I just recently switched to an Android phone – the wonderful HTC Desire, and have been playing around with the camera on it, and two different camera apps so far. I was interested in seeing how it would compare to my old iPhone 3GS which gave me some great shots, and the Hipstamatic App was good for some interesting filters and the like.
But, I’ve been mostly pleased with the Desire’s camera, though the colours aren’t quite as vibrant as the iPhone’s camera were it seems. But the RetroCamera and fx camera apps have been really fun and versatile too, and add a lot of fun to the camera.
Here’s some shots of a beautiful sunset in Salthill, Galway this weekend:
It definitely gives good lens flare (which I happen to like. I also like taking photos into the sun as I have a soft spot for silhouettes.) I’m no photographer or anything, but it’s nice to have a portable tool that can record things I see with a decent quality for me.
I’m not sure what I think of this song. It’s really in a style that is far more straight-forward than what I usually write. It’s odd, there’s little things about it that completely put me off the song, but other parts of it that really endear it to me. In essence, it’s a love song to my piano, but the piano part is clichéd and simplistic and really straightforward. Which makes no sense. I think I’ll have to rewrite the piano line completely now that the rest of the song has slotted into place in my head.
The song itself grew from a two line little snippet that I wrote down somewhere and kept with my little scrap pages of lyric fragments. I intended on slotting it into a different song, but one day it just grew and became its own song. I’m fond of it, and I think it’s cute, but it’s oddly out of place when put next to some of the other songs. However, the other two it has been hanging around with, in terms of being written around the same time, are also more simplistic than what I usually write. I’m sure I’ll manage to overcook and overcomplicate them in time, but I’m just gonna go with it for now and see how the songs come out. They definitely have a shape that emerges quite naturally as I work on them, and I tend to ignore the ones that need a beat/percussion/production led development in place of the songs I can go ahead and give shape to on the piano.
This song also has a chord progression that I myself don’t actually like, yet each verse opens with it. I just find it too clichéd and over used, and yet there I am using the very same progression. Even structurally it’s really straightforward. Oh well. It’s definitely a song that is probably completely out of step with music that is being written and released these days, and feels very 70’s piano ballad in some ways to me. But, I’ve kinda come to terms with it, and I do like it for what it is.
Oh, and this one is really a very rough demo, I dunno what’s going on with my rolled tongue on “added it to…” – you’ll hear what I mean. And somehow the piano sounds more muffled than on other demos using the same settings. I think I was forgetting to actually use the pedal. See? crappy piano line in a song that’s written for my piano. And the levels are a bit shaky, and I think I even got a line or two completely wrong. But I’ll do a better retake of it soon.
Galway is kinda known for its rain, and for good reason if you ask me. Canvas shoes like Converse and their ilk aren’t exactly very suited to the climate in this part of the world, but that doesn’t stop people like myself wearing them. Half of the inspiration from this song came from the countless times my feet have been thoroughly soaked through while wearing Cons here in Galway. The worst day I remember recently was when my previous pair were on their last legs, and I got caught in the rain. Complete disaster, and I’d already been having a particular rough week. So, I went into one of the shoe shops in town, saw they had Converse black leather high-tops, and I thought that it was a sign. I’ve had them (and dry feet) ever since, though they’re starting to show wear at the moment.
Regardless, that’s one of the parts of this song. It’s a very simple song with one very simple chord progression all the way through. The lyrics were a completely separate thing to the music. First one of the riffs came as I was trying to set the words to music. I got completely hooked on that little riff and liked it more than the rest of the song. Naturally, I then promptly forgot it. Fast forward a month or two and I was trying to remember it, and instead came up with a completely different little riff, which was too similar to too many things, so I got frustrated and wanted to remember the original riff again. But, luckily, it seems I’d noted it down on some manuscript paper at one point. I’ve no idea when, but I stumbled across it in a manuscript pad while working on something else entirely.
Anyways, I then worked out some arrangements and countermelodies and stuff on manuscript, and only yesterday was plotting them out on the computer using MuseScore (thanks a million Sam, you’re a lifesaver for pointing me to that free software) and was listening to see if the fuller orchestrations would work with the song. I think it’ll be very pretty. It’s not really the kind of song that I usually write at all, but I don’t really mind. It’s one of a trio that I’m writing at the same time, which seems to be the way I do things. I have a habit of working on three songs at a time, and one is always the one left to the side while the other two get finished. So there’s a little collection of songs on the back-burner, so to speak. Mostly those are ones that won’t work with just piano and vocal, and need a bit more care and attention to nurture to fruition. I demo’d this song and one of the other two this evening, just in piano and vocal form. Here’s this one, which I’ve also subtitled “the prose and the cons” because I’m awful at giving things titles and I’ve a terrible habit of going with really bad puns. Nevertheless, the main working title is “Wet Feet” in honour of all the times my feet have been soaked through by the rain here in Galway.
I’ve sung this song countless times in choirs. I kinda grew to hate the song because it was such a standard part of choral repertoire when I was a teen. But we never made it as beautifully melancholic and full of yearning as this fantastic choir have, and they’ve completely reinvigorated the song in choral version in my estimation:
They’re a really sensational choir – it’s so rare that you see an all female choir comfortable singing down out of the rafters and really going for a beautiful texture. The two brothers who run the choir (conductor and pianist) create these absolutely gorgeous arrangements of songs as diverse as Air’s “Sexy Boy” and Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters”.
They’re a choir doing versions of songs from popular music in absolutely wonderful arrangements, but not in a glee-style show choir manner. I first heard their cover of “Sexy Boy” and completely loved it. Since then I’ve come across a fair bit of their music via youtube, and sourced two of their albums. Their covers don’t always work for me, but when they do, they’re absolutely thrilling:
Smells Like Teen Spirit (live)
Years ago I actually did a choral arrangement of Kylie’s “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head”, so I was intrigued to hear how they’d interpret it, but unfortunately I’m not a huge fan of their arrangement. But interestingly, there are some of the same harmony lines in their arrangement as I have in some bars of mine.
However, my arrangement was for a musical inspired by “Sister Act”, so the song was re-appropriated to be sung to Jesus instead, and included a “Allelujah” too for good measure.
However, some other songs are far more successful. This is one of my favourites, and is featured as the soundtrack for the trailer for “The Social Network“:
I was looking up the original version of “Fame” from the 1980 Alan Parker movie, and got sucked into one of those voids of watching endless linked youtube videos. I decided I didn’t like the remake of the song at all, for last year’s version of the movie, and I also decided that the finale song is one of the most uplifting pieces of music I’ve ever heard, and that the “Hot Lunch” scene is probably still the best bit of flash mob on film.
Yeah, the theme tune is still classic, but there’s so much other great music in the movie, and the film itself is not even nearly as frivolous as the footage of people dancing on cars might make you think.
