Weapons of choice.

Sorry for the lack of posting and finishing tunes.

This is mostly due to us finishing off and releasing the Hair Thieves EP7 cracking on with the new Hair Thieves EP.  Which I can announce will be called EP8.  This is obviously my main priority.

I have also released an EP of instrumentals under the name Sineglider and a couple of other instrumental tunes.

I have been chipping away on Sweet Lemon Mechanism, Sour Grapes, Tabinad and Persephone, but not enough progress has been made to be able to let anyone hear any of it.

Other than that, I have been in gear acquisition mode.  Having bought a couple of new midi controllers (Ebay is great for getting things cheap) and Native Instuments Komplete collection.

So a lot of time has been spent just playing and learning new tools and soft synths and getting to grips with it all.

This now leaves me in the position of having a plethora of synths and multi versions of various types of effects.    So it is now time to make a decision on a subset of tools that I will use on the album.

I really want to limit myself to a few soft synths and effects, to stop me spending days playing with multiple things to find the perfect sound.

Luckily,  Cubase allows me to create effects subsets.  I have one which contains just the plugins E and I have in common, for use on Hair Thieves tracks.   I plan to do the same for this album.  Choose my weapons of choice, so to speak.

So yes, progress is being made but not at a speed I'm happy with.  I need to ramp it up over the coming months.

This is probably my last post on the album for 2015.  

2016 will see the release of "A Winters Memory", which was written as part of 2015's Fawm competition.   So I really should release it before Fawm starts in February 2016.  

Yes I will be taking part in Fawm again next year.

So wishing you all a very Happy Christmas / holiday season and a productive and happy 2016.

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.

A Winter's Memory - A Mid Summers Problem

It has been a couple of months since the last update.

A lot of the time I have had for music has been taken up with finishing the writing for the new Hair Thieves EP.   This has now been done.  Though I have one song to mix for the EP, we are currently having a couple months off, due to festival season and house moves.

So I am hoping to finish A Winter's Memory this month.  Musically and lyrically it is complete.  I need to add one more part to the arrangement.  Re-record the vocals and it is ready for mixing. 

It isn't a million miles away from the demo. 



I have tweaked the piano, to add some variation.  Changed the tempo a bit.  Added a middle 16 (which is where I need the new part).  Just noticed the demo doesn't have the drop d guitar part in the choruses.  It was recorded before the bass part, so it should have been on the demo.

I was also hoping to re-record Tabanid, as the b-side, but I trawled all my songwriting notes and cannot find any notes on how to play it, nor the lyrics, so that does mean me revisiting the song from scratch. 

Essentially, I can see me ditching the music and starting again musically with this. 

So I am in two minds whether to ditch Tabanid for the moment and use Sour Grapes and Sweet Lemon Mechanism for the extra tracks on this release.

My thinking for that is also that Sweet lemon mechanism is quite electronic which at the moment might be out of place on an album.  But without finishing more of the album, it is too early to say.

So that is a problem for another day.

In the meantime, (whist looking for the Tabanid tab) I came across a set of chords. So I have started writing a new song.   So seventeen tunes on the go.  I may be sometime.