Category: Updates

DJing at R.I.P. (Rock Indie Pop)

I’ll be spinning some tunes for a while at the R.I.P. (Rock Indie Pop) night in The Button Factory, Dublin next Friday 27th. DJ Laura Lovejoy of the band Pulpit will also be playing, alongside R.I.P. regular DJ Sean John.

If you’re around Dublin, come check it out. (click the poster for the facebook event page)

After the last two nights of fun this Summer, we couldn’t let August pass without another RIP.

The Button Factory will open it’s doors again for a third installment on Friday 27th August, and to help get us in the mood for Electric Picnic / back to collage / the leaves falling from the trees, DJ Seán John will be back to rock our world with more of his signature beats, and joining him this time will be DJ ebby.

Spinning his own blend of rock, alternative, quirky pop and electro, ebby has been DJing gay alternative nights in Galway since 2006, namely AlternativEden, IQ (IndieQueer) and Smells Like Queen Spirit, while Dublin dwellers may have caught him this year playing at Paddy Monster.

DJ Laura Lovejoy will be on the decks in the Button Factory side bar. Obsessed with 60s pop, as well as girl groups, soul, motown and surf, Laura’s record collection is a treasure trove of the finest pop hits and obscure gems. She’s currently the weekend resident DJ at the Garage Bar in Temple Bar, and before that she played at Antics, Retro Revival at Le Cirk, Shebeen Chic and Dice Bar. She ranks Phil Spector and Joe Meek among her favorite producers, and the multi-talented Laura also plays guitar and sings with the band The Pulpit, who rocked RIP back in June. She’ll be accompanied on the decks by band mate Evan O’Leary.

Maria (demo)

The lyrics for this song were written years ago, I think circa 2002 or so, but didn’t become a song until some time in 2006. I wrote the music for this and another song Caoineadh initially as piano instrumentals first. The lyrics for Caoineadh started to come as I was playing through the music for that one, but it was only as I was going through old ideas and words that I’d sketched out that I noticed that the other instrumental I’d been doodling on at the piano fit rather well with the words of Maria. I have two other melodic lines written (possibly two violins, but I’m toying with the idea of going with woodwinds for this song, as I think it’d suit it better, but that’s for another day I guess) but they’re not recorded in this demo at all.

It’s a song that I always mess up the verse order in when I play it live, but at the same time, it’s a song that I tend to pull out a lot when I’m playing live, as it’s just lovely to play to be honest. I might record an instrumental version of this when I work out the rest of the instrumentation. I think that would be lovely.

Maria (demo) by misterebby

Friday Night Friends (demo)

This song kinda came together in dribs and drabs over a wee period of time. The main chunk of the lyrics were written all at once, in a longer form that I edited down a good time later. But it didn’t really start to come together until I added what became the middle section and the whole idea of what the song was about started to take shape.

Initially I was going for a piano version of a surf-pop kinda song, to counteract the bite in the lyrics, I’m still not sure about what way the arrangement will go: whether to make it poppier and lighter, or to go for a more piano rock sound. I’m still toying with this song in that regards, but I do like playing it solo with just piano.

I’m rather terrible at programming beats, but I just needed something to play off and to start to give myself an idea of how the whole song would sound. So, it’s definitely a demo, and definitely quite rough still, but it’s helped me to see the shape of the song, and what I want to change or alter, and to give me ideas on how I want to flesh out the arrangement more.

Friday Night Friends (demo) by misterebby

The Best Of Me (newer demo)

When the wonderful Anna Lee was visiting back in May, we re-demo’d some of my songs, including “The Best Of Me”. Since the previous demo, I’d changed what key I was doing this song in, and quite simply, I wanted to just demo that much for now.

I’m happy enough with the piano & vocal combination, and it’s given me the space to listen to it and really hear the other parts that I want on it. As Anna was playing back the demo to me after recording it, I was clearing hearing specific parts in my head that I was humming along. I need to sit down and transcribe the string parts and the like, and see how well I like them when they’re added to the song.

The Best Of Me (demo) by misterebby

I’ve also started using Soundcloud to host and share the tracks I’m working on, which you’ll be able to find here:

http://soundcloud.com/misterebby

Free Download: Donut Song (Tori Amos cover demo)

tori amos

I remember the first time I listened to a Tori Amos album – it changed my idea of what a piano could do. It was Under The Pink, which I listened to all the way through a few times alone in my room. Before listening to Tori, my notions of piano music were limited to classical piano or vamped-chords and simple piano riffs of some of the pop music I knew. I’d finished all the classical piano grades with the RIAM, and was feeling a bit frustrated with the limited scope of the piano material I knew. Hearing Tori by chance on the radio, and checking out the piano books in a shop made me decide to get the albums. – yeah, I honestly looked through the piano books for Under The Pink and Little Earthquakes before ever hearing them.

But the opening notes of Pretty Good Year, the first track on the album, still sticks with me as one of my favourite piano lines, probably because it was the first of her songs I really heard at home, but mostly because it showed me that piano accompaniment can be melodic, fluid, and have a life of its own under the vocal melody line of a song. Every piano part on that album is absolutely gorgeous, musically interesting, and completely makes the songs something else.

When I was doing a few rough takes in my home studio, I knocked out two quick cover versions: the Under The Ivy one I posted about before, and a cover of Tori’s Donut Song from the album “Boys For Pele“. I was mostly messing about with my Roland RD 120, exploring the other instrument sounds on it, and certainly it’s not well recorded, played or sung, but it’s there, so I may as well put it out. I actually used one of the bass instrument voices on the digital piano, and added some of the Rhodes voice from it too, to see how they matched. It was mostly an experiment. I’ve dicked about with the song a small bit too, I’m afraid. But still. Oh, and I think I mentioned that it’s a not-great recording with bad mixing, yeah? I’d fix it up a bit, but at the moment I’m in Dublin, dogsitting. No, really.

[audio:http://www.misterebby.com/previewtracks/doughnutsong.mp3]
Donut Song (Tori Amos cover – demo) (right click and download)

It’s not a patch on the original, which you should go and listen to (see the live video below), but it was an interesting experiment for me. It’s actually not one of the Tori songs that I’d usually play at all, but I think I was just in the mood for it that night. There are a few of her songs that I’ve loved and learned over the years, that always pop into sets or sessions every so often, but this is not really one of them. I guess it’s just a good song for a late night, home alone, dark bedroom with a piano.

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