So here we are.  It’s time to start on album number 2.

I am currently in writing mode. It’s an exciting time, there are so many possible ways the project could go from here.  For me ‘writing mode’ is something that doesn’t often involve any actual writing with a pen per-se.  I should probably call it ‘noodling with riffs, sounds and patterns waiting for something cool to happen’ mode. Generally, I have a couple of techniques that seem to bear fruit and I thought it might be interesting to talk about them.

One is to switch on the Fusion and load up a grand piano, and just improvise.  (When my good friend Paul Travers lived locally, I used to love sitting at his fabulous Bechstein grand and noodling, because that was even more immediate and raw) Anyway, hopefully something cool will catch my ear, a chord sequence or a melody, or something, and then I’ll work around that and build on it until something vaguely song like emerges. The trick then is to capture it, because so often I’ve done this, come up with something really nice, left it alone and then completely forgotten how it went.  The audio recorder in the iPhone has turned out to be a great way of doing that – and it imports right into iTunes ready to be reviewed at a later date!

Another technique I’ve been successful with is to choose a synth or keyboard and spin through stock sounds until I find something that I think is interesting, then load up Logic and use that as a basis to play around with the sounds manipulate them into something new add some other textures or very occasionally loops, and pulling inspiration from the sounds themselves to start developing some coherent themes.

Very rarely I’ll actually come up with a lyric that I think is cool and come at the song writing the melody for that lyric.

Unlike Fantasy Bridge, where all but one track was music that I had already well developed as demos, this new album is only going to feature about 50% existing material.  In fact it might be quite a bit less than that.  Take ‘The Big Song’ for example.  This was going to be one I had written years ago, but when I started working on it I threw away all of it except one opening stanza and one big instrumental break.  So, as I start to re-develop the other tunes there is the distinct possibility of more older stuff being consigned to the archive to be replaced by re-written material. It’s all a bit of an adventure into the unknown.

I will also probably end up in a bit of a grasshopper work mode.  Working on a bit of this, and a bit of that as the mood takes me, with the basic aim being to end up with a bunch of workable demos in Logic, complete with guide vocals that I can start so use to actually record the final versions of the songs. How much of that demo ends up in the final recording will very much depend. With Fantasy Bridge that varied from absolutely nothing to almost everything. At this stage in the game there are no rules.

When I started this blog, it was for the express purpose of chronicling the making of Fantasy Bridge, from sorting out the material, through recording, to it’s final release. Since then I’ve posted a few other entries regarding the post launch activities, up to the release on iTunes last week. So really, apart from sharing reviews with you and letting you know when the album appears in other retail channels, the story of the making of Fantasy Bridge is at an end.

But as I have hinted in the past, there is lots more music to come. Things I already have written, things I want to write, and things that want to be written! So with that in mind this post forms a new start. It’s the day I start talking about ALBUM NUMBER 2.

It doesn’t have an official name yet… I think I know what I want to call it, I have a huge, part written 20 minute prog epic, that will form the backbone of the project, and a couple of other songs that are quite well developed, but I want to leave it a while so I can develop some of the other musical ideas before making the final decision.

So once again we’re back into making-of-mode. There will, I’m sure, be more news on Fantasy Bridge to share with you as time goes on, and I’ll post about those as they happen, but in the meantime…

… Here we go again!

Well, as you might have guessed, we had a bit of a party to celebrate the launch of the CD.

And played some tunes.

It was a hot June evening, and everyone seemed to be in a mood to party.  It was great to catch up with so many friends from all over the place.

You can see some photos from the event by clicking here. As more pics come in from the various people who were snapping away, I’ll add them to the album.

I have to say DBs Weston did us proud with the PA rig and the lighting.  On the whole, I have to say it was a brilliant night. Notwithstanding the problems I had with the mainstage rig and the monitors.  We got through the first half with half my keyboard sounds missing, but it didn’t matter.  We just had a great time.

