Studio Update #1

So here's the plan for 2012. (Place "I'm going to attempt to" before ever phrase and "this is subject to change" after).

Record a 4 track EP and 1 extra bonus track to give away
Title: Everything We Lost In The Fall Rootless/Artless
Base it around electric guitar and vocals with one or two eclectic instrument choices per track
Con as many friends and family as I can into playing, photographing, doing artwork etc
Release in early Mar (this is already feeling too optimistic)
Release it (download only) via CD Baby to iTunes, Amazon and probably Rob's Record Mart  too
Con as many friends and family as I can into buying it
Learn a massive amount about putting together a project
Repeat until financial solvency or clinical depression occurs

Right at the tail end of last year I did some pre production at Old Library Studios, Mansfield with producer Mark Allsop, and a couple of weeks ago I laid down guitar tracks for 31/2 songs.

Here's the songs I originally shortlisted

Let's Build An Airport
The Weight Of Glory
Better For Me If I'd Never Been Born (demo of this will be up soon)
[Everything Is] Broken
Brother Bull (I never did a proper demo of this, but will post the live preproduction version)
The Morning After The Day You Saved The World
and two versions of I Got Lost

Having now dropped Weight of Glory and Morning After, five songs remain. The four that fit together best/turn out well will go on the EP.

Simples

I'm really benefitting from having another pair of ears go through the songs with me, and making some edits, subtle and otherwise! My pace of writing has been so quick last year, that some of these tunes were finished, recorded and then never played again!

Any questions let me know.

Here's a sneak peak behind the scenes...

Other free songs by Matt Blick

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New Song: Let's Build An Airport

Let's Build An Airport was written during FAWM 2011. In keeping with the rough and ready vibe of that songwriting challenge I wrote it from scratch and demoed in a single night. I've had quite a few positive comments about it from other songwriters so I decided to go back and do a better recording. As well as the very talented Rachel McClean on Cello you can also hear a number of planes and real life WW2 bomber crew.

The original inspiration was simply a list of bizarre children's books that I'd seen in a school library on a break from teaching. I had intended to do a surreal list song, but I never got beyond the first title “Let's Build An Airport” by Kath Mellentin and Gillian Clements. I just spilled out my frustration over a descending chromatic chord progression that has been done many times before (in 'If' by David Gates/Bread for one). But switching off my inner critic seemed to be a good thing and I'm really proud of some of the phrases and imagery – 'As deep as the clouds', 'rootless and artless and freer than birds' and catching 'that burning ball in the fist of one hand'.

Though the song is using a commercial airport as a metaphor, in my mind's eye I see Lancaster bombers taking off when I hear the song, so I was thrilled to get some sound library recordings and Rachel's cello is almost the musical representation of a Lancaster bomber – heavy, yet elegant and quintessentially English.

Download the mp3
Download the Chord Sheet
Watch Video Live @ Vauxhall Griffin, London 2011

Let's build an airport and let's fly away
If we put our minds to it we could finish today
These people round here are as deep as the clouds
And they don't understand anything that isn't glued to the ground

But we're rootless and artless and freer than birds
Let's not march to the abattoir just like the rest of the herd.
Forget Stansted, forget JFK.
There's a whole world of difference Between a runway
And running away.
We're not running away...

Doesn't the sunset attract you? Don't the horizon look grand?
Couldn't you just catch that burning ball in the fist of one hand?
I'll clear you for take off and you can clear me 
Then we'll cross every ocean and be back for our tea
Let's build an airport and let's fly away
If we put our minds to it we could finish today
These people round here are as deep as the clouds
And they don't understand anything that isn't glued to the ground

 © Matt Blick 2011

Samples credits

Lancaster Bomber Crew Raid over Stettin, Germany (April 20, 1943)
Lancaster Bomber Crew Raid over Berlin - Sep 3 1943
by stelzriede.com. Both of these can be found on the Marshall Stelzriede War Story website
Consolidated B-24 Liberator Bomber pass by 1 and 2 by The Recordist Free Sound FX
Lancaster Bomber by confusion_music from Freesound.org
Spitfire Mk 19 (Griffon engine) by Genghis Attenborough from Freesound.org


Related posts: Download Faithful and True for free!!!
Other free songs by Matt Blick

Day 253: Bulgarian Feedback And Failing To Write About Nothing

A while back I was slogging my way through recording and arranging Never Be Silent and put a rough mix up on the 50/90 site to get some second opinions on a thread titled Bulgarian Feedback. As well as a lot of cool advice a number of people said Bulgarian Feedback would be a cool title for a song. But only one man was cool enough to make it so - Johnny Cashpoint.

Bulgaria has fallen and there’s terror in the air.
Conquering invaders have arrived with questionnaire:

“Please rate our occupation on a scale of 1 to 4
Where one is sheer perfection and four is very poor.

How’d you find the food? (Please only rate food you can find.)
During interrogations were our men polite and kind?

and this classic couplet

Promised to provide a service that’s both harsh but fair.
Just ‘cos we’ve over-run you doesn’t meant that we don’t care.”

Listen to the song and read the rest of the lyrics

Jonathan Coulton wrote about his excellent song Mr Fancy Pants*

 It’s almost like this song was generated by the non-thinking parts of me, by the systems level utilities - sitting down and typing gibberish until something gets traction. Strangely, it was the first time I tried this technique during Thing a Week, and I wish I had surrendered to it earlier. I relied on it quite a bit for this new album, and it often led to much more honest and personal expression than I could have gotten to otherwise. It’s very hard to write about nothing for very long, and the real stuff sneaks out of you when you’re not looking.

