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Seej 500



Last Updated: 11/22/2009

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Status: Single
Country: UK
Signup Date: 1/23/2007

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Saturday, October 03, 2009 
Following on from my post earlier today, I have now moved my blog.  Please click the link below to view it.

5:16 PM 
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Saturday, October 03, 2009 
Reposted from http://seej500.tumblr.com  

MySpace, we need to talk.  

I think it's time we started seeing other people.  

So, I've been using MySpace's built-in blogging option for a few years now. And it's OK. But that's all. Just OK. I feel like I don't really have "ownership" of the MySpace blog in quite the same way as I do over here. Plus this one has more versatility and I don't get strung up with quite so much format/code wanking when want to do something terrible like post a YouTube vid. The inertia I feel every time I want to post to MySpace is partly down to it being more complicated. Tumblr is easier. Plus I can integrate the Tumblr blog into my website more easily, rather than having to link to an external page. Oh, and if I link off to another site you don't hit the speedbump of "YOU ARE LEAVING MYSPACE! ABANDON ALL HOPE" (or whatever that stupid warning actually says). so, Tumblr; good solution.

Except I'd also feel a little like I was betraying MySpace.

That sounds dumb, I know, but bear with me here. MySpace was my first social networking site. Back before my friends discovered Facebook (which I'd actually looked at long before them and written off as being too closed, insular and controlling - which I still believe by the way), I was all over MySpace like a rash. Sending friend requests to all sorts of people. It was fun. I started a blog back in 2000 on an old website (I called it a diary, since the word "blog" hadn't really caught on back then).

I used to do it entirely in raw HTML. What a ball-ache. That site faded out after a couple of years and I started a fresh site that was mainly blog and nothing else. All in the raw HTML again.

Then I picked up MySpace. The original MySpace I had is still up here (though if you're not a friend then you don't get to look). Signed up in February 2006 and started blogging more or less immediately. Unfortunately, MySpace stopped allowing people to convert their profiles to musician profiles, so I had to set up a fresh one; the current one. Shifted blogging to the new option around 18 months ago and privated the old one, but it's still not quite what I want.

And then there's the other problem with MySpace. Specifically, that it sort of feels like the only people actually on there these days are musicians and other self-promoters. Feels like everyone has a MySpace just because everyone has a MySpace.

I don't want to be a rat deserting a sinking ship (and, actually, I think that with a little careful and obvious repositioning MySpace could become a destination again), but I'm toying with the idea of pulling my blogging closer to my own site, slotting the page from Tumblr in there and welding the edges together so it all looks seamless even though you'd be off-site. It'd actually probably be fairly easy to do this.

But I'd shed a tear for MySpace. I don't want it to die. Ideally, I'd like to slot the Tumblr blog into the MySpace page just like I'm putting it on my own site. But how?

All this internal debate means, of course, that if I'm honest with myself then I've already made the decision to do this.

*sigh*

It's been fun MySpace. I'll still call in regularly. But it's just not the same any more, is it?

I think it's time we started seeing other people.

Seej 500

3/10/2009, Yorkshire, UK
11:16 AM 
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Tuesday, September 22, 2009 
AH HA HA HA HAAAAAAA!!!!!

I enjoy it when I am vindicated.  Let me fill you in.  Last Monday some people were watching how I did my job (no, not telling you what I do for a living) for a little while.  They weren't there to see a whole session but they saw a bit.  Afterwards I thought to myself "I think that went pretty well."

Then I got feedback.  Basically, it said I was shit.  Really shit and incompetent, which is odd because I've been doing this job seven years now and in my opinion I've never been better at it.  But, no, it seemed that I was now worse at my job than when I started back in 2002.

I quite like my job.  There's a bunch of attendant paperwork and beauracracy and politics and bullshit behind the scenes that alternately bores and sickens me, but the actual process of DOING my job is quite enjoyable.  So to be told I was suddenly "Inadequate" when the last few times I've been assessed I've been "Good" (last time I was Good was in mid July, so what the hell has happened to me since?) was quite upsetting.

