Recording in Minneapolis… Secret Project

8 09 2009

I’ve been staying in Minneapolis for the last couple of weeks and luckily got the chance to record some awesome music yesterday for a secret project with my friends @ Robot Panic

We went into the session with two lines of a song and a rough idea of where we wanted to go, nothing musically just a slight concept. What followed was frankly the easiest and most fun songwriting session that I’ve ever had the pleasure of being at. Mostly, we’d drink spout some crazy crap, giggling would ensue and more lyrics would get written down.

Writing the Lyrics

Once lyrics got written we’d start discussing over a few pints how the drums and bass should sound and jam around a few ideas until we had a decent song structure that fit the lyrics.

johndrums

bassbass

moebass

So after laying down the drums and bass we had more discussion about how the rest of the song could sound, ideas on guitars, keyboards, vocals, harmony… interesting uses of instruments. Anything was free to discuss and believe me we had some awesome and entirely crazy ideas. From here Hilden started playing with keyboards.

keyboard

From here it was time to record the main vocals and believe me when I say that we couldn’t help but burst into fits of laughter with each and every line recorded. It’s one thing to write some lyrics that are funny but it’s quite another to actually hear them out loud!

vocals

harmony

From here out we started playing with different guitar sounds and added several tracks of rhythm and some solo sections. The highlight for me though was getting to jam with Moe on the Sax… his solo Sax background pieces were… inspiring… but for me the real fun was at the end of the first track that we recorded where we both just let rip and duel solo’d untl the end. Seriously I can’t wait to hear the final mixed result of this!

sax

moephil

guitarsax

Overall I’m more than happy with the recorded results of the two tracks that we did yesterday. I seriously can’t wait for you guys to hear the final results in the near future. I think it’s safe to say already that for fans of the last Shmopera in March will love what we’ve done here. Personally I think we blew that last effort out of the water!

This was easily the most fun and the easiest songwriting session I’ve ever done, a complete pleasure. No ego, no need for ‘band meetings’, just lots of fun and an awesome end product! All being well I’ll be contributing to the next couple of tracks once I get home as I did previously in the Shmopera.


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New Track – Spirits in the Rain

16 08 2009

Ok I’ve been writing some really weird and different stuff over the last few weeks, I’ve had less and less time with a guitar to hand so I’m finding alternate ways to channel my need to write something. This song is a great example what happens when I get an idea in my head and start finding very different ways to approach it and develop it.

The initial idea was recorded on an acoustic guitar and had a really relaxed but haunting feel to it, I really like it.

From that point I had some ideas of using that particular part as the intro and then bringing drums and a distorted guitar behind it for the main track. The main verse if you will would keep the 9th chord tonality and I’d add a couple of extras in there, so we’d be looking at Bm9, G9, Em9, C.

Since stepping away from a guitar over the weekend I was limited to using the software instruments and laptop keyboard with Logic/Garageband to continue writing which as you’ll hear had a unique twist to the style of the song…

I’m not sure at this point which way I’m going to further develop the song, maybe both!

Phil


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Bright Shadows – Intro/melody Video

2 07 2009

I recently posted up a piano/strings version of the song and figured it was about time to show some hints of where the song is going after adding in other instruments and of course the main guitar melody.

As always, it’s very rough and subject to change heavily. The final track currently clocks in at around 8 minutes and has 30 tracks of music… I’m removed most of them for this to make the mix at least slightly clean!

Gear setup is nice and easy, the PRS Custom 24 through a Line-6 Pod Direct to PC. The tone on the POD is pretty straightforward too, a smidgen of delay and reverb, volume pedal for the swells and a slight amount of gain.


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What I’ve been playing

1 07 2009

Ok so I mentioned in a recent post that I was going to attempt to transcribe and learn to play Guthrie Govan’s wonderful track called ‘Fives’. At the time I knew it was a tall order and I still think it is! I envisage this taking several years to play at an acceptable level…

Anyway, I managed to learn the intro and main melodies over the last few days so here’s where I’ve got to so far:

Where that ends off there is a pretty damned scary string skipping ascending tapping riff, which I’ve managed to tab, just not manage to persuade my fingers to do yet ;P


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A Whole load of Black Mages Covers ^^

28 06 2009

Evening all, I bring with me today a whole slew of Black Mages/Nobuo Uematsu covers. Why? Because I can, and if you can then you should.

Videogame music in my opinion is some of the most under appreciated in the world. It always amazes me that both TV and film soundtrack is acceptable to the general public but not games. It is an interesting medium and in my opinion, whilst there are some seriously great composers out there, Uematsu just pushes the boundaries more than most.

When he started up the Black Mages as a Rock Band arranging Final Fantasy music it put a huge smile on my face and frankly 3 albums later they haven’t disappointed me yet.

Force Your Way – Final Fantasy VIII
This is a really fun piece to play from the string-skipping pedal note melody through to the tapping solo and powerful harmonies.

