With the Rider Came the Storm

So, as planned, finished up two in-progress songs this weekend, here's the first. I always loved the soundtracks created by Ennio Morricone for 70s Westerns, so I headed off to recreate something similar (all without going back to listen, so just from the impressions in my memory).

Got a chance to put the new Aerodyne Jazz bass through it's paces, and used both the Strat and the Tele for the guitars (and the Ovation for the acoustic of course).

After some consideration, I did decide to add brass and some "nonsense sound" vocals, as those were part of my impressions I had floating about and it wouldn't have seemed right to try without them!

To turn mp3 into mp4, added a couple of screen shots from Red Dead Redemption 2, another part of the inspiration for diving into this too; one screenshot run through the excellent FotoSketcher for extra atmosphere.

Enya Morricone

So last weekend I added Omnisphere to my collection of soft synths, which sparked a weekend of instrumental stuff. I called the weekend Enya Morricone weekend, as I had one Enya style track I started, and one Ennio Morricone style western track.

Through the course of the week, I started another Celtic-style instrumental, though purely guitar based.

And I also picked up and worked more on the western-style instrumental, have it all mapped out and recorded, will just wait a bit and give it some polish before calling it done.

Writing and recording ain't very photogenic - so here's a shot from Red Dead Redemption 2, through FotoSketcher

The western instrumental goes by the name "With the Rider Came the Storm", still playing with it this weekend, we'll see if it gets to a point that is somewhat done - I'm optimistic!

I decided it was time to upgrade my bass. Not my main instrument, so I didn't need anything flash, just a good, solid workhorse, with the Precision and Jazz pickups in it. After some consideration I went with...

… a Fender Aerodyne Jazz bass. Made in Japan, so solid workmanship if "nuthin' fancy" and just in the sweet spot of quality vs price, with the right range of sounds. Looks pretty snazzy too! Picked it up on Friday Nov 16th from the Guitar Center in Nashville, as wanted to try it out before purchase, not being familiar with it. Already it's in use on "Awake.." and "Rider.." so maybe y'all will get to hear it soon!

Have a good one!
   Tom

Echoes of travelin' times 4

Sure has been a lot of travel in recent months! Which means I am still catching up with some photos from those trips - only up to Vegas (I think I mentioned Chicago last time, but Chicago is coming up next). About to add more this coming week, with a trip to Venice.

I kind of expect to see Batman somewhere in this photo (yes yes, I know, Gotham was his stomping ground and not Vegas, but still).

To wrap up, for those interested, I used the free program FotoSketcher (https://fotosketcher.com/) to add a bit of extra interest to my Vegas snapshots. Check it out!

Cheers!
   Tommy

Echoes of travellin' times 3

Still playing catch up with some photos from recent travels, this time some shots from Vienna. We've got Vienna from the air as I flew in, the Metropol theater, the hotel street, the B72 bar, and a restaurant I forget the name of. I'll just intersperse those amongst the post!

The next one to catch up with will be the Chicago trip photos - and then I'll be having a new set of photos from Venice as heading there in a little over a week (don't expect canals though, ironically!)

Cheers!
   Tommy

Echoes of Travellin' Times 2

Catching up on some of my recent travels! Back in August, I was over to Europe and back via Vegas, so we'll start in Sofia, Bulgaria.

I was only there for about 24 hours - should have been more like 48, but the first leg of my flight to Chicago was delayed and delayed, and eventually I ended up leaving via a different route on the next day (which got me there faster than leaving via Chicago on the same day as planned).

Had the chance on the one evening there to catch some live music, a fusion of jazz and traditional Bulgarian music. Not often I see a Telecaster and an accordion in action together :) There were also samples of the traditional music being triggered up-front there, to make for a unique sonic palette!

Getting around in these other cities often seems much easier than here in Nashville ;) I do love public transport in all it's forms! This is a flash forward to Vienna, more on that next time.



