Fearne Cotton played a song by Loney Dear, which is the pseudonym of a Swedish artist called Emil Svanängena. The song was called Loney Blues. Check out the video here:

I liked the song so much that I went a bought a copy of the album Hall Music straight away.

Loney Dear - Hall Music

I think it’s a really fantastic album and I recommend it thoroughly. I reminds me a lots of Bon Iver’s album from 2011, which is no bad thing as that was my favourite album of the year.

I don’t think it will be too long before I find myself getting hold of Loney Dear’s previous albums as well.

Stephen.

2011 was another great year for me in terms of music, as I released another single called In Time. Apart from that, progress on my album Parkview in moving along very nicely, albeit pretty slowly. However I now have 9 songs completed and mastered, so I think the light is starting to appear at the end of the tunnel.

Obviously I’m looking forward to reading my blog at the end of 2012, where I’ll have decided to make Parkview a triple concept album, which will take me a further 10 years.

So apart from my own prolific releases, what have been the other highlights?

Albums

Bon Iver – Bon Iver

I’m blown away by how good this album is. I was a big fan of the first Bon Iver album, For Emma, Forever Ago. The songs were beautiful and the whole album had a nice lo-fi production. However for me this second album has moved up to a whole other level. It’s incredible, every song is fantastic and the production is right up my street. If I could make my own album sound this good, I would be a happy man indeed.

Bombay Bicycle Club – A Different Kind Of Fix

This band are so young it makes me slightly weak at the knees, but they are already on to their third album. Them seem to change their sound for each album and I think that on this album they have really found a great sound. The first single from the album was called Shuffle and it’s one of my favourite songs of the year along with another track called Lights Out, Words Gone.

John Grant – Queen Of Denmark

This album was released in 2010, but I only heard of it when the BBC Glastonbury coverage showed John Grant performing the song Sigourney Weaver backstage on the piano. I thought the song was amazing, so bought the album. It’s really fantastic and there are some lovely songs on it with incredible lyrics. I’m so pleased I was watching the BBC that day.

Jon Brion – Meaningless

I’ve been a fan on Jon Brion as a producer for years. Ever since I noticed that a lot of my favourite songs by people including Aimee Mann, Rufus Wainwright, Elliott Smith and Fiona Apple were all produced by him. Meaningless is his only solo album and it was released in 2001. I’ve been trying to get hold of it for years, but I’ve now finally managed to get myself a copy. Thankfully after all that searching, it’s a cracker. The standout songs for me are the title track, Her Ghost and I Believe She’s Lying which contains the fastest and most frantic drumming I’ve ever heard!

Elbow – Build A Rocket Boys!

Well I guess most people who know me, know that I a massive Elbow fan. This year they released the follow up to the huge selling and award winning album, The Seldom Seen Kid. Fortunately it would seem that they have let none of this go to their heads, as Build A Rocket Boys! is a fantastic album.

Thomas Dolby – A Map Of The Floating City

After a gap of 15 years, Thomas Dolby returned with an album, tour and online computer game. Thomas has been a musical hero of mine for years, both in terms of his own albums, as well as his production for other people. I was very please that after such a long wait, the album was very good indeed.

King Creosote and Jon Hopkins – Diamond Mine

When the Mercury Music Prize shortlist is released each year, I always like to listen to all the albums and this album by King Creosote and Jon Hopkins really stood out for me. It’s a collection of folk songs augmented by Jon Hopkins ambient sounds and field recording and it’s beautiful. Despite my own opinions being voiced loudly at the TV, for some reason the judges didn’t award it the prize.

Ed Sheeran +

I first came across Ed Sheeran via a video of him on YouTube performing his song The A Team acoustically, sitting on top of a boat going down a canal. So when he album was released I got a copy and was very pleased when it turned out that to really good.

Laura Marling – A Creature I Don’t Know

I bought this album after hearing the song Sophia on the radio. I was well aware of Laura Marling, however I had always found her a little bit too folky for my tastes. The quality of the songs on this album though, is outstanding. I may even be tempted to dip my toe into more folky waters now.

Death Cab For Cutie - Codes and Keys

I’m a big fan of Death Cab For Cutie, however I found their last album, Narrow Stairs to be a bit patchy. So I was quite nervous when I listed to Codes and Keys for the first time. Fortunately I thought it was a real return to form. I particularly like the songs Unobstructed Views and Stay Young, Go Dancing.

