All quiet on the western front
Another quiet week in Richie-land, after
my moan about not having any new songs - I managed to get a new song written and recorded within a couple of days (which is quick for me!), obviously lacking drums though.
These days - even with advances in recording - I just don't have the space, the patient neighbours or, more to the point, the drumming skill to add drums to stuff when we're recording demos on the fly. The choice being then between cheesy keyboard drums (any of my friends who've heard Love-Love-Love or Seconds-Out would know what I mean!) and beat-boxing it!
Ideally, the thing I'd really like (one day) is an electronic drum kit, pads with decent triggered samples on them - generally
very expensive, but probably not much more than a gym membership in Central London anyway and probably just as effective as a tool for weight-loss!
STILL! The song recorded is pretty reasonable, almost a 'concept' song (the idea being that all instruments for most of the song are deprived of lower frequencies, except in reverb terms. So that the vocals are the only thing appearing in the mid-range) - it just about works! At the end, we then bring in a deep bass noise and a large number of vocals - which I may still run through Phil's big amplifier and get them distorted. The music is very remenicient of Radiohead ('no surprises' in particular, but I think that's probably a pit-fall of any minor song with high chordally things) and Sigur Ros (at least in terms of the squeeky vocals towards the end).
And the AV Crew forum (which I won't link to, because otherwise we'll probably get lots of 'randoms') seems to be livening up too, and work on SongBase too - which I'll post more about later... sounds like the
church conference in october may be fun from a technical point of view, maybe even to the extent of coming up with a 'live CD' at the end of it.
So, another week of so much to do, so little time - but probably not much in the way of anything really happening. Oh well, best go and see if I can find myself a nice cumabund and bow-tie for this weekend, which MIGHT be black-tie, but no-one tells me anything!
cya
Careful with that hammer!
Well, another weekend gone - and I'm back at work feeling tired!
It all started promisingly enough, a nice long lie-in on Saturday - after which I took my suit to get dry-cleaned (after I left a chocolate in the pocket and it melted... ewwww!), did a bit of reading and bible-study thingies and then, after trying to find something in our fridge to eat that
wasn't sausages (they were on special offer a couple of weeks back, so pretty much all my flatmates bought a couple of packs!), I sat down with a nice quiet cup of tea to play a little bit of football on the computer....
Of course,
then I proceeded to try and pick up my cup of tea without looking, succeeded in catching it with my wrist and propelling it across the desk. I simultaneously tried to catch the cup (in a suave and sophisticated manner) and only succeeded in diverting the cup into my computer keyboard.
After draining the liquid out, all seemed OK - until the computer decided that it didn't like being sent random key information, so I ended up pulling the whole thing to pieces and cleaning it until about 2am! - well, it seems to work now, so hopefully no permanent damage was done!
What else? Got a CD of the 'Mission' music out to the guys in our kids ministry, we had a Benjy's (the best all day breakfast in the world, only available on Earls Court Road - yellow frontage, turn left out of the tube! -
plug!!) and then set off to
church, which was cool - Charl sharing on being 'salty' in whatever places God's placed us in.
Then we went to the proms, it was Phil's inspiration that did it and we rounded up
Annette and Mike to come with us (Phil, Jason and myself) - the way it seems to work is that you join the queue and then either some person (who may, or may not recognise you as an IC student!) comes round and sells you a ticket, or you just get given a 'raffle ticket' (so you can keep your place in the queue) and pay your £4 on the door... you then realise that you're queuing outside of the window of Natty's room, so Phil gives him a ring and he passes us some tea! (The man is a
major saint!). A little while later, we pass back the mugs and disappear into the hall.
Last night's programme was a Violin Concerto by Elgar (with a soloist who looked like he could definitely make you an offer 'you couldn't refuse'!) and a Mass (which up until the choir started belting out 'Gloria' we were expecting to be a symphony) - by Dvořák. Both were great, but my back was giving way (bad posture!) by the end of the second movement. Still, a great night was had by all - and we finished it off by taking a little wine and pistachio nuts with some pasta, cheese-sauce and cut up sausages.... only four more packs to go then!
introductions
Oh and I suppose I'd better introduce the people who are most likely to read this to each other, in case they havn't already met....
I suppose people fall into three categories....
- My London friends - flatmates and other close friends, from church or my time at uni
- My 'home' - that's Edgware - family and friends
- My 'virtual' friends - very few of whom I've ever actually met, but generally hang about on fan-forums or mailing-lists for Delirious (who I like) and other - more random - connections!
There may indeed be some people who fit into more than one of the above categories - and other people who I know from church but don't meet much outside of a Sunday - or the AV Crew - but that's just the complicated world in which I live. So yeah, Mum - meet Jono (actually... on the other hand, forget I said that..)
Oh well, I'm off to play badminton with Phil and Jason (flatmates), Will and Mike (friends) and maybe we'll drag Wes (flatmate) along as well.
Have a great weekend, everyone...
As the music starts...
May as well link over to
Teapot Records - as it's a friday. Sooner or later it'll get updated with the new stuff that's coming along, the big redesign to promote Wes's album (smile) - once he's recorded it!
As for me - after
Puddles, there's not really been much. I just havn't felt like writing and what I am writing tends to be pretty morbid and uninspiring fare - either that or inanely happy.... Writers block? probably more like apathy and many other distractions....
Oh well, it's the weekend!
The inexorable tide...
Finally decided to give in to the 'unstoppable march of progress' and get myself a blog of my own, not sure how much it'll get updated but hopefully it'll give whoever you are some insight into the recesses of my mind!
Admittedly, we tried to get our old
Solution site to run off
TextPattern at one point, but it seemed rather like using a hammer to crack a nut - so err... we ended up running off PHP/XML instead!
Oh well, work calls - performance, performance, performance is the mantra of the day...
