LCM Year One is Over!

The past month or so has been hectic! So much coursework to do - I've not had time to update here but it wasn't just laziness! My bad.

So my first year at Uni is over. Mental. I feel like i've only been here a few months. Time's gone too quick, its crazy to think im a third of the way through Uni already. It's dawned on me that I've wasted a lot of time this year, and I could have used the time a lot better and got a lot more done. I mean, i've still done quite a bit of music, but not nearly as much as i could have. I live in a city with an amazing music scene but i've still not started any bands or got any gigs or anything, which is what i really wanted to do! I now have close to 4 months with not a lot to do, so im going to make sure i get a decent bit of music made. A quick recap of what I've recorded or helped with recording this year..


Revenge


This was the first bit of coursework I did! I took an old piece that i'd done months ago, and took all the MIDI files and put them into logic, and did a lot of work on it. I extended it, added new parts, used better samples, mixed it all better. It sounds a hell of a lot better than the original.


Lots and Lots of Bedroom Recordings


Lots of bored nights in with my flatmate resulted in these. 5 songs recorded for Tom, 1 recorded with Tom and his mate for his LCM Audition (which he passed), and then 3 songs with me on guitar and Tom singing. Probably a lot more of these to come.


Crimestoppers Dub


I recorded this for the Crimestoppers assignment at LCM - this is the first of 2 pieces. This is one of my favourite pieces i've produced this year - It sounds great and I'm really wanting to make some reggae/dub kinda music soon. Its one of the projects that im hoping to start over the next 4 months.


Mugging


This was the second piece i produced for the Crimestoppers assignment. This came from an idea I had when listening to a song The Prodigy did with Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello. I had this little guitar riff in Logic on a distorted guitar with a wah pedal, and some drums, and that developed into this.

Safari


This is a more recent one that I haven't shared on this blog yet! I had to create a 4 minute piece of music and write a 2000 word essay about it (and transcribe it!) This is what I made. I wanted to do music for a certain purpose so I had more i could write about in the essay. My dad suggested doing music for a David Attenborough programme which gave me the idea to use African instruments, however this is what came. It isnt actually for a nature programme, it just kinda.. tells a kind of story. There's a theme representing a herd of gazelle at the beginning which is repeated in a minor key later to show that something has happened to the herd, theres another theme to represent a predator.. it's all explained much better in the essay!


Babies


One of my studio assignments was to record a cover of a song as a group, and it had to fit into a certain category. Then we all had to do an individual remix. It had to:
Only use the original vocal track.
Use Found Sound Drums (the version i've posted doesnt use these).
Use a synth that we have made from scratch.
Write and Record 2 original instrumental parts.

I did another reggae style remix which I think turned out pretty well! It was pretty hard to do cos the acapella tempo fluctuates from 150 bpm to 160bpm. It sounds pretty good though, I think. I never recorded 2 instrumental parts, which I could lose marks on. But there is different instrumental lines on this so they could count, i'm not sure. For the Found Sound Drums, which I didn't use on this version as it sounds better with the proper kit, I used quite a few weird things around my room. The Hi-Hat was just me ripping up a takeaway menu, then I added a bit of noise, and a lot of reverb. The Snare was me hitting the bottom of a metal bucket, layered up with me hitting a bottle of salt. I added lots of reverb and delay onto to bucket sound so as to create the typical dub sound. The kick was me slamming a cardboard box over my knee, layered up with me punching myself in the stomach. I EQ'd these and raised the low ends so it was thumpier. One thing I didn't do which i didnt think of till after, was pitch shifting the sounds so they were lower. Still, it sounded ok.



So, that's pretty much all the music i've made in my first year at Uni. Expect some more coming over the next few months as I have a lot of free time! I've just bought a melodica, so I'm hoping to use that for a couple of acoustic recordings. I'm also gonna go acoustic guitar hunting this week, so I can record some much better songs. I'm also finally gonna get my electric guitar fixed and get it restrung so I can record some reggae vibes with that! Hoping to do some kind of Skints covers!