Songs

Here are some songs that really caught my ear during the year.

Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues

Gypsy & The Cat - The Piper’s Song

Friendly Fires - Live Those Days Tonight

Chase & Status – Blind Faith

Lissie – Cuckoo

Treefight For Sunlight – Facing The Sun

Noah & The Whale – Give It All Back

Snow Patrol - The Garden Rules

Frank Turner - Wessex Boy

Adele - Don’t You Remember

Gigs & Theatre

Matilda The Music

The combination of a Roald Dahl and Tim Minchin musical seemed like a combination that could not be missed and we were lucky enough to be able to get some tickets. The reality however, was better than anything I could possibly imagined. It’s an emotional roller coaster of tears and laughter with some absolutely incredible music and lyrics. Also the book to the musical by Dennis Kelly contains some changes that take the story from the book to the stage in the most imaginative ways. We’ve already booked to see it again next year. Twice.

The Book Of Mormon

We went on holiday to New York. In the months leading up, I had been trying to get some tickets to The Book Of Mormon, which is the new musical by the creators of South Park and Team America. Sadly it is sold out for months and months and tickets are like gold dust. When we got to New York though, we decided that as the theatre was near where we were staying we would enter their ticket lottery before each performance. Essentially 2 hours before each show you get to put your name into a tombola and they pull out 10 people who can then by a pair of tickets each. On our fourth go, we were the last card to get pulled out and we therefore got to see the show. The show itself was amazingly funny and well worth all the effort to get to see it.

Roger Waters – The Wall

On my wish list of concerts I would like to have gone to over the years is Pink Floyd performing The Wall at Earls Court in 1981. So when Roger Waters announced he was going to be touring the album, I went through a long pre-sale registration process and was lucky enough the get some tickets in the third row at The 02. The spectacle of the show was incredible and at times completely jaw-dropping.

Tim Minchin – Live At The Royal Albert Hall

I was very disappointed that we weren’t able to see Tim Minchin play at The 02 in December 2010, so I was very please when he announced he would be playing The Royal Albert Hall with The Heritage Orchestra in April 2011. The concert was fantastic and hearing his songs with a full Orchestra was wonderful.

Elbow – Terminal 5, New York

It turned out that Elbow would be playing a gig in New York while we were going to be on holiday there. The venue was a much smaller place than they would now play in the UK, so it was fantastic to seem them in a small environment again. It was also wonderful to see that they could completely captivate a crowd in the US just as well as they can in the UK. “Everybody, Hands!”

TV

The Mentalist

I’m not sure why, but I had always been a bit wary of this series, despite lots of people recommending it to me. Perhaps it was a couple of dodgy trailers when it first appeared, that put me off? Anyway this year we finally started watching it. Then we watched it some more. Within no time at all we were hooked and had watched all three series of it. Now I sound my time going around telling people how good it is.

Game of Thrones

I’ve not a huge fan of fantasy writing. So didn’t really fancy this series, based on George R. R. Martin’s books when it first appeared. However my brother and some friends thankfully sold it to me and I’m very pleased they did as it is excellent. I can’t wait for the second season.

Only Connect

I absolutely love the quiz show Only Connect which is on BBC Four. The questions are complex and simple all at the same time and Victoria Coren is a fantastic quizmaster.

Castle

I’ve been a fan of Nathan Fillion for a long time. I’ve loved the TV series Firefly and the film Serenity is one of my all time favourites. However I was a bit nervous about the series Castle. It looked a bit too lightweight. However this year we gave it a go and I was very pleased to discover that it was excellent. Every episode is essentially a well put together whodunit, and that’s fine with me.

Internet

Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Finally caught up with this internet released project that by Joss Whedon that was completed during the writers strike. It’s a strange little blog/musical, but it packs a surprisingly big emotional punch. It is also responsible for the following…

Commentary! The Musical

The commentary for the release of Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is like no other. It is performed as another musical and it is very good indeed and extremely funny. It also features the song Steve’s Song, which may well be one of my favourite songs of the year.

Films

2011 wasn’t really a great year for films in my opinion, however there were a ferw that I though were great.

Attack The Block

I though that this film, written and directed by Joe Cornish was going to be good fun. However it was much better than that, it had real depth to it. It also featured some really excellent horror moments that were genuinely gruesome.