It blindsided me, frankly.  I tried to get clarification on areas that I was confused about and just found the answers I got more confusing.  The way I'd been rated didn't seem to make sense, but I was told that was the correct way to rate people.  There were two unhelpful and entirely facile suggestions masquerading as token pieces of constructive feedback, and otherwise it was Seej Is Shit for twenty five minutes.

And then I had to work the entire afternoon as well.  Yeah, I was in a perfect frame of mind for that.

I got home, and then went back over it.  The hurt and betrayal became anger, because I've been in a similar situation before and being meek doesn't fucking work.  I started looking at their arguments.  The main reasons I'd been marked down were all about not doing certain things.  Except I'd done those things.  It wasn't appropriate to do them while I was being watched, but they knew I'd be doing them because I'd given them a detailed plan.

But because they'd left before I did them I scored the minimum for them.

But then there was another bit which they hadn't seen, and that remained unmarked.

I also got criticised for not doing something that was physically impossible for me to do and in direct contradiction of work guidelines.

I got criticised for having poor subject knowledge EVEN THOUGH I KNOW MY SUBJECT REALLY BLOODY WELL; IT'S A POINT OF PRIDE FOR ME, AND THESE GUYS WEREN'T EVEN SPECIALISTS SO QUITE HOW THEY COULD MAKE THAT JUDGEMENT IS BEYOND ME!

And, oh yes, one of the people assessing me is so crap at his job that earlier this year I'd finished my workload and picked up some of his equal-sized workload as an act of goodwill because he needed the help.  Shit, the day before the feedback I'd voluntarily run around and found and set up some specialised equipment which he should have ordered, even though it's not my job.

Well, fuck that shit.  I do not sit by while people take shots at me.

I especially do not sit by while people who aren't even qualified to make those assessments take illogical and deeply flawed shots at me.

They'd talked about coming to see me again in a couple of weeks.  Yeah, another opportunity for them to tell me I suck and demoralise me.  Been there and done that too.

Life has repeatedly shown me that shitty situations are best handled by taking matters into your own hands and taking control of the situation.  So I did.  I went over their heads.  I went to their boss.

And he agreed with me.  He even overturned their assessment.  And he popped down to work alongside me on Monday.  Another assessment, sure, but an informal one where he would chip-in and demonstrate good practice.

I think we bonded a bit.

And he said he thought I was doing fine.

I FUCKING HAS TEH WIN!!!!

I assume there's gonna be some fallout for the guys who ballsed up my assessment in the first place.  Good.  I felt utterly betrayed by them, and I have no regrets.  God, it's fun imagining them squirming and fuming.

So, that's what's been up with me recently.  Figured I owed you some sort of explanation, allbeit an oblique one.  Right, off to work on my vocals.

Currently listening: Editors - Papillion
10:21 PM 
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Wednesday, September 16, 2009 
EDIT 2: SORRY AGAIN. A REALLY SHITTY THING HAPPENED TO ME TODAY IRL. DON'T WANT TO GO INTO DETAILS, BUT BASICALLY I WAS MADE TO FEEL LIKE A TOTAL FUCKING FAILURE FOR TOTALLY ILLOGICAL AND UNFAIR REASONS.  RATHER THAN SPEND THE EVENING WRITING SOME DEPRESSION-SOAKED BLOG, I DECIDED TO GO CHANNEL ALL THAT NEGATIVITY AND FRUSTRATION AND ANGER INTO A DEFENSE.  I THINK I'M GOING TO TAKE SOME PEOPLE BY SURPRISE TOMORROW.  AND CONTINUE TO MAKE THINGS DIFFICULT FOR SOME CONSIDERABLE TIME AFTER THAT TOO.  I'VE BEEN IN THIS SITUATION ONCE BEFORE AND I TRIED TO BE CONCILLIATORY AND APOLOGETIC AND GOT ROYALLY FUCKING SCREWED, AND IT WAS ONLY AFTERWARDS THAT I REALISED THERE WAS A WHOLE OTHER AGENDA AND I WAS BEING SET UP AS A SCAPEGOAT.  WELL, FUCK GOING THROUGH THAT AGAIN; THIS TIME I'M FIGHTING.  AFTER ALL, THEY BLOODY WELL NEED ME.  AND IT'S NOT LIKE I HAVEN'T BEEN APPROACHED BY THEIR COMPETITORS....