Thanks for reading - I'll be posting more regular again from now!

LCM Crimestoppers Coursework

The past couple of weeks I have been working on as assignment for Uni. I've been given 2 crimestoppers videos, each about 30 seconds long, and have had to produce 2 seperate pieces of music to go with them. They had to be produced in Logic, and had to have at least 8 voices. I've done 2 very different tracks - one started out as a project from ages ago that was supposed to be some kind of Rage Against The Machine meets Dubstep track. Because I only had 30 seconds it didnt really have time to develop into this, but I'll post what I came up with.



The other piece is the one I prefer. I think it sounds a lot better. It started off as a rip off of the 'You wouldn't steal a handbag' film that plays before DVDs. Its ended up completely different, a reggae/dub style track.



I'll post the feedback I get when I get it - I have to hand it in tomorrow! Which means I'll probably get feedback in about a month from now. Any feedback on these tracks would be appreciated :)

Merry Christmas!

Proud of myself!

This week I've actually got something done music-wise! Got the basic backing for a reggae track made, and I've started a cover of Red Right Hand by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds! Got no idea where its gonna go, got nothing in mind but I'll just see what happens!

Sheftival 2012: Saturday 4th August

Words cannot describe how excited I was when I was told about Sheftival. I'd never heard anything about it, then my mate said 'oi raven, Toots and the Maytals are playing sheffield in a couple of weeks'. I couldn't believe it! Toots is a bloody legend, he is credited with inventing the word Reggae in the song Do The Reggay, he's one of the pioneers of reggae. To find out he's playing not far from me for only a tenner, was amazing! Couldn't miss it. There was loooads of people on the line-up, but I only went for Toots, and The Selecter.

I was very hungover from the night before - this was the day after the Skints, and I only ended up getting a couple of hours sleep anyway - so i almost, almost considered not going. But, I put Toots + the Maytals on the stereo, and it gave me the strength to power through my hangover and get the bus into town. I met Max and Alex, and we got the best hangover cure there is:

More Beer. Which quite frankly made me feel extremely ill, along with the train shaking about. But I just about managed 2 or 3. Anyway, we arrived at Don Valley Bowl where the festival was, about 6 o clock. It was the first time i'd been to DVB since the Arctic Monkeys homecoming gig last year (which was probably the best gig of my life).

It was weird seeing The Selecter. I saw them when I was about 3 years old, and it's probably my earliest memory. I remember being held by my mum whilst they were on stage - I don't remember the music, I just remember it being them. So to see them live nearly 15 years later was pretty weird! They managed to get the crowd going pretty well - lots of old Skinheads were skanking! A couple of people were definitely off their head aswell, haha. Their set was only short, 40 minutes at the most, but It was good. James Bond was probably the highlight of the set, along with On My Radio and Too Much Pressure.

After their set, we made it over to the Juju World Music stage. Macka B was on the stage, someone i'd never heard of, but was pretty good. He sang a song about what food he liked to eat, which was bizarre but pretty funny. There was a pretty long wait between Macka B and Toots, so we sat down for a bit and chilled. When he finally came on.. it was so so so so so good. He opened with Pressure Drop, which is a beautiful song!! One of my favourite Reggae songs ever. His set included the classics Monkey Man (famously covered by the Specials), 54-46 Was My Number, Louie Louie, Funky Kingston and many more. It was a great set and i'm so happy I can now say I've seen both The Wailers and Toots + The Maytals live. Arguably the 2 biggest reggae artists ever!

Friday 3rd August: The Skints @ The Leopard

This Friday was great. I got to see one of my favourite bands perform, which is always good. But they actually performed in my home town of Doncaster, which made it even more special. Doncaster rarely sees any big names play here - you could probably count the well known bands that have played here in the past few years on one hand. I've seen The Prodigy here, and Dizzee Rascal, and I think Plan B has played. But none of them were as good as this.

