerned – it is virtually impossible to tell that different parts of the vocal were recorded at different times and in entirely different circumstances.

Kudos again to SessionLinkPRO – and should any gentle reader be interested in the technical details of the setup I would be happy to furnish them.

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