EDIT: THIS WAS A SHIT BLOG WASN'T IT?  PROPERLY PHONED IT IN.  SORRY; WILL DO A GOOD ONE LATER.

Heh.  Forgot to update this.  Busy few days for no particular reason.  Will write something proper this evening.

Meantime, here is teh Win:

6:04 AM 
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Saturday, September 05, 2009 
I'm stealing an idea here; imageblog!  Basically, all the stupid Star Wars pictures I've accumulated.  Enjoy:










































































































































































Wasn't all that awesome?  There's at least a couple more pictures I couldn't find.  Will add them if/when I do.

Currently listening: Jay Z and Notorious B.I.G. - Allure (Ratatat remix)

2:50 PM 
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Wednesday, September 02, 2009 
That last blog was a bit maudlin wasn't it?  Allow me to rectify the tone of this fine blog with my new bestest friend, Courage Wolf:



I WILL DEVOUR ANYONE WHO STANDS IN MY PATH!!!!!!!!!!

Currently listening: I've re-MOARed the instrumental for Decipher Your Kiss one final time.  Currently swapping the old one on my player with the new one.  Go listen.
9:11 PM 
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Monday, August 31, 2009 
Well, it's been a fun break, but sadly I have to return to The Day Job tomorrow.  Actually, the rest of this week is pretty easy, and for the next week or two things won't be too arduous if I'm honest.  No, the problems start when Autum sinks it's fangs into my Happy and robs me of warmth and sunlight until the tail end of next April.  That's gonna lick balls.

Thus, I find myself feverishly working on music once again.  To quit the job I need either a big injection of cash into my bank account or an alternative job (one which I can still pay my mortgage and buy food with).  My lottery chances are as shit as everyone else's, so I need instead to use this brain I'm so proud of to come up with something clever enough to get me out of the rat race.

Inventions are good, and I do actually have a fair few ideas in that line which, with some R&D, might be worth something.  However, and this is gonna surprise you, I do not have much of an R&D budget.  In fact, I have no R&D budget.  So that's all of those ideas consigned to the back-burner till who knows when.

No, instead I think the only solution is to produce something creative that people might want to buy.  I do paint, and I'm around 10,000 words into a novel (about, in part, escaping a shitty day job), but those both lack the immediacy of music.  As I've shown, the ability to release a record is becoming democratic; anyone can do it.

Unfortunately, here's the problem; how do you get people to notice your record?  In these early stages in which I find myself, I feel (perhaps arrogantly, but objectivity is difficult when you're producing something that is definitively subjective, and better arrogance than reticence) that I'm now making music that sounds pretty good.  I'm very pleased with the seven lyrics I've now got, as well as my ability to write more. So where next?

MySpace isn't an easy place to get noticed, since I'm just one voice in thousands.  I don't think that sending friend requests to every damn person on here is a particularly practical or effective means of drawing attention to myself.  And I'm not able to play a thousand shitty gigs around Camden because I don't live there and my opportunities for exposure by gigging up here in Yorkshire away from the London-centric music industry and media are pretty slim.  No, I think in this case I need to get other people championing my music.  The various music blogs are essential, of course.  I've really gotta finish the next song I'm planning on putting out and see if any of them bite.  Then, radio perhaps?  That's a bigger step, and one I'm not sure about.  All of this leads to an obvious conclusion though:

Self-releasing isn't gonna make this financially viable until people have heard of me.

I need help.  Which means that if I'm serious about this then at some point I need to approach a proper label.  Or, more likely, several labels.

Not what I really want to do, but how else do I let significant numbers of people even know I exist?

Which makes me think that if I'm gonna pursue that route then I need to be ready.  Already have the web presence (this profile, Twitter, Seej500.com and the rest).  Already have my name up there on iTunes and the other digital download sites.  Already have some idea of how the industry works and where I might fit into that picture.  What I need now is three good songs, and another three to follow them up if I get anyone's attention, and make good on my New Year's resolution to not have to get out of bed until the sun comes up on that first, cold, horrible Monday back at work in January 2010.

Thus, I find myself feverishly working on music once again.

