The new podcast is out now, featuring a new version of Up!Went My Dreams (first released in demo form on the podcast a year ago, fact fans), the tale of midnight hauntings and romantic tomfoolery. Perfect (now as then) for a Halloween night. Sweet dreams…
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(on a related subject, the The Sound of The Ladies Lounge 3 has been released on the video podcast feed; click here to download it via iTunes if you don’t already have it)
Lots of exciting things going on at The Sound of The Ladies towers; new recordings of old songs, the glimmerings of a new science-based EP and a sea-based album. I went to see the Pixies play the entirity of the superlative Doolittle, which was as exciting as it sounds. On Tuesday I played at Freedom of Expression in Croydon, with Liam Butler, Alan Lacroix and Superman Revenge Squad, all of whom I like very much (unusual for my jaded pallette). On the subject of classic albums, Ben Parker (the songwriting arm of Superman Revenge Squad) used to be one half of Nosferatu D2, and their debut album is getting a belated release from the fine folks at Audio Antihero records. Nosferatu D2 are a more angular and fearsome proposition than acoustic Ben Parker, but are no less excellent. Click here to buy their album and propel Ben to the TOTP appearance he’s wanted all along…
So, lots of musical irons in fires; more news as the nebulae start to coalesce into nascent suns of harmonic warmth: watch this space.
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I spent my Saturday composing new music (well, more musack) for The Institute, a site-specific event at The Pleasance off Caledonian road. I don’t want to give too much away, but the fact that the performances take place over Halloween weekend should be a bit of a clue. Let’s just say that the guided tour around The Avernus Institute’s clinical research facility will not be without its surprises.
The venue is amazing; the cast top-notch; and the costumes note-perfect (Helen Zaltzman is lending a hand there). Neil Hobbs is the sound designer and tech, but I’m pitching in with the odd bits and bobs: like this little gem, guaranteed to strike terror into the hearts of the brave:
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Remember, stay calm. You are perfectly safe. Nothing could possibly go wrong.
The latest Sound of the Ladies podcast is out now, featuring Every Single One, the gleaming centrepiece in the Squid Roast Trilogy. The shiny bookends (Straight, Boy and Department of Homeland Security) have appeared in various forms and weave a wondrous fantasy of aquatic malfeasance. Coming to a digital music service near you soon. Ish. Until then, enjoy:
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The Secret Island Location (portaloos just visible in foreground)
I had a lovely time at the World’ Smallest Festival on Sunday (albeit briefly – no fun for the wicked). The festival took place in a secret island location somewhere in southeast London. Or the labyrinthine back garden of someone’s house, for those of you with less poetry in your souls. Thanks to Donal for asking me down!
Ben Goddard and a man climbing a very short ladder
I was around long enough to see Ben Goddard do a great set, rounding off with a song “people say sounds like Craig David”. The fresh-faced and brilliant Siddy and James followed with some great songs - really wry, poppy country stuff. I’m not supposed to mention the Toxic cover, but it was very good as well. They’re Bristol-based, so if you’re West Country types, you can see them play Whenever You Want. You lucky folks.
The Thames Beach (St Pauls visible in background)
For those of you confined to London (like me) there are a few consolations. A (very) low Thames tide coincided with my fancying a walk after work, and so I got to walk along the Thames beach from Hungerford Bridge to the Millenium Bridge (about a mile). I was pretty much the only person there. If you want a romantic (solo) date, I can heartily recommend it.
You know that The Sound of The Ladies are a fan of tiny gigs (having had tremendous fun with The Sound of The Ladies Lounge), and now we’ve been asked to play The World’s Smallest Festival (in Forest Hill, London). It has a great line-up, including The Pipettes, Popsocks and a host of comedians too.
Now, getting a ticket is somewhat novel. The festival is run by the folks at blagamillion.com, who are pursuing the noble goal of setting up an arts fund for internet filmmakers - through the medium of blagging a million pounds in 90 days. No, rilly. If you’d like to enter the raffle for tickets, simply text BLAG to 60777; texts cost £1.50 plus the normal cost of a message, and the money goes to the blagger fund. There are 50 pairs of tickets up for grabs (told you it was the smallest festival in the world). Keep texting in! And maybe see you on Sunday!
I’m increasingly full of the joys of harmonizing, and it seems that any time I run into a brick wall in arranging (I.e. I’m burying a good song under my shortcomings), harmonies, usually falsetto, are my default rescue option. Luckily, songwriter extraordinaire Ben Walker has conclusively proven that multipart falsetto harmonies are the way forward:
In all seriousness, I worry that having “default solutions” to problems might lead to “default songwriting”; but in this case I rather like the results. It’s called Every Single One and will feature in this month’s podcast, but here it is in preview:
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Weirdly, I’ve never been a massive fan of the Beatles or The Beach Boys, the classic harmonizers (although I own and enjoy albums by both); though I do like Ben Folds Five a lot and the Fleet Foxes record grew on me after my initially not giving a shit.
