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

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.

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.

Fawm - Week 2 Summary. (and a bit of week 3)

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.

Mixed week this week.  I was happy to have done three songs in the first week (after only managing six during Fawm 2014).

So week 2 should have started with an instrumental on Sunday morning as part of an exquisite corpse game (each participant writes a one minute tune.  The first person writes there and sends the last 10 seconds to the next person, who carries on the tune. etc.  When the last person finishes, it is all stitched back together into one long song).

However, the person in the list before me, didn't manage to do theres.


So on sunday, I finished the demo for "A Winter's Memory".



Starting to really like this.  There is more guitar parts recorded than ended up here. I will re-work this after February.


On the sunday there was another skirmish.  This time the title was "The Devil's Highway".

So I wrote a quick song about my love affair with the M6 motorway.  So glad I don't have to drive down that each day (like I did for 5 years).


Originally, I wasn't going to put this to music, buy some people on the forum said they wanted to hear it.  So here it is.  The demo was made using EZKeys to come up with something really quick.

I'm quite happy with how it turned out.  Not sure if I will re-record this for use later.  Maybe it will be a b-side or bonus track.

During the rest of the week, I struggled with starting a song from the drums upwards.  Spent far too many hours trying to import some .rex files into Cubase.  Cubase seems intent on importing files that are in 5/4 or 7/4 in 4/4 time, regardless as to what the song's time signature is.

After several nights of trying, I gave up and went back to using Ezdrummer.  

On Friday, I was told to start the Exquisite corpse song.  So in three hours, I wrote a one minute instrumental called "Lorana".   I have sent the last ten seconds off to a chap called Tim in Australia to carry it on.

Obviously, I can't yet spoil it for everyone, by posting the song.  I will post the song once the Exquisite corpse is finished.
So Saturday I was home alone.  I re-recorded the devil's highway vocals, since the original second verse didn't work for the melody I wrote for verse one.  Added the music to the bridge (which I thinks needs an instrumental adding before the final chorus.

I then had a go at the failed song.  So far I have some chorus music in 5/4 time, with a guitar riff.  I then proceeded to write a verse chord progression in 4/4 time, that seems far too happy.

So this needs re-working further and lyrics writing.

So the scores at the end of the week are five songs demoed.   One song on the go.


So this is the start of week 3,  I wrote some cliched lyrics for a skirmish entitled "I found my happy place".

Really insistant that I won't write music for this and will use the rest of the time to finish the other song in progress.

"I found my happy place".

In a world of fears and regrets
Wars and famine
Children distressed
All of the illness
and all the duress
I've found my happy place

In a world where we ain't equal
race and creed
hatred begats evil
All of the pain
And all of the suffering
I've found my happy place

Because
In you, I see a shining sun
In you, I see love for everyone
In you I see hope and a reason to be
In you I see courage and the will to be free

I've found my happy place

In a world of rich verses poor
Terror, disorder
Banks rotton core
In all of the sadness
And all this disease
I've found my happy place.

Because
In you, I see a shining sun
In you, I see love for everyone
In you I see hope and a reason to be
In you I see courage and the will to be free

I've found my happy place


So at the end of Sunday at the start of the third week.  I have five songs, one set of lyrics (not) needing music and a partial song musically.

So with two weeks left, I think I will improve on last years total of six songs written.  

So happy with how February is progressing so far.

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.

Month One report.

One month into the solo album and things haven't gone totally to plan.

I'm blaming this on the World Cup, (which I didn't take into account for) and also me complicating the Hair Thieves latest release by adding another song and signing us up to record a cover song for a Mansun tribute album.

However, as I stated in the intial post, I have done some planning based on on Music Success In Nine Weeks by Ariel Hyatt.

I failed to do the 5 victories thing each day.  Mostly because I have a pretty good task system, so I can see the progress of things ticked off, each day!


So I have set myself a end target to release the album in March 2015, which will coincide with my birthday.

Before then, I need to set up a website (which won't be needed until I have something for people to listen to).  set up distribution, social media and start playing local open mic nights and find some support slots.  So much to think about, plan and do.

I have started work on the first song, however.  So far I have some music and some lyrics.  It has the working title of Persephone.   I rejected it from being a Hair Thieves tune on the basis that it is in DADGBD tuning.    So I will see what I can do with it in the next week or so.

I have also dragged out my old amp.  I bought this amp in 1990 (around the time I bought the B.C. Rich Warlock).  I used it to gig throughout the 1990's.   Eventually selling it, before buying it back again since I missed it.

I am contemplating recording some of the material with it, given in the past, I have used V-amps. PODs and Amplitude plugin for guitar sounds, so it might be nice to record a proper amp for once.

This does, obviously, subconciously assume that this is no longer the planned acoustic album I envisaged.  Plus with different tunings, this might make playing the songs live acoustically tricky.

So to Ariels, week two tasks (or months task in my case).   Branding.   I will write a separate blog entry on this and my problems with it.  And try and do part one of my '80s musical heritage!

Later

Rollasoc