Monday 12 October 2015

Musical Direction



As part of the musical duo The Hair Thieves, we break one of the first marketing rules for musicians.  That is to define your style, so people will have some frame of reference to the type of music you play. 

e.g.  Just saying "Hey,  buy our new CD" means most people wouldn't click the link, since they don't know what type of music you play or whether it is in a genre they would listen to.

Changing it to "Hey, if you like <insert band name or genre>, you will love our new CD".  Is a bit better, (probably not perfect.  still sounds like you are selling something).

With the Hair Thieves, we let the song evovle fairly naturally, so it could end up a rock track or an ambient instrumental, or a punk track, or a pop track.   Sometimes we decide to write a song in a specific genre. E.g. On our forthcoming EP we specifically decided up front to write a chord repeating post rock style instrumental.  Whereas the rest of the EP features a pop song, and orchestral song  and song using royalty free samples from films.

So where does that leave this solo project?   Given most of the songs are abandoned Hair Thieves songs?

As I mentioned a while ago, I have resurected two (pre E joining The Hair Thieves) very old tunes, Sour Grapes and Sweet Lemon mechanism. These are from around 2005.   Though E did at one point record a guitar part for Sour Grapes.

These are quite electronic for parts of the songs.  So at the moment, I'm thinking the album will have more electronic drums and more synths (given I have loads of synths in Cubase that I have hardly used) and possibly less guitars.

I'm also wanting to make this album sound less like The Hair Thieves, which is hard given our eclectic style.

A few weeks ago, E and I met and went through the plugins that we have in common.

Often when tracking or mixing, one of us will use a virtual instrument or effect the other doesn't have, which makes passing files around sometimes hard.

So we have now standardised the virtual instruments and effects we have in common.  To lessen the issue in future.

This means I have a big list of virtual instruments and effects that probably won't be used on future Hair Thieves recordings.

That means I have a set of tools to experiment with for this solo album.

A Winter's memory, which will be the first release, may be a bit of a departure and not representative of the whole album.    It is more a straight up piano based indie pop tune.

I am thinking it might not even be on the album?  We shall see.

Of course, if this album becomes more electronic and less guitars, the chances of me playing any of this live becomes more remote.

So I'd expect some acoustic guitar b-side versions to be recorded as well.

So with Sour Grapes almost finished, Sweet Lemon mechanism on the go, I have gone back to reworking Persephone to be more electronic and I'm very happy with its new direction.

A Winter's memory is finished and I'm in the midst of creating an animated video for it.

So as soon as that is finished and I have a b-side for it (probably Tabanid), it will be released.

So that is the state of the album.  A vision is forming for it.


In other news.

The Hair Thieves EP7 is finished other than artwork.  So should  be released sometime in late November / early December.

I have also been recording some instrumentals for release under the name of Sineglider.  This is more ambient or funky electronic instrumentals.   With a loose Elite Dangerous theme (given I was playing a lot of the game, when this was written earlier in the year).

The first four track EP of this music, will be released on Friday 16th October 2015.   It will be available on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify etc, or can be ordered from my Sineglider bandcamp page.