The line up will consist of Imogen Burman on cello, Hakon Sveinsson on piano and Joe Carter on trumpet, plus me on vocals and acoustic guitar. In case you’d like to check it out, we’ll be on just after half 9 for a 30 minutes’ set. In case you can’t be bothered to follow the links, The Workshop is at 243 Old Street, London.

Last night I went to a songwriter’s night called the 15 minute club, organised by Laurence Hobbs at All Star Lanes Holborn, it must have been my lucky night, as Yann Destal was the first performer on the night and put in a stand-out performance. He was backed by his Takamine acoustic guitar and a couple of pedals and sometimes, two background singers, that he had brought along from France. I think the other performers were facing a bit of an uphill struggle after him. But Ridley Barbet from Yorkshire managed to play a good set straight after Yann.

I shall keep it fairly brief today, as I need to get back into mixing my Norwegian project, more about that later. I managed to read a few books on mixing in the past year and if you would like to up your skills in that department I recommend you read these 3. Especially in the order given as each one gets more involved and technical than the one before. The first one I read was The Producer’s Manual by Paul White who is also the editor of Sound on Sound magazine, pretty straightforward with good advice and tips on how to record stuff as well. Then, go on to Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio, Mike Senior, who does write articles for Sound On Sound, has a wealth of experience when it comes to mixing, and basically gives you failsafe recipes on how to do it, in a hands on manner. Lastly, there is a book, which, if read first will only confuse you, but if read after the aforementioned ones, will give you a wealth of information about why you actually do things the way you do them and what else you could do and how you could do it in a different way. It’s called Mixing, Concepts, Practices and Tools, by Roey Izhaki, who teaches at SAE amongst other bodies. I’m not making any money from this, just thought I’d tell you which books worked for me. If you know how to monetise this, tell me.

So, about to wrap up for the day, but a friend has asked me to write a few lines about a friend of theirs and their up coming release. The band is called ‘Woodman Stone’ and the new offering from them will be officially released on Monday 25th of March. I believe they hail from Leicester as that’s where they recorded “Someone Else’s Dreams Will Fill Our Home” (but not sure). Their songs spring forth from their dreams and they came up with a bit of a myth concerning their origins, apparently they came into this world in a post apocalyptic post 3rd world war type of scenario, there must be some time warping going on that I’m not entirely aware of. Tom Robinson of 6 music wasn’t put off by this conundrum, but I guess he skipped the reading bit and went straight for the music. Good man. The music is quite a mix of pop styles with an electric indie folk feel. Especially the vocals give it a folk twist for me, as the vocals seem less produced than the instruments. So yes, good songwriting skills well recorded, see whether it’s your cuppa. I’ll add an itunes link here next week.

I don’t think it really matters where I start, so let’s just dive in somewhere. Well, musicians usually do gigs once in a while, or all the time if there is no day job to distract them. Some even manage to do both. Now, if you aren’t famous already, and you aren’t playing covers, chances are you aren’t making a lot of money. You might be losing money! By the time you and a couple of other fools (i.e., the band) have rocked up at the venue, you are a few travelcards down, you will be spending money on drinks and you might have had a couple of rehearsal, which means 30-50 quid per rehearsal and a few more travelcards …… yes, you are right, down again. So let’s say 30 people make it to your gig, that means the venue will give you about 30 pounds, or 40 if they are feeling generous. Well, you can see where this is going. You have just made a loss. (At least that’s how it is in London)

Here’s where a new-ish thing is coming to the rescue. Second Life has been around for a number of years, but for people like me who aren’t into gaming or most things virtual, I didn’t even know it existed. Thanks to my friend Jordan (Reyne), I was introduced to it. She has been playing gigs on there for about 2 years I think. Anyway, she invited me to a special morning, where 3 acts from London performed in succession. First Jordan, then me, then Maxdymz (industrial metal). That was back in September 2012. Since then I pretty much started playing my own gigs by the end of October and now have a couple of regular slots in this virtual world. In case you are in the dark about Second Life or SL for short, it is a virtual world that you can explore using an avatar. You can walk, fly, travel and be teleported to places, a bit like in the old Star Trek. So, if I play a gig, people see my avatar on stage and I see their avatars arrive at the venue. They can use local chat to communicate and they can even tip a muso, using SL’s online currency, Lindens. The audience then listens to me singing into a mic in my room and my guitar plugged into my little mixing desk.

I was hooked up with someone who spends a lot of time in SL. And she agreed to be my online booker (I call her my pimp), which is a total blessing, as it is not easy selling yourself. So, if someone else does it, greatttttt. If anyone wants to book a gig, I’ll say, please get in touch with Secret (Rage) as she has all the dates. Well, you can see, you can play gigs without leaving your room or your pyjamas behind!!! You can’t get rich, but you can make a few bob, to help you out a bit and once you are established, even get a fixed fee from the venues. It’s still all pocket-money, but every little helps and people who like what you do will follow you onto other platforms too, like Facebook and so forth. You are spreading the word.