Currently listening: Erik Hassle vs MPHO - Don't Bring Flowers (remix)
as a single
6:56 PM 
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Wednesday, August 26, 2009 
This girl is not a very good singer:



Wait, no, scratch that.  I was thinking of me.  I am not a very good singer, especially after hearing that.  This girl is bloody awesome.  The beautifully foul-mouthed Louise Haynes has a free download over on her blog if you want to put some of Jessie J on your "MP3 player" and "listen to it" like "a fucking human."  All you have to do is click through about a million adverts on zShare and it's yours.

Seej News too; new track on my player on here.  Only the instrumental so far, as I'm currently re-writing (i.e. currently blogging and putting off re-writing) the vocal melody because I didn't like my original one.  Yeah; what's new, right?

Currently listening: my own vocals, and shaking my head slowly and sadly :(
11:32 AM 
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Thursday, August 20, 2009 
First a disclaimer.  I am, by no means, an expert in song writing. In fact, to be an expert I really ought to be familiar with lots of different methods.  As it is, I've never really bothered finding out how other people write and just sort of worked it all out for myself.

To clarify on that last statement, yes, I'm self taught.  Not in that Read Lots Of Books On It way.  I just sat down and did it (more on this in a bit).  I began with the production side of things doing mash-ups back in 2002, felt limited by the sounds available to me, so began figuring out how to write.  Sure, I looked at books, but never bothered with more than a few pages of any because I'm an asshole.  I have passing familiarity with the basics of musical theory, but don't actually fall back on it very often.  The most useful thing I've learnt is how to write and read (*cough* veeeery slowly *cough*) musical notation, because it allows me to remind myself just what notes I'm playing on the keyboard without needing to figure out just what bloody chord it is.

Oh, and when I was about twelve I got grade 1 in guitar.  Woooo-hooooo!  It only took me like four years of lessons.

Anyway, learning how to make music has been an interesting process for me.  I've lacked structure, rigour, and much awareness of how other musicians work.  Beyond "minor chords sound sad" or the Circle of Fifths I'm all at sea with the theory (oooh, "All at sea;" I like that phrase and must stick it in a lyric).  I have, however, come at it from a producer's viewpoint and gotten very good at picking tracks apart as they're playing and seeing just what's going on there.  Try it on Graffiti My Soul by Girls Aloud if you want to have your mind blown by the songwriter's art.  Xenomania, who write all the good Girls Aloud songs, are bloody brilliant.  First question for you with that song is "Which bit is the chorus?"  See?  Amazing.

Anyway, I basically work more or less instinctively since my lack of formal education means I don't think "Ah, now I'll play a lovely rich B major..." not least because it'd take me a second or two to work out how to play B Maj.  This is a weakness and a strength.  I'm sure plenty of other songwriters are the same too, so don't worry that you aren't classically trained.  That's Lesson 1: There's no right or wrong way to do this and you should find what works for you.

So, enough waffle; how do I write a song?

Well, the short version is "You sit down and write a song."

Obviously though, there's more to it than that.  First, let's be clear here, you will almost certainly write some crap.  Looking at my hard drive I have over 150 tracks that I've started working on.  The majority of them are crap.  Occasionally they have a halfway decent nugget of an idea, but mainly they're crap.  This is the toughest part for me; without a structure within which to write, I wrote an awful lot of rubbish before I started to get the hang of it.  Spending over half a decade flailing around in the musical wilderness like that is, I'm not gonna lie to you, a depressing experience.  I still find the process emotionally difficult and draining and there are times when it's distinctly unpleasant.  So, I suppose, this is Lesson 2: Be prepared for disappointment and be enough of a stubborn, self-destructive prick to carry on even when it pains you to do so.

So, assuming through trial and error and looking at what other people have done and whatever you've reached a point where you're reasonably familiar with your chosen instrument, what then?  Well, you're not going to remember every nice sound you happen to stumble upon so it's crucial you have some way to record it.  I use a combination of musical notation (print off free sheet music at the very excellent BlankSheetMusic.net by the way), carrying a notepad to write down ideas, MIDI programming, and just making an audio recording.  Hell, I have a dictaphone application on my phone that's good for getting down a melody I've just thought up.  Lesson 3: Learn how to record what you write.

