Random Photographs

Thought this was an interesting picture I found while scrolling thru my phone - I took it a couple of years ago on holiday in France. Its actually the view from a Carrefour supermarket car park. In case you didn't know its Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in Europe. Don't you wish every supermarket had an interesting view as good as this. The locals seemed oblivious to it. I suppose when you've seen one mountain you've seen 'em all!

Micky Jones: 1946 - 2010

I just heard the very sad news that one of my favorite guitarists, Micky Jones from Man passed away on the 10th of March. I knew he'd been ill for sometime, having to leave the band in 2005. Micky truly was an inspiration to me and so many others. I have seen him perform on numerous occasions and he always blew me away. He never seemed to play the same solo twice and his improvisational skills were amazing, along with his wonderful voice. To me he always sang differently to anyone else I heard and his phrasing was unique.

I first found Man as teenager at a house party, drinking cider and trying to be cool. It was the album "Rhinos, Winos and Lunatics" and I'd never heard anything like it at the time. Micky's amazing soulful voice, brilliant songs, soaring guitar solos and fabulous harmonies. I went straight out the next day and bought it. I loved that album and still do ,as it brings back so many memories - teenage lust, hot party's and even hotter summers and it was never off the turntable. I still play it now.

Unfortunately they split up before I got to see them play in the 70's but by chance one day I was driving passed a venue in Wigan (The Beer Engine) many years later and saw a poster "Man In Concert", I couldn't believe it could be the same band as I'd heard nothing about them for an age. Amazingly it was, I got my ticket and I went to see them play and they tore the place apart, the audience just wouldn't let them off the stage, - from then on I went to see them whenever I could, meeting them on a few occasions. I remember speaking to Micky about some of the albums from the past and he commented, "you don't look old enough to be a fan of us" - he truly was a lovely guy.

The biggest thing apart from the music he left me was something I'd read in Deke Leonard's book, also titled "Rhinos, Winos and Lunatics." Micky would always strive to be original at all costs and try to do something new and that concept has never left me. It kicks me in the backside every now and again and makes me sit down with a guitar and write some music. It's something I believe in as a musician.

I just found this slideshow of Man's Music on youtube that someone has put together so brilliantly. Please follow the link above and watch the video and listen to 50 Man songs in 10 minutes and you'll get a flavor of what he was all about.
R.I.P. Micky Jones, Many Are Called But Few Get Up



Musical Thoughts For Nought

CD Mastering For Your Band

A trap a lot of Indie bands fall into when they record an album at home or in a small project studio is that they forget to finish off the process. They will record their tracks, mix them to the best of their ability and stick them up on myspace or any other music networking site and although this is fine, there is so much more than can be done to get a more professional sounding and finished product.

This is where the mastering process comes in. There are no set rules when it comes to mastering and the process can be complicated. After the process is completed the tracks can then be transferred to some kind of data storage, normally CD for reproduction or reformatted for distribution across the internet.

The process I use, is to firstly get to a final mix I'm happy with without using any compression, limiting or eq on the master channel and leaving enough headroom so that the mastering process can be more effective. If a mix is too loud with too many peaks the mastering process will be that much more difficult to obtain great results. An optimum level for a mix would be around -8db.

I've done quite a few mastering jobs over the years and I use mainly digital plugins. Here they are briefly and in the order I use them.
1. High Pass Filter: to get rid of unwanted low frequency noise and rumble
2. EQ : done to suit the track and bring out good or quash harsh frequencies
3. Compression - to tighten up the mix and gel the music together
4. Limiting - to bring up the overall volume levels of the track.
5. High Pass Filter: Again to take out any low rumble if left by the processes above.
6. Spectrum Analyser in real time (at the end of the chain) for a visual look at the track as it plays to see where any problems maybe occuring.

Other processes that may need to be done include, noise reduction, signal restoration, editing, levelling and fade ins/outs

As you can see it can be a difficult job and no doubt if we all had the money we could spend a couple of hundred quid per track sending them to a dedicated mastering engineer.

The bottom line is you should be driven by what sounds best, how you get there is irrelevant, but with a little knowledge and experience you can achieve industry standard results .With this in mind I hope to set up an affordable on-line mastering service in the near future.