In order to be able to do this, you need: a microphone, an instrument, a small mixing desk, a decent (external) soundcard, headphones. And you need to find someone on SL to let you stream audio into this virtual world. I pay 1500 Lindens a month for it, which is 3.75 pounds. And you need to download a little program that will stream your audio to that person’s server. There are various small ones around. I use something called BUTT. 

You can see my avatar (or avi) doing a gig at a venue called Key West in Second Life above. If there is anything you’d like to know, that I left off, or whatever, leave a comment and I’ll add whatever it is, provided I know the answer.

Managed to update the info on Bandcamp as well, where you can buy all the new songs. Put more stuff on Soundcloud as well, and have started doing kitchen sessions, where I play a song in simple acoustic fashion in our kitchen and put it on Youtube. Right, next blog post soon, and if you have a minute have a look at the updated Amphibic website as well.

Next blog post soon.

We also went to the 12 Bar Club on June 7th and played a gig where we tried out some more brass on songs and welcomed Sarah Mann on trombone into the fold. Joe Carter on trumpet also showed off his skills and even threw in a muted trumpet solo. We were impressed. Nick added some new keyboard sounds, there was a touch of electric piano (a rhodes type sound) and even some organ in a song called Lilly. The new sounds came from a module by EMU called Proteus 2000. I used my Seagull acoustic on the night for which I have just ordered a new custom made bone saddle. Sounds kinkier than it is. We were sharing the evening with Jordan Reyne who is an industrial folkster from NZ who did impress everyone with her dark songs and nifty use of her loop pedals.

I have discovered a couple more licensing companies (for Film/TV and ads) and am in the process of offering them some more songs to hopefully bring in some dosh sooner, rather than later.

Apart from that, Jordan is actually working hard at creating a new website for Amphibic.co.uk which is supposed to go live fairly soon. Excited!! Yeah!!!

One thing I’m working on at the moment is a song that is close to my heart. It’s a project that is to do with Norway and I am looking forward to some collaborations with some old friends there. I don’t want to say too much at this stage. But will keep you updated here. I am very excited about this and even though I did use the word excited in the last paragraph, I don’t get excited very easily. Honest.

Met up with our Finnish drummer friend Jari the next day and had a drink with him and his grilfriend down Notting Hill way. He’s going to supply some drum recordings from his studio in Finland.

We also went to see the Tall Poppies at Home House, which was a night set up by a lady called Sefe Greg. There was also someone who would be fantastic on any X Factor type show (but very good really) and an offering more to our liking, called ‘The Cellophane Flowers’. Just checked the gig was on March 6th….

On the 14th of March I went to the Phoenix, off Cavendish Square, for a day of songwriting-master-class-fun with Martin Sutton who has been doing this very thing (writing commercial songs) for a number of years. Met a few interesting characters and some nice folks and had a pretty good day, including writing half a song amongst about 17 of us, within about 15-20 minutes. I was quite impressed by our collaborative effort. I have since dug out some old and good songs of mine and am giving them a once over ‘Martin Sutton’ style. The main thing for me, comes down to, ‘not settling for the first thing that springs to mind’ type of approach. Trying different lyrics (or melodies) for a given line in the song. He told us he was pitching a song to Barbara Streisand at the moment. I thought, wait a minute, I’ve got a song for Barbara too ……Oh, then I left my guitar in the pub, which i noticed when I was going down the escalator’s at Oxford Circus, ahhhhh.

My mate Atul had his musician’s meet up at the Comedy Pub on the 18th, so I went along and gave my two cents’ worth of wisdom if asked (and also when i wasn’t asked, well you know if you know me….) There’s a link to Atul on the right hand side here.

Finally got round to repairing an old Drawmer Compressor (DL231 since you asked) and I might keep it as it is a pretty smooth sounding piece of kit in engineer speak. Might sell my Symetrix instead. The Amek BC2 strip is working but it’s not as great as I was hoping it would be. So will stick to the old Alice preamp for the time being. This week I’m going to up the ante by buying a version of Komplete (Native Instruments virtual instruments collection). Almost enough of the geek talk, but also got my old Oktava MK219 out, which hasn’t seen any service the last few years, upgraded the transistor in it and a few capacitors (the grille went years ago), and it really is a fantastic mic. Just waiting for some brand new brass mesh. I will be doing a mic shootout over at Tigersonic studios with Felix Macintosh there in two days’ time. I will take along my Royerised MXL 2001 and the modded Oktava 219 and possibly my Sennheiser MD421 which works great for me on vocals too.

