Studio Tan #3

This blog post goes out to Iain!!

We were back in the studio today for session number 3 of the solo album. At one point, I heard Iain and Colin agreeing that they wished they had an ability on a melody musical instrument - well, all I can say is that Iain's the most musical "non melody player" there is!!

We're now at the "labour pains" point in the game. The album's finished!! All we nned to do now is schedule one more for some odd backing vocals and then the final mix!

Today was a gas! The bass line for Follow The Piper was redone, followed by all the remaining guitar parts - lead and clean rhythm. Then we had the chance to add all the silly bits we always wanted to do out of the constraints of The Shine.

First up, Enigma was launched with the first ever use of my Talk Box - sounding good!! Next up, in terms of guitar, much to Colin's, well, delight (?) was some strategic ebow on various tracks. Then Mr Wilson took to the floor.

Iain and I had discussed various rhythm additions so my bud got down to business... First of all, Piper was given a military snare overlay, followed by a muted floor tom - AWESOME! Next up, it was time for "shakermaker". The first track to get this treatment was Close So Close with Iain on shaker and yours truly bashing hell out of a fire extinguisher with a drumstic! Sounds incredible so thanks to XTC for this ingenious idea. Always the true professional, Iain didn't even miss a beat on one of his conga patters when I casually flashed my bare arse at him - NOT A SINGLE BEAT!

So, big up to iain - this session belongs to him for rhythmic contribution, invaluable musical control and feedback from mission control and for being a generally all round good egg!!

Oh, and my new Senheiser headphones were well and truly christened!

Nex time (soon) - THE BIRTH!

WAAAAAAHHHHH!!

Sons of bitches!!!

After 22 years of unblemished driving, I got caught by a bugger like this one on Friday 14th September in Dunfermline!

There I was, happily tootling down to Rosyth to fill up with petrol to get to the Killin gig and KABOOM! Caught! 42 in what I didn't know was still a 30....

I stick my hands up, fair cop, I did it - I'll pay... What bugs me is that (1) I've got some great friends in both Fife and Central Police - it's these sneaky money grabbing pricks in the hi-tec ice cream vans that piss me off, parking in obscured places and (2) Really pisses me off that I've now got a cheque to write which I didn't expect and points to carry on my licence (for 12 MPH) while those nob ends in BMW 5 series, Lexus etc., boy racers in mobile death traps seemingly get away with fucking ridiculous driving!

All in the name of local authorities making a few more bucks!

Studio Tan #2 - Now We're Getting Somewhere!

18.8.07

So it was back to Craigmont Studios on Saturday 18th August for round 2 of the "solo album". Big thanks to the guys at The Pad again! This time round it was Dougie at mission control who, like Colin, was extremely welcoming and humouring of the middle aged, balding muso with weird ideas... Wait til the next session for weird!!

We rolled in just before 12 after braving horrendous roadworks on the M8 and typically Scottish weather - it was pissing down! In went three guitars, the trusty Marshall, keyboard, Moog Taurus - and young electric pipe player Jane. Jane seemed to be in awe as we looked into the BBC's prop store and she took the obligatory photos of the flats where Still Game is filmed and the Me Too pink taxi...

Down to business! First up (starting easy as Iain and I had been up til 3am the night before gigging and, in my case, then back on the road at 9am), the acoustic guitar went down on Children Of War. Couple of takes, job done! We then listened back to the bass tracks with fresh ears and made the decision that they were actually OK - job done! Next up, we decided to lay down the Taurus tracks. WOW!! What a sound!!! Taurus was strategically placed on Children, Close and Ghosts - now we're getting somewhere! The previously bare tracks were now starting to come alive.

I decided to take a quick break and a sit on the control room for the next part - Janey was going to lay down her electric pipes. Thankfully, as I was completely knackered from the night before, Mr Wilson and Dougie took up the roles of musical director and guided Jane through a few takes which will be added strategically to Follow The Piper. Quite possibly we could have done this section a bit faster if I'd realised earlier that, in addition to Jane going through my amp, she was also going through my effects on Floyd setting - 10 delay bounces for every note she played!

Then things got decidedly noisy! I re-entered the studio to record the guitar parts at higher than gig volume on Les Paul & Marshall. Big thanks to Shiny Andy for helping me tune in that perfect Les Paul sound - it was skull cleaving!! All OD guitar parts down, it was time for some clean. We got about halfway through the 10 tracks before time realistically was up. As Dougie and Iain rightly said, that was enough for the day anyway as I was starting to flag - and Dougie's tea was rapidly heading in dog direction!