The Guard

I watched this film on the plane whilst flying to New York. I though that it was very similar in tone to In Bruges, which also featured Brendan Gleeson. It’s a very dark comedy and I thought that it was outstanding.

Bridesmaids

I thought that Bridesmaids would be a slapstick, disgusting comedy at which would make fun on women and their ‘wacky’ behaviour at weddings. However fortunately, it was nothing like that at all. I though it was touching and in places very darkly comedic. Oh and also disgusting.

Books

Caitlin Moran – How To Be A Woman

I don’t seem to read as much as I used to, I never seem to find the time anymore. However I was very pleased that I found the time to read How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran. I found it to be very interesting, moving and laugh out loud funny.

Right, that’ll do. Happy 2012 to you all!

Stephen.

I was very pleased when I received an email the other day telling me that I have made it through two round two of the competition and have been placed on the MTV Brand New For 2012 long list.

The next stage of the competition is all about generating buzz for my song One Warm June Night, and that means that I need people to have a listen to it and vote for it on the MTV Brand New For 2012 website.

So if you like what I do, please go to the website by clicking the image, have a listen to my song and vote for it. The if you could tell everybody you have ever met in your entire life to do the same, I’d really appreciate it. Voting closes on the 9th January 2012, so what are you waiting for?

If you want to know more about the competition, you can find out more on their website or by liking their Facebook page. There is also a video about it here.

Stephen.

Off the top of my head, a few of my favourites are:

• The Beatles – The End (from Abbey Road)

• Coldplay – Death And All His Friends (from Viva La Vida)

• Bloc Party – SRXT (from A Weekend In The City)

• Queen – The Show Must Go On (from Innuendo)

A few examples of this are:

• Kirtsy MacColl – Tomorrow Never Comes (from Titanic Days)

• a-ha – The Summers Of Our Youth (from Analogue)

• Elbow – Dear Friends (from Build A Rocket Boys!)

• George Michael – Waiting Reprise (from Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1)

As I’ve been recording more and more songs for my album Parkview, I’m starting to think about what sequence the songs I am making should appear on the album. I really like the sequence of songs on an album to have a flow and feel balanced in a way that it feels like the album is taking you somewhere.

For example, I wouldn’t put all my slow songs together, as it may mean that the listen gets into serious danger of nodding off. It’s nice to have ups and downs across the songs as it makes them work better together as a whole.

So almost as soon as I started writing and recording my song Fading Light, I knew that it was going to be the last track on my album.

I wasn’t particularly looking to record a stripped back lo-fi song in order to it put at the end of the album, however the moment I sat at my harmonium and started to pick out the chords to the song, it instantly felt like that is where it would end up.

Salvation Army Harmonium

Writing and recording Fading Light happened very quickly, which I was very pleased about. I had been struggling with recording a different song that I have been working on and off with for almost a year and I had’t really been very happy about the way it was turning out.

I had recorded 2 or 3 different versions of the song and I had just got the stage where I had decided that the reason I was struggling with it so much, was that it was in the wrong key. Essentially this means I was going to have to record all my guitar and vocals tracks all over again, which meant dumping all the work I had already done on them. This was a pretty grim prospect.

While I was waiting for the song to load on the computer, I started to just play a few chords on the piano and started singing a melody off the top of my head. I then moved over to my harmonium and played the same thing again.

I then tried some more chords for a chorus and once again came up with a melody almost straight away. I quickly recorded what I’d done into the computer and started work on the lyrics.

I decided that the best thing to do was simply to stop working on the song I had been having problems with and work on this new song instead. I can go back to the other song later, hopefully with a fresh set of ears.

As I had already decided that Fading Light would be the closing track on the album. I wanted the song to reference how I had gone about making this album, both in terms of the recording as well as in the lyrics.

My studio is up in the attic of our house. As I have mentioned before, it has a view out over a park. Normally when I am recording I try to make room as soundproof as I possible can in order to not record any background noises.

Studio View

For Fading Light I thought that I would do the opposite, I would try as much as possible to record the environment in which I have made the album.

I set up some microphones to record the sounds out of the windows. All the noises from the park, the cars, motorbikes and people making the way down the street outside.

I also recorded a big rainstorm, which would ordinarily mean no recording as the rain hitting the window panes is very loud.