The set list was as follows

• Fantasy Bridge
• Together on the Shores of Time
• Autumn Rain
• Endless Ocean
• Quiescence
• Don’t Give up on Love
• Ode to Joy (encore)

I would like to thank Daren from DBs, Sue for all the help in organising it, and putting up with me in the run-up to the party, and of course Adam, Brendan and Paul for helping create the Fantasy Bridge live sound.

With 3 of us working full time jobs, and two of those (Brendan and I) working for companies that insist on sending you to ‘Forn Parts’ (As I write this, I’m in Paris, and Brendan got back from South Africa last week), the third running his own small business – you can imagine the hours that entails… and the fourth just finishing up his degree, finding evenings where all of us are a) in the same time zone, b) not embroiled in complicated paperwork, essays, powerpoint or invoices, is as complicated as juggling. Juggling angry cats.

However, despite this we are getting together reasonably regularly.  The songs are coming together and amazingly, we are starting to sound like a band. With just over a week to the gig, we have been amazingly lucky.  Next week, like some bizarrely complex piece of clockwork, our itineraries have aligned, and we can rehearse on two evenings.  Then it will be Friday and the gig will be upon us.

Exciting… Isn’t it?

We had a first full rehearsal of the Fantasy Bridge live band, and Sue and I both thought that one element that wasn’t translating well, was the vocals. As you might have gathered the album features quite a lot of vocal harmonies, and it was clear that I needed to do something to try and replicate this live.

Technology to the rescue! Boss, the effects pedal company, and part of Roland make this little beastie called the VE-2o Vocal Performer.  Among it’s party tricks, it can add reverb, delay, compression, vocal enhancements, effects, like flanger and distortion, and of particular interest to me, harmonies!

You tell it what key you are in, what the intervals you want are, and then sing…

Suddenly there are three of you on the stage singing perfect harmonies. Well, if you are singing in tune there are!. It can also do a rather nice double and 3x vocal stack effect which is great too.

Once again I have to give a big thank-you to Ian, the Roland guy at PMT Bristol for his patience, product knowledge and the great demo of the little red beastie.

It was Sue’s idea.  If we’ve got to delay, we might as well do something a bit more ‘special’ to launch the album.

We decided that playing the CD through and me having a go at some ‘unplugged’ versions of a couple of songs, in the back garden with 20 or so friends over Easter would have been nice, but we could think a bit more ambitious.  Adam was up for it, as was Paul (the two ‘local’ musicians on the project). So we got together and started trying out some of the songs. Yes it was working, but we could really do with a guitarist too.  Andy unfortunately had to rule himself out due to work commitments, and of course Steinar and Nick are in different timezones!

But Paul and I thought of a friend from way back who is a good guitarist and who might be up for a jam.  To cut a long story short, I’d like to welcome Brendan Dykes to the Fantasy Bridge family for the launch gig. Rehearsals are very much under way, and I’m pretty pleased with the way it’s sounding.

Then our attention turned to the venue.

So having thought a bit and explored a few avenues that seemed to get closed by either cost, or people not returning emails, Paul happened to mention his neighbour owned a live music venue, and might be worth contacting. Sue and I went to visit Daren of DBs Music Bar in Weston, and he is a really nice guy, with a cool venue, replete with sound system, stage, lighting, bars, and more importantly  a free night on June 3rd.

So we will be presenting about half the album, live to an invited audience on that night, followed by a play through of the CD and some fine retail opportunities.

The countdown to the launch party begins!

Well.  This is it. The last track on the album, and the final mix preview.

The quintessential English summer holiday, by the sea. As seen though the eyes of a young lad. Replete with sand castles, toy boats, kites, ice cream, the pier amusements, the funfair.  All peppered nicely with a large dose of childhood imagination.

I was that young lad, and I have tried to write a song that captures the spirit of those long ago holiday memories.

