Business as usual

It's been a busy few weeks in the studio, with a few changes to the gear.

The first and most significant addition has been an Orange Tiny Terror guitar amplifier. Beleive it or not, I have been without an amplifier for years, and certainly haven't used one since the last time I played with my old band Penguin Steak back in 2004. Everything I have recorded has been either through my old Digitech RP200 pedal or more recently DI'd and then run through a guitar amplifier modeller.

I've used some of the major guitar amp modelling programs in the last 5 years or so, Amplitube was probably the best one, Guitar rig was also okay, Mart used UADs Nigel on the Thursday Night EP which gave some decent sounds too. Since switching to Reason about a year ago, I had been using the Line 6 amp modelling software that come with it. It wasn't great to be honest, but then again I don't think I've ever really liked any of them - to my ears the sound always sounds processed and sometimes chords or other heavily layered sounds just don't seem to resolve properly.

Anyway, I'd read a few articles about miking up amps and I just thought why the hell not - I've got three nice guitars so why not let the tone shine through? So I did a little research and it seemed the Orange Tiny Terror was a decent bet - highly regarded, but with a fairly generic approach which meant it shouldn't be dificult to cover several bases. Clean sounds are important o me, all the way up to medium distortion. But I don't really need metal-like tones, so it's lack of very high gain wasnt' a problem.

At the same time as ordering the Tiny Terror (TT from now on), I bought a Shure SM57 mic, mainly for miking the amp, but also because everyone seems to have one and they are reputedly very useful for all kinds of sounds!

Nine Killer Bees


Work continues on my songs as time allows. In the last week or so the idea has come together to group some of them together as an album. Nine Killer Bees is the working title, and was the name I gave at the time to my collection of songs I wrtote between about September 2005 and April 2006. Listening to the old demos recently made me think how they all fitted together, both in terms of sound and theme, so it would make a good album. I have five of the nine complete or almost complete at the moment. The plan is to finish tracking by the end of January and mixed and on soundcloud by the end of February. We'll see!

Back to Earth

In September 2008 I got my first (virtual) analog synthesizer and a few months later I got the FM8 VSTi from Native Instruments. I'd dabbled with electronic before, but this was the first time I'd made any serious commitment of time (and money!) in the gear to do it. Back to Earth was the first song I made with this new equipment, and was written around the keyboard riff you hear in the chorus.

As an aficionado of 80s music, the song sort of developed around that sound, like a pop song from the mid 80s, right before the point that dance music begun to influence pop. The intention was for the song to be all electronic and the obvious choice would have been to put a synth bassline on it. However, for some reason I jammed the bassline on my bass guitar and it sounded good to me, so I thought I'd stick with it.

I was quite happy with it initially, but I fell out of luck with it quite quickly, as I wrote Don't Break My Heart, A Lie and Let it Ride not long afterwards and it sat in demo form until this year. I wanted to track the song in Record 1.5/Reason 5, and exported the bounced filed of the synths from Cubase, as R&R didn't support VSTs (quite rightly!) nor did MIDI out for the Nord Lead (not so happy about that...). The drums were originally done with the drums in Cubase's Halion device, but I changed to one of the high quality kits in Reason's factory soundbank. The moog-style synth solo was added in at the end from the Nord Lead, and played freehand. Unfortunately, the song was a little bit too high for me to sing so I left it a little while until Reason 6 was released - essentially combining Record 1.5 and Reason 5 plus some extra new devices and features, one of which was audio transpose! I dropped everything down by two semitones and it was easier to sing.

The bassline is retained from the original demo. I kept it partly because I thought I'd done a decent job, and partly because I wanted to experiment using Recycle and Reason's Dr. Octo Rex device to effectively audio quantise the part. Thankfully, on my original demo I'd recorded the signal dry, then sent the recorded signal to my outboard Behringer Bass V-Amp Pro. I was able to find the takes of the original dry signal, import them into recycle for slicing, then load each part (verse, bridge, chorus and middle 8) into one instance of Dr. Octo Rex. Finally, I quantised each slice to tighten it all up. I was happy with the results. And it's so far the only time I've ever played slap-bass!

The version currently on soundcloud is a rough mix, but I would like to return to it in the future and really polish it, and despite all the work I did with the bassline to recorded it properly and more cleanly.

Back To Earth (Rough Mix) by Ligumo


I wrote the song not long after I'd quit a rather soul-destroying job to work for myself. The first few months were  difficult but I decided to stick with it. The song is about my thoughts of my old job, sometimes wondering whether I'd done the right thing, and resolving to stick with what I'd done.