We started the day the same way most of my days out start - alcohol. 20 pack of Fosters, sat in the sun, listening to Reggae - it was good :)

After this we went straight to the venue, and just sat around chatting with people, having a couple of pints. It was fun, although i am having trouble piecing together exactly what happened, because I was pretty drunk. Anyway about half 7, 8, we went upstairs for the bands. This was my first time at The Leopard, which has been around for longer than I have I think. The upstairs part where the bands perform is tiny! But I loved it.. it was such a good atmosphere! The first band that were on are called The Beaus. They're a local band, i'd heard the name but never listened to them. But i'm definitely a fan, their set was pretty enjoyable and i've listened to a couple of their songs since and they're good.



Whilst we were watching these, Marcia and Jonathan from The Skints came out and watched them! I went over and got a photo with them, talked to them for a bit and then they left.

The Skints came on about half 9, and their set was amazing. Being so close to one of my favourite bands while they played live was just incredible! They played all their best songs (apart from Live East Die Young :( thats my favourite), including Roanna's Song, Rise Up, Culture Vulture, and Rubadub. They also played brilliant cover of Bob Marley + The Wailers classic Stir It Up. And, I think they filmed something there, part of a video or something. It was a great gig - they sound brilliant live and I was dancing nonstop all the way through. I'm jealous of their talent!

Afterwards, we hung around outside the back of the venue and just chilled, talked to a few people. Then we saw Jamie Kyriakides, the drummer, just chilling with his girlfriend! So we went over and had a chat - he was one of the nicest guys i've ever met!

We also got chatting to the guys from the Beaus, who were pretty sound, and they gave me a free t-shirt, woo. Me and my cousin Aiden decided to let ourselves backstage, which looking back probably was a bit out of order and I wouldn't have done If i was sober. But, it ended up in us meeting the guys and chatting with them for quite a while! We got a photo with them, but Aiden's camera was pretty blurry, so The Skints' photographer guy took one on his posh camera, and has said he'll email it to me! :D top bloke haha. All in all it was an amazing day, and I will definitely be buying tickets to see them again! They're playing Leeds Festival, so I'll see them there. And they're playing Leeds Cockpit in october - I should be going to University there hopefully, so i'll probably go to that too. I would definitely recommend their live gigs - it was bloody brilliant!

The Skints are my NEW FAVOURITE BAND!

On Friday Night, I go and see one of my favourite bands The Skints, then on Saturday i'm going to Sheftival, to see legendary reggae band Toots and the Maytals, and iconic ska band The Selecter. I'm too excited! Tramlines proved to me that the best day out is just one with music, your mates, and beer. That was one of my top days of the summer holidays, so i'm hoping this weekend will be just as good. I'll probably end up posting about the weekend on Sunday, or Monday if i'm hungover.

The Skints are a great band. Marcia Richards, Jonathan Doyle, Joshua Waters Rudge and Jamie Kyriakides are 4 insanely talented people. If you see their live show, Marcia can be switching between Keyboard, Saxophone + Vocals all in one song. They play Reggae/Dub/Ska music, and also a bit of Punk on their first album and first EP. They're just so cool and write so many catchy songs, if you're into reggae at all then I'm pretty sure you'll like them. One of me favourites from the new album is 'Live East Die Young' which is mainly Joshua on the vocals, but it's very catchy and very lively and i'm praying they play it live so i can skank out a bit. Having said that though, there isn't a bad song on the album - 'Ratatat', 'Ring Ring', 'Rubadub', 'Lay You Down' and new single 'Rise Up' are all amazing songs. I definitely recommend it to lovers of the genre.

Here's the new single - make sure you show it to your mates, its a tune :)



..aaaaaand here's a live performance of theirs, a cover of Stop That Train by Keith and Tex - just shows what a talented bunch they are. Check out that harmony:




Link to buy the album.. think the previews alone are enough to tempt you to buy it. http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/part-parcel/id501957297

http://www.theskints.co.uk/

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