It turns out harmonies are pretty uncontroversial, right? Apparently not. One listener thought Centralia, PA
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which features various vocal overdubs, “sounded like a boyband”. If anyone can find a boyband using that lyrical structure, I’ll give them a parsnip. I’ll agree, though, that harmonies can sound pretty twee, which is presumably why early Belle and Sebastian used them so much. That and the recorder.
Ok, so my corresponding pet hate: male/female duets. I mean you, any duet on any Tindersticks album, any Johnny Cash duet not with his wife, and most of One From the Heart. The usual trick is to get a “distinctive” male voice and a “sweet” female voice in order to create “contrast”; the result is that the man sounds out of tune and the woman insipid. Dylan and Baez, see me after class.
There are few exceptions; here are the only I can think of off the top if my head. Tell me if you think of any others.
Stan (Eminem and Dido) Not sure it’s technically a duet, but disproves the adage that two wrongs don’t make a right. And proves the adage that even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day.
Anything by Simon and Garfunkel You mean Art is a man’s name? With a voice like that?
Anyone Else But You by Moldy Peaches. Unbearably sweet-natured, and the only I can think of to have been covered (badly) by Carla Bruni, the first lady of France. No, really.
Btw, for anyone thinking of going for a pervy Serge Gainsborough duet: Yawn. Kiddie fiddling is not cool or controversial or big or clever. And I hate Frank Sinatra. Any duet with him in will be at least 50% shit. Unless it’s with Dido or Eminem…
I thought it’d be fun to run through the nuts and bolts of “The ’40s never died” – it’s pretty much loop-based, and building up and getting rid of these loops is a good way to create dynamics. Steve Lawson has an excellent video tutorial on live looping, irreplaceable in the arsenal of the solo musician. In the studio, looping means you can record the constituent parts of a song really fast and then arrange the song in your daw or sequencer of choice. I used Garageband.
Let’s consider the instrumental version of ’40s never died (the vocal version is similar, but the bare bones are visible more in the instrumental). So, the song starts off with a fretless bass riff:
With a nice big slide from the b to the f# (the 7th fret down to the 2nd). It’s a four-bar repetition, so we just set that going on a loop. [disclaimer: as you can probably tell from the video, the loop that I recorded is longer than 4 bars. But I don't vary anything because I am a very boring man]
Next comes the main guitar riff (at 0:11):
Here, I’m varying the top notes I play (on the last beat of the bar) pretty much to taste: between 7, 9, and the slide from 10 to 11; for that reason, I’ve looped quite a few bars to capture this variation. Again, you could easily play four bars and loop that.
Some drums come in at 0:27. This was just a “jazz kit” in Garageband. I don’t know to annotate drums but the part is incredibly simple.
At 0:41 we liven the bass part up with a bit of Les Claypool-inspired tapping:
All of that stuff on the top two strings is tapped. You can keep the bass part going on the the E string at the same time; but to be honest, you can get away with just doing the tapping; the main bass part will be looping underneath.
At 0:59, the tappy bass is replaced by the “loud guitar”:
The four notes at the end of the first three bars are left-hand muted, for that satisfying chucka-chucka sound. In the fourth bar, we kick on the tremelo pedal. The tremelo is timed for a triplet feel – so in that bar of four, we strum each beat 1-2-3-4 but the sound is 1-da-da 2-da-da 3-da-da 4-da-da. If you don’t have a tremelo, you can just strum the triplets 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3.
And this gives you quite a lot of variation to play with. Just by dropping stuff out and bringing stuff in, you get a sense of development and dynamic in the music. You get different textures by just using some of the parts (e.g. Main bass plus loud guitar) and having the parts as loops gives you a lot of flexibility to try out different arrangements. Which is a great tool for a songwriter to have, even if the loops don’t make it into the final version of the song.
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To accompany the song, I’ve recorded an instrumental version and done a little video for it, which is a virtual how-to; the song is based around looped and layered parts (which I don’t do all the time but have used on a number of occasions). You can see how it works thanks to the wonder of split screen:
And you can also see this video on Vimeo or get it direct when you subscribe to the video podcast via iTunes. I’ll be releasing all of the episodes of The Sound of The Ladies Lounge here, too, so if you’d like them on your iPod (and who wouldn’t), head over there.
If anyone wants me to post up tab for these parts, you’ll totally be able to play it - the video shows you how to loop everything up. Enjoy!
Hello – just a quick hello to say - The Sound of The Ladies Lounge is now a Video Podcast. Click here for the iTunes page, or here to get the feed if you’re not on iTunes. It’s an m4v file, which I think is mainly for iPods I think.
I’ve just uploaded Episode One (from back in March) which features Martin White performing “Maybe” and me playing “Wash the sleep from my eyes…”. Ah, nostalgia.