MIDI, by the way, is bloody brilliant.  I feel sorry for those of you whose chosen instruments don't use MIDI.  I use a keyboard; a 61-key twenty year old Yamaha PortaSound PSS-680 that was languishing in a loft, unused for a decade and a half since I was a kid until I realised that despite it being a bit rubbish and having very few decent voices or velocity-sensitive keys, I could hook it up to my PC and use it to control software synthesisers.  The thing was an entry-level machine when it was new, and it'd probably go for £20 or less on eBay, but it's built with clumsy children in mind so is rock-solid, and using a PC has given it a fantastic new lease of life.  I also use a Boss Dr. Rhythm DR-660 drum machine which I picked up second hand on eBay for £45.  This, or the SR-16 if you can't find one, will do the basics just fine and is also MIDI compatible.  My PC is a Windows XP box I built myself a few years ago for about £400.  It has a 2GHz Athlon processor and 512Mb RAM, so not anything Earth-shatteringly high-powered.  I was using the very excellent Reaper until I got a free copy of Samplitude off a magazine cover.  Once you have your Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) set up, there's a wealth of free plug-ins that you can control with MIDI.  Start by picking up a copy of Computer Music; their cover DVD has everything you need to get started plus they and the other music mags supply a load of samples each month too.

So, you're reasonably competent with your instrument and able to record what you write?  So how do you write?  Shit, I dunno; all I can tell you is how I write.  There's no set start-point for me.  I just try and kick ideas about beats, basslines, melodies, harmonies and lyrics around until I find an idea that I like.  This is crucial, and Lesson 4: If you're not actively trying to write a song then you're not ever going to write one.  I keep that notepad with me almost everywhere.  It's full of lyrics or ideas for lyrics.  WRITE IT ALL DOWN!  I keep what I call a recyc pile, which is where any odds and ends that aren't a complete lyric go.  If you're stuck for inspiration then look there first.  I do often start with the lyric.  What you should be thinking about is writing something that has some meaning or relevance to you.  It never hurts to mention the name of the song in the chorus either.  Think about all the great songs since the 50's that you know and love.  I'd be willing to bet at least 90% of them mention the name of the song at least once in the chorus, if not several times.  The song effectively advertises itself.  For more on this sort of thing, go read The Manual.  I know, I've said it before (and I will continue saying it), but it really is one of the best things about making music I've ever read.  It's certainly one of the only things I've read all the way through.

I also like to scroll through the sample library I've built up, looking for sounds that catch my attention to construct a track around, and I like to fool around with my instruments.  At this point it often feels like a complete track is a million miles away, but you need to take that first step (if you'll excuse the awful metaphor) if you're ever going to get there.  Play notes at random, hum a tune that you improvise, play word-association games or look for rhymes to words you like.  But do it.

If, after all this, inspiration still fails you, then allow me to quote Picasso; "Bad artists copy.  Great artists steal."  There's plenty of material out there that you can appropriate and make your own, and much of it is stuff you're legally entitled to use.  For example, Project Gutenberg is building a database of books who's copyright has lapsed and are now in the public domain.  The complete works of the Romantic Poets, Shakespeare, and countless others are yours for the plundering.  The same is true of music.  If you really want to rip-off the melody of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star for example, there isn't a damn thing anyone can do.  Well, except point and laugh, but you get the idea.  Oh, and a final tip; the black keys on the piano are much more fun than the white keys.  There's probably some good theory behind this but I've never bothered looking it up.

So, once I have an idea, where next?  This is where things get a little more formalised for me.  First, I sort out a beat.  Between the drum machine, my sample library, and my own imagination, finding a beat isn't too difficult.  You need to ask yourself what sort of song you're trying to write.  Is it a slow ballad, a big stomper, or what?  Find another song with a similar vibe and listen to it's beat.  Failing that, just get the sound of a kick drum hitting the beat twice a second (i.e. 120 BPM).  This is a good enough foundation for any song in 4/4 time (i.e. four beats per bar, also called common time).  Hell, all House music is explicitly built around this structure.  The type of beat and how quickly it repeats are the tempo.

