The Chaos Tree - Is dead, long live Rollasoc.

I was going to delete the original Rollasoc blog and start a new one for the "solo" project, but I didn't want to lose posts, like my musical journey ones, or the fact that four years later, I still haven't released "A Winter's Memory", (even though it is mixed and mastered), nor "Persephone", (though that isn't far from completion). 

But sometimes, you have to keep the embarressing history of a lack of progress.  

So why the delay?

Time and procrastination would be the honest answers. 

Working on two (well three, but one is a secret),  other musical projects, which have been releasing an EP or two each for the last four years, family expansion, (which is pure fun) and a major illness, has slowed me down and possibly a lack of direction. 

Since this is a vanity project for me, not allowing myself to work on it, until I completed tasks for other musical projects meant this set of songs has been a frustrating niggle at the back of my mind for a very long time now.

A couple of years ago, I decided to speed this thing up, it might be nice to collaborate with some people, so I changed the project name to The Chaos Tree, but I never got around to asking anyone, so I'm changing it back to Rollasoc.

 I already have the social media names for Rollasoc and although there is no other bands called The Chaos Tree, someone is using that name on Instagram and Youtube, so it kind of tarnished the name for me.

"A Winter's Memory" had occasionally, been remixed or re-mastered over the last four years.   It is currently sitting there waiting to go.   But I've had in my head an idea for a music video for it, but haven't had time to start it.  So it has been delayed.

I have started designing the characters for it.

So this is the first character, Marnie.

The above will be the cover for the single. 

With The Hair Thieves, we used to use a manniquin as a cover, then moved onto smoke art.

With Sineglider, the covers are now all fractal images.

So going forward, each Rollasoc cover will be computer generated person / scene.

I'm not sure if any others will have animated videos, I hope so.

I'm thinking of releasing A Winter's Tale in September 2020, video or not.   We shall see.

I will try and blog monthly from now on and make some musical progress.

Rollasoc is dead. Long live The Chaos Tree.

I've been having a think about the current state of my solo project and have decided that before I release anything from it, that it is going to need a name change.

The new name is The Chaos Tree, I'm thinking of opening this up to a bit more of a collaboration project rather than me doing everything, so I have chosen a generic band name.

So this blog will change from being not often written about the solo project, to being a bit more open about this project, my other two musical projects (The Hair Thieves and Sineglider), I might even scrap my photography blog and merge it with this one.

So more news soon and hopefully, more focused blog posts on music in general, music marketing, photography, animation and life.

Later

Rollasoc

Happy New Year.

Happy New Year from me.

So, it has been five months since the last blog post and almost four months since I last looked at any of the songs for this project.  The latter half of 2016 pretty much slipped away from me. 

This is for a variety of reasons, ranging from work commitments, The Hair Thieves trying to get EP8 out of the door, whilst also accidentally writing some of EP9 and EP10, family bereavements and finishing off and releasing another insturmental Sineglider release.

I've just gone thorough the 15+ songs on the go, with some mixed emotions of, that's good, why haven't I finised that and what the hell was I thinking, do I really want to finish that?

But 2017 is a new year, with new goals, new horizons and a new optimism.  So although I am not promising anything this year, I am quietly confident of new (/ old) music seeing the light of day.

Later

Rollasoc

Summertime

The last couple of months (since the last blog post) has been interesting and frustrating.

If you are one of the few following this blog, you will know, that I am slowly working on an album of original material, left over from the last 16 years of Hair Thieves tunes or songs I have written in odd timings or tunings.

This has meant, that some of the songs were started over a decade ago, using software that has been updated many times, in the intervening years and using plugins that no longer run in the modern software (Cubase) that I use to record into.

So sometime, Cubase won't open a song, or I am missing a virtual instrument or synth or an effect, or (and this is the frustrating one), the latest version of the virtual instrument has changed name, so won't open nor tell me which patches it used.

So I have spent quite a few hours over the last two months (and on and off for the last two years), trying to track down all the old versions of virtual instruments and effects I used back in 2006 / 2007 when we recorded the first couple of EPs.

I think I am pretty much there now.  I can now open the works in progress that I needed to and have been generating a patch list, so I can recreate the songs as was in my latest software.

This means, some songs, are now closer to the original than they were a couple months ago, when I had to use new matches and synths.  So I am a lot happier about them.

