Success

So my internet's down at home and all of a sudden life gets about five times more complicated. Emails don't get received or sent. Artists don't get their mixes. YouTube sees a sudden unexpected dip in its views...

Actually, it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things at all. But it does mean that you, dear reader(s), have been denied your daily doses of my wit, wisdom and whimsical meanderings. For that, and everything else, I humbly apologise.

So in the vague hope my iPad comes into the realm of a free wifi zone before my landline is resurrected, here's a collosally witty, wise and whimsically meandering update on what has been big in Hi-Sonorous land in 2013 so far.

Alun Leppitt's record is big. And great...5 tracks of beautiful, vital, epic, worshipful rock. I'm really proud of it and, happily, it's going to be available sooner than you might think. A loose deadline of the end of the month is looking possible. Tom Gregory (drummer extraordinaire for Mr Tommy Eye and good friend of Alun's) joined us at the studio for a great percussion session which culminated in him laying down some parts played on the side of chair and the top of a music stand. And the best part of this is they're not even gimmicks we'll push to the back of the mix on second thoughts. The EP also has a really good name and LOADS of cool sounding guitars. I guess it's not hard to understand why I'm so into it!

Byron Gold is very soon to announce big news on a brand new release. I don't think I'm allowed to give anything more away yet but it's the track we've been waiting to write for Byron for about two and a half years and it's basically a stonker and Sanj and I are both well pumped about the news. Expect clips, vids, facebook spam and general twitter hype madness within the month!

Our tax returns got filed. OK this isn't news. But how else do you account for my chipper and lackadaisical tone?

I set my guitar up in stereo and jammed on my looper for two hours in Wednesday morning. This isn't really news either, apart from the fact it may well have spawned the basis of an amazing idea we've come up with a remix for Byron's single but haven't yet had a chance to work through properly. The remix involves an incredibly cool patch we made up on the MPC where we sample spliced one of the hooks from the tune and built a beat out of the various ensuing vocal samples. Great fun to play with and prime remix material. We even shoehorned a tiny element into the single mix!

Anyway, before I get down to how many socks I've washed so far in 2013, let me get onto the subject of my blog...success.

Am I alone in thinking that the creative industries have much less definable measures of success than some? If you're a doctor and you correctly identify their illness, prescribe the right drug or treatment and they get better, job done, no? If you're a lawyer defending someone who's innocent and you argue their case well and the jury returns the correct verdict, again, good job. OK, so I'm sure GPs and barristers the world over will be writing in in uproar at my crass oversimplification of their roles, but compare it to the creative equivalents...

I'm a web developer who gets hired to build a website for a company. At the end of the design process the site looks great, functions well and you get your cheque for a job well done. But the site's far from being a success at this point. It has to get seen by search engines, it has to build awareness, it has to attract customers, it has to sell a message. Ultimately, it has to make money for the company. As a designer, you won't probably stick around to know if any of these things happen.

Take another example even closer to our patch...making records. Any contemporary artist who's made an album will tell you the same story...albums are a songwriter's symphony; their film or novel. They are the final and most eloquent medium of expression for the contemporary musician, where the weeds are mercilessly picked, where every microscopic detail is analysed and questioned and reasoned into existing. Great albums are given everything by the artist to be what they are. But, as an artist you don't ever really know the impact your music has on the people who receive it. You don't even really know the impact for the people who love it, who go crazy for it. You speak clearly, precisely, but what you get back isn't an equivalent response. It's either an inarticulate and meaningless jumble of superlatives - "it's so amazing, you're so great, I love you", or more in my case a deafening silence.

Some will say don't be so vain. Do it for the art. Do it for fun.

But making music as an end in itself has never really been it for me. I've always had this daring dream that music can change people. That it can be about people, rather than about 'art'. Or at least that art is helpful and good when it's concerned with people and not just itself.

But this is a really hard dream to hold on to because it's nigh impossible to know when you've done anything worthwhile and even when you have, it's an incredibly expandable vision - there's always this desire to reach more people and have things on a bigger scale.

I've seen that time and again even bands who've had all the success in the world still want to be number one again. 'You're only as good as your last single'. Success is pretty insatiable when you're chasing that version of it.

And in the main I'd say I don't need all the success in the world. And by my own logic it seems it would be folly to desire even an ounce of all the success in the world because it would never be enough.

So where does that leave me then? How do I reconcile the ambition I have for what I do with the knowledge that success won't ever satisfy?