So, there we go... One more session of recording to go by my reckoning and job's a good 'un. Next time it's just complete the clean electric guitar parts, lay down the lead parts, keyboard washes on 3 tracks, vocals - AND TONS OF RHYTHMIC SILLINESS FROM MESSRS. MACKIE & WILSON!

Back on the road again about 6.30pm and again, thank God for Iain. With the roadworks, the M8 was as bad heading east so I literally stuck to his rear bumper like a bungee. Fife to drop Jane off through torrential rain and back home for quarter to eight and a well deserved bottle of wine!

Oh, and thanks to Stevie Lawrence for leaving another copy of his Hidden Gem CD for me. Saved the postage and the waiting - the tenner's in the till!

Studio Tan #1

28.7.07

So, we finally started work at The Practice Pad / Craigmont Studios on my Mr N original material on Saturday 28th July!

What an eye opener! It's much harder working with unfamiliar material than it is going into the studio with an extremely tight, professional and highly rehearsed band like The Shine! All of the material for this session existed in various notes in my lyric book and in my head...

Anyway, Iain and I convened to make a start on things with a sense of high hope and excitement - I have to say, Iain played a blinder and was a star throughout! For my part, I didn't realise what a strange experience it is trying to change disciplines between being a singer, a guitarist or a bass guitarist! My bass playing to begin with stunk more than a dockside hooker's gusset on a hot summer day when the Navy came into port...

It was also really weird, as I said to Iain at the time, having Colin listen to my stuff in production. I lost concentration a few times thinking "I wonder if Colin thinks this is really wanky?".

The end result was that 11 tracks originally intended became 10 in practice. There's a fair old mixed bag in this batch - a couple of tracks that didn't make it to The Shine, a few from my aborted "concept" album concept and the rest are real favourites of mine. The standouts at the moment are "Follow The Piper" - a completely new idea which is sounding AWESOME and "Enigma" - one of the "Shine wannabe's" which is again going to be mega powerful.

So, after stage 1 of the recording process, the drums are down and perfect in my opinion, the bass is down but will need RADICAL overdubs or complete reworking and the 12 string acoustic guitar is down on the 3 that were to receive that treatment (including one track which includes a "beep" from my watch as we were recording)...

So, next stage takes place on 18th August - this time it's clean guitar, dirty guitar, lead guitar, Moog Taurus, keyboards, lead and backing vocals and various other overlays... Tall order? Probably!!

Anyway, the tracks... (in order of recording as far as I can remember)

Enigma

Follow The Piper

Raven

Angel (Of The City)
With You
Starlight
Children Of War
Ghosts
Close So Close
Gypsy Dancer

HURRAH!!! What-Ho!!

Now, this REALLY means a lot to me!! By chance I bumped into an old school mate in Tesco recently and, by chance, enquired after a REALLY good mate of mine whom I haven't heard from in 20 years!!

Phil and I were almost inseperable during the 80's and were very in tune with each other. Also, at that time, we both shared a similar sense of madness.... Maybe we've both grown up since then - maybe not... Who knows...

Phil's a great guy and I was over the moon to receive an email from him this morning. For reference, that's him on the left next to Ade in the picture. No doubt that image has changed as Phil's now a champion piper!! WOW!!

Phil, if you ever read this, let me reassure you how much the contact means to me!! We really must have a few beers and a catch up real soon.

Studio Update

Quick update....
The Tapco / Mackie interface arrived earlier this week!! Obviously I immediately set it up and gave it a try - all I can say is AWESOME!!
The sound clarity and ability to track separate gives me so much more scope to do what I want to do - stuff that I was physically hampered by in the past.
Think I might need to have more of a play at the weekend... Maybe lay down some guide tracks...
This is such a cool arrangement!!

Her Ghost In The Fog

This is a first for me.... For the solo project I'm working on a diverse range of material - some old, some new, some ressurected!

Now, anyone who's worked with me (on original stuff) before will know I tend to work from a title, which then becomes a lyric, which then becomes a song... For "Her Ghost In The Fog" I'm looking to develop a song from a PICTURE... This picture.

I saw this picture on the net recently and I just thought it was both gothic and beautiful at the same time. The comment below it was Her Ghost In The Fog....

So, there you go. Let's see if I can make a song work from this....

Mr N's Studio Diary

OK, the photo's got nothing to do with my studio diary - it's just me (from the horrible French trip last year)....

