The December Mood

It's always around this time of the year that I become a lot more emotionally sensitive, I think it is mostly the harsh cold and the fact that Christmas is again fast approaching, but I can feel that the extra stress included this year with all of the assignments that I have been set isn't helping. I generally like Christmas, I'm not in anyway a Scrooge or cheapskate. I like to treat my friends and make them more than aware that I am thankful for them and their loyalty. I haven't sorted a lot of presents out yet though, I still have a lot of people to buy for; even family, but there really is something about December that just sets me off.

I'm not strictly religious, although I was raised Christian forcefully through singing school hymns in assemblies, that and I do follow a popular group of musical mormon dads on YouTube with an open mind, but I'm almost convinced it's like a some kind of spirit has entered me. It sounds cheesy I know, but that's the best way that I can describe it. It makes me feel so pure, kind and at times broken then whole. It makes me want to just burst out in tears and cry like a baby. I don't know if this is just an outburst of some kind or what, but I have noticed over the last couple of years that I really have warmed up to the idea of Christmas. I've always loved it, I'm just too emotional.

I manage to stay positive usually by being surrounded by family and friends, although that has become more difficult with the amount of time I'm at Uni. I've spent a fair amount of time with my cousins recently. We had a gaming tournament which we decided to name, 'Super Smash Birthday Bash'. The game Super Smash Bros. Melee had not long hit its 15th birthday, this is just how we celebrated it. We used to play it a lot when we were all younger and the game had not long been released. It was a fun night! Plus, I won.

RS1 - My First Pro Tools Experience

This week, a new lesson was added to my timetable. This has replaced our other recording session that is now our Live Sound session with Andy Oakley, but all that starts next week with a slightly earlier time of 9am. It's been a bit confusing because even I thought we should have started it this week, but we had one last session with Rob to mix our little project and then physically submit it.

I had a short practice with the level 3 students that I'm working with briefly before this new lesson today, only for half an hour because then I needed to be upstairs. RS1 is an amazing studio, I knew that before I entered the room. There are three studios at Clarendon and this one is by far the best, especially now I know how to use it and patch up all of the microphones into the preamps and then the preamps into Pro Tools. This is a big step up from RS3, which is a Logic studio. A lot of it is still the same and most of the skills I've learnt from there are transferable, but the console in RS1 that controls the Pro Tools software is just incredible, even if slightly broken. When a new track is created, one of the faders will automatically go up. It's incredible to watch, technology at it's absolute finest.

Our tutor Matt lectures for this session, but then just lets us get on with it after a while. He ended up giving us a bit of a history lesson because of some of the technology they still have racked up for use are now a bit predated. There was an AKIA S2800 3 1/2 inch floppy disk sampler and another tape something or other. One of the first things he shown us was how to import audio because of the task he was going to give us. He then went on to show us all of the different preamps we could work with, and their qualities before showing us the patch bay, which I surprisingly picked up rather fast. I had done some patch work before during my level 3 course, but I didn't understand what I was doing because it was never explained to me properly. Matt explained it clearly and I actually feel like I fully understand, and this is just the first session. I was naturally quite worried about this session, just because of the new things, but really with the experience I already have its just feels like a little extra on top which relaxes me a little.

After Matt had helped import/technically convert the track, 'Just Be Good To Me' originally by Deborah Cox into Pro Tools, shown us the desk and helped us set up a bus channel so we could hear the track in the other room, sending it though an output routed to the live room through patching he pretty much left us to it to. Oh, and after showing us all of the different microphones that we get to play with. We were left to set up 12 microphones, all plugged into one of two stage boxes in the live room and then patch them all up to specific preamps that Matt had listed for us. It took us a about half an hour or so to set up all of the microphones on stands and have them all connected to the right input, then it was time to route everything using the patch bay.

Setting up all the microphones: We didn't record them all
like this, but it looked pretty cool.

