sound principles

funny how the process of recording music manages to be both fascinating and boring.

you invariably spend unbelievable amounts of time fussing and fiddling: setting up, testing, adjusting, trying to work out why something is or isn’t happening. the technology’s incredibly dense and complex to navigate, the acoustic issues are always tricky, and the performers wait and wait, go away, come back again, momentarily get interested in the process or the problem, lose interest again, go get something to eat, then suddenly have to perform – perfectly – or again and again. somewhere between stone cold and too tired, you hope for that one flawless take.

the grand tafe showdown – may 18, bar broadway

despite being called Music – Performance, there is no compulsory public gig in this course, though organising your own is encouraged. so being the mature-age narcissists that we are, james and i went up to bar broadway and did just that. only our cabaret show is a skimpy half-hour long, so then we had to make sure there were enough other performers to turn it into a full night, which was surprisingly difficult. i mean considering it’s a performance course, i wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d come pouring out of the woodwork once someone had done the ‘hard bit’ of booking the actual gig. but we had to go round to each class and coax and wheedle, forgodsake. no-one’s ‘ready’ yet – either that or they’re actually with bands that perform regularly and wouldn’t go near anything as potentially naff as a tafe showcase. still, we dragged out enough to get quite a night happening – and, thanks to sam (god bless his little red knickers), it’s also going to be filmed.

loose tangle of tafe

funny about this course and how it’s run… it’s very fragmented. if you stay with it you get plenty out of it and it certainly does provide a broad (but quite specific) framework within which to develop your own learning projects, but it’s the loosest learning system i’ve ever rattled around in.

works for me, and for plenty of others in the class. it’s not working so well for some.

take bridget, for example. a huge talent and well-trained already – probably overqualified for the level of the course but she’s here anyway… well, more or less. she started 5 weeks late and it looks now like she’s decided to finish 4 weeks early – and it’s only a 13-week course. she could have starred in the class, come out with straight distinctions despite her late start, made some useful connections and got a grasp of the industry and where she wants to go in it. instead it’s looking like she’s gonna fail, or whatever grey mark it is that they give you when you don’t hand in most of the required work, don’t turn up to class, don’t let your teammates in the group project even know whether you’re pulling out.

*sigh* i hate seeing that happen. i can’t do anything to help, ‘cos she’s not answering my calls – presumably ‘cos she doesn’t know what to do about it all and expects to be chewed out for letting us down. she’s still only 17, for chrissakes.

there are others in the class with similar dilemmas, but i feel like this one’s kinda my responsibility, ‘cos i’m directing the group project she asked to join. i just wish she’d answer her phone. friday we started organising an understudy.

deborah conway

deborah conway

Originally uploaded by Illuminata.

bumming around in hobart on a saturday night, we picked up the street press and were lucky to catch a stalwart of the oz music industry in an intimate and radiant performance.

the republic – i suspect one of hobart’s hippest venues – filled up with groovy baby boomers and lesbians of all ages to see deborah conway belt out some new and some old with her band. the photo, i admit, is a shocker, but we were there, and you can see how close we were – i was actually sitting on a speaker box right in front of the stage, beside a packed dance floor, shielding my right ear from rape by decibels as the head-high speakers were even closer than deb herself. she played for a couple of hours – i think the encores lasted as long as the set itself, and it was inspiring to watch this survivor of 80s chart success – unpretentious, cheerful, strong and funny, doing it her way.

still alive and brilliant indeed.

Good Friday

coal country

Originally uploaded by Illuminata.

Good Friday – a lovely, crisp autumn day, and I’m journeying south along the coast to Woonona, about an hour and a half out of Sydney. My tafe teammate James lives here, commuting to town three days a week, but today I’m commuting to him to begin recording my song. The train passes through green valleys, bushland, seaside hamlets and the occasional old coal silo rigged for rail transport; the view ranges from idyllic to panoramic but the train windows are dirty and my photos can’t do it justice.

returning…
The recording process is simultaneously stimulating and draining. You’d think a day was enough to complete a 4-minute song, but it’s not even close. By the time you factor in travel time, meal time, setting up and faffing round time, the public holiday train timetable and my commitment to dinner with Drew’s folks who eat at 6, there was only a couple of hours real work time left. We talked through the parts and the dynamics I want, James got a clearer feel for the song and we set bpm rates for the 2 parts. I chose which string sounds I wanted, we sorted the keyboard strings wash for the prelude verse and I practiced the keyboard string solo. We managed to get guide vocal and guitar lines down and burnt me a CD without the vocal so I have a practice track, but are we even halfway through? I don’t think so.

