Is that vague feeling enough to start writing a blog post?

No, but here I am typing.

Ironbark continues apace. The title track is coming in at a nifty 18 minutes, all labyrinthine riffs melotron and silliness. Steamlife is arguably more silly, but redeemed by a pop chorus that I've been saving up for well over a decade. The Miser's Will tell's its story well. Being 5 songs that tell one story, complete with recurring musical themes, its essentially another 20 minute work. Which means I've well and truly ticked the prog box.

And then there's the Beast of the Air. That just needs a new vocal and a bit of mixing and it'll be done, ready for the video that we start filming in just over a week.

Whoop I say, for this shall be fun.

Here's a video of Joe testing one of the toys we'll be using.

So another perfectly sensible video to follow the Spinning the Compass one.

Recording is a manic depressive business. I find myself flitting between obsessive, proud and depressed, often in the space of the same few hours as I try to nail down a vocal or guitar solo, create the perfect sound and then realise moments later that it sounds awful. At the moment I can listen to the whole album through and find only one or two things per track to hate, so I suppose I am slowly winning the battle.

I long for the day when I can plug the computer directly into my skull and download the sounds I hear in my brain.

This stands for Fawm Over Party and it was a gathering of people who had taken part in that year's February Album Writing Month. We all gathered together in a pub and played a few songs to each other. Very informal, a little rough around the edges (at least my performances were) but great fun nonetheless.

The lovely Morti (I sang a song on his previous album) has put up some videos, so here's me performing a couple of songs and babbling nonsense, followed by Matt Blick's 'Let's Build an Airport' which I happen to think is a fantastic song.

Greetings!

I have to say I was pleasantly suprised by how many readers of last month's newsletter correctly identified the Lewis Carrol poem in the competition – great to know that so many readers are fans of such unabashed nonsense.

The prize however went to Gary who was first in with the answer. Special mention should also be made of Alison who rather fantastically decided to compose her own following lines rather than merely google the lines I mentioned

This month has been one of ups and downs. Recording has continued apace but I have been sidetracked by my (Shock! Horror!) first bad review (Click here to read) and by the start of both the A Game Of Thrones TV adaptation and the new series of Dr Who. How is one supposed to concentrate when such geeky goodness is available to steal one's time away?

The Album

I'm making real progress on Ironbark. The Easter break gave me time to get a lot of recording done. I had a few difficulties with my voice, which I have documented on my blog (Click here for that) but by and large I'm exceedingly happy with it.

When will it be out?

Well here's the thing – certain bits will be ready before others. The Miser's Will, which is a set of 5 interconnected songs, will be ready before the rest of the album.

In the olden days before all this new-fangled internet nonsense that wouldn't make a difference – the whole thing would need finishing to put onto cd (Or vinyl. Or wax cylinder). While there will eventually be physical CDs of Ironbark available, there's nothing stopping me putting the album out in stages as songs are finished.

So what do you reckon? Should I release The Miser's Will early, or should I hold back and wait for the whole album to be finished? I'm genuinely undecided and could use some feedback.

The Video

Work continues. Joe's experimentation has led to me being molested by a glowing ball of blue energy, and Joe's head exploding.

Click here

Also here

As well as the special effects being more impressive than those for the Spinning the Compass video, the props Joe's building are fantastic and rather wonderful. And very, very silly.

Audio Sketchbook

This month's sketch is a rough draft of a song I wrote last Wednesday. It's provisionally titled 'Cutting up all of our Dreams' and is about scary creatures who come out at night.

Click ye here

Competition

Last week's competition was great fun. Let's make this one non-time related to give everyone a fair chance. As I like my nonsense poetry, we'll stick to that theme.

What are the next two lines after:

    Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
    Thy micturations are to me

I will randomly choose one of the people who correctly replies to recieve this months mp3. Anyone using google to discover the answer will of course have to deal with their own guilty conscience. Answers on a postcard to tomslattermusic AT gmail.com

Tom

PS. Releasing songs in stages rather than all at once when the albums finished? Would love to hear your thoughts.

tomslatter_cuttingupallofourdreams.mp3 Listen on Posterous

Or at least, a demo of the beginning of a song that I wrote in 20 minutes.

Cutting up all of our dreams

They come out when the night falls
And dance in the streetlights,
They crawl out from their hidey-holes when no-one's there to see.

They kiss under the star shine
Play games in the gutters
Sardines and hide and seek while the waking world is gone

If we just let them play away in the night time
They won't come to the places we sleep

They're nothing but a rumour
A glimpse in the distance
the stories of their tails and teeth have never been confirmed

They kiss you when you're sleeping
sing songs that you don't hear
They vanish if you stir, or sigh or call out in your sleep

If we just let them play away in the night time
They won't come to the places we sleep and make mischief
By cutting up all of our dreams

Save us your lies
We all know that they're there
They're all waiting for the night to come
When none of us awake

cartographerapril25.mp3 Listen on Posterous

Day 5

Spent today singing, recording, listening then deleting. Not happy with anything I've been signing at the moment.