As I recorded all the instruments and vocals for the track, I also had all the windows wide open in order to capture the environment I record in as best as I could.

I also decided to keep the instrumentation very simple, just harmonium, vocals and guitar. I also recorded some clunks and click that the windows make when you open and close them, these became the percussion noises on the song.

Lowden O23

Unusually for me, every instrument is a real instrument and nothing is virtual or computer generated. I certainly do love technology, but as Fading Light will be the closing song on the album, I though it would be nice to simple have real instruments that were played by me.

Once again I got the song mastered at Abbey Road and once again I’m very happy with it. You can have a listen to it here:

I hope you enjoy it,

Stephen.

This is the response that a lot of people say to me why I tell them that I am having my music mastered at the world famous Abbey Road Studios.

Most people have heard of Abbey Road Studios. Mentioning immediately evokes images of countless bands and artists that have recorded their over the years. For most musicians it would be something of a dream to record there.

Abbey Road Studios

However, what is mastering? To put it very simply, mastering is taking the final mix of a song and converting it into the source from which all further duplicated copies will be made.

That all sounds fairly simple I guess. I have my multitrack song recorded and I bounce a copy of it down to a stereo track. Ta-Dah! I have mastered my track and I am ready to make further copies of it.

However things are not really that simple. When I now play the stereo track back and compare it to some commercial records, it sounds different. The track lacks punch and it is flat and a bit lifeless. In fact at the most basic level, it simple sounds quieter than commercial records.

But how can this be? When bouncing the track I made sure that everything was as loud as possible without introducing any distortion or clipping. Once the track was bounced, I even normalised it to ensure that highest peak in the audio level was as loud as it could possibly be.

In Time - No Mastering

So why does it sound so different to the music I buy? Well that’s the real secret of what mastering does.

As well as getting the track in a fit state for duplication, a mastering engineer will also apply a variety of effects and processes to the mastered track. These include:

• Editing minor flaws
• Applying noise reduction to eliminate clicks, dropouts, hum and hiss
• Adjusting stereo width
• Adding ambience
• Equalize audio across tracks
• Adjust volume
• Dynamic range expansion or Compression
• Peak limit

All these are carried out in order to to make the finished track sound better.

Now to say something sounds better is obviously a bit of a subjective statement, something that sounds good to one person may sounds worse to a second.

This is the point at which it is important to really know what you are doing and to have some really good equipment at your disposal. Something which Abbey Road Studios seem to have in abundance.

Abbey Road - Zebra Crossing

Mastering is definitely something that you can do yourself and do on a budget. However as I found out to my cost it can take a very long time and an awful lot of trial an error.

I produced countless different masters of a song myself. However there would always be something about each version that irked me a bit.

Sometimes something was a bit too quiet or loud. Sometimes a track sounded great through my iPod, but sounded terrible through my car stereo. Other times two different tracks ended up sounding completely disconnect from one another because one was much louder or more bassy than the other.

I then remember an article that I read in Sound On Sound magazine about Abbey Road Studios starting to offer an Online Mastering service. You can read the article here.

Steve Rooke’s mastering room at Abbey Road

While I’m at it, also have a read of their excellent article about remastering The Beatles back catalog in 2009, which of course included the rather brilliant album, Abbey Road.

The Beatles - Abbey Road

So I thought that it couldn’t hurt to send a track off to them and see what I thought of it when it came back.

The difference was huge. The track sounded smoother and rounder and a hell of a lot more pleasant to listen to. It also sounded great wherever I played it. It also took them a remarkable short amount of time to achieve this.

I guess sometimes it really does show when someone clearly is an expert at what they do.

In Time - Mastered

From them on I was sold. All of the tracks that I have so far completely for my album have been mastered at Abbey Road Studios. I may be somewhat biased, but I think they all sound fantastic.

Other than the slight buzz it causes when namedropping the name Abbey Road Studios alongside your own music and undoubted track record they have, the other reason I chose to use them was their stance in the Loudness War.

There’s a great article on the Loudness War on Wikipedia which I suggest you have a read of if interested. In short though, it involves using mastering techniques to increased the perceived loudness by sacrificing the dynamic range of the music.

The end result is that peaks in the audio levels are reduced, meaning that the overall level of the whole track can be increased. The more and more this is done, the louder the track becomes.

