studio

If you are interested in what goes on behind the scenes to put together an episode of ‘Some Other Scotland‘, you may like to visit two blogs that have been running interviews with podcasters over the last few months.

First of all, Rich at Random Pimpage has a series called “8 Questions”, where he asks 8 simple, if sometimes a little bizarre, questions to a number of people from the world of podcasting. Since this tied-in with the launch of Every Photo Tells…, you’ll find Katharina’s and my answers together at the site.

On the subject of Every Photo Tells…, we’re now into our third month of photo-inspired stories and already up to episode 8. So far there have been tales of love, assassins, pirates, monsters and even a classic whodunnit. There is plenty more to come!

More recently, a more detailed set of questions were put to me about writing and podcasting by Odin at his View From Valhalla blog. His questions go into depth about writing podcast fiction, techniques and equipment for recording and the goals of podcasting. Since he has had a number of people answering his questions in this “How I Do It” series, I would recommend it as a great introduction for new podcasters to pick up tips from those of us who have been through the learning experience already. My answers can be found right here. Incidentally, Odin also runs a regular review of podiobooks, so if you are enjoying ‘Some Other Scotland’ and would like to delve into other podcast fiction, he has some good recommendations for you to try out.

The latest Board recording session was a bit of a mixed bag – partly due to technical problems with the monitoring of the sound and partly due to a lack of planning, perhaps. We ended up with a single recording, albeit a 20-minute, multi-instrumental one. This was a bit of an attempt to recreate some of the live experience in a studio setting by recording an extended improvisation tying together The Unofficial National Anthem and Morning Rolls in one long track. However, neither of the two songs were a patch on existing recordings, so I doubt we’ll use them. Some parts of the instrumental worked quite well, and I would reckon we could probably get it edited down into a pretty decent four or five minute piece.

I have done a bit more writing over the last few months – putting a better structure to The Parallel Curve, a song about corporate lunacy, which we first tried recording back in March this year. I’m hoping to put a new demo together for it in the next week and possibly record it at the next session. I also have some bare bones of a song started which covers some themes about power, leadership and control through the ages – a verse, a chorus and some chords exist so far, and even a little bit for the celtic flute. I’m still struggling to get Jim Crow into a finished state – it rolls along rather nicely in its new doo-wop styling, but needs another couple of verses to do the subject justice.

That’s about it for the moment – I’ve been without a studio for a couple of weeks as I’m shuffling it around a bit now that I’ve had some time to live with it and can see improvements to my original plan. I’ve also got a very cool new-but-old keyboard which I needed to make room for – more to follow on that shortly!

My musical meanderings now have a proper home – my little studio is up and running!

I finished building the frame and shelving over the weekend. I’m no joiner, but it all seems very sturdy, if not exactly a thing of great beauty. It has taken the best part of 2 days to get all the cables and gear in site and connected up. There are still some tweaks to go in order to have everything running smoothly, but I’m at least able to get a sound out of everything, which is much more than I’ve been able to do for the last few years.

I’ll be running it all on three computers – the good old faithful Atari ST for controlling keyboards and any forays into the world of algorithmic music, my regular PC for running virtual instruments, which I’ve never really got to grips with beyond the odd demo here and there, and a bargain basement (under £1) old PC for actually recording everything. It was great to get back to the ST with its simple-to-use and crash-free environment after years of using PCs, but weird to be back on a little 12 inch screen instead of this 19 inch monster. Hopefully this arrangement will give me the best of all worlds, as I’m not convinced this PC is really up to handling all chores on its own.

Give me a couple of days and I should come up with something new to post on the site…

Every so often I’ll check to see how people are arriving at the blog or the main Deserters site. There’s usually a fair mix between people looking for the band specifically and ‘accidental’ visits by people looking for information on military desertion or fire engines. Every so often there’s a little gem that makes me smile – somebody does a search for ‘what does eximious mean?’, for example. The latest was for ‘greenshed, progressive rock’ from Yahoo japan.

When I did a search on this myself, this blog was the only entry (a Googlewhack, I believe?), so I dug around for anything else about ‘green shed’ that could be remotely related to progressive rock. Not a thing could I find. So the question is; is there somebody over in Japan creating prog rock under the name ‘Greenshed’, or was this a return visitor to the site who’s enduring image of the band is of us recording in a green shed? Who knows (or cares)?