Dancing Mad – Final Fantasy VI
I could have gone with the full piece but it’s very long and not that interesting to watch me standing around during the Pipe Organ solos ^_^ I love this solo though, for some reason it feels kinda David Gilmour even though it really isn’t.

Battle Scene – Final Fantasy VI
Some fun riffs and melodies but most of all I love the whammy bar abuse at the start of the solo.

Eyes On Me/Love Grows – Final Fantasy VIII
Originally sang by Faye Wong, I love the melody so much I decided to do my own arrangement which is sort of a cross between ‘Eyes on Me’ and another track ‘Love Grows’. As a side note, I recorded this early last year on the day I picked up that particular guitar.

Clash on the Big Bridge – Final Fantasy V
I recorded this one last year some point and figured I may as well post it as well. One of my favourite things to play on the guitar. I couldn’t resist playing an extra harmony for the main melody and of course I couldn’t stay quiet over the synth solo. (It’s just too much fun!)


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Recording Drum Tracks

24 06 2009

Evening all, how are you?

I’ve recently been recording some drum roughs for various tracks I’m working on and figured I’d get something up for you all to see. So here we have some short sections from a currently unnamed track that I’m working on that’s pretty much falling into the Jazz/Fusion category.  Sadly, I’m not the greatest drummer about as you’ll see, however these clips really are rough (until I can improve my skillz) so won’t be even close to what you’ll hear on the final recordings.

Also, I love Roland’s V-Drums. Seriously, they are awesome.

I’ve had some nice folk recently asking me about gear via email (philhaymes@hotmail.com) and via my Youtube Channel so I’ll be posting up some stuff shortly.

Back soon,

Phil


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Bear McCreary Live…

21 06 2009

Bear is one of my favourite musicians, period. His work as a composer for TV to date has been phenomenal without exception, showing a distinctive and new style and a complete understanding of how to represent musically what is happening on screen.

Battlestar Galactica was a musical masterpiece from episode to episode right from the start to the final seconds and thankfully a large enough following has grown to get some soundtrack CD’s released and even some live shows.

His band is an interesting one that mixes traditional instruments such as violin with rock guitar and then some really far out ones like taiko drums and duduk’s.The result is a really distinctive sound unlike any other probably in the world so I absolutely recommend you check out the below videos!

All Along the Watchtower – Bear’s awesome reworking of this Bob Dylon/Hendrix classic. Best version out there. This particular version also has a guest appearance from the lovely Katee Sachoff (Starbuck from the show).

Black Market – One of my favourite tracks from the show, great guitars, interesting scales and loads of power.

Lords of Kobol – Featuring Raya on vocals, stunning performance! Mysterious, powerful and suspenseful.


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Album Song: Giant Enemy Pyramid

18 06 2009

Giant Enemy Pyramid (GEP) is currently the intro track to the album and sits at around the 2 to 3 minute length. The name is about as ridiculous as it gets so don’t try to find meaning in it, I merely got a load of cool words then picked 3 at random and this is what came out. Although that being said, the scale and tuning that I’m using doesn’t sound a little mysterious so it fits quite nicely. At one point I even considered renaming the title of the album to this as it’s clearly such an awesome name!

GIANT ENEMY PYRAMID AHEAD!

Song Breakdown

The first thing of note on this track is the tuning of the guitar which is a little odd. I decided to down tune an entire step and then drop the top and bottom strings to C so what you end up with is C G C F A C

I added a Digitech Whammy pedal to thicken up the sound using the octave/+ octave mix setting which gives it a really unique sounding tone that sits somewhere between guitar and sitar! I liked the sound so much that I used it also on the lead parts too.

The song came about after stumbling across the intro notes completely by accident and then just playing them over and over again. I was hooked. So what ended up happening was that I decided to have that being played throughout the entire song with other things happening around it. At one point the intro was roughly 2 minutes of clean guitar solo over this repeating riff before any of the other parts came in. I’m still debating whether or not to include this in the final song.

Towards the end of the song I’ve added a synth melody that finishes everything of and closes out. At first I was a little concerned about doing this but the results I’m hearing tell me I’m doing the right thing.

Here’s a quick MP3 of the intro

Giant Enemy Pyramid Intro

*UPDATE*

Okay after several complaints about having such a short MP3 and requests for more of the song, I’ve gone and recorded a full length video of me playing the song for you all. Please bear in mind that this is a very early demo version of the song and as such many things are rough especially the lead guitar part which I’m still writing (so several areas I’m just noodling over in key). This particular version has a slightly different structure to the one I’m currently working on and lacks the synth solo at the end.

