Tag: piano

Mastering, gigging and a free download

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:

A little piano track, mastering and some gigs.

fund:it, the crowdfunding service I used to raise cash for my album recording has been going now for over 6 months, and they’ve released a video about what was achieved over their first 6 months. They asked me if I had any music that they might be able to use for the video, and as it happens I had recorded one of my piano instrumental pieces on the last day of the piano & vocal tracking in the studio recording sessions. I’d an hour or two to spare and ended up knocking out a live version of “I Wish You Were Here” as well as the piano instrumental piece.

The song has ended up on the tracklisting for the album, and the instrumental is planned as a bonus track for the digital version of the record going out to those people who funded my project. But, now you can hear an edit of that track used in the video about Fund:it’s first 6 months, which they have entered into the “Better Together” competition in the hope of winning some money towards helping to develop and improve the service they provide. Please click on the link and consider voting for their entry, which will help enable other creative projects happen through the use of crowdfunding.

Here’s the video:

I’m heading off to get the record mastered later this week, having gotten to the point where I have final mixes that I’m happy with, and a record that I’m quite proud of. The artwork is still being developed with print artist Grace Mitchell, and I’m excited to see the work she has been doing all coming together to result in the final packaging for the record. We are planning to hand print and make the packaging for a limited number of the records, and everyone who bought the cd through fund:it will be getting one of those copies. I’m looking forward to having a finished product and I really hope that people who hear the record like it as much as I do.

Later this month, I also have a little gig on the 24th at the “Song Cycle” showcase night Upstairs in Whelan’s in Dublin, and the Cork Jazz Festival on the 30th. So, if you are knocking around either city around those days, drop in and you’ll get to hear some of the songs from the record before it is out, as well as some of the material I’ve held over for the next one, and newer songs I’ve been writing more recently.

Jazz Festival, more mixing, and a Swede

I’ll be playing a set in the Festival Club at the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival this October 30th. The time isn’t confirmed as yet, but I’ll update some more about that when I know later on. I don’t believe I’ve ever actually played a gig in Cork before, now that I think about it. I’m looking forward to showcasing some of the tracks from the record along with some of the other songs that didn’t make it on to this record, but are being held over for a later date.

I’ve also been writing again recently, reworking older unfinished songs, polishing off mostly finished song, and writing some brand new ones too. I’m really happy with some of the newer material and a little part of me wishes I could just jump right back into the studio and knock out a second record this winter, as I have enough songs that I’m happy with to go and do that. But I still have work to do to finish off this one first. And who knows what other songs I’ll write in the meantime.

I was back in the studio for a day a week or two ago to do some tweaks to the album mixes, but I think I now have mixes that I’m happy with of the record. Some little things niggling at me about the track sequencing at the moment, but I took a break from listening to the record to go back at it with fresh ears and sort out the part of the sequencing that I’m not happy with. The next stage will be to get the record mastered.

I’ve been spending a lot of time playing piano again – the digital piano is set up in my room, and I’ve been able to play away on headphones. However, I’ve been snatching time at the acoustic piano too – though it is in dire need of tuning and some minor repairs. Hopefully that’ll all be sorted out next week when the piano tuner comes to call!

One of my best friends is visiting from Sweden for a few days next week too. Last time she was here I had just bought my first little protools recording setup, and we had a ball recording some covers and little things on that same piano that I’m getting tuned next week. Nika plays in two wonderful Swedish traditional folk groups, Sheik and JONI, and as well as having her own solo output, and studied classical piano with me in Maynooth a number of years ago. If you’ve never listened to any Swedish traditional folk, any of those three links wouldn’t be a bad introduction, in my opinion. One of the songs I learned from her, Vargsången, I ended up arranging for SATB choir and performing with the NUIG Choralsoc last year, and is one of my favourites of my own arrangements.

Here’s Annika singing a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Conversation” on my piano a long time ago now. It’s quite quiet, but I had just one microphone that was on loan from a friend, and the actual recording session itself is lost, and we just have mp3 copies of those tracks left. But she did a really lovely version of this song:

annika hammer – conversation by misterebby

Inspiration: Joni Mitchell

This is one of my favourite Joni Mitchell songs, and I stumbled across this live version from 1970 on youtube today while searching out more performances from this BBC In Concert series.

The entire concert is collected here, if you fancy losing yourself to some wonderful live solo performances from a talented songwriter on the cusp of the greatest period of her career. This would have been in the period just after Ladies Of The Canyon, while writing songs that would appear on Blue.

There’s a great early version of “All I Want” in that show too, while it was still being written, which I recommend checking out, if only to compare it to the version that is so well known and loved on the album. In fact, that song was the reason for a spur of the moment road trip across the country one year for me. My ex was visiting, and we went for a hangover breakfast with a friend, and afterwards, this song came on in my CD player in the car, and we decided that my ex wouldn’t get a bus back to Cork, but that we’d all just keep on driving and listening to my Joni CDs and sing along. Now, every time I hear that riff starting on the dulcimer, I think of the road to Cork, and it makes me smile a lot.

Studio Days: mixing days

I realise I’ve not posted any photos of myself from the studio days, but then Charthouse Studios themselves posted some shots of me today. So, thank you Ian, for taking some photos of me pretending to play the piano. I’m sure it looks dead natural. These were actually from the last day that I was tracking piano and vocals for the record.

studio daysstudio days

I’m back in the studio next week for a final day to fix the little niggly things that aren’t quite right with the mixes just yet. The mixing days were long, but were really interesting to be honest. It brought so much clarity to what we had tracked, and really cleaned up the tracks so much by refining and shaping the songs to sound the way they should. We covered a lot of ground in a very short space of time, but really, it’s still a record being made on a very tight budget, so that’s to be expected. That said, I’m really pleased with how it has been turning out and I can’t wait until it is all finished and I’m able to share it with people. It definitely has been the best use of my summer possible.

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