The tricky second album. I mean blog.

Right. I have been pretty slack about doing a blog, mainly because I have been doing the actual 'working the context' work and my own composition work, oh and having to pop home for a family thing. Before I get up to date I will post a picture of a guy called Alex Lee. <<<<

 Mr Lee is a guitarist and producer based in Bristol. He is very cool and has worked with many a band and toured many a far off land. Big thanks for coming and giving us a talk about promotion, existing as a portfolio musician and the art of production Mr Lee! 

For his second trick (the second half of the day's lecture), he listened to the popular music compositions that we in groups had composed and gave us feedback. I'm not sure if I've even explained this in the blogs so far so I will quickly sum up the last two weeks worth of work that led up to the above situation.  

Rick Rogers is the head honcho for this lecture series called 'Working The Context' in which we as musicians who wish to enjoy an income are taught how to self promote, self produce and basically make a product of ourselves. Rick recognises the impending shift in the music industry that will favour the working musician. At least I think so. 

Anyway, He put us into tidy groups of four and gave us a play list of genres of music and told us to pick a play list (or audience) and write and produce a record for next weeks lecture. Now a non-Dartington student might find that is typical request, 'do something for next week' but we soft bellied, lazy, fat art students are not used to practical deadlines, so we had to cut our twelve hour lie ins short and remember how to play our instruments. As it happens I was put in a group with my house mate and guitarist Matt, Jade the saxophonist who is probably one of the best musicians in our year and some girl who never turned up. We decided pretty readily to do a Radio One play list style song and then went our separate ways to find out what was currently playing on Radio One. 

The list for that week was mostly R&B and dance music so I looked a little further down the list to the b list where there seemed to be a few more guitar based song. It became a toss between the new Greenday toss and a typical Snow Patrol power ballad. My personal feeling about Greenday is that they are more than their bouncy music and even if I could write in their shape; it wouldn't sound like them. So then its Snow Patrol's time to be copied. Its not hard, in fact its really easy because Snow Patrol have a tight formula and I think I quite like what they do. Anywho I wrote a song called 'I Need To See You' and played all the keyboard parts into Logic, including some sweet airy, wispy synth bits to get some magic happening. Matt sang the two vocal parts and played in the guitars and then the next day Jade played some long, breathy sax parts. We had a song. 

Alex Lee and Rick liked our song and really had no comments except that we might tone down the sax. I agree as it happens; sax makes things sound like supermarket instrumentals.