…shame cos we never made any hehehe Hey folks, I’m back on a boiling hot day here. I’m even wearing shorts so avert your eyes. I’m struggling to find the motivation to write this in the heat but I realised I’ve neglected you all a bit lately, I’m sorry. It’s about time I posted another track, so here it is.

It’s another one by my old band Kagnee called In It 4 Tha Money. As crazy and chaotic as ever this is a very short tune at only 1:34, short but sweet you might say. I really like it though, it was always one of my favourites in our live set. The song is actually pretty political and contains lots of little references to look out for, a lot of our stuff did. Our guitarist Spenner was a really good artist and he designed some fake Kagnee money for us to promote the track with. You can see an example below:

We got loads of this printed in different colours and threw it around at gigs, I’m sure the cleaners loved us for that the next day but it was a lot of fun. I even tried to pay for a round of drinks with one of these and the bar man really wasn’t very impressed, it was just a bit of fun though, it’s not like I actually thought he was going to accept it, I mean LOOK AT IT! Master forgers we were not, mad bastards would be closer to the mark but we had a good time and I think even the odd person who saw us did too. I emphasize the ODD in that sentence.

So that’s about it for today, it’s too damn hot for any long and meaningful anecdotes sorry. My brain is fried, so have a listen to the track I hope you enjoy it and I hope it’s sunny where you are too. I’m off to buy an ice cream or something… I wonder if they take Kagnee money? Hmm

Dan

 

 Kagnee - In It 4 Tha Money [1:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Howdy one and all, I’m back with another track. It’s something of an “oldy” this time but if I may be permitted to say so, also I think a “goody”. Another song I recorded as part of my Shed Music project which you can read about in earlier posts. This was on the album “A Trip To The Where? House?” that we produced in 2001.

It’s called “Special?!” and it’s a classic piece of Shed Music really, mixing crazy electronic sounds with more traditional organic instruments and funny speech samples from a film. I had some fun experimenting with a little program which allowed you to take any audio file and use it to scratch with like it was a vinyl record. I can’t remember the name of it but man I loved that little program. You may know this already but I’m a huge hip-hop fan, isn’t every slightly middle class white kid? I love all kinds of music of course as I’ve said before but when I hear a break beat kicking off it warms my heart. I’m not really into a lot the modern mainstream rappers you hear now like 50 Cent, Ja Rule and whoever else is cool this month, those idiots couldn’t rhyme their way out a paper bag compared to true MCs like KRS One, Big Daddy Kane, The Furious Five, Zulu Nation, Public Enemy, The Wu-Tang Clan and Jurassic 5. I could go on and on with that list but I’ve leave it there as this is getting way off topic. I’ve always wanted to be able to do great things with turntables like DJ Shadow, Mixmaster Mike or Grandmaster Flash for example. I even bought a set of turntables years ago that are still sat in the cupboard gathering dust. I had a quick go but I’m not sure I’ve got it, give me a guitar and I’m fine, I guess I’ll just have to leave the scratching to others. On this track you will hear my attempts at scratching with the speech samples that come in from time to time. It kind of works in the context of the track but if you’ve heard DJ Shadow or Cut Chemist believe me you won’t be impressed.

This was recorded some time in 2001. I started with the drum loop, the acoustic guitar picking and the synth line and then built up the track from there. My studio revolved around an 8 track Fostex hard disk recorder in those days and I would tend to come up with a rhythm track on the computer then record it out to 2 tracks on the recorder, leaving me 6 spare tracks to put guitars, vocals or whatever else I wanted over the top. Looking back these days with my hi tech computer based studio where I can cut and change things around at any time and use as many tracks as I want, I kind of miss the simpler times because I think it forced me to be more creative with production. It wasn’t so easy, you had to work to solve problems and sometimes lateral thinking throws up things you didn’t expect. Maybe that’s just the mists of time making it look better than it really was to me now, I was probably sat there pulling my hair out (I still had some then) and screaming “if only I had one more spare track I could do this!!!” Anyway, I’m digressing again sorry. So instrumentation wise you will be able to hear: some drums programmed on an old 808 style drum machine, a synth riff from the 303, some acoustic guitar picking, my electric bass, a distorted guitar played with a slide and the funny little talking samples going in and out. It makes a surprisingly full sound.