I thought we did really well. We worked really we together as a team, even if I sort of dominated the leader position, but it's good to have someone coordinate things so work gets done. We took it in turns to work on the patch bay so that we could all get used to it and start to feel comfortable using it, after all it does look ridiculously confusing the more barton cables we added, but we started to notice a pattern which made things much easier. The ins and outs were usually either directly above or below. Matt came back to check on us when we got halfway through patching everything, which was perfect actually because we just hit a problem. One of the preamps didn't seem to be giving out much of a level even with the gain on full. We couldn't work out if it was a problem with preamp or just that the microphone wasn't very sensitive and neither could Matt. It was quite funny actually. He was sat by the patch bay trying to work out if we had done anything wrong or missed anything, (which we hadn't) there's a possibility that is could have been a loose connection within the patch bay, but we ended up just re-routing it into the AMAZING Focusrite 428 MkI. I love it. It's by far my favourite preamp to work with in that studio. It's reliable and it sounds great, it's just a shame they are so damn expensive.

Our session was meant to finish at 2pm, but we ended up running over. The session starts at 11am and we didn't finish until about 3:30pm. So, we had 5 and a half hours studio time. Mental. I loved every minute of it though, especially once Matt left us too it. I feel like if he had watched over us the whole time I might not have learnt as much, but yeah I'm quite impressed with both myself and Pro Tools after today! Can't wait for the next session!

Assignments, Assignments, Assignments...

I'm sure that we are all feeling the same at the moment, by we I mean the general demographic of students that read some of my posts lately. I'm currently sat in the HE Common room working on my Sequencing plan that's due in tomorrow whilst simultaneously writing this blog entry and panicking about all of my other work that is also due in the next week and even further after Christmas! I mean, really, I probably shouldn't be writing this and I should probably just be focusing on my work, but as a student, generally it is just some kind of inability that one should to do as one should. It just doesn't happen.

I personally tend to focus for about and hour or two within the right environment, but it really does have to be the right environment. I struggle to work at home because doing assignments at home mean I have to do them in my bedroom and there are just way too many distractions in there. If it's not my Mac, it's either going to be my PS3, GameCube, N64, SNES. That's not the end of it. Then there's the handhelds, though I think you can start to understand why I fail to concentrate at home from that shortlist above, alone.

I'm feeling quite content that I've nearly finished this small piece of work (In context to some of my essays that are due in after Christmas with 2000 plus word counts). I've mostly been writing about the structure of a Dream Theater song namely, 'Take The Time". The structure of the song is all over the place in an organised manner, but probably only to someone who understands music theory to a knowledgeable level or is at least aware of the concept of ridiculous time signatures. If you're not familiar with their style of music, it is very complex, but I'd much rather focus on something like this than some shitty house track. Electronic music really doesn't phase me if you haven't guessed already. I can't wait to show Mark tomorrow and use the ol' phrase of "Matt said it was ok, so yeah." heh.

The Importance of Self Motivation

This is something that I often forget about myself, mostly because I tell myself most of the time that I am lazy. Which arguably I am to an extent, although recently have become more of a morning person, I think it is the winter season that does this to me and not necessarily just Uni. The darker mornings are more welcoming for eyes.

Back to the point. I've been looking back and re-reading through some of my old blog posts, some from over four years ago now and its actually pretty easy to find a excerpt where I call myself lazy, but then I also stumbled across one particular post from March 2013 where I was clearly the complete opposite. I had completely forgot about this up until now too! There was a time when myself and another musician, Lucy Mearns were arranging practice sessions and then we eventually arranged our own recording session where I brought my Soundcraft Compact4 mixer into college, and an old laptop to use with it to record an original song that we had been rehearsing. 

It doesn't sound like a lot, but it's fair to say that we were both self motivated to do this and this was all extra curricular. I personally think it is important that I continue to do things link this. This was my way of forcing my self into music technology. I was still learning how to use my mixer at that point because I had only owned it for about a month and had briefly looked into methods of recording audio. It all feels so long ago now. The knowledge I have now regarding music technology is much more refined although, I am still learning some elements like synthesis.

My most recent acts encouraged by my self motivation would be the cleaning of the college piano that I mentioned in my last post, coming into college for practice sessions with the FE Students and most importantly coming into college to do work on my essays and sequencing work and then also working on those at home. I know there are other areas currently where I could do with a bit more self motivation to dive more into the subject, but it proves to be difficult when its not something I'm 100% interested in. At the moment for example, I have a short assignment that is due in on Wednesday to do with writing about the structure of a specific song relevant to the genre that I have decided to replicate with sequencing and then create a plan... I still haven't properly started it. I have work at 2pm today so I don't really have much time to work on it now, all I have done so far is chosen a song. I think this will end up being something I do on Monday. There really isn't a lot to it and that probably doesn't help my interest levels.