I have been chipping away at the album. Two songs that were just guitar ideas are slowly being fleshed out.   I seem to have mislaid some notebooks, so I am missing the original notes on these songs, so I am having to re-learn the songs by ear.     Which has been interesting, especially, when after a week or two, I realise I have been playing something slightly wrong.

So progress is being made.   August is festival and holiday season, so not much music happens normally.  So I am not expecting much progress over the next month.

Nina Kitten Records, the home of my musical output, has a new website. 

Hopefully, by late September, I will have a website for this project, with some audio and video for some of the songs on the album and more details on the first release.

X Marks the spot

It has been a long time, since I blogged the current status of the album.

My main priority, is The Hair Thieves, so work has been ongoing for the new EP.  Normally, we write four or five tunes and four make it onto the next EP.  This time, we seem to have sixteen or more songs on the go.   We have whittled it down to those going onto EP8.  This is three quarters done, but we have also started EP9.

Thus. this solo project is slow going.

The first single was / is ready to go. 

The problem is direction.   An Example.

Sour Grapes, will be the first song on the album.  Initially, it started off with some drums and synths, then went into this really heavy, multiple guitar parts, with an abundance of effects.  A major wall of sound.

Currently, all the heavy guitars have been removed, replaced with one lead acoustic guitar and more synths.

Sometimes, I put one or more of the heavy guitars back in.

I'm not sure which way the track will go.  I'm starting to think, this is a stalling plan on not finishing, what is essentially a minute or so instrumental introduction to the album.   What this song does will set up, some of the sonics on the tracks to follow.

I may soundcloud a couple of versions later, and see which people prefer.

The second track, Sweet Lemon Mechanism, is starting to take shape now, it has been extended and I think I know now where the ending is going.

A long time ago, I wrote some music, it was rejected as a Hair Thieves song.  So I started working on it for the album.   Whilst writing for the new Hair Thieves EP, we wanted a song,  this seemed to fit the bill, I presented it to E.  He liked it, it went back to being a Hair Thieves song.    A while later, he changed his mind again, it is now a solo album track.

So a lot of playing with synths, playing with guitars and not much song finishing has gone on.  

Bob Baker, the music marketing guy, is running a 30 day passion project in June.  For $97, you will be given a partner to spar off and other encouragements, to do something everyday during June, to a project you are passionate about.

So in June, I am going to do one thing on, one of the songs on the go everyday in June, even if that something is "listen to the tune and write down, what the next thing I need to do to get the song closer to completion".

Not sure if I will manage to complete a song or not, but I hopefully, at the end of June, will have some idea of where this album is going.

The first task for June 1st is to listen to the 18 songs on the go (in the album project directory) and whittle them down to 9 or 10 for the album.

In other news, we have a referendum in June, to decide whether the UK should stay as part of the European union or not.   That could make life interesting depending on the outcome.

FAWM Over and Out

Fawm is an annual songwriting event, where several thousand musicians try and write an album of 15 songs in 28 days.  This year being a leap year, it the idea was 14.5 songs in 29 days.

I'm happy to say, I failed to complete the task again.  Having achieved 3,6 and 9 songs, in previous years, officially, I achieved 12 this year.  Though in reality, it is less than that.

I managed :-
     three sets of partial lyrics, (without music)
     two instrumentals, that require lyrics *
     seven instrumentals for my solo instrumental project, Sineglider.
Why so many instrumentals?

Simply, I'm currently suffering from lyrical writers block and low confidence in my lyric writing. I was hoping FAWM would have given me the necessary kick to finish some lyrics, but it wasn't to be.

That with work commitments and the fact that I wanted to learn to use some of the soft synths and effects I haven't got around to using, meant that I was a lot more interested in experimenting with sounds, than finishing lyrics.  So instrumentals were the way to go.

* of the two instumentals, one was picked up by another songwriter, who put lyrics to it.  Hopefully, you can her it Here. 

I took part in another Exquisite Corpse task.  (one person writes a song, passes the last 10 seconds to the next person who carries it on, etc etc.  Someone when chains all the songs together).

here is my section of the song.  Called Gabina.