I think that’s it for now, next installment in about 2 weeks I reckon, be good.

Forgot to mention that Aussie company Hook, Line and Sync has accepted some Amphibic songs for their catalogue. So hopefully there will be more synching going on soon.

I read this paper on what musicians should and shouldn’t do by Derek Sivers and as I have a bit of a habit, telling people what I think about their output, I sent him an email. He founded (and sold) a very successful company called CD baby, where artists can sell their wares to their fans, and fans they didn’t know existed. Anyway, he’s a nice man who likes to communicate and got straight back to me.

I have done a bit of thinking and have decided to submit a few more songs to the licensing company that managed to get me the placement on the American show, Switched at Birth. Apart from that, I will approach a few more companies like them and also keep submitting stuff to various Taxi listings. A consultant I spoke to recently, told me that he liked the songwriting of the new songs, but that he wouldn’t be able to present them to the labels he is in touch with. The labels he knows need the recordings to be more developed. I do suspect that the size of the labels could be relevant here, as the smaller the label, the less likely it is they’ll have money to do any developing themselves. But, he is a pro, so I’d better take him seriously. It made me mull over my recording setup a bit. It’s incredibly simple but also very efficient. With a bit of thinking and care, I reckon I can push the recording and mix quality up by a few notches. I am testing some more professional software and am doing some more mic shootouts. Have also re-connected my old Amek BC2 desk channel strip and it does beat my current preamp. Don’t want to bore you too much, so will talk about this a bit more in the next installment. Had a rehearsal with Imogen on cello last week and one with Nick (piano) today, drums, violin and cello on Thursday … So yes, we are firing up all the different cylinders at the moment….. Okay, more next time.

Okay, that’s enough geek-age. Just before the year was out, I was joined by someone dear to me and there was a big feast featuring wild boar that night. On the last day of the year we ended up on the roof terrace of my mate’s house which is fairly high up, we had given up the plan of driving to the top of a nearby hill, to see the fireworks mayhem that visits Germany every New Year’s eve. This is due to the fact that everyone can and will buy fireworks. We did hear the fire engines later that night, as there are always a few house fires and someone’s probably lost some part of their body and possibly their eye sight. On to happier news.

There were a few more days where I could chill and I managed to borrow a car to drive up to the Dutch border where Steven (at Haldern Pop) had been storing my old guitar case for my Strat (for about 4 years). Thanks Steven! I also picked up a last batch of CDs from them. Before I got to Haldern I drove past Ollie’s place to pick up my old VOX AC10 amp from about 1958. It’s tan and I bought it in London in 1993 or so, when it was in a terrible state. They are very rare and fetch more than a thousand US. Anyway, it was good to see Ollie, Steffie and their little one, Leo. We had a couple of beers in the evening and shared a coffee in the morning, then back on the road. Ollie gave me a Fender Tex Mex pickup which is now the twinkle in my brunette guitar’s eye.

Just before I came back an email reached me to tell me that the song Hungry Man, from our EP THERE WERE MILLIONS OF THEM, had made it onto American television. It was used in a show called ‘Switched at Birth’. I think the episode is called ‘Starry Night’. I will have to see whether I should offer this publisher a few more songs, or whether I should spread the wares over a couple of publishers? But I would like to keep some new songs back, in order not to run out of ammunition for publishers here. The company in the US specializes in TV and Film.

Anyway, back here now, have done three jobs. Met Atul at his musician’s meet up on Saturday, where I met Felix Macintosh who runs Tigersonic studios. Went to see the film ‘The Artist” on the weekend and that’s it. Will do some recording now…..

Industrial folkster, Jordan Reyne, had tipped me off about a music industry party at the Water Rats on the 8th of December. I was glad I went, as Believe-in-Digital gave us a few free drinks and I checked out one band that I liked. They are called Belleruche. Then there was a carol singing thing at St Mary Aldermary’s, just opposite Mansion House tube, which was lovely, they had wine, mulled wine, mince pies, cake and candles and I was slightly concerned that the new vicar and his crew might be burning down the house (church). Anyway, well done to James for enticing us to come along. We got louder with each carol.

There was one more industry schmooze event at the Electricity Showroom, but apart from having about 2 and a half chats to as many people I didn’t get anything out of it, so left early. Almost on the home stretch to Christmas I told loads of people to come down to the Prince Alfred in Maida Vale on the 17th of Dec. I think about 12 did and believe most would agree that a good time was had. Just before I headed into Christmas hols, where I traditionally leave the country, a small present to myself arrived. A Proteus 2000 by EMU which was dirt cheap on fleabay. It’ll make it possible for us to have some fairly cool Rhodes type sounds (electric pianos for the un-initiated) on stage soon. The box can do a lot more but that’s more for recording at home….. Right, there will be another update tomorrow bringing us to the Here and Now……

One thing that I haven’t mentioned when I mentioned the Ideal Home Show the other day, was that I’m contemplating using stop animation to produce a video. I saw this stand by a company calle Hue Animation who supply you with their software, camera and plasticine to create stop animation videos. I thought it’s great stuff for me or other artists to create videos for their songs. You need 8 frames per second which means you need to create 1680 frames (individual pics) for a 3 and a half minute pop song. I can do that and I bet you can too! That’s my good deed for the day.