I guess the best answer I have for you now is to try and make all the music making about people. To make it about having good relationships, building people up, having integrity, being honest, being positive, being an example etc etc. I think even a little bit of this can make you feel really good about what you're doing and become a really positive way to channel all the ambition.

Chris

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Supporting Lemar, Dropboxing drums and new toys

News from last week...

Another jam-packed week of recording sailed by, with work on Alun Leppitt's EP well underway now. The first working mixes came home on Thursday and they were sounding sweet! Our good friend Andy Rowley's spending his evenings in Nashville, TN recording the drums from our pre-production templates. He dropboxes the files to us at bedtime and we download them around 4 hours later over breakfast, get to the studio and get to work with them.

It's a marvellously cool and efficient way to work, and I think more creative. Andy, by virtue of being 5,000 miles away, isn't getting the traditional micro-managed producer treatment with his parts, and we get to focus on the bits we actually play rather than doing days of tracking other people first. Rockin'.



Also, we just got back from the Old Firestation in Bournemouth where Byron supported the first night of Lemar's new tour! Sanj and I backed him up, playing some acoustic arrangements of two brand new and two older tunes, and the crowd seemed to be lovin it! Byron's also with Lemar for two more dates this coming week, so that's a really good opportunity for him.

Rachel Kerr was also at the show supporting and it was great meeting her backstage and hearing her incredible voice live. She's just won a MOBO this year so definitely one to watch out for in 2013.

Looking ahead to this week, we've got more work coming up on Alun's EP and we welcome back Enrico who's down today to finish up his single which should be dropping in the new year.

Busy times!

Also, Santa came early this year and dropped off one of these...

It's the Blue Sky from Strymon and I have to say I'm loving it big time! It's complex enough to be able to achieve lots of very usable verb settings, but it's also got some epic creative effects. I've been using it on shimmer mode for one of Alun's tunes which results in beautiful octave-shifted layers above the original tone that create a wonderful, hazy jetstream of sound. Also, been running it in stereo through my Fender vintage and a Laney solid state and I almost think it's cooler having different amps for each side as it just enhances the stereo-ness. Would definitely recommend it!

Chris

 

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What's going on?

Well it's time for a little update.

First up, did anyone miss that we did this...

Everyone still on board?!

OK, and more recently, since mid-August we've been working hard on new singles for Byron Gold and Enrico Delves, as well as recording new tunes for Aimée and Ebonie G. Tommy's album has been moving forward as well - we've been finishing up mixes as well as recording some of the remaining collabs, which are well exciting.

Phew! Essentially everyone we work with has been through the doors in the last month and this has certainly been one of the most busy and productive times yet for us.

Here's me looking stressed and frantically busy.

And Looking ahead, we've got worship projects coming up with Alun Leppitt and NauJavan in Oct/Nov and more new writing to get done as well.

Sweet times!

Chris

 

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Updating you all

So, dear reader(s), time for a little update. As I sit writing this, Enrico and Byron are currently improvising ideas for and wrangling over an ad lib bridge line for Enrico's forthcoming single, with Sanj patiently wading through the ideas to capture the best moments. It's great to see too great singers pushing each other to be better. Occasionally, I volunteer a "yeah" or a "no", but times like this, you mostly just get out of the way and let the magic happen around you. That is of course, providing they don't eat each other, or something...

Last week, we spent the whole week recording with Aimée Mutambo, and two great songs are now well under way with her. The vibe is poppy but with a strong live undercurrent so there's plenty of real stuff going on whilst trying to keep things sounding tight for radio. We've been enjoying layering up acoustic kit with programmed stuff and getting some excellent blends. More work to commence hopefully week after next and then you may well find sneak previews over on her blog.

Also making a welcome return to Purple Squares on Friday is Ebonie G, word! Can't wait to write some more awesome tunes with her, gonna be great!

Til next time...

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What's going on?

Time for a mini update folks. Plenty to write home about from Hi-Sonorous HQ. First up, some of you may remember a few weeks back we linked you to this video. Well the man behind it all, our good friend and fellow producer Mr Gregory Felton organised a hip-hop orchestra show featuring Tommy Eye yesterday in Southampton. Which basically was amazing. [I wanna say it rocked, but that would be imprecise stylistically. Sadly there's no urban equivalent I can think of right now. At least not positive equivalents... Hm, significant?]

Tommy Eye made his best effort at getting the west quay shopping zombies to remember that life exists beyond retail, and a good few hundred were reminded and all the more healthier for it. Big up to G Funk for an amazing job...too cool.