Once I have food, I might have a quick go at it today before work. One thing I have noticed with my self motivation is that most is for extra curricular activities, but that doesn't mean its not relevant to my field of study. I'm keen to build up my musicianship and be versatile with what I can do and what I want to do. Basically, I like to keep my options open. 

A Tale of an Old Piano

I originally posted this exclusivly to The Piano Guy's Fan Group on Facebook but I thought it would be a great idea to share it on here to. This version is slightly edited to suit the stlye of my blog.

This is a photo of the piano we have at my college. It's old. I'm not sure exactly how old, but it was here when I first started in 2010 (not long then before I personally discovered the piano guys) and I'm guessing it is much older than that.


I didn't play it very much in my first year, in fact I'm not even sure I knew of it's existence back then. My main instrument is guitar and I didn't put much time aside for piano back then as I was trying to master my guitar playing instead, well at least improve it.



My second year was a little different. I started learning bass guitar too and slowly started to rekindle my piano playing. In my first year, we didn't have any pianists on the course, but that year we did and it allowed me to see how the two of them played differently and what stylistic I liked either performer.

Both were classically taught and I remember watch them both play amazing piecing of music on either this very piano during a break or another keyboard during a practice session. This motivated me to want to practice more.

Another thing happening around the same time was a lesson called Keyboard skills, which effectively basic piano lessons but lead and taught by our college professor. The only one with a doctorate/Phd in music.

He slowly became my biggest motivator. Not only did I recognise his intelligence, but in a way I befriended him and we started to arrange private tuition sessions within college when we were both free. At times teaching each other. We started with modal scales and eventually contrasted into general theory and then figured bass.
t was also around this time, that I generated A LOT of interest in The Piano Guys from first discovering them on YouTube (Late 2011/early 2012). I was so blown away with the quality of their work, their ideology and passion that I felt like I needed to be able to do the same and be on the same level as their talent. From that point I was hooked on them and I've not missed a video since, music or behind the scenes.

This became common and most of the time, you guessed it, we practiced at this piano. Because of his influence I started practicing regularly at this piano. At almost every opportunity (Unless someone else was using it). I still practice at this piano, but now just solo when I have the time. The professor is still in my college, I just don't think he would appreciate me chasing him about anymore now I'm studying for my HND.

When I first started back here again in October, one of the first things I remembered was this piano and it's location. I had to check it was still there. It was, but it was in a mess. Some novices had stuck note names everywhere on paper with sellotape. I would understand if this was a primary school for young children to learn, but this must have been carried out by 16+ YO's. So today, I finally decided to take action.

This morning I was that magic fairy that made the old Knight piano's keyboard clean again. I piggled off all of the stickers and brushed off some of the sticky residue with my Christmas jumper. There are still thicker bits remaining, but I didn't want to ruin my clothes too much. It already looks a lot better. Tomorrow, I may just bring in some trusty Mr. Muscle's furniture polish and a cloth and finish the job.

I love this piano. So many memories from last time around mostly from my second and third years and no doubt there will be some new ones for this year. Some of my class have already had a short jam with me. I feel like it's only my duty as a repayment for all good times sake.

I've sat at this particular piano many times through my college years whilst either being schooled or just practicing and now I'm back here again studying my HND cleaning the same piano.


I guess the moral of this tale are:

Always practice
Remember your roots
Find people that inspire and motivate you


If anyone can think of any more from morals from this I would love to hear them and update this post to include them.

Beaten & Bruised

I have been learning to play drums now for about a month an a half and with my last few practice sessions I have noticed a few bruises starting to appear. I have a set at the very top of my leg where I have been accidentally hitting myself with my sticks when I have the snare drum set up too low. I have a large bruise on the outside of my right leg from where it has been rubbing against the the floor top and then to top it off, another bruise on the top of my right foot from when the beater of the bass drums hits me back. That was just from using one specific kit, the one that sounds the best in The Venue, but also kills you slowly.