I think it works well and listening to it now I still like this track, maybe it’s wrong of me to say that since I produced it but it’s the truth. It’s not half bad Listen out for the slide guitar parts, I had great fun with that. I didn’t have a proper bottleneck slide to use at the time so I had to use the back of my old Zippo cigarette lighter, how rock and roll is that? I got my electro acoustic Yamaha out, plugged it through my Marshall amp and just played that sucka, it gives quite a distinctive sound and I’ve not done it in a while, I think I should after hearing this.

It’s quite a simple track and I can’t tell you what inspired it, there aren’t really any lyrics as such other than the lines that I sampled. “She’s very special… well I’m sure she is special if you picked her out of the whole bunch”. Maybe it’s the closest I ever got to a Shed love song who knows… maybe I was just bored and I thought the words sounded funny, it doesn’t really matter now. Just listen to the track and see what you think, I really hope you enjoy it. If you do leave me a comment here and let me know someone’s listening… and also feed my ego a bit ha ha

Till next time, word to ya mutha blood hehehe

Dan

 

 Sonic Real Estate - Special?! [4:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Hey folks, sorry it’s been a while. Anyway, I do have something brand new for you to listen to, it’s a theme tune I made recently for my friends Sheryl & Ken’s new show GeekSpeak TV. They’re gonna be doing the show as a video podcast I think but I’m not sure of all the details at the moment.

I met Sheryl almost a year ago now when I joined Jaiku.com, a little microblogging / social networking site. She was one of the first people I got talking to on there and I’ve made a lot of good friends through the site since, some I’ve even met in real life, yes that’s right in person, I never would have expected all the cool things that have come out of it but it’s been amazing. We have quite a cosy little community over there which is great fun to be a part of. Sheryl started doing a podcast a while back which became pretty popular and soon she was hanging out with the stars such as Leo Laporte, a popular technology broadcaster. Prompting much repetition of the phrase “I knew her before she was famous” from me. The show was called The Gabby Geek and I offered to make some theme music for it. Sheryl seemed pretty happy with the resulting tune and I was happy to make some good use of my studio, I was even a guest on the very first episode of the show which was great fun.

So when Sheryl asked me about making some music for the new video show she’s doing with Ken, I was only too happy to don my cape and swing to the rescue… well I agreed to do it anyway, I wear the cape most of the time but that’s another story. Making theme music for films, TV and radio has long been an ambition of mine although it’s not something I can honestly say I’ve done much of to date. I’ve mainly focused on my bands and little solo projects over the years musically, I’d like to think this could be a new direction for me but we’ll see. So if by some chance Ridley Scott is reading this… giz a job, I could do that

The track itself turned out very well and I’m happy with it. The original brief was Euro Pop I seem to remember and it’s fair to say I deviated a little from that. Writing something to someone else’s specifications is still quite new to me but I think I’m getting the hang of it, it’s quite liberating actually to have a direction laid out for you already when starting a track. I did a couple of demos before Christmas which were quite Euro Pop themed but when I came back to do the final track last week I just couldn’t get this guitar riff out of my head, it kept rolling round in my brain with the words Geek Speak TV over the top. I worked it out on the guitar, set up a drum loop and within an hour or so I had the basis of the track. I tried to make it a bit more techy sounding with some interesting synths and so on but if I’m honest it’s really just a rock tune. Once I got the guitar out there was no going back and now it’s less Euro Pop and more AC/DC attempts Euro Pop, I think it works though and luckily Sheryl & Ken seem very pleased which is the main thing.

The only thing I think I would change about this now is the drums, I used a loop to get the track up and running quickly and build around but it sounds a little too mechanical and sanitised for the feel of the track I think. It could use some fills and subtle changes. Ideally I’d have a drum kit set up and just play along to the track but as I’ve said before I don’t have the money or space for that at the moment (sigh)… Seriously Ridley, call me mate!

