Tag Archives: Music

The last song this month is Golden Ticket

Diana Stones Songs, glass cage, music, Musings, whatever, ,

I finished a song a day or so ago. I slightly messed up the final transfer of the mix so I had to redo it. Its  fairly conventional sounding tune for a change. Straightforward one might say in many ways.  As I type this we have gone from a heatwave to conditions more like the beginning of November in the space of a week or so. So I am sulking as I cant go out to play mostly due to the dread C19 virus messing things up bigtime. I dont expect much sympathy as you lot can’t really keep calm and carry on either can you? 

So here is the song first in case you dont want to read all the whinging first.

I am glad we got that bit over first. So back to the whinging then.  Some people are relentlessly upbeat all the time.How do they do it and what are they on?  The walls continue to close in on me I am afraid. I have been trying to open the doors but the wind is blowing them firmly shut again. The damp is making my bones complain again.

I cannot say I have ever felt as isolated and out of touch at anytime in my life so far as I have during the weeks since March 23rd this year when lockdown restrictions were formally introduced in the United Kingdom. Everything is strange and surreal. Even the most mundane activities as we go to the shop masked like cowboys with bandanas as we buy a hand of bananas. The novelty has worn off now though.
Will we ever get back to normal? I am not convinced its going to happen anytime soon. One year, two years, longer perhaps. It’s hard to imagine really. So far we have had restrictions for 159 days.  And we are still here.

if only I still had something to say.

“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

“He that can have patience can have what he will.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“Why is patience so important?”
“Because it makes us pay attention.”
― Paulo Coelho

 

Pending review

Musings,

Well today was a bad day. I felt very low, sometimes however much I try things just get on top of me. I get angry, frustrated and all logic goes out of the window.  That’s one of the gifts depression brings to the party.   So today I have been trying unsuccessfully to shift my mood with many distractions.  Listening to music from my teenage years Neal Young, Elton John, Hendrix, Yes and also a bit of other stuff like the Dudley Moore trio. !968 to 1972 in particular was an incredible time more music and revisiting it helped me a bit.  I am still fighting it out with a French Language course but being dyslexic doesn’t really help to much, but I can’t give up. So many times in my life it seems as though I have had to though.  Its very frustrating, or maybe I am a lot stupider than I thought I was.

I also started recording a track which will be a song once I have sorted the lyrics into some sort of order. I spent a couple of hours working on that.  I think it might be a reasonable number if I can get a good enough vocal on it. I can sing but my voice is not going to win awards. In the past I did work with some guest vocalists on some collaboration’s but personal circumstances make that a bit difficult to do here.

Also I am listening to the sound and production on recordings I really like to see if I can get some sort of warmth into my own stuff. Some of the 70’s stuff is particularly appealing. Perhaps I need to open the doors up figuratively and literally  and try again?

Now I am a bit wary of people and i am not always a good judge of character, I can be easily fooled or duped if I don’t keep my wits about me.  Also I often get suspicious of peoples  motives and that can get me in trouble if I misinterpret them. The trouble is often ends up with me feeling isolated and cutting myself off from opportunity.

 

Busy and ups and downs and around about

Musings, ,

 

It’s been a fairly busy few days, 4 gigs in a row and a bit of website stuff to sort out for the Delta Ladies.  Plus I am working on a  new tune or two and have now managed the basic track for a new song. The lyric is incomplete at present, but I have the main part and  the chorus. It’s a funny thing but although I am quite competent technically I occasionally get a bit of a block and for get whats possible. I try to keep the focus on the musical aspect and not the production part, but you can get blown off course.  The almost limitless options in terms of production on even the most humble demo home studio really does mean its just a matter of your own creativity. You can’t really blame the gear anymore.  I remember saving up my penny’s when the first Teac Portastudio 144 appeared and having great fun with it over the years. It was very simple but gave good results. In those days you had to actually worry about head room and signal to noise big time.  Now all that’s pretty much an irrelevance, just make sure you record to -4db as peak and you are sorted.  I think you had to have more of a sense of adventure then to actually make something special.

The next big deal for me was when I got my Korg W1fd. I had had various keyboards before but this was my first workstation that I could build up complicated arrangements on.  It also had a real time sequencer, so that was a great leap for forward for me.  Before that I had a couple of Korg analogue synths (one was the Monopoly), but I never really got the full potential out of them. I then got a Yamaha Piano and started learning Piano as opposed to keyboard playing.  One thing I regret selling though was a not particularly good fretless bass, I could play it a bit and even used it on a few recordings, but lack of space and funds caused me to get rid of it in the end. It’s fun playing a bass. Maybe I will get another one some time 😉

View from the stage Millfield Theatre

Another regret is that I never did master sight reading music,  but I had been playing by ear for a long time.  I started working on it about ten years ago, but I am still pretty crap at  it. I can do lead sheets fairly well though.

I am dyslexic, and I wonder if the 2 things are related.  Still that’s life I guess and I wonder if I would have been inspired to do the other stuff if I had been playing by the rules.  Its interesting that many iconic songs have been created by people who have inherent musicality but have not had any formal training. Of course the reverse is also true at times.

I sing, but I am never happy with my voice. Not much I can do about that really. But I shall still keep singing.  My musical tastes are very eclectic, so the stuff I create and write is very wide ranging. That keeps it fun though not everything works of course. I first picked up an instrument about 1968 I guess and my first instrument was a Harmonica. I never really got much out of it, then I attempted guitar which was a bit more successful. Then came the violin which was difficult. So difficult that I gave up after 6 months or so. But  about a year later I thought I would  have another try. I got a slightly better instrument, which I still have in my collection and spent about 18 months fighting with it, but this time with more success.
Day jobs of many different flavours and finally a 13 year dabble in IT databases websites and programming whilst being a Civil Servant at  which point various problems caught up with me, and I ended up leaving a stable job and leaping in to the void. I seem to be still here but I can just about keep my head together on good days. At other times I don’t  do that well but I do better than others in my situation.

I very rarely played live until I joined Elephant Shelf  (now defunct)12 years back at the tender age of 48,  But I have done about  1500 gigs, so I have a bit of live experience under my belt now.

Elephant Shelf band, Catford, London UK 02.12.11
So that’s me, the depressive dyslexic and often cripplingly shy  person who strangely finds one’s self performing in front of the public.  Occasionally I even tell jokes on stage, but once the lights go off I am soon back in my shell.

The way the world is now,  is there is a lot to concern me, but I can’t write protest songs with lyrics that anyone can understand. I am not going to save the world with a song, but I might know some folks that can.