Well, it just seems to be studio, studio, studio at the moment! The Shine are getting geared up to visit Shug Carter at The Practice Pad in Glasgow next month - that's if we can EVER decide on the tracks to record!! Hopefully we'll get to the bottom of this tomorrow at a run through session. Recording at the Pad is absolutely brilliant for both The Shine and for myself personally. Shug's crew have been producing some brilliant stuff (Biffy Clyro for example) and this'll be the first time The Shine's been in a professional studio having done the previous two recordings on (1) my analogue gear and (2) Andy's home digital set up respectively. From my point of view, I'm also dying to work at The Pad - the home of Abel Ganz!! www.abelganz.com for the uninitiated!

The one thing is, I always feel like a bit of a fake (rather than a bit of a fuck which is usual) recording professionally with a covers band when there's so much brilliant original stuff out there! Mind you, if covers bands were strangers to pro studios, where would all the brilliant demos come from? Get a grip Mr N! The Shine are a brilliant covers band....

However, this ain't all there is to report in terms of a studio diary.... Whilst The Shine is my "live mayhem" release and I'm really proud of the band, I need to get more creative at the moment. I've been feeling like this since the start of the year and finally decided to start writing / recording again.

Now, this project has started to grow arms and legs!! Originally, my intention was to quietly dig out my old Yamaha analogue recording gear, Mr Alesis my resident drummer, and just do my own thang without hurting anyone else... Best laid plans and all that....

As I started to compile my tracklist for my first "Mr N" project, things started to go askew! Some of the tracks will come from my "almost shelved" Prog Epic project, some will be older demoed tracks, some will be tracks I took to The Shine and were greeted with roaring apathy and a few will be brand new wet ink ones. Now, as I say, I was gonna do all of this myself - then the volunteers started! First of all, along came my mate Jane who plays both traditional and electric pipes... "Hmmm" I thought, "This could be useful for Follow The Piper"! So, I drafted Jane into playing when the track was right. Next up, Iain Wilson - my top bud and Shine drummer volunteered - nay, demanded - to carry out rhythm duties!! This was a godsend as, although the Alesis SR-16 is a great machine, it's still a machine. Iain's an awesome drummer. Following rapidly behind, my mate Big Ade (of The Jacobites) insisted that he contribute various Celtic acoustic type noises - and probably include one Ewan Kidd (also a Jacobite and fellow UB man with Iain and myself) to contribute keyboard /accordian type stuff.

So, where does this leave me? Mr N is no longer so much solo.... These guys (and girl) are top people and I don't want to take the piss out of them with an inferior recording. So the next thing was to look at doing a pukka job. I've got Sonar installed on my laptop so, as of yesterday, an investment was made in a Mackie / Tapco USB Sound Interface. Voila!! With my live desk and effects, a ready made digital studio!! The added benefit is that the Interface / Laptop arrangement will allow me to record Shine gigs straight from the FOH desk as we see fit.

More to follow but, suffice to say at this point, this could be epic! I'd like Follow The Piper (with these people involved) to have the same kind of feel as Ganz's remake of ThePretender - Pipes, Ebow, acoustic instruments, bodhran.... All that guff.

Take care and best of love,

Mr N

Youthstart

Yahoo, it's nearly March!!

Throughout the year, Martin Bamford of Fife Constabulary and I work with a great bunch of kids from Inverkeithing High School in the Youthstart Initiative. Martin and I are really proud of this project in which we help and mentor 15 / 16 year old youths to become valued members of society. We also have a lot of fun!

The initiative involves various activities including classroom based drug and alcohol education, interview technique and presentation, various workplace visits and, most importantly, team building / working exercises. The latter of which brings us neatly to March....

In March we take the group annually to the Scout Association's centre at Lochgoilhead. Whilst Martin and I continue to work to the max at this time, it's pleasant surroundings to work! We'll be doing the usual team building activities such as sailing, raft building, abseiling, hillwalking etc.

I just wonder if I'll end up on my arse with some seriously injured body part due to the obligatory ice skating evening - at which the kids are invariably MILES better than me!!

New Look Website

So, here we go... A new look to the website and a new Blog section! Problem with the blog section is I don't really know what I'll end up posting? Probably any old rubbish that comes into my head at any point in time!

The reason for the change in the website is really down to my changing attitude to life at the moment. With The Shine I've been going through a kinda "goth" period in terms of dress and image. Now I'm getting bored of that. Time to lighten up a wee bit. That's not to say that the leathers won't appear on a stage near you soon and on a regular basis - but maybe not exclusively! Also, reflected in this, the site was very black and gothic. That too has changed.

My intention is to further develop the mackieonline.co.uk site - the next stage being finding a way of embedding a media player on the homepage - but for now that escapes me. It's a wee bit frustrating as I know WHAT I want to do but CAN'T do it.... I'll crack this, oh yes, I will crack this....