As I stated before I was trying to experiment with synths and effects this year. One of the challenges this year was to write a 30 second song. I used that as an excuse to play with effects within my recording software, much like I would have done with physical guitar effects. What I came up with was a little more than 30 seconds and is two guitars, one take each. I will re-record this later and expand it with further instrumentation, I think.
As you can tell, I seem to have been in a more heavier mood, song writing wise, than I have been for many years.
This is noticible in this track. When I first started playing guitar in the mid 1980s, I was really into thrash metal. It is nice to go back to my heavy roots now and again, now that I have some wonderful distortion plugins. Plus the guitar in this (my old B.C. Rich Warlock) was tuned to DADGBD.

Lyrically, since the last blog, I have started one set of lyrics.  Whilst doing Fawm, I was also (semi) attempting a free songwriting course.   The idea was to write a song about your hometown.

Given I had already written a song about my hometown called Strang Familar World, the thought of writing another was not appealing.  But I did start some.  I will rework and finish this, since I think there are some nice lines in this, but it is rough and needs a lot of work.

Hometown Heart

Chorus
Like a Mistress
I keep coming back to her
She might not have my love
but she will always have my heart
Though distance means
we're constantly apart
Please when I die
take me back to the start
My Hometown heart
My Hometown heart

----
I feel the sea calling me
Through broken sleep
Too long land locked
Miss the warm salty breeze
Though I left half a life ago
She makes me believe
a smalltown boys dreams
and great things to achieve

The course has been pretty good and I did learn some new things, which might help me out of my lyrical hell.  We shall see over the next couple of months.

The two songs I think need lyrics, I have passed to E to see if they have any mileage and whether they will be Hair Thieves songs or not.  So not sure if any song this year will become Rollasoc songs.




So that was FAWM 2016.  I'm quite happy with my musical output this month, but slightly disappointed with my lyrical quantity.   Oh well there is always next FAWM!

So now FAWM is over, I can start concentrating back on the album. 

After discussion the other night in the pub about Spotify and getting music online, I think my next post will be on the companies I have used to get my music online and how I have got on with them.

So more on that soon.

Not Feeling it.

Had an indifferent week with Fawm.

This is mostly to do with issues I have had with Cubase not playing nice with my hardware as well as issues with it playing with some plugins.

It slowed me down and frustrated me.  Hopefully, I've sorted it out now.

I have managed to finish two instrumentals.

An experiment in electronics.

Every sound is from some Native instruments VST.

Drums from Battery and Kontakt

Synths from Rounds (Reaktor), Kontakt (Gamelan, Evolve, Evolve Mutations), Absynth, Massive.

Barely mixed. Some reverb added to some sounds. General panning, slight EQ, some compression.

This is in 3/4 time. 

Pick up sticks.




The second is a little ditty called Resident Wevil.

Being traditionally a guitarist, I thought that two weeks into Fawm, I should record some guitar.

All I knew is i wanted something distorted somewhere.

Drums are from groove Agent.

Badly played bass (through ampeg amp in amplitude)

3 guitar parts. All telecaster. One through Amplitude, one through Guitar Rig and one through Shuffham amp.

Synths are a mixture of Kontour and things I found in reaktor and rendered to audio, so don't know what they are anymore.

Title is due to liking the word Weevil.




Been struggling with lyrics.

I had two attempts.

Mother
I have my mother's worry
I have my mother's eyes
I have my mother's wicked tongue
I have my mother's sarcastic replies

I have my mother's humour
I have my mother's tact
I have my mother's money luck
I have my mother's quest for facts.

I have my mother's darkness
I have my mother's fears
I have my mother's lack of grace
I have my mother's attractive veneer



Just Don't Know
Fed Up with checking sources
on the news I see
Lack of faith
in the strories they feed
But a puppet has a master
holding the leash
Subjugate the masses
with the tales released

Chorus
and I just don't know
What to believe
Truth or lies
Are we so Nieve
Are they Criminal or just
A Friend or foe
well you just don't know
You Just Don't know

Elected government monkies
are they corporate whores
Telling lies
to they people they swore oath to
Who's the puppet, who's the master
who's pulling the string
as the elite get rich
leave the masses begging

Not sure if I will use either lyrics.

Still have a couple of other songs on the go.

No Hair Thieves tunes so far, we have been experimenting with melody writing with existing lyrics, which isn't the sort of thing that is part of FAWM.

I'll show E the lyrics and see if he wants to use them / finish them.

So onto week 3.  Still playing catch up.