The arrangement swings from a quiet voice and acoustic guitar, courtesy of Andy, to a triplet based motif instrumental full of whistling synths, guitars and harpsichords, then into my little homage to the Beatles with the pier visit and the funfair, with guitars provided by Andy and Nick.  Then into a frenetic 6/8 instrumental depicting the roller-coaster ride, with two different Moog modular synth parts playing off a ripping guitar solo from Nick.  This part also features the Morphwiz iPad synth, doing some really nice glissandi.  Then back to a reprieve of the first theme, this time with the band turned up to 11.

This track was a joy to mix. It just came together and clicked.  For me at least it is a fine way to end the album.  I hope you think so too.

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That rather excellent keyboard playing genius Jordan Rudess of Dream Theater fame is renowned for his quest for unusual musical controllers.  One of his favourites is the Haken Continuum  Fingerboard which is a touch sensitive surface you play by sliding a finger across it.  It is wonderful, but costs an arm and a leg, and probably a few internal organs too. However Jordan is also a champion of musical apps for the iPhone and iPad, and he teamed up with  a developer called Kevin Chartier and created an iPad app based on the principles of the Continuum, called Morphwiz.  Now Sue has an iPad, which she occasionally lets me use, and being the great wife she is, and knowing I was intrigued by Morphwiz, bought and installed the app. It’s rather brilliant.  Left and right moves across the screen control pitch and up and down moves control timbre.  It has a clever feature that always pulls you to a correct tone in your selected scale when you touch the screen (if that’s what you want) and similarly, you can ensure a slide ends on an harmonically correct note. It’s even polyphonic.

So impressed by all this, was I, that I had to feature it on the album, specifically on Day by the Sea in the intro, outro and the end of the instrumental. And rather good it is too.

I now have a candidate mix of the song to listen to over the coming week and if I’m happy with it, I will let you hear a snippet next weekend.

Which scarily will mean all the songs will then be mixed and ready for mastering. Gulp!

I bet you thought I’d gone away, that the project had stalled and this was one of those blogs that just dies.

But no! Just been maintaining radio silence while I kept my head down and got on with mixing.

So, some news.  Guitar supremo Nick Crosby has provided the extra guitar parts for Day by the Sea and very nice they are too.  I have comped together the big guitar solo for the 6/8 time sig, instrumental but Nick being Nick, he had not only fulfilled the brief in getting those 32 bars of solo to me, oh no, I had 4 tracks of guitar for the entire song to pick and choose bits from to augment Andy’s acoustic parts and his Strat part in the middle section.  This is the last song on the album and one of the long ones, clocking in at around 10.5 minutes, so pulling all that together has been something of a task.  A very enjoyable task nonetheless. As soon as I get a passable mix, I will of course let you have a listen.

Joy, beautiful spark of divinity

Daughter of Elysium,

We enter, drunk with fire,

Into your sanctuary, heavenly (daughter)!

Your magic reunites

What custom strictly divided.

All men become brothers,

Where your gentle wing rests.

Quite so, Messers Schiller and Beethoven, quite so. Of course, in German it rhymes and everything. More to the point, however, and apropos the subject in hand, namely a certain prog rock album.  It ain’t half a good tune.  Now, I’m not sure what Ludwig would have made of a hammond organ (via suitably overdriven leslie) and an electric violin (via suitably overdriven amp stack) going hammer and tong at his carefully crafted theme, but actually, I have a feeling he might have actually quite liked it.

This afternoon I revisited the synth solo that has actually nothing to do with LVB’s piece at all, but was an excuse for me to  indulge my liking for my Korg Prophecy, the Moog modular Arturia plug in and a logic Amp Designer setup called Turbo Stack, with the setting set to ‘Shred’ Which didn’t, to be honest seem over the top at all…

Which means that we are at the point of getting the DI set up and getting Sue to record her violin part, before letting me loose again with the Amp Designer. (cue eerie lighting and the sound of someone going MWAAAHAHAHAH!)

Fun, fun, fun!