It reminded me of my song Let's Build An Airport. I started with a weird title, which was actually the title of a children's book and what flowed out of me (oooh don't sound like a reel arr-teest!) was a reflection of the escapism and frustration I was feeling inside. Like Coulton I want to try that more often.

I'll be posting the new recording up soon, but for now here's a live recording I did at the FAWM Over Party at the Vauxhall Griffin Pub in London. (Note: the audio starts before the video)

*You can listen to Mr Fancy Pants on the page but why don't you go here
Find Thing A Week Four
Find Mr Fancy Pants
Click on the smiley face next to Mr Fancy Pants and get a FREE DOWNLOAD
See all those other smiley faces?
You can thank me later


Free download: Never Be Silent
Other free songs by Matt Blick


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Day 226: My Exquisite Corpse

I'm still doing way too much multitasking. I've interrupted the rerecording and mixing of Let's Build An Airport to contribute my portion of an exquisite corpse that we've got going on the 50/90 site. “What's an exquisite corpse?” I hear you google. In musical terms we have 11 people co-writing a song. One person writes about 50 seconds of music and then sends the last 10 seconds to the next person who does likewise. Finally someone puts it all together and we all get to hear the song. It's the musical equivalent of this...

I'm about 7th in line, and I'll post a link when it's done.  


Here's the finished song - You're Sure To Find Yourself.

The part I contributed was the 6/4 and 7/4 prog metal instrumental bit. It's after the folky 6/8 bit with the "we can do what we want" sample. Unfortunately during the edit my part comes in too early but to be fair I was asking for it superimposing 4/4 over 6/8 (If you're interested, here's how it should have fitted together).

Guest post

The second part of my series for Krown Media is up now. One of the reasons Christian's make poor artists is they spend way too much time obsessing over their motives. Here's a sample -

So, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31) applies to all of us, no matter what profession. But have you ever noticed that Christian plumbers, Christian school teachers and Christian I.T. specialists don't seem to suffer the same kind of paralysing bouts of self analysis that artists do? Maybe because they instinctively realise that in context and practice that verse is about outward actions, not inner motivation.

Read the rest here

Great writing on writing

There are quite a few songwriting blogs out there that dispense really helpful advice. There are others that are so beautifully put together that reading them is a pleasure to be savoured. There's only one that I can think of that ticks both boxes and that's Nicholas Tozier's The Halted Clock. Check out his post Life Cycle of a Summer Song, Part 4: An Attempt at Self-Criticism for example.

Tozier wakes up in the morning, stretches, scratches at his unseemly body hair, and sits on the edge of the bed...He walks to the sink, where he definitely does not waste half a can of Barbasol by using the foam to make a giant Santa beard...Having accomplished a smooth jawline with only a reasonable amount of bleeding and crying, Tozier embarks upon the day’s errands.He ...buys two beverages: Lady Grey tea, because he is a sensitive poet; and coffee, without cream or sugar, because he is a total badass.
...At exactly 8:30pm he hits the stage. The audience is hushed, perhaps intimidated by his awesome punctuality.

Visit Tozier's site to see what this has to do with songwriting.

Lastly, and still on the Tozier tip, I got to round out the series of posts (44 and rising) which I've done about the Abbey Road album with a light hearted chat with Nicholas over at Beatles Songwriting Academy.

Free download: Never Be Silent
Other free songs by Matt Blick

Day 221: Let's Build A Helipad

Feeling a little vulnerable at Shabby Road tonight. I was trying to record the vocals for the 'proper' demo of Let's Build An Airport while somewhat ironically a police helicopter kept watch overhead. As the evening wore on there was a constant stream of traffic down the sleepy street where the studio is situated, a sure sign that the nearby main road was closed and traffic was being diverted. When I got in I found that the Police station at the top of the road had been firebombed.

While it's good news for glaziers and the Kaiser Chiefs the civil unrest has been bad news for anyone who doesn't want a cheap pair of trainers or a new phone. I know I have a good percentage of readers from overseas so if you want to know what is happening, here's my view.

A few days ago the police in London shot dead a suspect. He appears to have been armed, but appears not to have fired upon police, the bullet found lodged in a police radio appears to have been from a police weapon.

Local people included the man's family took a peaceful protest to the local police station where the police appear to have handled badly and a riot kicked off.

The police appear to have handled the riot badly and appeared to give the impression that looting would go unchallenged.

Mass looting occurred.

So while the initial event in Tottenham was a PROTEST which ignited into a RIOT, everything since that point in London and beyond is merely opportunistic LOOTING and an outbreak of LAWLESSNESS. Don't dignify it with the term 'riot' because it is not a protest about anything.

In hindsight the Police should have dealt with the initial protest more strongly. The reason they didn't is that they are scared of the understandable public backlash after they shot an innocent man on the London underground on suspicion of being a terrorist and caused the death of an innocent bystander in London who was suspected of being a violent protester. Amongst others. They also failed to have quick and transparent inquiries and punish wrongdoers in the Police force. This fear of public ill will seems to have caused a paralysis when we needed the strong arm of the law.

With respect to my American friends the 'arm everyone' philosophy is attractive at a time like this but our reluctance to go down that route means thankfully at the moment our streets are full of broken glass not dead bodies.

Nottinghamshire Police did a great job last night and seemed to have the upper hand.


Download Faithful & True for free!!!
Other free songs by Matt Blick