Day 1

Nine of the eleven songwriters are now here – our final two, Nuala and Ziggy, arrive later today. For the first full day we started with a discussion of last night’s task, which was simply for everyone to write ten titles and then discuss with the group how they might be developed further into lyric ideas and eventually complete songs.

This was followed by a lecture in which we discussed some of the techniques, challenges and pitfalls of the songwriter’s creative process, and some playback of existing songs, including Rodger and Amy’s song ‘Renegade Fishermen‘ from 2007 (a word-setting task), plus some pop songs including Sarah Bareilles’ Love Song, The Beatles’ Yesterday, George Formby’s Little Ukulele and various other songs that came up in conversation.

And then onward to the first full task, which is to separate lyric-writing and lyric ’setting’ (i.e. writing the music). Each songwriter is to write a lyric in its entirety, and then pass it on to another songwriter for completion. This is the simplest form of collaboration because it doesn’t involve any negotiation; some songwriters find it very liberating to write music for a pre-existing lyric, although some have difficulty with writing a lyric with the knowledge that they have no control over how it’s going to sound.

Our week at Barncrosh Farm coincides with the terrible Nov 2009 weather that hit Cumbria and to some extent our current location – Dumfries and Galloway. 30 roads are reported closed, so we may end up with more songwriting time than we planned!

Burnsong 2009 - if you look up from your lyric-writing pad, you may find yourself playing stare-out with a llama.

Burnsong starts next week. I’ll be spending a week working with Chris Blanden and ten songwriters at a remote Scottish farmhouse in Dumfries (with resident llamas!), followed by a gig at the Scottish Parliament on 30th Nov, which is to be broadcast by the BBC. It’s a daunting thought that the songs we’re going to play haven’t actually been written yet but there’s something energising about rehearsing a band set at this speed!

The winners have been identified, and we’ve heard the initial songs (i.e. the ones written before the event). Here’s a list of the people we’ll be working with.

Fiona J Mackenzie
The first Gaelic speaking winner of Burnsong, Fiona J Mackenzie is a native of Morayshire, lives in Dingwall and is well known as a Scottish Gaelic singer and teacher. In 2004 Fiona was nominated and won the BBC Scotland Traditional Music Personality of the year. Well known for pushing the boundaries of Gaelic song, she is unafraid of experimenting with styles and genres as well as being passionate about her desire to make the learning of Gaelic language & song as accessible to as many people as possible.
www.fionamackenzie.org

Andy Tucker
Andy Tucker is an Edinburgh-born singer/songwriter. Formerly of The Dead Beat Club Andy is now singing with The Scattered Family – a broad musical collective of musicians from all over Scotland. Over the last few years, Andy has shared a bill with the likes of The Beautiful South, Seasick Steve, Angus & Julia Stone, Ian McNabb, Kim Edgar, Karine Polwart and Martin Stephenson playing everywhere from Portmahomack to New York’s east village.
http://www.myspace.com/thescatteredfamily

Yvonne Lyon
Singer-songwriter Yvonne Lyon is among the best and brightest emerging talent currently from Scotland. She has recently received national radio support and is winning over many new fans with her strong, creative melodies, demonstrating a voice that can be both fragile and intense. Yvonne has consistently drawn and stirred crowds across the UK with her emotive performances.
http://www.myspace.com/yvonnelyonmusic

Roberto Cassani
Scots-Italian Roberto Cassani sings his stories with lots of humor and a curious Scottish-Italian accent. Roberto is a in parts bit poet, a bit troubadour, a bit of circus clown. A superb songwriter and a master entertainer, Roberto Cassani is cheering up audiences nationally and internationally, as well as getting radio play and featuring in some of the most prestigious festivals around.
http://www.myspace.com/robertocassanimusic

Alex Hodgeson
A previous Burnsong winner in 2005, Alex has gone on to perform as far afield as South Africa and Malaysia. He also regularly performs at cultural events around Scotland. Alex Hodgson lives in Prestonpans with his wife Isobelle and two children. By day, Alex is a technician at Preston Lodge High School.
http://www.myspace.com/songwriteralexhodgson

Nuala Kennedy and Ziggy Campbell
Nuala and Ziggy met in the Burnsong Songhouse in Nov 2007.  They immediately struck up an affinity and wrote several tunes together during their tenure. This year they have played incendiary sets at the Edinburgh Art Festival and at the Big Tent Festival in Fife. Nuala also accompanied Ziggy in a sell out performance playing alongside his latest BAFTA nominated sound installation, Cybraphon. Both have their own busy gigging schedule with their own acts but continue to write and play together.
http://www.myspace.com/nualakennedy http://www.myspace.com/ziggycampbell