Then, in my experience, you need to work out what key you're going to be working in.  Someone who is well educated about music would be able to give you a detailed answer here.  Me though?  I'll give you the simple one; it's the note at the heart of the piece.  It's often the one you start on and/or end on, and it's certainly going to be the one you keep coming back to.  When you sing the title of the song in the chorus?  That note, right there, is almost certainly the key of the song.  Let me make it even simpler for you though.  Sit down with your instrument.  Now hum or sing a note.  Now find that note (don't bother with chords; just find the individual note).  There's a fair chance it's one of the 5 sharps/flats in an octave (those black notes again).  Ta-daaah!  You've just selected the key of your song.  And so, we reach Lesson 5: Pick a tempo and key for the song.  See?  You can now say "My song is in common time at 120 BPM in the key of D sharp" and sound like a proper musician.  That was a piece of fucking piss, no?

Next, let's combine that drumbeat with a bassline.  You could over-complicate things and get very clever here.  I am not that clever though, so I say stay in the same key.  The bassline doesn't need to be very complex.  The twiddly stuff happens up in the treble, but the bassline is the bit that grabs you by the intestines.  I wouldn't even bother with chords unless you're feeling very adventurous.  Just get a big fat bass sound that makes your bones vibrate and play some simple tune along to the beat.  Something kinda catchy, almost like a big dark dirty nursery rhyme.  Play around, and listen to what other people have done.  A good current example (at time of writing) is Sweet Dreams by Beyoncé.  Fire up Spotify and go have a listen.  Those four bars just keep on coming throughout the song (and it's on those black keys again) and I only count 14 or 15 distinct notes there.  That's less than one note per beat, and yet I've read a bunch of reviews that praise the groove set up by the bassline and the beat.  You could do that, right?  Thus ends Lesson 6: Write a bassline over the beat to establish a groove.

Now your song has a solid base, the other key bit you still have to write is the melody.  This is the tune you sing.  This is going to sound familiar, but go back to those black keys and whatever key your song is in and play something over your groove.  Start with the chorus, because this is the bit you want other people to be able to sing too.  You're looking for something that has a hook.  This is that thing that lifts the song; that makes it stand out somehow.  Other people will tell you the hook can be anything, and they're absolutely right.  Me though?  Have a hooky beat or bassline, sure, but I don't see why you can't have more than one hook and if you're going to put it anywhere then it makes sense to put it in the bit that hopefully people will sing along to.  This is the hardest part in my opinion; writing a melody that sounds great.  Beyond sticking to your key and the black keys more or less (though throw a few white ones in there too), I'm out of suggestions.  Experiment.  This is the unhelpful message of Lesson 7: You can simplify and streamline the process of writing a melody, but ultimately it's down to your creativity.  Hopefully though, those other technical barriers that keep your creativity from getting a look-in are gone and it all hangs upon your own musical ability.  Good luck.

Ahhh, we're getting there now.  You should, by this point, have a beat, a bassline, and some lyrics you can sing to a melody over the top.  This is a song.  You have written a song.  Consider The White Stripes.  There's Meg providing the beat, and there's Jack who takes care of the groove and sings the melody.  They've had international success.  Granted they're bloody good, but theirs is song writing at it's most distilled.  You are probably not as good as them though.  I'd certainly feel egotistical comparing myself to them.  No, I need to pour some extra sprinkles over my songs at this point to really lift them to a point where I'm happy.  Harmonies are a good start.  Try playing along to a recording of your tune, accompanying the melody but not playing the melody.  I learnt to do this by playing along to the radio.  Just switch Radio 1 on, to a show you like, and play along.  Arrogantly embellish other people's tunes.  Now, go back and do it to your own tune.  Be careful not to overcrowd things.  Assume your audience wants to get to know the main bits of your song first, before you throw anything extra in.  The harmonies shouldn't distract from the melody.  Try turning them down, or panning them over to the left or the right a bit.  During your chorus is a good time to go for it though.  The tune behind the chorus doesn't have to be the same as the melody you're singing, and it can seriously add a kick to the tune.  Also, and this is important, singing one tune and playing a different one and having them work well together will make you seem very clever.  You can also try singing some harmonies as a backing track to give you more layered vocals.  Why not try going out of your genre's standard set of instruments too?  If you're a rock band, throw a bit of synth in there; in electronic music slap some heavy metal guitar-chugs on the track.  You can extend the idea of harmonies when it comes to the breakdown/middle-eight section.  Go as sparse or as wanky as you like here.  Just keep it in key and ask yourself "Does it sound good?"  There, Lesson 8: Harmonies are easy but impressive.

