The digital version of my album went out to my fundit funders yesterday, and about half of them have already downloaded it at this stage. But you can now stream the album on Bandcamp or Soundcloud, and if you like, you can buy it from Bandcamp. It will shortly be available through iTunes and other digital stores over time.
Bandcamp is my own preferred digital retailer, as quite honestly, I get to charge you less for the album, and I make more money directly as it’s not going through a middle man of any kind.
The CD itself has had another little setback – I’m starting to take it as a hint that CDs maybe aren’t the way forward. The designer’s computer had a hard drive failure yesterday, and I’m not sure if he’s been able to retrieve any of the work that has been lost. Here’s hoping that he can.
Mastering is an interesting art. I was able to attend the mastering session for my record at Wav Mastering in Limerick, and experienced the recordings gaining more definition and going from being a bunch of tracks that I’d recorded to being an album that made sense to listen to. I find it hard to explain exactly what it’s like without resorting to a bread analogy – so imagine you’ve made 12 loaves but baked them just as a round of dough on a tray. Now, imagine all those 12 loaves were baked in the same loaf tin instead. They still will taste the same, but they’ll look more uniform as a result. I guess that’s how I see mastering. I don’t know if that even makes sense – but it works in my head and I hope in yours too.
I was due to play at Song Cycle in Whelan’s last monday, as a sort of prep for myself to road-test some of the really new songs I’ve never played to an audience before. However, the mental floods in Dublin that evening meant that the evening didn’t go ahead at all, so apologies to anyone who may have braved the weather to make it in.
I wanted to play those songs live before playing them at the Jazz Festival gig tomorrow, but alas, they’ll just get their first outing at that gig instead. So, if you’re around Cork for the weekend, drop into the Festival Club on Sunday evening, and I’m playing in the Legends Suite.
I’d been hoping to have the record ready and out there before the Jazz gig, but various things always seem to crop up to add to the delay. But that’s really helped and added to the whole learning process. These last 6 months have been one big learning curve for me, and comparing the demos I was doing at home before going into the studio with the finished album I have now is mindblowing to me at times. But I wanted to be able to start sharing some of it with people, so here’s a track called “Helen” which you can listen to and download for free via Bandcamp. I hope you enjoy it, and spread it around. The full album will be available in November, all things going to my now re-adjusted plan:
I was back in the studio a fortnight ago for a few days more, and really settled into the place. I’m quite happy with the work that has come about so far. Heading back in for another bit again from tomorrow and after that I should have made a good start on pretty much every song I wanted to cover for this record.
Here’s a sneaky preview of some of the work that’s been going on in the studio – though bear in mind that these are just clips of tracks in progress, and pretty much just piano and my vocals right now.
Some of the songs are coming together a little differently in the studio to how I’ve been performing them live, which is an interesting to see develop to be honest. I guess there’s just a very different energy when you’re connecting with people live, and when you’re really just playing to yourself in the studio.
This song was written at the same time as Helen (don’t make a sound) back in 2007 sometime. Both songs were inspired by novels I’d read or recently read at the time. I’ve noted previously that I tend to work on songs in batches of two or three at the same time. Sometimes an idea splits in three, sometimes I’ve loads of little ideas that start to link together resulting in some different songs. With this one, I was working with a really basic straight-forward chord progression, and I was trying to write something that was musically quite simple and direct. Perhaps because the other song I was working on at the same time was the opposite of that.
I’ve never been so sure of this song, but I like some parts of it. I guess I’ve been playing it so long that I’m just used to it. One of my old housemates surprised me one day by saying it was her favourite of my songs. I think I have a music-snob idea that because it’s simple it’s not as good as some of the more musically complex songs. I’ve managed to completely over complicate the piano line as a result though, and I definitely fuck it up in this demo. I’d go fix it up before posting it, but my piano has been out on loan all weekend, and when it comes back I’m gonna finish off the new demo I start for “is this what they call romance?” instead.
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.