The instrumentation is pretty basic really, 2 guitars, bass, drums, synths and vocals, that’s all there is to it. I did use some effects to fill out the sound on the guitar and vocals though. I patched the vocal through a guitar amp and messed about with it a little to blend it in. I’ll have to remember that trick for the future. It’s a pretty short track and I expect the guys will fade it out quickly after the singing finishes, that’s the idea. I left all the extra guitar twiddling stuff in there because I thought it would give them some room to play and besides, if I’m honest I was having way too much fun noodling away to cut it out now.

I hope you like the track, can’t wait to see what the guys do with it. Not bad for a days work hey? It was a lot of fun to make. Hopefully I’ll have some other new tunes for you to hear very soon, thanks for listening,

Bye 4 now,

Dan

 

 Sonic Real Estate - GeekSpeak TV Theme [2:24m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Alright folks, sorry it’s been a couple of weeks since the last update. I’ve been pretty busy of late with this and that. Anyway, I do have another classic track for you to check out. I use the word “classic” as a nice way of saying old really, I’m not being narcissistic or anything You might have read on the little biog page of this site that many years ago I attempted to create my own style of music called Shed Music. It was partially a joke but also had some substance to it. This is the track that started all that off really. Now allow me to transport you back through the mists of time dear reader…

It was in the year 2000 and I was without a band at the time, pretty happily without a band if I’m honest as the previous one had been emotionally draining and I wanted some space. I’d just started a Computer Science degree (which I completed honest… I’ll get the certificate out if you like?) and things in my life were changing I suppose. I got my student loan and then promptly spent it on a load of audio equipment to set up a home studio, I got a digital 8 track, a nice Soundcraft mixer, some mics and all that kind of stuff. Most people spend their student loan on beer and drugs, I spent mine on my own little Abbey Road hehe

I was playing around with all this new equipment and starting to get involved with the Internet more and more via my course. I experimented with Propellerhead’s Rebirth software a lot at the time, it essentially gave you a virtual 808 drum machine and a couple of synths to play with. I loved it and spent a lot of time messing around with delay and reverb panning between speakers. Like I said, while other students were out getting drunk and partying, I was doing this (sigh). I came up with this long drum track containing weird synths and noises panning around so I dumped it to my outboard recorder. All 9 and a bit minutes of it, which I couldn’t change thereafter cos it was recorded to 2 audio tracks. I then started jamming a bass line over it, recorded that, added an acoustic guitar. Then I felt the urge to get the old harmonica out (that’s not a euphemism) and jam along. I recorded it all and after a day or two it was building into a pretty nice groove I must say. It sounded like a mad mix of electro noises with acoustic guitars and harmonica, I didn’t really know what to call it.

It was at some time around this point I found myself watching that perennially depressing BBC soap opera Eastenders. Readers within the UK will know what I’m talking about but basically it’s been running for about 20 years and it’s a bit of an institution here in the UK. Even if it is utter shite. Deadenders would be a more accurate description. I don’t honestly know why I was watching but it must have been fate because one of the characters said “You’ve got some of that shed music down there haven’t you Janine?”. It was a crap joke but the name stuck in my brain, Shed Music, that was it!. So I made a note of when the repeat of the show was on, set up my mini-disc recorder and taped the whole thing to use for samples. I got a few funny lines and obviously the bit where they said Shed Music and mixed them into the track, as you can hear. After that it had to be called The Shed Anthem. I recorded a load more tracks and combined them with some friends to make an album under the Shed Music banner. It was an experimental and eclectic mix but I still love it to this day. It still sounds fresh even 8 years later and that says a lot I think. Listening to this track again now it still sounds good but I’m not so sure it’s as groundbreaking as I first thought. Who knows? It reminds me a bit of Lemon Jelly or someone like that. Still good though. I piped the harmonica track through an electric guitar amp and mixed it with the dry version at different points throughout the track, which adds a nice touch I think.