When a track has been been through this treatment it often stands out more, particularly when played on the radio. This lead to the practise of people mastering music louder and louder in order to make their tracks stand out and ‘sound better’.

Michael Jackson's Black Or White - Getting louder with each re-release.

The argument against this practise is that it destroys any subtlety and emotion in the music, as everything is very upfront and in your face (or ears).

My other personal big gripe is that after to listening to music mastered this way for a while, you start to get listener fatigue as it feels like somebody is consistently shouting in your ears. Sometimes I can’t even make it through a whole album.

The engineers at Abbey Road Studios are not fans of this kind of mastering, which suits me just fine and that’s one of the reasons I decided to try them out in the first place.

I am very please with how all of my album tracks are turning out. Why not have a listen to them for yourself and see what you think.

I guess now I had better get on with the rest of them.

Stephen.

Omnisphere

Recently Spectrasonics have released a special add on library for Omnisphere of 700 sounds that have been made in honour of the late, great synth pioneer Bob Moog. The proceeds from the Bob Moog Tribute Library go towards the Bob Moog Foundation which among other things children about electronic music using vibrations, sound waves and electricity as a generator for sound, circuitry and more.

Bob Moog Tribute Library

It’s a great cause, but to be honest it doesn’t really take much to convince me to get hold of some new sounds.

So I was going through the sounds and I came across one called ‘Soil Creatures’ that was created by Ignacio Longo. I played a few random notes on the keyboard and suddenly I was off. there was something about the sound that was very inspiring. As such it is the first sound you can hear at the beginning of the song.

I quickly recorded a few bars of the sound into Logic and then recorded some improvised vocal melodies over the top. Within about 5 mins I had the verse to the song written. I was very pleased with myself.

I then started to add in some more things to fill out the sound a little more. The first thing I thought I would add would be some piano.

I have previous written about how much I liked the piano sample libraries from Imperfect Samples. I used their Braunschweig Upright piano very successfully on my song I’ve Found You. So I thought that I would check out some more of their libraries. I downloaded the Fazioli Ebony Concert Grand piano.

Fazioli Concert Grand

I have to say that Imperfect Samples have produced an amazing piano library. The piano sounds really amazing and once again, it is the imperfections of the samples such as the creaking of wood and clicking of keys, that gives the piano so much character.

I found a sounds I liked that had the mics up really close to the soundboard of the piano. I then fed this though a huge amount of large room reverb. I was try to make the piano sound intimate, yet massive at the same time.

I added some piano chords to the verse and then started to play around with some other chords. Then just as quickly as the verse had come, I improvised a melody over the new chords and this became the chorus.

While I was on a role I thought I would get the lyrics done too. This is always the part of writing a song that takes me the most amount of time. I was obviously feeling inspired that day because the lyrics came very easily as well.

So in the space of a few hours hours I had written a whole song. This is very unusual for me as I’m normally messing around with bits and pieces for ages.

I added some guitar parts using NI’s Guitar Rig 4. I found a preset to start off with that I really liked called Slow Motion Movie.

Guitar Rig 4 - Slow Motion Movie

The effect has lots and lots of delays, so that the sound you play goes on for ages. So long in fact that I had to tweak the patch and then do a lot of work with automation when mixing the song to make the notes fade out at the right moments.

I fed the resulting guitar sound through some more guitar effects that added random detuning and pitch shifting effects.

I added a repeated bell sound which I faded in and out of the distance. I thought that this added nicely to the atmosphere of the song.

FInally I then filled out the song a bit more with some Glockenspiel and a Music Box. These added some nice twinkly bits to the high end.

Glockenspiel

And that was that, everything was recorded very quickly. Things got a little bit more complicated when it came to the mixing stage. This was because I wanted to move the sounds around the stereo image a lot, particularly the guitar parts.

However it was worth the effort because I think it sounds great and I’m very happy with how this song has turned out. I sent it off for mastering at Abbey Road and they worked their usual magic to make the song sound as good as possible.

You can have a listen to the song here:

An unexpected turn of events events was the reception that the song got when people listened to it. People really seemed to love it and I had a number of requests asking if people could buy it.

I had only ever intended this song to be an album track. However inspire by all the enthusiasm I was getting, I quickly created some cover art based around a photo I had taken of the river Thames in Reading.