Lisa Rigby
Lisa was born in England in 1974 and moved to Scotland when she was 8 years old. With family roots that are an Afro-Caribbean-Celtic, she describes herself as “ A Scot of the world!” Lisa is currently part of Edinburgh band Townhouse, that was picked as a finalist of Radio Forth’s Forth One to Watch competition this year. Lisa was also a previous Burnsong finalist in 2007.
http://www.myspace.com/lisa_rigby

Marie Claire Lee
Glasgow based songwriter Marie Claire Lee has supported among others the likes of Mercury prizewinner Julie Feeney, world-renowned Ojos de Brujo and, more recently, rising stars Mr Kil.  Marie Claire currently plays with The Lotus Project and Engine7. Recent gigs include The Edinburgh Fringe Festival Mannifest Festival (Isle of Man) and a live session on BBC Scotland Radio Vic Galloway Late Live show.
http://www.myspace.com/marieclairelee

A.J Roach
A. J. Roach was raised Scott County, Virginia. The relentless touring and recording schedule that A. J. has kept since 2003 has paid off. In 2004, he was the General Category recipient of the Chris Austin Songwriting Award at MerleFest in Wilkesboro, NC. In 2006 his sophomore full-length album reached the number 1 spot on the Euro-Americana Music Chart. In 2007 his song, ‘Black Lung’ was included on a compilation album that was thrice nominated for Grammy Awards by the Recording Academy, and in 2009 A. J. was selected as an Emerging Artist at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival. A. J. currently lives in Brooklyn, NY where he is working on his third full-length album.
http://www.myspace.com/ajroach

Emily Elbert
Emily Elbert joins Anthony as another of the first winners of the Burnsong International Song Contest. Raised in Texas on a musical diet of Antonio Carlos Jobim, James Taylor and oldies radio, 20 -year old Emily has a passionate, self-taught approach to her song writing. Emily has toured extensively throughout the United States, opening for artists ranging from G. Love & Special Sauce to Richie Havens. She is currently a student of Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.
http://www.myspace.com/emilyelbert

Yes, I know the blog’s been a bit quiet lately. The studio has actually been quite busy with the Widcombe project and a couple of small freelance things, but mainly I’ve been preparing for a lot of commitments and events outside Bath in November. I’ve started the songwriting PhD (at Surrey) and had an initial meeting with my supervisor, Prof Allan Moore. The working title of the PhD is ‘investigating creative interactions in collaborative songwriting’ and I’ve been reading background materials for my initial literature review. I’ll probably post some more detail soon about the PhD for any interested songwriters or other musicians & academics – I’m hoping that the blog will be useful in this respect, because I want to (continue to) amass a comprehensive list of songwriting-related contacts, publications and interviews etc. So it’s always great to hear any recommendations that people may have for songwriting books or analyses – or, for that matter, any experienced collaborators who want to find out more about the study. There seems to be only one book that deals specifically with collaborative songwriting – Walter Carter’s The Songwriter’s Guide To Collaboration. Not that the PhD is going to be exclusive academic – it will involve interviews with songwriters and a lot of actual co-writing (it combines musicology and composition).

Part of the work involves investigating the psychology of creativity, in musicians and others, so it’s fortuitous that there’s a conference next week at Surrey about this very subject.

We're buying a stairway to Scotland

And I’m gearing up for a week in Scotland at the end of November working on the Burnsong project. Burnsong is a Scottish (Arts Council) organisation that promotes songwriting – not the songs of Burns himself, but of the values and beliefs he expressed in his work. They run an international songwriting competition, and the ten winning songwriters spend a week writing and recording at a remote farmhouse in Dumfries. We’re then going to perform the songs at a one-off gig (on 30th Nov) at the Scottish Parliament building, which will be broadcast by BBC Radio Scotland. Apparently we’re setting up the whole band on the staircase pictured – I’m intrigued!

