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.

Sweet Lemons

Ok it has been a month since my last blog update.  I was hoping to get out the next blog in the ongoing musical history, but they are time consuming and I haven't had big blocks of time to do one.

So I will start the next one and save it as draft and chip away at it.

The last month, we reconvened on recording the new Hair Thieves EP.  So a lot of the time I have been doing music has been recording and writing for that.

As far as this project is going, I have gone through my archives and songs from this years FAWM and realised I have sixteen potential songs to work on for this album.   Most of it is music only, only a couple have completed lyrics.

So I have been playing with a pair of old Hair Thieves tunes, called "Sour Grapes" and "Sweet Lemon Mechanism".  These were going to be the start of the previously planned Hair Thieves album, but when we decided not to do an album, but only do EPs, they were dropped.

So I am trying to ressurect them.

The main problem with them, is in some cases, I don't have the VST instruments (like Groove Agent 2 plus some others) nor the effects pedals (Digitech Whammy) to rerecord sections of it again.

So I am struggling with getting new grooves I like to work with the tracks.   Stupidly, in the case of Groove Agent 2, I recorded the audio output of it and not the midi.   I have Groove Agent 4, but that doesn't have the kits from previous versions.

I think I have decided on the first tune to release.  "Persephone" was planned to be the first track released, but I have decided that "A Winters Memory" will be the first tune, since I think I have an idea brewing for the video.

This will be backed by a track called "Tabanid" which is another rejected Hair Thieves tune, with no chours.  This was almost finished, but I aim to re-record it in a slightly different style for this release.

So I am chipping away at this project, though not as fast as i would like.

More soon.

Fawm - Week 3 Summary

Fawm (http://fawm.org) is an annual event to write an album in a month.  The idea is to write 14 songs in 28 days and release an album.

Musically a mixed bag this week.

I decided I didn't want to put any effort into writing music for Sunday's skirmish, entitled "I found my happy place".  

I decided I would try and finish the song I started in week one.  The one in 5/4 time.  So I have spent some time re-working it, so now the verse music is the chorus and the chorus the verse.

As a demo I am happy with it.  I just need to write some lyrics for it.  I tried yesterday, but my muse wasn't having none of it.

During the week, I met up with Ian, the other half of The Hair Thieves.  He had started working on a synthy instrumental for Ep7.  Even though we already have a instrumental for the EP.

I had a listen.  There was a part of it, which was screaming out CHORUS to me.  So we re-arranged and recorded a few bits, until we had a proper song structure.

I have worked out a vocal melody.  Added some guitars since.  I just need to write some lyrics. Again, I tried yesterday, but my muse wasn't having none of it.

I have however started a new Sineglider instrumental.  Called Onionhead.



It still needs a bit of work, possibly a lead guitar, more synths, in the intro / breakdown.

But I'm quite pleased with it so far.  A bit more upbeat than my normal songs.   Plus I got to use the new bass guitar I bought during the week.

So current state of play.
6 songs Demo'd
1 set of lyrics I probably won't use.
2 songs with music needing some lyrics.
1 week to go, until FAWM finishes.

There is a skirmish, I believe tonight.  So I will have a go at that.

At the start of the month, I was never really planning to have fourteen songs at the end of it.  I believed I would get at least six and really would be happy if I could get nine songs done.

So with a week to go, I am very close to achieving that.

Then I can concentrate back on which of these new songs will make it on the solo album and crack on and get the first single out sometime before the summer.

I want to get the album released before March 2016.  So much more work to be done (as well as Hair Thieves EP7 / EP8 to complete and a Sineglider EP in 2015).

I'm excited.

Fawm - Week 1 Summary

Fawm (http://fawm.org) is an annual event to write an album in a month.  The idea is to write 14 songs in 28 days and release an album.

It is now the start of day eight, so I thought I would update my progress so far (given in 2013 I managed 3 songs and 2014 I manged 6).

Well, the scores on the door is currently sitting as 2.5.

I started off on February 1st, whilst everyone else in the house was asleep.   So it was headphones on, leave the noisy guitars alone and work on a new tune for my Sineglider instrumental project.


This is based around the Alchemy plugin by the recently defunct Camel Audio.  Shame, given I like their plugins.



As with all songs I am going to demo this month, it will be very rough and will be re-worked over the coming months.

In the afternoon, I went to visit E from my band The Hair Thieves. I challenged him to come up with a song in the three hours we had.  

To speed things up, we used Toontrack's EZKeys piano plugin.   So over the course of three hours, we chose some piano patches, re-worked the chords.   Sorted out a rough beat and started the lyrics.

At the end of the day we had a rough tune and some partial lyrics.

On the Monday I recorded the lyrics, before reconvening back at E's on the Tuesday to finish the demo.

So after deleting the vocals for lines that didn't work (either melodically or scan).  We reworked the lyrics, added bridge lyrics and recorded some more vocals.

We then called it quits in the demo and released it onto the world.

This song will probably be on The Hair Thieves EP8, so we will rework this sometime later in the year. We will possibly throw away the piano and using the chord structure re-write for guitar.

Overall we are pretty pleased with the song.

The third song that was started is called "A winter's memory" the title was given as a skirmish (where you have one hour to write and record a song, with a given title or subject).

I managed to write the lyrics in under an hour, but never finished the music.

Idea came from a conversation I had with a friend at Uni.
We was talking about his girlfriend and he said something along the lines of,

"I love her, but sometimes, I wake up and look at her and just want to punch her in the face."


A Winter's Memory

Waking from a long sleep
A vision of you
Head under a pillow
I was never so cruel
It was so easy
though I'm not thinking straight
Why is it love, comes with such hate

And the winter remembers
The ghost of you
The coldness, the darkness
The screams and untruths
And the memory sparkles
as the nights draw near
Into my silence
you're worshiped and revered.

Snow falls on the landscape
On coats of blue
Ice breaks and dredgers
Still looking for truths
It was so easy
To make them understand
The love of a woman, can melt a man.

And the winter remembers
The ghost of you
The coldness, the darkness
The screams and untruths
And the memory sparkles
as the nights draw near
Into my silence
you're worshiped and revered.


I have started the music for this.  Initially, using EZKeys again.  I am currently in the process of replacing the piano with guitar and bass.  A the moment, this is in the tuning of DGDGBD since that was the guitar to hand.   So this will be a song for the Rollasoc project.

I will try and finish the demo in the coming days.

So on to week two.   I have signed up for an exquisite corpse game.   This involves several people, with the first person writing a minute of music and then sending the last ten seconds to the next person.  This process repeats until the end of the line is reached.   The first person then stitches all the snippets together into one long song.

I did this last year and got the Sineglider tune Foxtrot 4 out of it.


So another one minute Sineglider tune will be on the way this week, given I am second in line in my corpse.

Until next week's update, I'd best crack on and write a couple of new songs.