Other Artists

Playlist of the Week (2018/3)

This week’s POTW is the Haven Yates’ Triple 25 Vol. 1 . I can’t tell you a great deal about Haven, apart from he writes some nice music, does some sound engineering as well as singing, songwriting, guitarring and producing and he seems like a decent bloke!  As you can probably tell from the name of the playlist, Haven has put together a few of these, so watch out for Vol. 4 coming up next week.

The super-eagle-eyed might have spotted one of Haven’s tracks, Find You, on one of my own Spotify playlists, How to Relax.

Playlist of the Week (2018/2)

This week’s playlist of the week is THE BIG ONE by Atom Collector Records. Atom Collector Records is a site where indie artists get together and share tracks and playlists, but you can also listen as a music fan to catch some music you’ve not heard before and find out more about the artists – you don’t need to be making music yourself. I like the ‘go’ button on the listen page for finding new music – you never know what you’re going to get, apart from the very broad genre you selected.

The BIG ONE playlist contains a huge variety of music from all genres so you can expect to be challenged at times and not to like absolutely everything (that’s what the skip button’s for, after all). The flip side is that I’m pretty sure that you’ll also find a few precious gems that you didn’t even know were out there.

Playlist of the Week (2018/1)

I’ve seen a teeny weeny bit of growth in the number of people listening to my tracks over the last few months, mostly via other peoples’ Spotify playlists. This has been a big encouragement to keep going – the last couple of months have been pretty tough.

So, this year, I thought I’d do a new series of posts with playlists that I’ve been included on and give a shout out to the fantastic people who have been willing to add my music to their lists. If you like the list, give it a follow of course and listen again! I’ll keep going with the series for as many weeks as there are playlists with my music on, so if you’ve got a public playlist and I’m on it, let me know! (NB: your playlist needs to be suitable for all-age listening! I don’t think my music is likely to fit too well on a seriously dark playlist or one that has a lot of swearing anyway, so it’s unlikely to be an issue, but just saying…)

My first playlist of the week in 2018 is Our Fierce Female Friends. It’s by Susan Moss of MoonDreams Music, who makes beautiful lullabies and gentle music suitable for young children (make sure you listen to track 4 for a sample of her work). Susan’s an avid playlist creator, often featuring independent artists like myself amongst better known tracks, which is hugely appreciated.

So, I hope you enjoy listening. Hopefully it will brighten up your commute or chillout time or when you’re doing the cooking.

Crashing Down (part 2)

 It is about time I updated everyone on how things are going. My Dad is still in hospital: it’s been eight weeks already. He has been moved twice now and is back in the original hospital he started in. The move away was because they thought he would need an operation, but it was decided that wouldn’t be necessary, even though he had been as far as having a probable date for it and going nil-by-mouth on the day. So he’s been moved back nearer to home. It’s only a few miles difference, but the rush hour isn’t as horrific, and visiting hours are better for avoiding the worst traffic, so there’s a little less time pressure. I still haven’t met Hugh Laurie or his glamorous team…

We think Dad will be in hospital over Christmas and New Year now; they have identified the cause of his illness and he’s being monitored pretty closely to make sure the antibiotics are winning. We don’t know if he will fully recover, though, and his state can vary a lot between visits.  I’m the optimist and my Mum’s the pessimist. I’m looking at the good days and thinking that he could be nearly back to normal as soon as this infection is beaten, even if it does take a few more months; Mum’s looking at the bad days and talking about the worst-case outcomes.  Of course, either is possible, but Dad is a pretty determined individual, and given enough hope, he will fight this thing.

Doughty's Oil Mill in Lincoln will feature in the video for Run, by Manipulant, feat Stoneygate.

Sneak preview of the video for Run by Manipulant feat Stoneygate. Extra atmosphere provided by Doughty’s Oil Mill, a Grade II listed building in central Lincoln, UK.

I’ve been really tired myself, and am missing my creative work.  I have taken a few days respite, though, and have been working on a video for Manipulant’s track Run, which I contributed vocals to a few months back. I can’t share it with you yet, as it’s not quite finished, but will do once it’s up on YouTube.  It’s a bit different to the other videos I’ve made so far, because it’s a ‘straight video’ rather than an animation or being made from stills.

Just in case I don’t manage to post again in the next few days, please do have a lovely Christmas and New Year! I’m quite intrigued to find out what Christmas will be like in the hospital. All the wards seem to be making a big effort with decorations.  We are having a family get-together as normal, it will just be a bit different.

My Chilled Folk Music Playlist

Every now and again I will hear something I like that just doesn’t fit into my other chillout playlists because it’s quite folky, so I had to start a new list to gather these pieces together. A particular highlights for me on this list are the songs from Uncut Pages, a British indie outfit with a songwriter that I know from way back near the start of my songwriting efforts, who now lives in the States with his wife, whose beautiful voice you will hear.

Which song is your favourite?

 

Covering A Song: Before and After

Something I have been meaning to do for a while is to do a cover song, Stoneygate style. (I play various Suzanne Vega covers on the guitar, but not as ‘Stoneygate’.)  So when a musicians’ Facebook group I’m following asked who would be up for doing some cover song swaps, I decided to give it a go.

The pairings were random, and the group is based in America, so I thought I’d probably be working with somebody State-side. In the event, the random pairing put me with (cue drumroll) Lynz Crichton, a fantastic singer-songwriter based less than an hour away from me! It was a lovely surprise to be paired with someone so close by, with the added bonus of a future meet-up for a coffee. (A Midlands-based Brit also organised the cover song swaps… watch out world, we Midlander musicians are taking over!).

Before

I thought it would be cool to share a little of the process with you. The first thing I did was to listen to Lynz’s EP on bandcamp, check out the lyrics, and sleep on it. I still had an earworm the next day with the song that had stood out, One Fine Day. Having another listen to the EP and reviewing all the lyrics helped confirm my choice.

Once I’d decided on the song, I could map out the structure and chords of Lynz’s original song in my digital audio workstation. I wasn’t sure about a couple of chords, and Lynz also very kindly let me have a chordsheet to check my work against. The key was not very keyboard friendly, as the song was originally written for guitar. That was going to slow me down for writing parts, so I transposed it up a semi-tone, at a very early stage, and checked it was still going to be within my vocal range. I also messed around with the tempo a bit, slowing it down to bring out the song’s full drama.

After that, I could set to work constructing an arrangement around the original song and record a guide vocal as a place-holder. My intention was to make it into a trip-hop version, but my first attempt with the arrangement felt somewhat disco-ey. It wasn’t that I disliked it, it was just that it wasn’t the vision that I’d got for it… I mentioned this to the swap organiser in our Facebook group, and he happened to mention Portishead. That got me back having a quick listen to Glory Box to check up on and confirm my suspicion that my bassline was the main culprit for the song having the wrong feel to it. It was just too bouncy.

I wrote a new bassline, stripping it right back so that it wouldn’t attract so much attention to itself. It was better, but the song now felt like it was missing something to really give it atmosphere. I tried adding some strings at key points in the song where there was space for them, messing up the chords so they felt more jazzy and retro. (This is what has given the song its James Bond overtones.)  Now the song was really coming together. Time for proper vocal takes, some more tweaks and mixing.

After

I released my cover in May 2018, on the Survival album.

Lynz is covering Silver Bird, by the way, and I’ve heard a draft already, with some awesome vocals. Watch this space!