Producer Chris Blanden and I worked on the Burnsong project back in 2007 (the songwriting venue was the same, but the 2007 gig was at BBC Glasgow). For 2009, the whole Burnsong event promises to be larger in scale, due partly to the fact that 2009 is the 250th anniversary of Robert Burns’ birth. We’ve already heard the winning songs, and there’s some good stuff there, from traditional Scottish folk music to acoustic singer-songwriters, and (I kid you not) a plate-smashing song. I’m planning to blog the project every day anyway (as we did in 2007), and as before will try to get as many MP3s and lyrics online as possible; it’s possible that the project will generate 50+ songs (10 writers, 7 days) and Chris is pretty adept at producing good-quality acoustic demos from the first playback sessions.

Until I meet these men I am unable to get into the studio.

And now some bad news. I’m locked out of the studio! Rainwater found its way into the wood of the exterior door, which has now swelled so much that I can’t get it open. Hoping for some dry weather, and that it will shrink a little, so I can book a Man With A Plane. And a guitar recording project came in this week with a 7-day turnaround. So I’m going to do this using Chris’ help and a mobile recording setup. Which, as he says, kinda proves the point that we, er, don’t need studios any more…

The K6 restoration continues (see phone box category or follow from the original post). Carl has now restored the replacement roof – here’s a photo walkthrough of him fitting it (more about Carl and the restoration business at his website).

Mine's the grey one in the corner - primed and welded.

Moving the box into place.

Higher...

..and higher...

...and higher still...

Carl manouvres the roof into place.

On it goes...

A snug fit!

And here's the view from inside - the cable channel for the ceiling light.

The studio has been busy since its completion. Or rather, its near-completion. Everything is sorted technically so I have 16 simultaneous inputs available, 12 of which have valve pres via the M1F. Howard will be returning soon to fit the XLR wall plates and do the relevant soldering.

Remember the holes that Artis drilled for the cables?

So in the absence of wall plates I’m just poking XLRs through the holes in the walls (which are now the only route that sound can travel between the rooms – a pretty clear example of how effective the studio’s soundproofing is).

The studio will have three main functions – a recording/co-writing space for commercial song projects and work relating to my Songwriting PhD; a production facility for the CDs that go on the cover of my guitar books (e.g. the next book in the Complete Junior Guitarist series); and, er, everything else – i.e. whatever other musical opportunities arise that sound fun or interesting. In this third category I’ve undertaken three projects recently – a Techno remix of a James Taylor song, a community-based recording of some local people’s original songs, and (mainly to test out multiple drum mic-ing) a prog-rock drum session for a couple of CM graduates, Chris and Tom.

The Guitar book

The Complete Junior Guitarist was published in Sept 2009 and early indications are that it’s doing OK in the shops. The people at Music Sales tell me that there’s a dearth of good-quality guitar teaching material aimed around ‘Key Stage 2′ (i.e. junior school kids aged 8-11), so this is the book I’ve tried to write – not patronisingly full of pictures of anthropomorphic cartoon animals as younger starter books can be, but not based on particular bands, styles or artists, as more teen-focused books often are. So the book ended up quite ’serious’ but I think this matter-of-fact editorial tone is what a lot of kids this age like to read. What I’ve avoided (I hope) is ‘dumbing down’ of the audio (there are 52 tracks on the cover CD including backing tracks for all the pieces, and I used live session players for bass and drums rather than compromise by programming the kit part). The book also focuses on short melodic pieces, as opposed to chords, which are much more difficult for the beginner – I’ve never understood why some guitar books do this.

I’m hoping to write book 2 in the series during 2010, and the home studio will enable me to try out ideas for the next book’s cover CD without worrying about the ‘meter running’ pressures of hired studio space or players’ time (although, as before, there will always be a pro drummer on the final session – I’m not going to be a good enough kit player any time soon).

Thanks BTW to everyone who helped me to choose the title for the book (see previous blog entry) – Complete Junior Guitarist won the day, which has the added advantage of making this book the first result when these three words are typed into Google.

Song for Widcombe

A guitarist mic'd up (with an SE100 condenser) during one of the Widcombe project song sessions.

In an earlier post I mentioned the Song For Widcombe community project, and the song I submitted ‘Widcombe Rising’. Since then I’ve gotten to know the lovely people involved in the Widcombe Association and become generally more interested in Mummers‘ plays and songs. The association wants to put together a CD of its top 10 ‘finalist’ songs, and I listened to some of the original demos, which were varying in quality depending on the kind of recording kit each songwriter had access to (some only existing in sheet music form). Given my views on Performance vs Songwriting, it seemed only fair that none of the other songs on the album should be compromised by a technically poor demo – so I agreed to run some studio sessions for those writers who didn’t have access to decent recording kit. The motive for this wasn’t entirely altruistic – I need to test the studio as much as possible to check the signal paths and get to know the patchbay, layout, ergonomics etc… plus the sound of the room, mics & speakers. And given the varied collection of instruments that Mummers’ songs may include (concertina, fiddle, melodion/accordion, piano, recorder, flute, piccolo, bass drum, bodhrán, guitar, upright bass, banjo, and multiple male and female voices) this was the perfect opportunity.