I then sent the song off for release on Bandcamp, iTunes, Amazon and eMusic where it is now available for your purchasing pleasure.

I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed making it.

Stephen.

Auto-Tune 7

I doubt that there are many studios in the world that don’t have the software or hardware installed, nor many producers that have crossed path with it at one time or another. However whether they would openly admit to using it, or for that matter admit to a singer that they had used it on their recording, is another matter.

Perhaps I will go into my own vocal recording techniques and thought on using pitch correction in a different blog. For now though, the debate reminds of the talk around the introduction of sequencers and samplers in the 1980′s and 1990′s. I remember reading that it would cause the downfall writing new and interesting music, and that all music from that point onwards would become generic and boring.

To my ears there was generic and boring music before the advent of sequencers and samplers, just as there was after their introduction. There was also some fantastic music too.

Auto-Tune 7

Anyway, I didn’t start writing this to get into a debate with myself. I do enough of that in my own time. I’m writing this because Antares, the company behind Auto-Tune have annouced that they are working on a new product, ATG-6. Also known as Auto-Tune for Guitar.

A video has been released showing a prototype version of the software in action.

Apparently the software will offer real time pitch correction, individually across each string of a 6-string electric guitar.

In the simplest form this means that it can keep each string of your guitar in tune. So whether the whole guitar is out of tune, or if just one string goes out after a particularly wild bend during a solo, the software will detect this and adjust the pitch of this string(s) automatically on the fly without you even noticing.

Beyond that it will allow you to apply lots of other virtual tuning effects such as open tuning, capos, 7-srings, 12-strings, bass and octaves.

It will also allow you to change the tone of your guitar pickups. So you could be playing with a Les Paul humbucker…

Les Paul - Humbucker Pickups

and have it sound like a Strat or Telecaster single coil pickup.

Fender Strat - Single Coil Pickups

This is all very interesting. I guess the proof will come when the product gets in to the hands guitarist we see what can be done with it.

Despite all this though, the holy grail of tuning guitars will always undoubtedly be a 12-string acoustic guitar. However I doubt whether anybody, man or machine, will ever get one of those suckers to stay in tune.

Stephen.

Why not have a listen to it here:

When I wrote and recorded the first version, it was only what is now the first section of the song and it was just piano and vocals. At that stage it was only supposed to a a simple song based around just two chords, D and A. I really liked the sound of the big crashing chords played low down on the piano repeating throughout the song.

Years later when I first built my own studio I thought that this would be a good song to start off recording with. It’s very simple and it would be a good way to learn how all the nice bits of equipment I had would work together.

Once I had recorded the piano and vocals parts I then started to go through all the different bits of new software I had looking for some more sounds that I could use to add some more atmosphere to the track.

First I added some lovely evolving pad sounds. I used Native Instruments’ Absynth 5.

Absynth 5

I also used a few instruments from Native Instruments’ Reaktor 5. Including SubHarmonic

Reaktor 5 - SubHarmonic

and Steam Pipe 2.

Steam Pipe 2

However as is my wont, I couldn’t just leave it there. I was playing around with some arpeggiated piano sounds in Spectrasonic’s amazing Omnisphere synth.

Omnisphere

Suddenly, in the way that music can sometime, a new melody popped into my head whilst I was playing the chords again. As I started to form this into another section of the song, I though it would be interesting to have it based on the same two chords again, but the other way around going from A to D.

So I started to recorded this new section of the song. I thought that in contrast to the fairly sparse vocals of the first section, I would make this new part much more lush vocally. Rather than have a lead vocal as such, I wanted there to be a lot of harmonies all singing together as well of lots of oohs and aahs and the like.

At this point I was fairly pleased with myself. I had given my new studio a successful road test and written a new bit of music to boot. Nice! I then moved on and started working on other projects.

I had bounced a copy of the song down to my iPod and I used to listen to it from time to time. Each time I listen to it however I felt that something wasn’t quite right with it. Although I really liked the new second part of the song, I felt that the structure of the song now wasn’t working all that well. I needed something that would tie the two sections of the song back together again at the end. In short, it needed a third section.

I thought that it would be an interesting idea to bring the two vocal parts from the first two sections together to form a third final section that would tie everything together and end the song.

