I'm Bored With Mainstream Music

And I’m not alone. There are many of us sick of the processed rubbish. So I did something. For over a year I’ve been writing and recording hundreds of my own songs on my laptop using a Line 6 tone port, a Taylor acoustic, a Fender strat, and a Shure mike. I call the set up The Hexyl Circle.

In 2006, I uploaded enough tracks to fill a CD which I burned and called Shedworks. One track, Feel a Little Love, has been downloaded 105 times on Itunes alone.

Maybe people thought they were downloading Depeche Mode’s Dream On, can you feel a little love. Sorry. If you are one of the 105 people listening to my song Feel a Little Love, or any of my songs, on your I-pod, tell me what you think. I’d love to hear from you.

So now I have 36 minutes of new music on my Hexyl Circle Myspace profile, which in no small way makes up my second CD, call it, Some Day Soon:

1. September 73 (sit back, relax, rock and pop are dead)

2. Who Am I To Disagree? (ft MiNiMaL_aRT) the remix of my song knocks me out.

3. Whatever It Is I Want It – I just visited the Beatles houses, see my last post for photos.

4. Not Strong Enough (ft MiNiMaL_aRT) this amazing remix smooths my melody into a new groove.

5. I’m Not Strong Enough – the original. Not supposed to be there, but Myspace won’t let me delete it.

6. Some Day Soon – you might have heard it on my other Myspace profile. Here’s what they say: “‘some day soon’ is just beautiful, the guitar playing is wonderful, the lyrics are pure poetry and the melody just blows me away with its dynamics…
…great one!”

7. Don’t Spoil It – Plastic Dave wrote the verses and recorded voice, bass, drums, and sublime banjo.

8. Looking Back – new song looking back in time, it’s never nice to look back in time.

9. New Blue Jeans – this grew into some kind of morbid jazz blues.

10. Who Am I To Disagree – the original.

11. Don’t Know What I’m Doing – Bombero made a great final track out of my wobbly dirge. Well I never claimed I knew what I was doing.

Download, kick back, headphones on for the full squeaking chair surround sound effect. No expense has been spared in the recording of this material. What I like most about writing, recording and publishing my own songs is I have the freedom to write and record anything I want. Complete artistic control is about having power. Mainstream music is full of rules, marketing, profiling, conventions, restrictions. I wouldn’t want anything to do with it.

You can download my songs at Libsyn. Myspace downloading is broken. Here’s a taster of the tracks, MiNiMaL_aRT’s remix of my song I’m Not Strong Enough.

Looking Back – The Riff 5

I spent all morning getting the house ready for propective buyers and estate agents, and headed to the gym at 10am. Since then, I’ve been trying to improve the recording of Looking Back. The way of recording the acoustic through the mike and the Toneport just didn’t work, so I recorded a new guitar track through just the mike and left the first track in. So it’s two guitars. I added the harmonics. Then I recorded my songwriting podcast, The Riff 5. I have grave doubts about the song. It seems a bit odd, like a Radiohead song. It sounds out of tune even though it isn’t, although in places, as ever at the moment, my voice isn’t quite there.

A song, a spoof, and FF40

That’s me looking intellectual before shorter hair and serious glasses playing a travel guitar on holiday somewhere, it looks like a Landmark Trust house.

Today, I recorded Friction Fiction 39. I realised FF40 will coincide with going away, so I’ll have to get it recorded earlier next week. I decided not to read out my Nightmare Poet poem on FF. I want to rewrite it without the Seung Cho reference because it will be more interesting that way.

I just posted a spoof to Hold It Up For Ridicule. I became amused by Digit Al, the pathetic robot that appears on TV every five minutes next to an old bag knitting while the BBC’s patronising output gets switched off in front of her. The government quite rightly calculated that they don’t need the votes of old Tories who don’t pay licence fees anyway, so they’re going to switch off their “sets” after the next election. It’s over two years since the analogue signal in Reading effectively disappeared one Christmas. Since then, we bought and destroyed a Freeview box. Now, it’s all Murdoch here.

I recorded the new song I’ve been messing with, although I haven’t updated my songwriting podcast, The Riff, yet. I wanted the max acoustic noise, so I put both mike and guitar output into the Toneport and then sang over it. It needed very accurate playing to a click track. It’s a nice effect, but something’s not quite right. I can add harmonics though. The set up worked once, then never again. Rick on Myspace assured me it would work. Anyway, the song is called Looking Back, and it’s as offbeat as anything I’ve done. I’ll post it next week.

Here Comes The Riff

I just recorded another songwriting podcast, The Riff, with the latest ccMixter.org remix of my song Don’t Know What I’m Doing by Slumberlords. Also, I updated the lyrics and recording of I’m Not Strong Enough. The fourth podcast also has the seedlings of a new song.

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