Getting Real.

I know I don’t post much nowadays, what with uni being busy and all, but I have just released the EP I’ve been working on for the past 5 years.

It’s definitely the best thing I’ve ever done.

So go and give it a listen, maybe even a download if you’re feeling generous (it’s only a pound, which is a good deal for 25 minutes of prog).

I’m finally selling my music and it’s a real dream come true.

https://soundcloud.com/flying-machine/worlds-apart

http://flyingmachine.bandcamp.com/

and it will be available on iTunes and Spotify within a couple of hours.

Picking technique importance…

I’m kind of stuck at the moment, obsessing a little over how I’m holding my pick when playing the guitar and whether my own particular (apparently unusual) style of picking is holding me back from progressing.

Since I started playing guitar about 6 years ago, I’ve held my pick like this:

And after some research, I found out that most people use only their index finger on the pick, gripping it between the outside of the index finger and thumb, like so:

In an attempt to break the rut I’ve been in, I’ve been trying to use the latter technique, and I do think it may be a LITTLE more effective, Although it’s hard to tell whether it’s a psychosomatic thing. 

I’ve had a wealth of problems with the second approach, in that it’s very uncomfortable for me (probably just because I’m not used to it), and I’ve found it hard to hit pinch harmonics and palm mute as effectively whilst using this. If my own usual way is holding me back though, I’d be happy to spend a lot more time getting used to the traditional approach.

I suppose the problem is that I just don’t know whether it really SHOULD make a difference. I don’t know anyone else who plays with my picking style, so that’s just lead me to believe that maybe it’s a mistake that I should learn to get out of the habit of, if I want to progress on the guitar.

I’ve noticed that my motion with the second style is slightly more economic, which may be the reason it seems better, but that might be just because I’m thinking about the technique more, rather than relying on muscle memory.

I’m just a bit stuck. Any suggestions would be very much appreciated…

City of Hopelessness - 18th September 2012

Another song written for open mic, recorded as it was originally intended. WELL hard to do it right though, so I know the recording isn’t perfect. There’s too much finger noise on the strings and the mixing is a little bit dodgy, but I just wanted to get it down.My challenge to myself was to write an acoustic and vocals song in 7/8, and I think this achieves that really well. There are a few sneaky bars of 8 as well to catch you out. ACOUSTIC PROG IS HAPPENING. Next thing you know I’ll be doing awesome stuff with loop pedals and changing my name to Matt Stevens…

Woohoo!

In a Year - 11th September 2012

I wrote this song for an open mic night as just acoustic and vocals and spent a little while fleshing it out as a full arrangement of a pop song. Some of the vocal performance could have been better, but overall, I’m really proud of it. Definitely feels good to be recording again!

I’m BACK, baby!

Hello, I wanted to make a tumblr post about this but I can only put one audio file up at a time, so I’ll do it all as one big audio file and transcribe it. 

Today I ran an experiment to find out what my room was like in terms of mixing and the acoustic environment, and the reverb inside the room, and I didn’t like what I found out, and I noticed a lot more.

So I’m going to do a post explaining how to do the ‘experiment’, and put the results from mine up, so you can give it a listen through and realise what’s going on with it.

What I did was to simply put the mic I’m using (an NT1-a, which is what most student home studios have) in the listening position which is in the equilateral triangle with the speakers (Rokit KRK 5s), which is where my head would usually be, then play some samples from a tr909 drum machine (which is sampled in Ultrabeat), through the speakers. Listening to that back on headphones, you can hear what the sound of the room is like in comparison to the original signal of just the pure 909. By comparing and contrasting between the 2 you can tell what’s going on acoustically in your room that shouldn’t be going on.

This, that I’m going to play now is the original drum machine doing kick, snare, closed hat, open hat, crash, ride, and 2 toms. The signal is going straight from the sequencer to the audio interface to the headphones, so you should hear absolutely nothing else that’s going on in my room, other than what is coming out of the 909.

Also, as a thing, when listening to this, it’s DEFINITELY better to listen through headphones, otherwise you’l mixing in the sound of your room with the pure 909, and contaminating the sample. Listening through the headphones for the first sample will give you the sound of the 909, and listening through headphones for the second sample will give you the sound of the first sample in my room if you weren’t wearing headphones.

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This next audio sample is the recording from the Microphone, placed in the listening position between the 2 speakers. This is what I would be hearing in the room, after plain the first example through my monitors.

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as you can see, from right off in the first bass drum you can hear a lot of the computer going, the noise on the road outside, and some room ambience, which is surprisingly not entirely terrible, but still could do with having a lot of work done on it, so I’ll have to do something about that. I’ll leave you listen to the rest of this and maybe let me know how it goes, I’m interested to hear what other people's rooms sound like.

I think as well, to make it easier to compare and contrast between the 2, I’ll play the 4 kicks from the original and 4 kicks with the room sound, then snares, hats etc, and you can have a proper A/B comparison.

Enjoy, Goodbye!

Thanks for reading.

—-

Unfortunately this will only be in mp3 for space saving reasons, so no high quality audio. You can still hear the difference, though, which gives and idea of the drastic change.

pedoshaming:

muchopoconada:

enchantedfuture:

yessysetssail:

neairaalenko:

sexjesus:

claudiobeat:

Bohemian Rhapsody (Vocals Only) | Queen

His voice was actual perfection.

I love this 

I have the music so ingrained in my head I couldn’t NOT hear the instruments.

listen with headphones so you can really appreciate everything going on vocally in this song

(Source: alackofoxygen, via takingkateis)

To make a point to Tom. 

An acapella version of a few bars of Sweet Dreams by Eurythmics.

The Riff Exchange…

Hello, all!

This is an idea I’ve had for a while, after I looked back on a couple of riffs I really like that I wrote maybe 5 years ago. They’re the kind of riffs I’ve never been able to actually make into a song, because everytime I use them I tend to have the same ideas and it never really works.

It occurs to me that other people might have the same kind of thing, and usually with this type of thing a completely fresh perspective is the thing that will really open it up to new possibilities.

So to that end, I give you The Riff Exchange.

It’s pretty simple, if you have a riff or an idea that you’ve been stuck with for a while, then show it to someone else, without any kind of context, and see if they can make anything of it. In return, you do the same with one of theirs. I’d like to try this out with someone if anyone has anything they’d like me to work on or have a quick look at!

If you do, get in touch :)

Here’s the new cover I did with hQ. If people like it I’ll put it on the hQ soundcloud!

I told my girlfriend I’d have a go at recording a cover of a song from One Tree Hill. It started out promisingly, but my voice definitely does it no justice. Listen to the original, it’s much better :P