More music, more everything

Things have been cracking along in the Sears music foundry.  I bought myself a winter solstice present of a bundle of MIDI instruments from Native Instruments (not to be confused with National Instruments, who make Labview, even though they both call themselves NI).  This includes various sampled "real" instruments as well as fully-electronic synthesizers and effects.  One of which is "strummed guitar".  This saves all the trouble of learning how to play chords and not sound like a complete beginner (which of course I am, because I don't usually play songs) and gives instant gratification with professional sound quality in no time at all.  Couple that with the "Session Drummer" and a few processing tweaks, and you're mostly done.  The only thing they haven't provided yet is a MIDI-controlled vocalist, but it won't be long, I'm sure.  In the mean time, I've saved months of guitar practice, selecting snare drum sounds and placing individual cymbal bashes using a mouse to create a new song from some more of Pete Golding's lyrics in record time.

Actually I've had the lyrics for a while now, but knowing that they were originally written for a punk rock band made it difficult to think up a different way of presenting the song.  I wanted to do something in contrast to the obvious rhythmic rant, but it took a while to come up with anything.  I'm really pleased with the result though, and this time I don't feel the need to apologise for my vocal efforts.  I hope my version carries the song a bit more gently, and maybe makes the ending a bit more poignant.  See what you think.

Here's the link:  Run Like You

Meanwhile I've started running again after my winter solstice food/booze/laze-fest.  The hill run has proved difficult due to persistent flooding at the top (I know, but that's just reality breaking through your idea of what a hill looks like) but I've got a new PB on the river (20:55) and recently started to extend the run a bit towards 5km, which is some sort of industry standard for running people, apparently.  So far it's about 3.8km in 24:18.  Yesterday I had a new sensation for a while that my legs were doing the running on their own, and the rest of me was just along for the ride.  Interesting, and rather appealing, I must say.  It all changed when I got to the last bit up Exwick Hill though. 

Just for a bit a fun I looked up the record for 5km - as run by 60 year olds.  The current holder is a Welsh chap called Martin Rees, who ran 5km in 16:08 in 2013 when he was 60, although he went 2 seconds faster the next year (when he was 61, obvs).  So he's running just a little bit more than twice as fast as me. To anyone with a competitive nature, that would be a thing, I'm sure, but thankfully my Spinozist philosophical bent (not to mention my Citalopram habit) means that I'm still quite content. 

This post has been entirely about things which I don't have any pictures to associate with, which makes it look a bit dull on the page, so here's a picture of me and Layla.  Layla, is of course, growing rapidly and learning all sorts of new stuff, which is very exciting for everyone.  Here, she is demonstrating her ability to give stuff to people, by emptying the contents of her bag of clothes etc. into my arms, one piece at a time.  As you can see, it's pretty satisfactory all round.

Pretty satisfactory

If you were thinking "My, she certainly has grown!", well you're right of course, but I should point out that she is standing on a worktop.  I'm still quite a bit taller than her, really.

Music, after a fashion

Enthusiasts for my peculiar musical outpourings (and yes, there are one or two, despite what the rest of you may think) will be pleased to know that a new, improved version of "Know Your Enemy" is now on Soundcloud,.  This sports a guitar break in the middle, and a (guitar) instrumental bit at the end, for those that like that kind of thing (me).  Also "live" bass guitar in places, courtesy of the recently-acquired Thunder Jet (see Music).  Sadly, the lovely Jackie hasn't (yet) been able to make good on her offer to have a go at the high vocal parts (due to ill-health - waaah!) so it's still me singing - although I have attempted some magic to make the vocals sit better in the mix, as we wannabe sound engineering types like to say.

I am happy to confide in my blog readers that I found it incredibly difficult to come up with a guitar break for this crazy song.  I had to work it out in little bits, and then learn how to play the little bits, and then go round and round trying to get all the way through each little bit without screwing it up, and then cobble all the little bits together - it's a far cry from jamming.  Of course, that's why we have MIDI, where you can do all the "getting it right" afterwards instead.   I suppose in serves me right for trying to write a harmonically "interesting" tune.  If any of you musos out there fancy a challenge, try playing along to it!  It's basically impossible.  Nevertheless, I've found the song to be a bit of an earworm - but maybe that's just because I've now listened to it more than twelve billion times...

The estimable Mr. Golding has sent me lyrics for another song, so who knows, a few months from now there may be another strange eruption from the bowels of the Sears music room.  I think something a bit more Techno maybe?

In the meantime,  I've also released something I did a while ago; a piano instrumental (phew!) called Raggedize. This tune has seen the light of day before, on a CD I made for my brother Alan, but that version was inexplicably missing the percussion track.  Since the starting point for the whole thing was the drum part, I thought that was a bit of a shame, although I tried not to make a big deal of it at the time, since it was supposed to be part of a birthday present.  Anyway, Alan - if you're out there - this is how it was supposed to be!