The First Day and Better as Friends

Over the last few months it's been difficult to find the time to devote to music. In september I left for India for 6 weeks for work, and while away I came up with a lot of ideas for music, both for news songs and the will to complete older ones.

An acoustic guitar is an important instrument for the recording artist - believe it or not I'd never had a proper one until last week! I'd made do with either borrowing other people's or getting by with a very cheap one which I gave away a few years ago. I'd been promising to get an Epiphone J200 for about 5 years and last week I finally decided that the time had come!

The First Day


I wrote this song at the start of a very productive streak in the Autumn of 2005*. It was recorded the week I bought my Rickenbacker 330 - in fact I think recording was already underway when I bought it - so I like the trivial fact that this new version has been completed in the wake of another guitar purchase.

Though a demo has been knocking around for 6 years, and Mart Owen also did his Electronic Cowboy remix of the song, this (unintentionally!) slightly slower recording is basically the same as original, just recorded cleaner and with the benefit of several years recording experience!

The song was basically about waking up somewhere after completely leaving your old life behind, and how the world woul be full of new possibilities, but also with a slight tinge of what's been left behind. The ambience sounds that bookmark the track are from some recordings I made of Diwali celebrations in Kolkata, October 2011.



Better as Friends


I've always loved the Beatles since a child, and I know that when I wrote this I was listening to them quite a lot and trying to copy some of their songwriting techniques. This was, I think, the first song I ever recorded that was in 6/8 time signature.

Again, this is a complete re-record from scratch although essentially a clean up of the original demo. I took a lot of care with the drums on this, and for the first time I've used the very natural natural sounds of Jason McGerr's refill for Reason 6. I also changed the bassline, paid a lot of attention to the rhythm guitars and took some time to get the best out of the SM58 microphone I bought for vocals but hadn't really used a lot up to this point. Vocals aside, I haven't paid much attention to micophone use before, but I'm having a lot of fun learning how to use them properly.

However, the guitar solo is lifted from the original demo. It was recorded well enough and sounded fine... so why not?!

I was inspired to write this song by a colleague I worked with. He was always breaking up with his girlfirend and having stupid fights with her. I remember going up Hanley to do some shopping one saturday afternoon and having the basic idea for the song - I came home and got it done!



At the moment I've got time on my hands and the will to record, so I hope to have more songs online soon!

*From Sept - Dec 2005 I wrote and demod Operation Nightfall, Something You've Not Got, The First Day, Canyon Song, Better as Friends, Mister G and Anytime. It must have been an inspirational time!

A cover of a Depeche Mode song

I've just moved into a new home, so there's been a break in my musical activities. I eased myself back into recording last week with a simple cover version of Depeche Mode's Somebody.

Though I find myself having to do it from neccessity, I'm not a natural vocalist - but I was quite happy with my vocals on this track.

Somebody (Depeche Mode cover) by Ligumo

I've been back in the studio this week working on some more original material, and I hope to have something new online by the end of the week!

Alex

Record breaking week on SoundCloud

107 listens, which is the highest I've had in the two months or so that I've been on there. I was encouraged by The Crookery to pull my finger out and get some more songs online. I'd got an acoustic version of Sha-La-La almost ready to go, but I didn't think it would make a lot of sense without the original New Wave version. So in a storming session on Monday I tracked and mixed the whole thing, eventually finished at 2am Tuesday morning. It's not the best mix I've ever done, and I'm slightly underwhelmed at the quality of Reason's Line 6 guitar amps, but it's not bad for re-starters.

Sha La La (Kowalski mix) by Ligumo

Keen to keep the momentum, I decided to put English Melodrama online too. I'd been working on this about a month ago, and had it fully recorded and just needing mixing. I'm not very pleased with the lead vocal on it, and I may do it again. I used my new Shure SM58 on both this and Sha La La, but I'm not sure yet whether I like the sound of it or now - or perhaps I need to change my technique to get the best results. Again, more practice using Reason's SSL mixer was good. It's certainly a lot different to the plug-in based approach I was used to in Cubase, but I'm starting to get there. I'll be returning to mix it better at a later point.

English Melodrama (Rough Mix) by Ligumo

Finally, the acoustic version of Sha-La-La, which has been three years in the making. It was only meant to be a different version, the New Wave one should be considered the 'Main' one.

Sha La La (Acoustic Version) by Ligumo