I decided that the Internet was the future of music, pretty ambitious in those days but I wanted to start an Internet record company with my friends. We called it Shed Records and tried to promote tracks through the site for download. It was tough and to be honest, it was probably too early at that time for it to work. It took about 25mins to download a 3min track and it was tough going. It kind of fizzled out in the end but I’ve thought many times about resurrecting it since the dawn of the download age. Many people told me that there was no demand for music online and people wouldn’t go for it. I was convinced and I was subsequently proved right by the launch of iTunes a couple of years later. To quote the great Alan Partridge “needless to say, I had the last laugh”

Incidentally, I think we’re in the same situation with video now that bandwidth is good enough, if there were better legal options to buy films and TV programs through the Internet I’m sure people would use them. Mark my words, there’s a fortune in them thar hills!

I was so convinced this was going to be a smash that I phoned the BBC to inquire about clearance for the samples, I’m not joking. I spent ages trying to explain to some poor receptionist that I’d recorded this song using samples from Eastenders and I wanted to get permission to use them. They seemed a bit bemused really, passing me from one extension to another and probably having a great laugh in the process. In then end the bloke basically said to me “just do what you want with it, if it becomes popular we’ll contact you about royalties then” he was very nice about it actually. Still can’t believe I went to the trouble of ringing them over that though.

I set up the original Shed Records website and purchased the name www.shedmusic.net which as you can see I’m still using to this day. I really wanted www.shedmusic.com but it was unavailable at the time, it just brought up some large picture of a random middle age couple with the words “click on our faces to email us” in large flashing letters. What??!!!! Bastards!!! I kid you not, it’s gone now or I would link to it. You’ll just have to take my word for it. Anyway, I digress. Hope you like the tune and I’ll be sure to offer you some more selected samplings of Shed Music in the future. It can be a bit eclectic for some people’s tastes I know but hopefully some of you might like it. Fingers crossed hey

Catch you next time kids, don’t talk to strangers

Dan

P.S – This is called a radio edit because the original version was over 9mins long, I spared you

 

 Sonic Real Estate - The Shed Anthem (Radio Edit) [4:47m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Just when you thought it was safe… I’m back. It’s been a busy couple of weeks but I finally have a new track for you all to check out. I say new track but really it’s another older track I revitalised. It’s called The Oystercatcher’s Escape which to be honest sounds like a bit of a pretencious title to me now but there is a story behind it. I’ll reveal that later on

It’s another track I recorded while in France and I’ve marked it as a demo version because there’s a few things I’m not happy with. Mainly it’s the drums, I had to program them and they sound too precise or mechanical I think. It’s a pretty jazzy/blues tune or maybe that should be bluesy/jazz who knows Anyway, it needs a more free flowing syncopated drum style I think and if only I had a drum kit, about 10 extra microphones, stands and a lot of space, I’d play it myself but for now the computer drums will have to do. I wrote the song over 10 years ago now on my battered old acoustic and I have a strange relationship with it. Sometimes I like it and we get along but at other times I think it’s a bit too cheezy and I don’t like it, I tend to be my harshest critic.

(The Bay at Polzeath, click to enlarge)

The reason it’s called the Oystercatcher’s Escape is not because of some profound and deep meaning, it’s actually more of pun than anything. For a number of years I went on summer surfing holidays with my family in Polzeath, Cornwall. We used to stay in a pub called The Oystercatcher up on the hill above the bay, lovely place and I had some great times there. I used to go out on my surfboard for 7 or 8 hours at a time and a few times the life guards had to come out and check I was still there, I haven’t been in years but someday I’ll get back there. I used to sit out on the fire escape of the pub watching the sun go down over the water and play my guitar, that’s where I wrote this song. So it had to be called The Oystercatcher’s Escape

Hope you like the track, let me know what you think

Dan

 

 Sonic Real Estate - Oystercatcher's Escape (demo) [3:18m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download