Seeing as the vocals in the second section are full of harmonies, I though it would be a nice idea to take the melody and generate some harmonies in a different way – with a Vocoder.

I have a keyboard that I use sometime when I am trying to work out complex vocal harmony parts, a Roland VP-550.

Roland VP-550

You can sing or play audio into it, then using the keyboard you can play out different lines or chords and it will pitch shift the vocal to what you are playing. I don’t really think the effect is good enough to replace actually singing the harmonies yourself, however I do find it useful for figuring out exactly where that tricky fourth harmony line needs to go.

Of course it doesn’t just have to be used to try and make fake vocals parts, you can also use it to make some great effects, namely the Vocoder.

A vocoder allows you to use the formant characteristics of one audio signal, in this case my voice, and add them to another sound such as the VP-550′s synth. The effect is that it sounds like the synth is singing, or alternative it sounds like I have turned into a robot. Famous examples of vocoders in music would include ELO’s Mr Blue Sky and Kraftwerk’s Autobahn.

I fed a few different vocal lines from the second section of the song through the vocoder and played some different chord patterns. They sounded great so I took my favourite couple of takes and used them panned left and right to make up a stereo track.

Next I started playing around with vocals from the first section of the song. My initial idea was to take little sections of the vocal, cut them up and shuffle them about the place in the third section. I spent quite a long time doing this and it sounded okay, however it wasn’t really interesting enough, so I started looking around at other things I might use to add more interest.

There is a musician I really like called Tim Exile who makes incredible exciting, interactive and experimental music using a customer setup he has built both in terms of hardware and software. I was delighted when I discovered that he was working with Native Instruments to produce some official versions of the software he uses. The first bit of software that was released is called The Finger.

The Finger

Using a keyboard The Finger allows you to apply a multitude of effects including loops, filters, reverses and so on to incoming audio to produce some really amazing things. Have a look at the excellent video below to see Tim himself telling you all about it.

Check out Tim’s other videos and website to see some of the brilliant music he makes.

I fed the audio from the first section I had been working on into The Finger and did a live performance of the effects on the keyboard. It was brilliant fun and I had a great time going over it again and again, finding out what I could do and tweaking the performance. It was just like learning how to play a piece of music or a solo. After an afternoon of fun I had it all recorded and was very happy with how everything had turned out.

There’s was just one thing I wanted to sort out and that would be that, I will have finally finished this song.

All I needed to do was add some simple piano chords over the third section so that once all the vocals came to an end, the song could finish on a simple piano chord. As usual, I spoke too soon.

I loaded up the amazing Braunschweig Upright Piano that comes from the fantastic sample library by Imperfect Samples.

Braunschweig Upright Piano

I have already written about why I love this piano and how I used it on my version of Happy Birthday. Suffice to say if I want a piano with character, this is the one for me.

I recorded the chords over the third section and then once again, that splendid thing started to happen, another melody started appearing in my head.

Although I was very pleased by this, I was starting to think that this was getting a bit ridiculous and I needed to put a stop to it. There was only one thing for it, a third chord!

I figured that if I threw in a G chord, I could so a I IV V chord sequence. After all that time on just two chords, this had a nice sense of ending to it.

I recorded the vocals for this final fourth section. I wanted it to be really soft and gentle, almost like a whisper. I sang really quietly and very close to the microphone. My Rode NT2-A is really nice for this as it seems to pick up every little nuance.

Rode NT2-A

And that was that. I finished up the mix of the song and set it off the Abbey Road to be mastered. As you can see from what happened to me over the course of making this song, it’s hard to know when the leave something alone.

The great thing about having tracks mastered at Abbey Road, apart from the amazing job that they do obviously, is that if I mess around with it again, I’d have to get it remastered.

So it was a long road, but I really did enjoy making this song.

I really hope you enjoy it too.

Stephen.

My brother was putting together a compilation of video messages and clips sent by a variety of family and friends from all around the world to show at her surprise birthday party, so we thought it would be nice to record a video for the song so it could be shown at the party.

You can watch the video here (complete with cheesy introduction):

You can also have a listen to just the audio track here:

It was great fun to record and make a video, although I must say that I found the music side a great deal easier than editing video. Next time I might leave it in my brother’s capable hands.

I started off the song by recording some Shruti Box, which I have written about before. I then started recording more and more layers of instruments.