Feel free to contact me on cpicton882@aol.com if you'd like to enquire about having your tracks mastered.


Musical Thoughts For Nought

A great recording website and RSS Feeds

A while back I posted a blog about Recording and intended to follow it up with Mixing and Mastering posts but since then I found a great site which covers the whole process in far greater detail than I would ever have time for, so I thought I'd pass on the info here. The site has some fab articles, videos, tips and tricks for people with a home or project studio.

With advances in technology these days its now possible to get amazing results from the comfort of your own home.
Joe Gilder is an independent musician in his own right and is the author of Home Studio Corner and it really is a brilliant site, whether you are a pro musician or a complete novice you really should check it out. Its full of knowledge, completely free and you can sign up and download his ebook "Home Studio Production: A Roadmap to Finishing Your Album" which I found very useful. (By the way I don't know Joe and he's not paying me for this... lol)

Finally, a quick tip: You can follow many, many websites very easily, such as Home Studio Corner, if you subscribe to whats called an RSS Feed. You will see the logo at the top of the page on loads of websites and blogs and what it enables you to do is follow those sites without having to visit them individually. You download what's called a "Reader" and you can see all the updates of the sites/blogs and follow them inside the reader itself. The one I prefer is "Google Reader" and it really makes life much easier and simpler. Once downloaded you can search for the topics you are interested in and follow those websites very quickly. TTFN. Happy reading.



Musical Thoughts For Nought

Sunday Times Quote

Thought I'd share this with you from today's Sunday Times 13th December.
Five things that reshaped pop.
At number 2 "Simon Cowell. In the 1960's, The Beatles, Bob Dylan and The Beach Boys et al transformed pop from a lowest-common-denominator business into an art form. It took only one man to reverse this process".
Don't forget to Buy Rage Against The Machine's "Killing In The Name" and join the facebook group to stop the X Factor being No 1 this Xmas...
Merry Xmas!!

Recording, Mixing and Mastering.

I've been mastering a number of projects recently and decided I'd share a few thoughts on the various processes in getting to the finished product. It can take lots of effort, trial and error, but here's how I see things. There are 3 basic stages, firstly the recording stage, then mixing and mastering.

Part 1: Recording
With recording its important to take time and set things up right and if you can, experiment with different mics and different mic positions. If something sounds good in the room then providing you are recording it properly it will sound good in your project. A badly tuned drum is a badly tuned drum and all the eq' in the world won't fix it. An old drummer friend of mine used to say "you can't polish a turd" meaning if it sounds terrible in the first place then that's what you'll be stuck with as an end result. A cheap set of drums tuned properly will often sound far better than a badly tuned, more expensive kit.

Try your best to get the sound of each instrument (including vocals) the best you can in the first place and things will fall into place much easier when you come to mixing. A quick note on vocals, try and give the singer confidence, relax and encourage them as much as you can, rather than say things like "that wasn't very good". Build them up and they will deliver a much better performance. You can also try out different mics (if they are available) as certain types of mics will suit certain voices better.

For the bass I use 2 tracks if possible, one for a mic on the speaker cabinet, the other for DI straight into the desk or through a processor then into the desk, giving you options when you come to mix the 2 signals.

Again you can experiment when recording guitars. For acoustics I have used 2 mics to record the sound hole and to record the sound on the neck, or if the guitar has a pick up, record the di'd signal as well. Move the mics around to find the sweet spots and do some test recording to see what positions sound best. You can do the same when mic'ing up the electric guitar amps. Move the mic around and find out where it sounds best rather than just sticking the mic in front of a speaker cone. You'll be surprised at the difference in sounds.

I tend to use a click track with my own recordings so I can easily sequence keyboards as I'm not a great keyboard player and the quantize button is a great tool if your playing is not quite as precise as you'd like it to be. I love the soft synth "Reason" for keyboard sounds.

Its also great to record a band all playing live in the room as more often than not, if they are quite well rehearsed you can capture a great performance, once you have settled them into the environment. Again its important to help them relax and enjoy the experience especially if they are not used to a recording studio.

Anyway there's a few very brief points and I hope its of use to anyone reading. Just remember there are no rules and experimenting with different ideas will, with a bit of luck help you come up with something fresh and original. Good Luck. Parts 2 & 3 to follow...


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