The snare of the kit in The Venue is very well tuned and easily makes it one of the best sounding kits in the college, bar maybe the one in Recording Studio 3 that my lecturer Rob tuned the other week. That one sounded pretty nice too. All of the snares in the other practice rooms desperately need tuning. I would do it, but I don't have a drum key and I'm not 100% how to do it either even though Rob shown us. Most of them have tape over them to either dampen them or try to make them sound like they're tuned, which also stops the rattling sound, but just doesn't match the sound of a properly tuned snare. I can really hear the difference now. It's something that I struggled with when Rob first shown us.

I'd say that my drumming is coming along nicely. I'm starting to feel a lot more comfortable with the kit as a whole now and understand more quickly what sort of sound (or noise if you like) that I want to make. This is going to help me with my sequencing too because I will need to be able to map out drum tracks and knowing me, it's not going to be a simple "four to the floor beat" with the progressive rock track that I will be working on. I'm still undecided whether or not to revisit an old piece or start a fresh. I guess I have today to decided. I will have to pick out a sound to to then pick apart and talk about it's structure.

Another Day, Another Lesson...

I've rather liked this weeks Wednesday if I'm honest. I don't have many lessons on Wednesdays so they are fairly short and sweet. My Uni day starts at a quarter to one in the afternoon and usually passes by rather quickly starting with Music in Context. Todays Music in Context lesson did seem to drag a little bit as today was the Deadline for the Bibliography for the next two essays due in. I, being a good student had already handed it in to my tutor the day before so I wasn't one of the ones rushing to finish the work. It was a fairly simple task. I understand that some people had been on holiday or away, I just don't get how people can leave it until last minute. Admittedly, I forgot that I had to hand it in as a pdf file, but that was easy to sort out.

With everyone else finishing their work, I was left to make a start on my essay. I managed just over one hundred words today. It doesn't sound like a lot but it has been checked over and I seem to be on the right track with it by not referencing too much and paraphrasing.

Again, if I'm honest our next and last lesson was a little boring today. I don't know if I'm just being mean because we had a teacher in training, but I feel like he may have just confused me. He focused the lesson on electronic music and made it seem like thats all we could produce in sequencing. I find it difficult expressing any kind of excitement for electronic music other than the really cheesy stuff, my best example being: Soul Control - 'Chocolate Choco Choco'. Even that is arguable whether it is even strictly electronic music. He went on to show us some basic electronic drum patterns and I sort of just looked up in shame. When you know your music theory up to grade five standard and you are being shown how to create a rather basic "four to the floor" drum beat using only semi-quavers in a 4/4 time signature and how you should learn to recognise the drum theory, you start to question a few loopholes. What about the triplets? Which, I may add, he did not cover. I'm not even gonna start on the powerpoint.

I feel like I'm being a bit brutal so I'm going touch on the brakes and stop it now. Apologies in advance if he somehow ends up reading this, but maybe take it as advice.

Today was also the day that I had my first proper tutorial with Matt, my tutor. He's ace, really couldn't have asked for anyone better. Originally, I was going to go first into the music office but I told the other two guys that they may as well go first because I know I'm going to go on. I had a lot to talk about and I was right. It's good to be considerate sometimes. I do feel like Matt might have seen me as a problem child at first, but I hope our chat cleared a few thing up for him too. I'm really not just doing this course because I had no other option and my mindset is now completely fixed. We talked first about the things he needed to talk to me about, general things like asking me how I'm getting on with each individual lesson to work out my weak points more than anything and then eventually I got to talk to him about all the other bits that had been ticking over for the last week or so. I had them all written down, almost too organised but I spoke about almost everything that I felt I needed to. He also cleared up a few misunderstandings regarding the Sequencing lesson earlier and told me that I could do literally what ever genre I wanted as long as it meant I could replicate it in Logic and meet all of the criteria. I'm now thinking of doing a progressive rock track for that, even though the guitars might end up sounding a bit pants but I would much rather create something well within a genre that I am interested in. There is literally no point otherwise because I'm just not going to have the same level of motivation. My talk with Matt did end up being about half an hour long and I knew it would be. I think it could have gone on much longer if we had time because I still missed some little things I wanted to mention because I didn't write them down! Silly me. I guess I will know for the next time...