First came the piano which is the Braunschweig Upright Piano that comes from a fantastic sample library by Imperfect Samples. Often I find that sample libraries can be a little too perfect despite the incredible lengths people can go to to record them and as a result they can actually start to sound a little but boring lifeless.

I really like this piano library because Imperfect Samples have gone out of their way to capture all the little flaws, creaks and buzzes from the piano that actually give it all it’s character.

Braunschweig Upright Piano

We then added some percussion with a couple of shakers, a tambourine and some hand claps. I then added some simple chords with my small harmonium.

Small Harmonium

Wanda then added some finger picking on my Lowden O23 acoustic guitar, which I have found always records beautifully.

Lowden O23

I added a few different electric guitar parts on my Fender Telecaster.

Fender Telecaster

I used Native Instruments‘ Guitar Rig 4 as a virtual amp as I find it very quick and easy to use, as well as being very versatile and sounding great.

Guitar Rig 4 - Christal

The drums came from a great sample library for Native Instruments‘ Kore 2 platform called True Strike Tension. I have actually used this soundpack on quite a few of my own songs, it’s great for big timpani style percussion and drumming.

I then added some bass using the fantastic Tillian by Spectrasonics, which I now use for pretty much all of my bass sounds.

Spectraonics - Trilian

For the vocals I recorded two different parts, one an octave higher than the other. Wanda then added a vocal that doubled the higher octave part. Finally we then added a couple of harmony parts to further fill out the last part of the song.

And that was that, it was finished. My Mum certainly seemed to like it and it got a round of applause when it was played at the party which made me very happy.

I hope you enjoy it too,

Stephen.

I also mentioned that I am very difficult person to buy Birthday and Christmas presents for, mainly because I end up getting too excited about something and I can’t wait, so I ending up getting it myself. I obviously have no self control.

So before Christmas in 2009 I said that if people didn’t know what to get me they should get me anything, be it a musical instrument or not, that makes any kind of interesting noise. I got some really lovely things, a number of which have made it on to my album Parkview, which I am currently working on.

When Christmas 2010 came around, I was lucky to again to be given another lot of very interesting things to play around with.

Firstly, perhaps to compliment the Rainmaker from the year before, Wanda gave me a Thunder Maker:

Thunder Maker

I really love this thing. If you kind of wave it around a bit it makes a low rumbling, get a bit more energetic and you may think about grabbing your umbrella, wave it around like a madman and it sounds like the world is collapsing around you. The thunder seems to be happening in D as well, which is interesting as it means I may be able to turn it into some kind of instrument that can be played in the keyboard. There are all sounds of odd metallic sounds you can make with it by bashing the metal spring that comes out of it which will make good percussion noises.

I also a got a Mbira, also known as a Thumb Piano:

Mbira Thumb Piano

You pluck the metal keys with your fingers and it sounds like a Xylophone crossed with a Glockenspiel.

A Singing Bowl:

Singing Bowl

You run the wooden stick around the edge of the bowl and the vibrations make the bowl start to ring out the note of C. What is lovely about it is that as well as the note, you can also pick out harmonic overtones that start to make it sound like a chord is playing (apparently this is to do with the metal being an alloy). This reminds me a lot of my Shruti Box so it will be fun to play around with the two of them together.

A kids toy called a Clatter Pillar (do you see what they’ve done there?):

Clatter Pillar

You kind of flick it with your wrist and it makes a sound that’s like a cross between a Güiro and a Football Rattle.

Another toy called a Tub Tunes Water Whistle:

Water Whistle

It may look like a turkey baster, but the idea is that you stick the end of it in the bath and use the depth of the water to tune the notes you play.

Finally John & Maggie got me something I can scarcely believe that I have never had before, a Stylophone:

Stylophone

The Stylophone is probably the classic ‘Toy’ musical instrument and it really is a lovely thing that is a great deal of fun to play. Obviously this is a modern version as they stopped making the original models in 1975, which means it gets a few extras that the original didn’t have. These include a volume control (famously missing from the very loud original units) and two new sounds in addition to the original one. They have famously been used by a number of great musicians over the years including David Bowie, Kraftwerk, Orbital, Jack White and Pulp and I can’t wait to use it myself.

So there you go. Judging by the presents, I was clearly a good boy in 2010. So don’t go believing anything that liar Father Christmas tells you.

Stephen.