5090 Songwriting

Okay, following on from FAWM (February Album Writing Month), the organisers also do 5090, the challenge for which is to write 50 songs in 90 days.

I’m there with the same username carried over from FAWM, and I have 4 song lyrics written – no demo recorded yet though …

http://5090.fawm.org/fawmers/paulmilne/

Radio Druid

The nice chap who runs Radio Druid has put some of my songs into the playlist. Have a listen, there are plenty of nice tunes on it.

In addition, there’s the Druidcast podcast, produced monthly, music and interviews. A new one is just out. Also available from iTunes.

I wrote six songs in February – yay!

Thanks to “February Album Writing Month” (or FAWM, as it’s more colloquially known), I’ve been inspired to write 5 new songs plus one I’d just written before I learned about it. So that makes six songs in Feburary! Yippee! Okay, they are not all gonna win a Grammy, but it has been fun and listening to the brand new music of others is a humbling experience.

Check out my songs, but don’t stop there. Explore the links at the top and hear some top comteporary music – maybe a bit bit rough around the edges, but you heard it here first.

FAWM rock on!

http://fawm.org/fawmers/paulmilne/

I am sorry to inform you

Despite having the loan of an electric guitar for a couple of months now, I have still not managed to do any songs.

But I do have a decent mike, and though I’ll have to give the guitar back, I’m still hoping to re-record some of my music.

In the meantime, enjoy this link to the Bardic Blog, and a video about the awesome rock power of the 4 chord progression.

http://damh.wordpress.com/2009/01/27/the-power-of-four-chords/

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Developments

Well, my neighbour with the musical equipment has left for sunnier climes until February, and I now have the use of all his gear, including electric guitar, good condenser mic and audio input box with phantom power (for the mic). He also said I could come over to his house and use it there instead of transporting everying over to mine, so instant recording studio as well. No excuses now.

We were over at their house last night, and his partner asked me if I had written some new songs, and it made me realise I haven’t written anything at all lately apart from scraps of the novel. Last song was written at Beltaine (The Running of the Deer) and the last poem – okay, The Blue Dog was pretty recent, but the creative output has not been prolific, shall we say.

That makes me sad because writing creatively is what keeps me going in life, I really enjoy it and think the fruits of my labours are on the whole pretty good. I don’t know what it will take to get me to start living the dream.

Equipment is arriving

At last I am starting to get my recording equipment organised. I now have two pieces in place: a cheap pickup for my guitar and my M-Audio Fast Track USB input box. And it works, hooray! Now I need to get a vocal mike sorted out, and I will be ready to rock and roll.

I’ve also bought two books to help me understand what I want to do:

David Pogue’s Garage Band 2: The Missing Manual

Fred Sokolow’s Fretboard Roadmaps: The Essential Guitar Patterns That All the Pros Know and Use

Pogue’s book has arrived and I can see the danger already – the temptation will be to play around with the software instead of actually using it to do something useful. Hopefully the fun factor will  get me going with it. I’ve already taught myself a little trick just mucking about: lay down a rhythm track of some kind, (bass or percussion) to play and sing along to, even if you don’t intend to use it in the final song. It just helps you stay on the beat consistently, instead of randomly slowing down and speeding up over the course of the song, as is my wont!

Sokolow’s book hasn’t arrived yet, but the reviews on Amazon indicate it is the book I need to take my guitar playing to the next level. I’ve noodled around with chords and such for years and years, but it’s a bit, well, boring to listen to (imho), so hopefully I’ll be able to add a little musical interest the songs I’ll be putting up.

Now I just have to get my vocal mic and I can start laying down the songs. I’ll keep you posted.

Equipment and lyrics

A couple of things.

I got an email saying my M-Audio Fast Track thing has been dispatched, so it looks like a fun weekend ahead.

I tweaked a lyric to one of my favourite songs, “Living on the Coast“. I never liked the last verse very much, the line, “The sea breeze that blows through your honey hair / is the same breeze that blows across my lips” just never sounded right, I mean a breeze blowing across your lips just sounds a bit odd, a bit, well, like your looking for a rhyme, ya know what I mean? So I’ve changed the verse as follows:

I don’t know if we’ll ever kiss each other’s lips again
Or ever feel our fingers interlace
But the sea breeze that blows through your honey hair
Is the same breeze that blows across my face

Better, don’t you think?

Change of music site

I have moved my music from the file store website “Fileden” to a music website “purevolume“. Thus links from here will lead to the music page on the Pure Volume, where you will be able to play the music or download it.

Music news

I have finally bitten the bullet and am buying some equipment to get my songs “properly” recorded (early Christmas presents…).

Following my friend Tim Riley’s advice, I have bought an M-Audio Fast Track audio input device, and a fairly cheap pickup for my guitar to be getting on with. I figure this can be upgradable if I feel the need.

The next step is to get a mike sorted out. I have a unidirectional dynamic mike, but I need to find out if it’s mono or stereo or if it matters. It has a 3.5 mm jack, which i will need to get an adapter for to plug it into the above-mentioned M-Audio box. The adapters don’t cost much, but the one I’ve seen says specifically it will work for any stereo mike with a 3.5 mm jack. If I need to get a new mike, I won’t bother getting the adapter, but I don’t want to have to spend any more money than necessary at the moment. I’ll keep you posted on how I get on. Shouldn’t be long now before new arrangements of some of the songs start appearing…

My novel

I have posted 2 parts of my novel in progress, “Newhame”, and am now not going to put any more chapters up. I’m going to concentrate on finishing it and getting it published one way or another, either traditionally or by an electronic print on demand service like Lulu.

I appreciate all the positive comments people have made, and I’ll leave up the chapters already posted.

Hopefully I’ll be able to return to poetry and music as well over the winter and post some new works.

I’ll keep you posted on the progress of the novel.

Music

After thinking about my online life for awhile now, I am scaling back a bit. I want to keep my current stock of creative work up, but I am going to remove the majority of the music files, as I don’t think they are all that great. I’ll leave up the last three works, “Year of Jubilo”, “Snowdrops”, and “The Running of the Deer” as I think these come across okay, but I will probably put them up on a different web site than where they are now.

I’m going to try to re-record the others in the meantime, and the lyrics to all will stay up.

Thanks for the support of those who have enjoyed the music.

Recommended new WordPress Blogging Tool

For all my friends on WordPress, check out this tool for posting web stuff to your WordPress blog with the greatest ease:

“Blogging is about more than sharing your ideas. It’s about sharing your discoveries: quotes, images, videos, announcements from awesome blogs like this one. And it’s about doing it quickly.

Collect and share bits of the web easier and faster than ever with Press This, the new WordPress bookmarklet”

Press This Bookmarklet « WordPress.com.