Finally, because we live in a sexy digital wonderland, you can finish the lot off with some cheap and easy production tips.  In electronic music try throwing some little blips and bleeps in there to garnish your track.  Richard X is good for this; if you listen to his ...Presents His X-Factor Vol 1 album they're all over the place.  You can also use noise sweeps - stick a band-pass filter on some white noise and gradually sweep it up the frequency range over a couple of bars to create some tension and drama ahead of an important song point (usually to lead into the chorus).  That trick is used all over the fucking place in electronic music.  Do more than one vocal take.  John Lennon and Kurt Cobain were into doing a double take of their vocals and playing them simultaneously, because they didn't really feel confident about how their voices sounded.  If it's good enough for them, right?  Hell, in the chorus why not have four or five different takes?  Mute parts of your track here and there to keep things interesting, e.g. try dropping the drums just before your final chorus, then when they kick back in it'll sound even more awesome.  Don't forget your track is in stereo.  Just panning instruments or vocals (especially your harmonies or your multiple vocal takes) a bit left or right of centre can create a much bigger, widescreen sound.  Finally, when you mix the final piece down, try hard-limiting it.  This is a type of compression, meaning the dynamic range (the difference between the loud bits and the quiet bits in your song) is compressed, making the quiet bits louder while keeping the loud bits loud.  There's plenty of theory out there on dynamic range compression, but do you care that much?  The short version is that to our brains louder = better.  Most modern music is compressed for this reason.  Give it a try, play with the settings of whatever software you use (most DAWs support this or accept freely available plugins that can do it for you) and see what works.  And that's Lesson 9: Production tricks can't polish a turd, but can take your track to the next level.

Phew.  This article turned out longer than I expected and has taken me far longer to type than I thought it would.  I'm supposed to be finishing off a song of my own right now.  We'll see whether my tips are enough to help me.  And that's where our final lesson comes in.  Lesson 10: Play the track for other people and ask for honest, brutal criticism, then act upon it.  Like Ben Franklin said, "Our critics are our friends; they show us our faults."

Good luck.

Seej 500

Yorkshire, UK, 20/8/2009
9:58 AM 
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Monday, August 10, 2009 
I've posted enough videos for a while. I'm gonna thrill you all with an exciting update from my life.  So, first things first, I'm on holiday right now.  This is a good thing, because it gives me plenty of time to work on music.  Those of you following me on Twitter will have been kept up to date with all the ins and outs of this process.  The short version is this:

1. I finished off the six lyrics I'd written.

2. I started writing melodies.

3. I hated the melodies I'd written and went back and re-wrote them.

4. And then re-wrote them again.

5. And again.

6. And again.  This process went on for some time.

7. I now have melodies for four of the six songs and I really need to sit down and record them and sort out the tunes and finish them.  The hard part is over now.

8. I have then procrastinated like a dickhead.

I dunno why I do this.  I really don't.  I'm awful for putting stuff off till the last minute.  Trouble is that there's no deadline on this.  Maybe I should set myself a deadline.  I don't know....

That's the main thing I've been doing anyway. In amongst I've also been laughing at The Met Office because on July 29th they did a press-release saying their earlier predictions of a good summer were wrong, and August would be a washout.  It was chucking it down when they made this announcement, but despite this I suggested that their prediction of rain meant it was going to be sunny.  Ever since the announcement it's barely rained, and the past three days were really warm and sunny.  Yes, well done Met Office; I am better at predicting the weather than your workforce of experts and your multi-million pound supercomputer.

I've also started work on another track that popped into my head the other night.  Not sure it's really a counterpart to the others I've written, but we'll see.  Aiming to finish that suckah today, then burn it and bung it to a few people and stick it up on iTunes.

Finally, I've been spending waaaaay too much time on Twitter.  Here, for your pleasure, is just a snippet from last night:



That's what Twitter is for.  Ahhh, technology.

Currently listening: Beyoncé - Sweet Dreams
10:35 AM 
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