Jordan Reyne tipped me off about a bandcamp meet up which took place at the book club 10 days ago and I went. Bandcamp helps bands to sell their wares online and from what I saw and heard they do it better than most. They are very friendly people and even shelled out a couple of drinks and I’m sure you know that it’s almost impossible to get a free drink with a bloody gig in London!! It also had a bit of a ‘camp’ (as in tent) like atmosphere about it, a bit boyscout-y if you like. Anyway, I liked it. I do have a bandcamp profile now (see link on the right) and you’ll see it grow over the coming days.

After a couple more rehearsals we played our 12 Bar Club gig on the 1st of Dec. Just before our sound check an ITV camera crew appeared to do a feature on Denmark Street and its musical history (Sex Pistols, a Rolling Stone album was recorded there, publishers were and are based there, music shops and clubs are still there…). Well they filmed our sound check and did a mini interview with Imogen and myself and we ended up on London tonight, on Saturday evening. I found out on facebook.

The next day I went down to Goldsmith’s as Sam Lee (period folkster) was holding a master class there. He talked about his journey and how he got started. He has been running a folk club for I think 6 years in London, it’s called the Magpie’s Nest. Promoting other people for a few years means that he’s been able to connect with lots of very interesting people and is in a fantastic postition to release his own album. He did some unaccompanied singing of traditional folk songs which he does in a very serene way, I was damn impressed by the man. I had a very brief chat with him before he set off across the country to meet an Irish traveller community to hear their old songs! Great stuff.

Oh yes, our gig went well, apart from trumpeter Joe being off sick, as he’d spent the night bringing his guts up. Well, we still struggled to get 6 of us onto the stage.

Matt Jamison, Charlie Ashcroft and Jim Gellatly at Amazing Radio have all played our songs so far. Thanks lads. And I have to say, after listening to quite a few of their shows now, that they are doing a great job, only using unsigned bands and talent. Tune in sometime if you can. They are on DAB far left on the dial.

Right, last point. Am off to see the lovely Sarah Ward at JazzFM now, we’ll be talking about Christmas markets, catch up on old times and play a song. The show will be broadcast close to Christmas, but I’ll keep you posted. Laters.

I think I have mentioned that I have done some work to bring our track Dear Caffeine back to life. It has piano and violins in there now. Nick came round on Thursday night to check out the piano parts and we were joined by Rachel on violin who I met when she was busking near the Tate Modern. It worked really well and as we’ll have Tom join us on violin for the gig at the 12 Bar Club, I spent a few hours double checking the violin parts (one and two) and saving them as PDF documents so I could email them to Tom last night. I work in Logic and I might do a ‘How to’ blog post soon.

Sunday morning started in great fashion as we had two tracks played on Amazing Radio. In case you’d like to check out the show, it was the Amazing Chill on 20.11.11. Charlie Ashcroft played ‘Boy Doesn’t Meet Girl’ and then ‘Rocket Boys’ in hour two. He was filling in for Matt Jamison. They broadcast nationally on DAB and are on the olde net(te)… Then we were off to the Ideal Home Show as my partner’s company were one of the sponsors. She had to do an interview (on camera) for them, so it turned out to be a media heavy day. Sunday night mate Olaf and I went to the Bowery in New Oxford Street to check out Jordan Reyne’s gig there, supporting Marina Celeste of Novelle Vague fame. There’s a link to Jordan’s blog on the right. Jordan does celtic folk with an industrial edge. She uses machine noises and also samples her own guitar as well as voice. Visually, imaginge Pippi Longstocking living on a seafarer’s graveyard . Marina Celeste had a lot of female admirers and two very good musicians with her. Das Fluff, who were also supporting, were a mix between Sisters of Mercy, Devo and Nina Hagen.

Okay, Monday I rehearsed with drummer boy Ben, down at the Imperial College before I went to Camden for Justin Wayne’s (link on the right) musician’s clinic at the Hawley Arms. I had submitted a track to be played (amongst other demos) and got to meet a couple of interesting people. One management person and Alex Kerr-Wilson who organises smallish industry showcase gigs in London. I though it was time well spent. Also met mate Atul there and had a couple of pints as a bonus. The Dead Saints had travelled from Manchester and provided some merry laddishness that was good fun. Oh yes, the 12 Bar Club gig is next week on the 1st….. laters.