So here it is – enjoy! (And please feel free to leave comments or email me with your thoughts! philhaymes@hotmail.com)


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What I’m Reading: Zen Guitar

15 06 2009

Zen DojoWelcome to the Zen Dojo, please leave the door open:

“Combining the ancient wisdom of the East with the most popular Western Instrument, Zen Guitar presents a path to spiritual fulfillment for music lovers of all kinds.” – Philip Toshio Sudo (author)

I picked this book up last week whilst browsing in Waterstone’s book store in Leeds. It’s an interesting book in that it doesn’t provide a single bit of sheet music, a single exercise or really instruct you to do anything specific with a guitar. Rather, it gives you a method of how to approach playing the guitar based upon aspects of Zen philosophy, asking that you focus more on how you think when playing guitar.

The first thing that the book does is explain the attitude that you are now a white belt. The concept is similar than that of the path of enlightenment: to move forward you need to admit that you don’t know and then you’ll be ready for learning. The book then discusses several attitudes, missteps and approaches when playing guitar; relating them to the way of Zen.

As a continually learning guitarist, I find that it is always good to learn from as many sources as possible which is what makes this book very appealing in its non-method approach to teaching. Whilst this won’t directly improve my playing, what it will do is change my approach to learning and my attitude to playing which can be equally valuable.

A quick lesson from the book:

“Pick up your Guitar” Means two things in this Dojo. First, for those of you who do not yet have a guitar, it means to go into the world and find the instrument that’s waiting for you, the one you are meant to play. The second thing I mean by “pickup your guitar” concerns the way you phyiscally take it in to your hands. Don’t pick up your guitar aimlessly. Act with a sense of purpose. Be of the mind that you’re going to do something – even if you know what that is yet , prepare yourself to play. Maybe you want to noodle on it while watching TV. Remember the guitar is an instrument – a thing by means of which something is done. Keep this in mind every times you reach for it. When you pick it up, pick it up.

It will be a while before I fully understand some of the concepts proposed throughout the book, but I’m sure that some of these ideas will become valuable in changing my approach to learning. It’s only a short book but definitely a recommended read.

What could be more suited for an aspiring Ninja Guitarist?

Phil





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What I’m Listening To

15 06 2009

Here are some of the fine folk that I’m listening to lately for inspiration:

Guthrie Govan: Erotic Cakes

My tutor Dave pointed me at Guthrie a little while back and I was blown away. Guthrie is probably the best guitarist on the planet from any standpoint, mastering pretty much every style as if he’d been playing it for 50 years. After a watching a few Youtube Vids, I very quickly picked up his album, Erotic Cakes and was mesmerized from the start to the finish. I can’t recommend buying this enough and if you aren’t convinced already then watch the following Youtube clip of Guthrie doing some improv over a Larry Carlton style backing track. Then go watch a few more vids and do yourself and Guthrie a favor – buy the album – you won’t regret it!

George Benson: Collection

I’d always been intruiged to hear George as his guitar was one of the 3 Ibanez Y2K signatures that my own Jem DNA belongs to. I found this album in a record store on Saturday for the measly price of £1 so couldn’t pass up the opportunity and thankfully I wasn’t dissapointed. Great guitarist, great musician and totally inspiring.

Chris Cornell: Carry On

I’m a huge fan of Chris’s work in Audioslave and Soundgarden, the guy has one of the best voices in music in my opinion! I’ve picked up all 3 of his solo efforts but this particular album really stands out and begs to be listened to constantly. This almost became the soundtrack of my life whislt spending time working in Russia last year and I haven’t stopped listening to it since. Each track has the perfect dose of rhythm, riff and melody with some truley great lyrics and vocal performances by Chris. It also features a unique cover of Michael Jackson’s ‘Billy Jean’ as well as the Casino Royale theme ‘You know my Name’.

Metallica: Death Magneitc

Everyone needs some metal in their life whether they know it or not and Metallica knows best how to deliver it. Seriously this is a great album from start to finish and has some of the most fun guitar riffs known to mankind in there. I’ve had a great time transcribing most of this album over the last few months!

Dire Straits: On Every Street

Ironically, even as a huge Dire Straits/Mark Knopfler fan I never really got into this album but I picked it up again a couple of weeks back on iTunes and it has me hooked. I guess that since I started exploring other styles of guitar myself such as Jazz, Fusion and Blues, this album really speaks to me on a level that it couldn’t previously. Album high for me is ‘Planet of New Orleans’, such an atmospheric piece of music.

Seether: One Cold Night (Live)

I was first introduced to Seether via the soundtrack for 1080 Snowboarding a few years back and the included song ‘Fine Again’ just instantly resonated with me. I immediately went out and picked up their first album on the back of it and was treated to many awesome songs of equal quality. I saw this Live album whilst browsing through CD’s at the weekend and had to pick it up. It’s an Acoustic set and includes many of my favourite songs including ‘Fine Again’, ‘Plastic Man’, ‘Driven Under’ and ‘Broken’.

Here’s a Youtube clip from that set:


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