Here are a few descriptions of the ensembles we’ve done already – there’ll be a playback session of these and others in Widcombe in a couple of weeks. I won’t post MP3s for now, as I don’t have permission from the writers to do so, but hopefully this will be forthcoming once the project is over; you may also be able to download the tracks from iTunes at some point in the future.

• 4-part male voice folk choir and bass drum
• G&S-style piano and male voice
• Piano, guitar, sampled Tuba and male voice
• Folk band including concertina, piccolo banjo, floor tom, snare, recorder, fiddle, guitar and multiple voices
• Folk band including programmed kit, electric bass, sampled fiddle, accordion and tin whistle, guitars, multi-tracked male voices, handclaps and tambourine

At the other end of the musical spectrum (or certainly some distance along it) I did a session yesterday for a couple of Bath Spa graduates who needed to do some drum tracking for a ‘prog’ album. We did a deal – they get a day’s free recording time, and I get to use their (excellent) drummer Tom on a future session for no fee. Traditional community bartering… perhaps all this olde worlde folky-ness is affecting me more than a little…

Tom does some drum tracking in the dry room. An unusual drummer - no rack toms, and two hi-hats.

Chris puts down a vocal and guitar take in the control room.

Techno Techno

Finally, here’s a mix of a track I did a couple of weeks ago with a old mate from my days at Future Publishing. He’s a fan of classic Techno (and knows much more about it that I do) but has always had a soft spot for James Taylor (the songwriter, not the jazzer). So here’s our remix-in-progress of JT’s Shower The People (You Love With Love). It’s turned out a little more ’70s Disco than ’90s Techno – I blame the off-beat handclaps on the intro. The track is, of course, doomed to unreleased commercial obscurity, considering its obvious and constant use of uncleared samples of a well-known recording, but hey – it was fun. And James – if you’re reading this, hope you forgive us for timestretching you up to 130BPM.

Shower Thee People MP3 (JB & DR remix)

Buy the original on iTunes

Any regular readers of this blog will know about the pub quiz audio rounds I put together occasionally for a quiz in London (see the quiz category). This week’s concept is entitled ‘Boy Meets Girl’ – we’ve created 10 boy/girl ‘couples’ represented by an audio excerpt from a well-known song. No points for the names (obviously), but one point for getting the artist. 10 couples – 20 questions. All the names are edited together without a gap (and I try to match key/barline where possible) so you need to concentrate!

Average score on this one is around 15 out of 20. Let me know how you did – either by commenting on this post or on Facebook/email.

Boy Meets Girl Quiz – 1MB MP3

Carl writes…

Fortunately the broken section of transom rail was with the kiosk when ‘Kelly the Crane’ brought it over [from Derbyshire] to Norfolk. It was the missing piece of the jigsaw & fit perfectly; however it had to be thoroughly stripped of paint & rust before I could could ‘operate’!

After buzzing a ‘36′ pad over the broken section & grinding a ‘V’ in both this & the structural transom rail I was ready to re-align. In order to aid perfect alignment of the section when welding, I drilled a hole through the broken section & the corner pillar. The broken section’s hole was enlarged & countersunk. The hole in the corner pillar’s top was threaded with a 5/16 Whitworth ‘taper tap’. A countersunk steel screw was nipped tight between the sections prior to welding. This screw will remain in situ & be coated with body filler creating the correct aesthetics.

After welding, the ‘36′ pad was used to ‘dress’ the weld; this ensures the weld trail is flush to the surrounding surfaces.

The original K6 on arrival at 'kiosk hospital' - note the damaged roof.

You’ll recall that the roof was damaged. Carl has found a replacement unit – here’s an excerpt from his latest email;

…with the old damaged roof free from the K6 it was an ideal time to ensure the replacement was exact. This replacement salvaged roof was from an old K6 that was originally located at a local racecourse (Fakenham).

The last picture shows both ‘lids’ being compared.