I do love gear and sounds! This last week, the folks over at Soundtoys had a sale on Crystallizer, which I'd tried out on demo some time back but was a bit too pricey back then for quite a specific effect - but was perfect at the sale price! It's kind of an echo / reverb with pitch shifting, so you can get the shimmer reverb for instance, as well as a range of other unique and creative effects.

Have a good one!
    Tommy

Travellin' Times

Busy couple of weeks, and more coming up!

I'll be off over to Europe, then back via a few days in Vegas, starting tomorrow, so will be out of commission for the next 10 days or so. So I have crammed in a bunch of stuff before heading off!

Software

Since I am still making use of TuneSmith, I did the right thing and purchased Rhyme Genie - maybe I could have kept on using TuneSmith for free, but heck, if I am finding it useful, the creator deserves their payment!

After some frustration with reverbs that come with my amp sim software / with Cubase, I demo'ed lots from Valhalla, and settled on the awesome Valhalla Vintage Verb. Amazing price at only $50 for such high quality reverbs, and was hard to choose just one - will likely add more to my arsenal later on though. It got used on "Diamonds and Pearls" :)

Then just today I purchased Reel ADT from Waves as it was on sale at $29 - vocal doubling / thickening is another thing that I've never quite got to my satisfaction, and was something I particularly wanted for the work tape of that when the time comes around. I tried out the demo and really liked it, once again it solved something I'd always wanted to do but hadn't found a way of doing!

And that's it for now! Got to go pack :)

Carded

Did you know

So long as your sound recording AND the music and lyrics have the same copyright holders, you can submit to the U.S. Copyright Office and cover both in one application, as a Sound Recording application. Can save the time, paperwork and cost of two submissions. See this document for details.

Frettie

It's been my pleasure to help out recently with some videos for the awesome songwriter community, Frettie. In this case, I've been making some videos to show how to sign up and get the most from the website - if you are a songwriter, be sure to check it out!

If you want to know the kind of thing you get access to, then there are two awesome "Know The Row" events coming up this month, which you can join if you are not a Frettie member - but if you are a member, you get access to those for free (both live and in recorded form if you can't make the date and time).

I also had the pleasure of meeting up with host and mastermind and owner of Frettie, songwriter Brent Baxter, earlier on this month too!

TuneSmith

If you're like me, and you write melody or chords, you'll likely find yourself firing up the voice recorder on your phone and recording a snippet of a tune, some words, or some chords. The problem is, how do you keep track of all that stuff and find the things that are worth actually continuing work with?

I'm trying out TuneSmith, which so far seems pretty awesome! I move the files off my phone (or tablet), and then I get a list of files that usually just have a date as their file name as they never got far enough to have an actual title or subject.

I can then just create a new song on TuneSmith, drop the file in there, and add my notes in the lyric section (and the lyrics if there are any, of course). I then sneak in an "R1" to "R5" where R5 is "Ok wow that sounds really cool" and R1 is "Hmm yeah what was I thinking when I recorded that?" - then a quick search of the lyric field will highlight the songs at that rating.

With audio, notes, lyrics, chords, and rating all in one place, it makes looking through those scruffy notes much easier.

And of course TuneSmith goes further, and you can add your co-writers, publishers, track when and where each song was submitted, whether it got cut and so on, which is really what it is for - but hey, it turns out to be great for organizing your notes too! PS, it's free, though if you want to use Rhyme Genie you'll have to pay for that side of it.

Carded

Now I'm in Nashville, where there is a thriving music scene, it was time to create some business cards. They came out rather nice I thought, good to see the logo worked well there! I used GotPrint if anyone is looking for printing their own cards, the price was good (I didn't go for any fancy options!) and they turned up really fast.

Songs

Thanks to TuneSmith, I've also been able to find a couple of other interesting audio notes and have started developing those to see if they turn into something.

Paperwork

A busy week, had to dive in and sort out copyrights and registration on BMI for a co-write. Would be easy enough, but slightly complicated by the fact that this was a song that existed before and has been rewritten in the co-write, so had to untangle how that works! As part of that, finally registered with BMI as a publisher as well as a songwriter.

Cheers!
   Tommy