Onwards Slowly

More of a record than anything else: Matt was down a couple of weeks ago, 12-14 October, and we filled in more gaps. Left with apparently 14 tracks in varying versions of completeness. I think we have to start worrying more about mixing than recording - the current versions sound great on headphones, but not very good at all on the stereo.

Made a bunch of two-track bounces of what Matt & I recorded. mostly surprising how bad the singing and mixing is. Have to do something about that. And I uploaded them to myspace, but I'm not telling where.

Recording with Matt

Matt came down for a couple of nights this week, and we used the time to start re-recording a batch of songs from the old Heybabies - stuff we'd recorded before but lots the masters for, or if we had them, well let's say they were demos but not really good enough.
Matt turned up with a list of two album's worth of songs (OK, three if you're happy with only 12-14 songs instead of 20 on each disc) and basically we started at the top and worked down. Got about five or so done - at least the bare bones - before Matt had to head back to Auckland.
Anyway, I have a big list of things to do, but at least some of them now relate to music!
And: given that there are something like 20 variants of "Hey Babies" and 4 or 5 "Doubtful Sounds" already on MySpace and Amplifier, we'll probably need a new name sooner or later.

Kopua

Nuncle came around again to record a more St Cuthbert's songs - especially a series of chants cribbed from the Kopua monastery. Then he mixed the first of many discs down for his music team at St Cuths...

Walsingham

So, sometime last week or the week before (7 July?) I managed to get another evening on protools. Yes, the first time since the burglary. I recorded a version of an old folksong, the Arundel Ballad, about Henry VIII trashing Walsingham Abbey. I found a tune on the interweb, but I didn't like it much so a made up a new one. Not exactly cheerful, let's just say the

Sin is where our Lady sat
Heaven is turned to hell;
Satan sits where our Lord held sway
Walsingam, oh, farewell!

St Cuthbert's Recordings

So - again as a recording diary - on Wednesday 1 July, Nuncle Richard came around to do more St Cuthberts' recordings. I even convinced him to do one overdub on the beautiful Psalm 84 (to "The Faughan Side" or "The Homes of Donegal"). It's not as good as it should be but better than any other versions I found on the web.

and of course it breaks my heart every time I hear it.

Block of Wood II

A reminder that - on or around ANZAC (25 April this year) Nuncle Richard had his concert at St Cuthberts.

He has some friends helping him out, and I was privileged to be one of them. No pix of that though, no recording either.

Block of Wood

So, a couple of weeks ago we all went to stay in Pinehaven with the Tim and the Fi. Also there was their friend Annabel who's a bit of a Geek (15" Mac, iPhone, works with Java). So we talked various geekiness, including iPhone ringtones. And Annabel reminded me that GarageBand integrates with iTunes to make it easy to put ringtones onto the iPhone.

So my ringtone is finally back to where it was a couple of years ago when I smashed my third Sony P800/900 (Ok I think it was 2 P800s and 1 P900).

And it doesn't look good
And I'm feeling like a block of wood
Take me away, I know not where

OK, well actually the tone is just four bars from the intro, but you get the idea.

Recordings

So this blog has been (partly) functioning as a recording diary. And after everything got stolen there wasn't much to record. Recently though we've been able to start again: notably Nuncle who is recording stuff for St Cuthberts.

Today (1 April) was actually his third session; other recordings were on 11 Feb and 11 March. He's recorded about an hour of stuff each time, generally bits and pieces for St Cuth's, but also some lovely original stuff like "Where to Run" and "How Long" which is just great.

* * *

I've also been doing some recording with Matt in Auckland not to any great effect - but this evening I also "remixed" a great U2-ish song of his called "sleep" but putting the pro-tools BOOM drum machine under it (because his version was done with Reason and I don't have Reason any more). But I think a "straighter" version will sounds better: this one is just an oddity.

Kath's got a blog

Katherine has joined blogger - at this rate, it will be facebook in 2020 and twitter in 2030... Kath's blog is at http://keresley.blogspot.com: I'm not sure why it's at that URL but there it is. Her first post is called A Handful of Rubbish but I don't think it's rubbish: rather the opposite.