Back in the studio, we've been writing a good deal of worship stuff for a future hip-hop project (Yes, I did just use the words worship and hip-hop in the same sentence) which is turning out to be a huge challenge, but one we are totally pumped about. We're also writing for this guy, and this guy, and this guy. (ok that last one is...let's say, aspirational.)

Sanj has been on particularly fine form on the beats and I've been jangling the guitar strings in between hourly sittings of this...

Sorry, that had to go on the page, I love it so much.

I'm generally finding the ebb and flow to be a little unorthodox. Staying creative is a discipline in itself. One it takes to time to learn. I'm realising more and more that you don't always just instinctively do great things. More often than not, you work for them. I sat in my snug (my house is too small for a lounge) on Friday for an hour and a half and produced two lines of lyrics.

So working is sitting and thinking. And it's an incredibly intense process sometimes. Always, always, always, lyrics come last after chords and melody. I wish it were the other way round, but the others are a piece of cake to me and words are nearly always a slog to the finish. I can sit in complete silence for a while, perhaps 10-15 minutes and just churn rhymes and ideas, ways of sayings things over and over, and get increasingly more impatient with myself. Sometimes the wall comes down before I pull myself out, and then the confidence is too low to carry on. But if not, eventually I just start to strum the chords and sing all vowels on the tune I have. And it's in this kind of spontaneous speaking tongues moment where I might randomly pull out a word or a phrase or occasionally even a whole line and it just fits and feels good, and right. Sometimes it's very closely related to the ideas that I've just been chewing on, and sometimes it's totally different. But what does seem consistent is the feeling that it's a process I have little control over, which is both exhilarating when I hit on things I think are good, but frustratingwhen I can't just get something out. It certainly increases my envy of artists like Tommy, when they freestyle all these complex rhymes and meaning and humour just totally off-the-cuff...

Anyway I said this would be mini. And now it's not.

Chris

Ps. Also shout out to the tireless independent music promoter Nick Tann who played us on his podcast show "Is this Thing On?" this week.

 

Byron Gold in the house, and musings on pop music

Not that I wish to give you, my dear reader(s), the wrong impression here - that of me, in my arrogance, taking a cheap side-swipe at my esteemed colleague - nay, this writer would simply like to express the fact that he is indeed in possession of the infinitely valuable skill of being able to type 'é'.

And by way of small addition to our very broad and thoroughly headliner-heavy review of the Glastonbury festivities I'd just like to say I actually enjoyed U2 the most.

Anyhow, onwards... Today, this guy joined us in the studio for some recording shenningans involving a pop hit that just seems to get faster and faster every time we work on it.

His name, as you can see, is Byron Gold. And he has a fast song. Which also has a nice fat-sounding chorus and some epic delayed acoustic guitar, courtesy of my MemoryMan. It's fun and poppy. We're hopeful that the powers that be will decide to include it on Byron's record, and with that in mind, our task for the day was to try and find the song a nice and suit and tie to make it extra smart for the all important interview.

For inspiration, we headed to the top 10, and realised, quite unsurprisingly that it isn't actually a top 10 at all. More like a top 3 - an Ed Sheeran tune, something else quite good, and 8 tunes that basically all sound virtually identical: big pounding crotchets in the kick drum, distorted, frantic synth parts, auto-tuned vocals, and overall club vibe. Sorry if you think that's unfair. Perhaps rock music all sounds the same to the uninitiated.

Anyway, it makes me smile because it's one thing to sit on your high horse and bemoan the lack of originality in the music industry, but it's quite another to go into the studio to make a tune that needs to compete in the charts and not end up with: big pounding crotchets in the kick drum, distorted, frantic synth parts, auto-tuned vocals, and overall club vibe, and still feel like you can sell this to the guy who decides if you get to be a hit or not.

What was that Bono said about compromise again...?

Frozen Dust Melted...

The 'Frozen Dust' record started around a year ago and due to other projects it got put on hold (and was itself frozen!) after we'd done the main bulk of the writing! The songs just needed the featured vocalists to come in and do their thing... over the last two weeks that happened!! Can I just say the tunes are sounding amazing?!!! Well, I have just said it.

We're shooting for July 2011 as a release for the record which is going to be available to the world to download for FREE. The record has been written aiming to raise awareness and cash for Operation Mobilisation (and the Dalit Freedom Network) as they build schools for the millions of kids across India who are 'cast out' of normal society. We're totally passionate about this cause and the music and can't wait for you to hear it!!

You can see some of the sessions with Nishma Menon, Capucine Falgas, Andy Dennis and Byron Gold on our YouTube channel.