Spent a few hours listening to Daniel Gildenlow from Pain of Salvation singing and feeling sorry for myself.

It then occured to me that my best vocal recording has been done when I set up the mics, got things properly sorted before I started then recorded whole takes – the best recordings have been captured when things felt right.

So, tomorrow morning I shall attempt to record with the right feeling.

Let's see if that works.

Day 6

Throat still awful. Didn't sing. Set up room ready for tomorrow though. Hopefully I'll get something good down.

Day 7

Successs!! Huzzah. Today I recorded vocals for 6 of the 8 tracks on Ironbark. I'm not sure if they'll end up being the final, final takes or not, but they sounded good my voice is in okay shape after a week and a bit of rest and practice. More importantly, I'm actually feeling up beat about my singing for the first time in ages.

The mp3 attahced to this blop post is an extract from The Cartographer's tale with vocals I sang today.

Breathing then Scale exercises – Still very scratchy at the top end. Tried recording high pitched section of Ironbark – sounded awful.

Day 3

Breathing, scales, a few songs.
Top end in much better condition to begin with. Recorded lots of vocals for Ironbark – first 20 minutes sounded good, then downhill from there! Stamina still lacking.

Day 4

No singing today, but I listened back to what I recorded yesterday.

Beast of the Air:

Happy with this, a couple of slightly off notes, one or two lines to rerecord, but basically it's done.

Miser's Will Part 1:

Not happy with what I recorded for this at all. The demo I recorded last summer sounded good – C minor was an okay key, and singing so much just above middle C was no strain at all. Yesterday's take of this soundes really strained and forced. I seriously need to work on singing in this range with a relaxed throat – there's way too much tension in this take and it really shows.

Miser's Will part 3:

 80% of this is good – it's all in the lower range which has escaped the ravages of illness and neglect. The only exception is a couple of notes towards the end which are supposed to float up into falsetto but sound too hoarse and forced when they do so.

It's not all bad, there's a lot I can keep from the last recording session, but listening back my voice still isn't where it should be.

Goals:

Work on singing the range just above middle C in a relaxed manner – volume without strain.
Sort out my falsetto – shouldn't sound so hoarse, and I could do with more breathe control here.

In other news, I've recieved a bad review here: http://bit.ly/hnRvgh

My this blog post is negative! It's not all bad really. Honest!

This was bought home to me when I tried recording some vocals for my second solo album Ironbark. Having set up the mic and warmed up a little I found that although my tuning and range where still there, my stamina and tone have really suffered.

There are lots of things that can affect the voice, general fitness and the state of your throat being the most obvious. Although I'm in the best shape I've been for a few years (Thanks to a wonderful and health conscious better half who has been dragging me along to the gym for the last few months) work has been crazy of late. This has left me fatigued and battling off stress-induced ailments that have gone straight for my throat. In fact I actually lost my voice for a few days in March.

Despite having lost my voice I tried singing a short online set and this really bought home to me how much work I need to do.

So today I start working on my voice properly for the first time in years.

To do this I made use of <a href=http://www.thesingthing.com/exercises.htm> The Sing Thing</a> and the Rock'n'Roll Singer's Survival Handbook.

The First Practice

I started with some breathing exercises, followed by some exercises that work the jaw and lips muscles, then onto some actual singing with some scale based exercises.

Apart from not having the stamina I once (that'll come back with practice) I still sound okay. The middle of lower end of my voice are relatively intact.

The problem at the moment is the higher register, notes above the E above middle C. Whether sung falsetto or with my full voice, this area sounds pretty hoarse.

Which is very annoying because there are a couple of passages on the new album that require the use of that range in a rather exposed fashion. Tommorrow I'll start working on these areas as best I can. Illness and tiredness often take away the top part of your voice first, and this range is currently sounding very ragged and unpleasant. Still, onward and, as they say, upward. More practicing tomorrow.

If you've got some favourite vocal exercises to share, please let me know. Always happy to try out something new.

banshee.mp3 Listen on Posterous

A couple of years ago I started writing some songs about outlandish horror-comic characters. I had a song about a banshee, one about the girl who was possessed by demons, another about a werewolf. The project has yet to come to fruition, but you can hear a demo from that project in this post.

At the end you get to hear 3 part vocals in 5/4 timing. Something that all songs should have.

the_making_of_ironbark.pdf Download this file

As you may be aware, I'm currently recording my second solo album.

I've put together a little PDF file to introduce you to the album – it includes some pictures and info about some of the songs. I'll update this regularly as I make progress.

Props and pics from our video shoot. This one will be even more silly the Spinning the Compass

See the full gallery on Posterous