Where did I put my flares?

The Six String Bliss podcasts have come to an end (unless the hosts have a change of heart), but the community lives on. We're going to try and keep producing albums for our own enjoyment. There are actually two projects in progress at the moment. One was proposed as a 'quick and dirty' 'EP' of songs from the 70s, but seems to be growing into more of an album based on songs people have reserved. The other is to cover songs from the original Woodstock festival.

I plan to contribute to at least one of these. I have a couple of ideas for 70s songs. They are songs that I know pretty well and have wanted to record anyway, so this could push be into getting that done. One will be a stripped-back acoustic version whilst the other will be a full band arrangement where I aim to play all the parts. I usually shy away from programming drum tracks, but will give it a try this time, with a MIDI file I found as a back-up.

I've not decided on anything from Woodstock yet. There are loads of possibilities, but I need to do some listening to make up my mind. I'll see if anyone wants to collaborate.

Forum stalwart JMan is blogging about his recording process, without giving away the actual song(s). This is very useful as many of us are not too organised in how we record and could do with some tips to make it run smoother. I could do with a bit more structure to how I work, but I don't know if I will ever be as organised as JMan.

I'll be using my usual toolset of Ardour and Hydrogen (from the KXStudio repos) plus various plug-ins. I may use my Zoom G3X for effects and amplifier emulation, but I need to check in on the state of Guitarix again soon.

Meanwhile, I'm still working hard on the Paul Gilbert guitar course. I've had two video responses from him now that were spot-on for what I needed. He puts a lot of emphasis on muting as this is vital for playing loud without extra string noise and is also fun for 'chikka' noises. I was working on an exercise using this last night that was crying out for some wah. I've only gained a wah fairly recently on the G3X and am slowly learning to use it.

Driving around

The time has come around again for the release of another Six String Bliss album called Driven To Bliss. This is the tenth collaborative album produced by this community and the fifth on which I have participated. There should be a download of the actual album soon.

My contribution was a version of Open Car by Porcupine Tree, one of my favourite bands. I wanted to try something a bit heavier than usual, but this also has some acoustic segments. There's a mix of time signatures in there. I based my recording around a MIDI file I found so that could cover the drums and keyboards that I would not have time to sequence. I wanted to concentrate on the guitars and vocals.

Recording was in my usual set-up based around KXStudio on Ubuntu Studio. The DAW was Ardour 3. This is still awaiting final release, but proved to be pretty stable. The main advantage for me over V2 is the inclusion of MIDI so that I didn't need to run a separate application for that. I ran the output to QSynth/Fluidsynth using a free soundfont from the Ubuntu repositories (more on that later). Having everything in one application makes life easier when you want to mute specific tracks and I was doing that a lot with the MIDI tracks I was using to guide what I played.

Guitars were my Gordon Smith GS2 via my Roland Cube 80x (R-Fier model), Dean Performer E electro-acoustic (recorded acoustically) and Peavey bass (direct). Vocals and acoustic guitar were via my Zoom H4 recorder with line out to my M-Audio Delta interface.

I did consider using software amp models in Guitarix, but didn't have time to experiment enough with that. The Cube did a fairly good job, but I could possibly have got a bit closer to the original tone. It took me a while to get the main riff down, but then I had to play the same on bass! This was a challenge.

I like doing double-tracked vocals. I tried singing some in a different register, but not totally happy with the results. Need to work more on my harmonies.

I also intended to do more playing around with things like EQ and compression to improve the general mix, but that didn't happen due to the deadline and some other things going on. I may still try those on the track to see if I can improve it and learn more about these tools.

The album was produced and mastered by long-term Blissner JMan. He noticed something strange about the waveform of my track that caused some issues with the mastering.

I had noticed it looked odd, but had been preoccupied with just getting it sent off. I noticed that the acoustic sections were offset from the zero line. This was narrowed down to one of the keyboard sounds. To fix it I quickly found another soundfont. I could possibly have used a different patch on the existing one, but I've not quite figured out how to do this.

So, here it is. This is the pre-mastering version. All comments and (constructive) criticism welcome. I'm still in the early days of learning about this recording thing and anything that adds to my knowledge is welcome.