One month later and things are starting to come together. Hopefully.

Studio Bordet (or whatever it will be called) is on the road to construction – it has power, light and walls. The next step is building a frame to hold PC, keyboard, mixing desk and various other bits of musical gear. With the addition of plasterboard, sound insulation and flooring there is just under 2m² of useful floorspace, which is even less than I had hoped for, but should still provide enough space to have a usable setup and be able to play bass or guitar in the room. Playing the theremin in there will definitely not work, though, due to lack of space, so I’ll still need to cart it around the house depending on whether I’m practicing or recording.

I did a recording recently for the local band using my new multi-input interface which worked out really well (apart from running out of disk space), but having listened to the mix I initially put together it has become painfully clear that I need a decent set of monitoring speakers. I have a good set of headphones, but mixing on ‘phones is never a good idea, so I try to get a reasonable sound using them, then switch to my PC speakers, which are pretty good quality for a PC, but still far from HiFi. The mix I ended up with sounded pretty good on the PC, great on the ‘phones, but unfortunately lousy in the car or through the little box we have in the kitchen. I knew the day would come when I’d have to fork out for decent speakers – it’s one of the things you really can’t skimp on (like microphones) to get a good sound, but it’s not as exciting as the wonderful wealth of fancy studio toys available. So… Some research, testing and budget-balancing later, I’ve finally bought a new set of speakers, and the winners are… Tannoy Reveals.

Revealing

Tannoy Reveal Speaker

I got a pair at a good price from good old eBay, and they’re sitting in their box waiting to become centrepieces of the new studio, such as it is. Apart from the great balance between sound quality, tonal range and price, they have a couple of other ‘feelgood’ bonuses. The Tannoy factory is about an hour’s drive from here, so supporting local business is good. I went on a fantastic guided tour there back in my early days of getting interested in sound engineering and have two lasting memories. Firstly, getting to spend a few minutes in their anechoic chamber – a really weird feeling having NO echoes at all, and particularly disorientating when they shut off the lights (to complete darkness) and you realise how much of your balance is dictated by audio and visual cues. Secondly was getting a demo of their top-of-the-range speaker systems at full tilt – revealing a level of detail in the music that I simply hadn’t heard through normal speakers.

Plus, what’s good enough for Mr Keneally is good enough for me!

In other news – I have finished my theremin/ebow remix and look forward to hearing the final album – details to follow soon, I hope. I ended up submitting two versions – one with vocals and another without – on subsequent listenings the vocal-free version is more pleasing to the ear!

Recording

I’ve been doing a remix of a short piece of instrumental music for an on-line acquaintence and kindred spirit (theremin player and electronic gadget abuser) over the last week or two. It’s pretty much finished now, but I came up with a set of lyrics to the piece which I’ve been trying in vain to fit into the music. I’ve got the rhythm sorted, but can’t seem to sing notes which fit in. This may be because the music isn’t in a great key for my voice, or it may just be that my voice isn’t fitting the music. I suspect the latter. It will be finished this week – one way or another. Not my greatest work, but it does have lots of ebow, some mandolin, and my first recorded theremin, albeit as a part of a wash of sound.

New Toys

I’ve managed to pick up a decent multi-input audio card for my PC at a good price from eBay. It will let me record up to 8 tracks simultaneously in high quality sound, which will be great for Lunacy board stuff, letting us swap instruments around (as we do) without worrying about changing connections, as well as allowing recording of a whole band at once.

Since starting this blog, any musical activities, apart from theremin and acoustic guitar, have required some digging around in boxes. I haven’t had a dedicated music space to focus my writing, playing or recording, and that hasn’t helped get things done as it’s a hassle to set things up for the sake of a single song. I’m pleased that due to some changes going on around Chez Bordet, I will be getting a small studio. Whilst this won’t be anything to give Abbey Road or Realworld any sleepless nights, and there really won’t be room for cat-swinging, it will give me enough space to set up my recording gear and instruments in a more creative environment, ready for me to use whenever the muse starts tweaking those creative juices. It will still be a couple of months away before it is complete, but work has started and I hope it will be ready to go by the end of the summer.

Mick Bordet

Question Time

Merry Humbug

Home at Last!

The Green Shed Googlewhack