*sigh*

The scary part is that the time we have left to complete this project is rapidly shrinking, but what I have to get done in that time seems to keep on expanding. I honestly can’t see it all coming together…

but it’s always like that at this stage, isn’t it?

tina harrod at side-on cafe

through bruce reid, head of the tafe course i’m doing and master slide guitarist, i’ve come to know a few other luminaries of the australian music scene – well, the blues/soul/roots/jazz/country part of it, at least – and one treasured discovery is tina harrod. louise, simone and i went to her gig at the side-on cafe, one of sydney’s favourite jazz venues and a longstanding ‘arts complex’ (gallery and venue) with a history of supporting the local live music/arts scene. alas, in heading about the gig we also heard that side-on is to close soon, as its most profitable night, the sydney improvised music association, is about to move to a new venue and without it, the cafe cannot go on. so not only will this be my first visit to side-on, it’ll also be my last.

we came to this shabby but elegant place on parramatta rd where so many great acts have played. there was no music playing and the toilets needed cleaning. the service was occasional and the food wasn’t good or even properly cooked – and this is where you go in sydney to see the best soul singer in the country. it was a sad end to a venture as noble as side-on.

happily, though, tina was fabulous. for more about her, go to the description from the first time i saw her, with the field at the vanguard.

ray

eug and i went to see ‘ray’, a film of ray charles’s life starring jamie foxx in an award-winning performance… a research project, really, more in the need-to-know than love-his-music way. we’re not big blues fans – eug even less than i, but out of respect and curiosity…

a good film, a fine film, and musically rich, as one of my tafe teachers said in recommending it, though I fear some of the subtleties of mr charles’s particular innovations were lost on anyone who wasn’t a blues and soul afficionado – ‘yo’ cain’t mix gospel with rhythm n blues!’ cried his opponents, utterly scandalised. but i can barely separate them… it was a pre-motown world, which is a cultural map near unimaginable to us post-sixties kids.

so what can i draw from this evocation of that evolution? do i, in my own teenage churchgoing, hymn-harmonising distant history, have a ‘pre-motown’ era of my own? and am i moving towards a synthesis between it and my pop/punk/grunge/indie real-world influences?

we can only hope so. if you have a god feel free to pray. if, like ray charles and me, you know we are our own only ultimate authority, i’d be honoured if you’d wish, will, make a small sacrifice (don’t kill anything; i recommend giving away some money, preferably directly to someone in need) or cast a spell in my favour.

i promise to use any powers i might gain only for good.

the field at the vanguard

the field at the vanguard

Originally uploaded by Illuminata.

Wednesday night a few of us from TAFE went to see our head teacher play at The Vanguard, a hip venue in King Street, Newtown. There were fewer of us there than I expected, maybe because of the gap in age and musical taste between the faculty and the majority of the class, maybe because of the cost and the impracticalities for 18-year-olds getting around this sprawling city at night – dying train system and all. Anyway, I thought it looked like a good night so I went, and it was.

Bruce’s band is called The Field, and this event was the launch of The Field’s second album. It’s kinda rootsy, moody, spacious blues – the kind of music you hear when a bunch of first-rate musicians no longer in the heat of youth get together to immerse themselves in the magic that doesn’t die. God they were good. I’m not going to gush about Bruce’s seductive slide guitar cos he’ll probably read this as part of my assessment and think I’m brown-nosing :)

But I wouldn’t be a good student if I didn’t tell you that the album, News From Home, is out on Rufus Records and available thru Universal.

I found myself spellbound by the guest vocalists, Darren Percival and Tina Harrod. I was absorbing and analysing their vocal work as best I could but I was also intrigued by their ‘presence’… a singer/frontperson is so naked up there… if you don’t mount a full-frontal assault on your audience you really have to be prepared to be utterly visible in your weakness as well as your strength. The balance has to come out visibly in your favour obviously, but that won’t enable you to hide your vulnerabilities. He, for example, has a charming ungainliness, a hint of the goof about him, though he’s a warm honey-voiced crooner, and she – I’ve heard her spoken of (and not by Bruce, who might be biased) as the best blues singer in Australia, and she did not disappoint; she’s amazing. But time is ruthless even on the beautiful, and there is tension between that and some part of her that is still a please-love-me little girl. How I wish I could talk with this degree of understanding about their respective vocal techniques… I watched for her breathing and couldn’t see a thing. That puzzles me – must remember to ask my vocal teacher. I learnt something about what’s possible just listening to her, but how she does it… that’s still mysterious. But I bought the CD and I’ll listen again to the song she sings on it, and again… searching for that control, that freedom, that power that is so much more than volume.

about gigging…

today i was given the lead part in a class version of ‘killing me softly’ – teacher on keyboards, 3 guitars, drums, and 5 other singers on harmonies – and afterwards michael (brown, teacher) said as we put the gear away in the side room that i should be gigging, i should be getting out there. i said yeah, i’d love to, but i’ve given up on the trauma of trying to organise the goddamn things, how do you do it? so we talked about ways and means, with contribution from andrew, the drummer, who plays regular originals gigs with a band called joey rocket and also does session work. michael said networking is essential and he’d give me some numbers of people who organise bands and gigs, but they both also said that once you get it rolling the gigs come to you…

boy am i looking forward to that.

about gigging…

today i was given the lead part in a class version of ‘killing me softly’ – teacher on keyboards, 3 guitars, drums, and 5 other singers on harmonies – and afterwards michael (brown, teacher) said as we put the gear away in the side room that i should be gigging, i should be getting out there. i said yeah, i’d love to, but i’ve given up on the trauma of trying to organise the goddamn things, how do you do it? so we talked about ways and means, with contribution from andrew, the drummer, who plays regular originals gigs with a band called joey rocket and also does session work. michael said networking is essential and he’d give me some numbers of people who organise bands and gigs, but they both also said that once you get it rolling the gigs come to you…

boy am i looking forward to that.