Mapping musicians

I like maps. They used to be fairly crap on-line until Google came along and showed everyone how it should be done. Not only that, but they made it easy for people to build apps on top of the map. Years ago there was a site called Frappr that let any group of people put pins on a map to show where they all were. This is useful for any on-line community to make it easier for people to meet up in the flesh. That site is long gone.

Recently I found Musomap that does something similar, but it aimed at musicians who want to find local people to collaborate with. It's still fairly small, with just over 1000 members. That means many areas are still sparsely populated. The site features messaging and chat facilities. I used the latter to chat to the site creator 'Kahne'. He's eager to talk to people about how they want the site to develop and I have said I am happy to help where I can. I've already persuaded a few people to join, including several members of the Six String Bliss community.



A site with similar aims is Fandalism, but that doesn't do maps. That really went viral and now has around 500,000 users. I assume that people are getting something out of it, but I haven't so far. It would be great to see Musomap take off in a similar way, but I don't know what it will take and if it can cope with that many people. Scaling is tricky and can cause a flood of updates that will overwhelm people unless they can filter it.

I'm still on various other 'muso wanted' sites as well. I spoke to someone a while back about a blues band, but nothing has come of it yet. I'm keeping my options open. My little pub acoustic jam session has started up again after a summer break. There were four of us there this week, including a bassist. I also have another Six String Bliss album project to work on. I need to start planning that.

Oh, and just last night I did a quick recording of a cool Paul Gilbert guitar lesson. It's a very rough recording, but it captures what I was doing. I didn't quite get the riff right, but that makes it my own thing!

Blissful Floating

I've been a member of the Six String Bliss community for a few years since I discovered the podcast. It's small compared to some other guitar sites, but very friendly. I've met several of them and regularly chat with others. One of the fun features is the production of an album twice a year. A topic is chosen and people can submit songs either individually or in collaboration with others. I've been on a few of these now. One was a collaboration with several others on a Slade song, but the others have been solo efforts. Previously I have not done full song recordings with multiple parts, so these have been good opportunities to learn about the process.

Previously I've used a MIDI file I downloaded for the backing, but this time I wanted to do it all myself. The topic was 'Songs released in 1987' and I chose She Drifted Away by Hüsker Dü from the Warehouse: Songs and Stories album. It seemed fairly simple and achievable. Then I found myself thrown by the 3/4 time signature. I wrote a bit about how I worked around this previously. Once I had the drums I did the main guitar part with my Roland Cube 80x running direct and recorded in Ardour. I managed to accidentally slightly change the feel of the intro riff, but I don't worry about exactly copying the original. I think I did the first vocal take next, but slipped up slightly. I was monitoring on headphones, but didn't realise I'd left the PC speakers on! You can hear it on the track, but I didn't think it worth re-doing just then. Then I added bass. I'm no bass player, but I've got a Peavey Milestone bass from a friend which I ran that through my Zoom H4 to use one of the bass amplifier models. I need to experiment more with those as I wasn't hearing much difference between them.

I added a couple more vocal tracks to give a bigger sound on the choruses. It wasn't intended, but the result has a bit of a sea shanty feel to it. I also doubled the main guitar part and added some high parts where the intro riff is repeated using a different model with more gain on the Cube.

I asked my friend JMan to have a listen and offer his opinion on what effects I should add to make the mix work. He had a few hints about use of reverb and compression. The bass in particular needed something to make it more consistent. The compressor settings I ended up with gave it a grittier feel that I liked.

Trying to mix was not helped by having blocked ears at the time. That's what prevented me re-doing vocals and the deadline was looming, so I sent it off as it was.

The album was launched in a special show. It's fun to hear the details of each song and the opinions of the hosts Clint and Alicia. Alicia has said before that she's a fan of my singing (!) and was disappointed that I did an instrumental last time. I think she actually said that this track was her favourite on the album. Comparisons were made to They Might Be Giants and Steve Howe, which I'll take as compliments. As always I am stunned by the quality of tracks that others put out. Mine sounds distinctly amateur by comparison, but I'm really happy to be accepted as part of this community. I'm looking forward to the next project.


You can download the album for free. Reviews are posted on the forum.