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Westy

About Westy

https://www.craigwestwood.co.uk

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Acoustic Solstice

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Shocking News…

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Mixing course

A couple of weeks ago I tried logging onto the mixing course website to complete my final module of the course. The site returned a 404 (site not there) error. I texted Matthew to get the reply that that part of the business has closed. Anyway, after messaging back my disappointment that day, Matthew, some 3 days later, did send me the assignment files so I could at least complete the final assessment mix. I’ve not had chance yet, with having to re-arrange my studio-space recently, but I will do this as soon as the audio equipment is re-wired.

Performance

I have also been chasing Andrew all week about getting one more live coaching session before the Batley Taproom night in June. I sent him a text requesting a meeting with both him and Matthew, to find out what was going on. Within a few minutes he rang me to tell me that his partnership with Matthew has dissolved, and that Matthew is now running 360 on his own. This was quite a shock. I had some slight vibe that things weren’t right here, you know, just a few little things that had cropped up in conversation, but the lack of communication was obvious. Andrew now is still working with 360, but as a subcontractor, so all bookings now are handled by Matthew.

This is a relief, as I was thinking for a while that the whole company had ceased.

So – now that my year’s contract has come to it’s end, I was perhaps fearing the worst, that I wasn’t going to have anything to show for the year’s investment.

While the experience gained this last year has been life-changing, until the major part of the contract is fulfilled, i.e. the five tracks, then I have no reason to renew my contract with 360, as their commitment is still incomplete.

I have since spoken with Matthew, and he still seems determined to complete the mixes and mastering as soon as possible. He is building a new studio, and though it’s possibly a month or two away from completion, and it would be a benefit to have final mixes done in it, I would rather be in possession of my five tracks now to market and progress the music further and have something to show for my efforts. We’ve also talked about getting a photographer to do some promo shots.

The story continues…

Studio Session

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Had a longer than usual session in Matthew’s studio today… In particular, I wanted to tackle the horns section in Nonsense Song which, once the instrumentation had been swapped in favour of Matthew’s superb horns set, the dynamics had altered, and I needed to tweak nearly every phrase. Although Matthew had done a stirling job of trying to interpret my crude instructions, it was more efficient to give me hands-on and let me tweak the piano roll, as I just knew the ‘feel’ of the track, and it was something I just couldn’t articulate, much as I tried. Anyway, he took this photo (above) of me getting my hands on Cubase, for the first time in many years.

We also went through this, and the other four tracks, and Matthew made notes as we played them through and commented on overall sound, and corrections to be made to the mix. They are all coming together I feel, and the changes needed now are fairly minor. 

Daytime Studio Session

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Craig - recording Daytime

Another really good session at Matthew’s yesterday. Hampered a little by the traffic getting across, and it was an interesting detour getting there and avoiding the tailbacks on the M62. Anyway, we got two takes of guitar (pictured) and two vocal takes also in the time that remained. There’s nothing like a bit of time pressure to bring out a tight performance!

We’re doing a new version of Daytime, almost 30 years old (for me), but a murder story, quite dark really. I’m looking forward to hearing it come together, with some real drums (360’s guy in Nashville again), and bass.

Keep watching this space…

Acoustic Circus Session

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Me with Purple Hair!
Nice pic from Andrew’s perspective… Me with Purple Hair!

Acoustic Circus Session is the title of the Open Mic event run regularly at the Taproom in Batley. Hosted by guitarist and singer Pete Long, the Taproom is a great little venue with nice acoustics which will hold about 80 when full. I was impressed with the sound quality when listening to the other acts singing and performing, though I had a couple of issues on the last bit of my second set when a dirty volume ‘pot’ on the P.A. started to crackle out. I just soldiered on and kept playing while Pete did his best to sort things out, which was done fairly quickly, but it definitely needs a clean up for next time.

Feedback from Andrew was very good. He was pleased with the way which I coped, even with the technical issues, and he had no complaints with my playing or my confidence on stage. I have a couple of things to work on in terms of the dynamics of one or two of the songs, which we can work on over the next few weeks. But as we’re coming to the end of our contract, I am now mindful of the fact that we still have 5 songs to complete, mix and master by April.

Lots to do. Watch this space…

Recording Session

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Went across to Matthew’s today for the first time since early December, being ill for most of December, and since my recovery he’s been away most of January on holiday.

We played and reviewed all the tracks so far: Watching the Rain, Nonsense Song, Get Out of This and a bit of Audacity.

First was Nonsense Song. In general I thought the vocals were too harsh, and I had to tell Matthew how unhappy I was with my performance of it. I think it was at the beginnings of my throat virus, and it showed in the performance. Hard to put my finger on it, but anyway, we’ve re-recorded the main vocal again, and I think it is sounding a bit ‘sweeter’, and doesn’t detract from the light-heartedness of the song. 

I sat with Matthew while he mixed Watching the Rain. There were certain parts that were clashing for me, and these I’ve just made sure that he was aware of these parts in the production. Not huge changes, but a couple of subtle things that weren’t sitting right. He didn’t go on to complete the mix, but just saved the changes, so I’ve yet to hear the completed mix with those changes in place.

Lastly, we recorded the vocal and backing vocal for Get Out of This. We’ve recorded three ‘takes’ of the main vocal, so that Matthew has three performances he can select to get the best out of the performance. Then we did a couple of overdubs, recording short phrases that allowed me to experiment and vary the phrasing on these, and then the little backing vocal phrase to finish. It’s now up to Matthew to come up with his ‘best cuts’.

Adding ‘live’ drums to your tracks…

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Session at Andrew's

It’s been a while since I last posted. Many things going off in my life at the moment, and the music being just a part of it. Anyway, the story so far…

We’ve recorded Watching the Rain. The mix is progressing, but it’s not quite there yet. There’s a couple of little bits that I’d like to improve, so Matthew’s letting me sit with him in the studio to go through the parts I’m not happy with.

We’ve recorded Nonsense Song. The vocal is too harsh on it, this is because I recorded it at a point in time when I was coming down with a throat virus, that ended up taking me out for 4 weeks or more (and right over Christmas too…). The throaty vocals have made it sound to me like it’s an attempt at a punk record. I’m not sure at this point what we can do with it.

We’ve begun recording Get Out of This, and one of two new songs: Audacity.

For both of these we’ve recorded guitar at Andrew’s place this time, while Matthew was away, and then afterwards Andrew has commissioned a drummer who’s got a drum-studio setup in Nashville. He’s put a number of tracks down now for Get Out of This. We’ve had to go to 3 takes over this one, and that’s more due to my having a 30 year old song. When you’ve had 30 years to think about it, it kind of goes a certain way in your head, and it’s difficult to imagine a different drum pattern. I wanted real drums on the track, but the ‘virtual drums’ I had were pretty much what I wanted to be played; I just wanted the ‘robotic’ element (that all drum machines have) to be removed.

There is no doubt to me that, despite the repeats and the re-work, having a real drummer really adds something to the mix. I can’t wait to hear the track completed. We still have vocals and keyboard instrumentation to do yet.

Performance Session

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Session at Andrew's

A really great session today with Andrew. I’ve introduced another three songs to the set: Taken to Another, and new songs Waiting on the World and Till the Day is Done, the latter having literally been written last week. I’ve suggested a slide guitar approach with this last one to Andrew. The improvised accompaniment he’s done today really works, I think, and it’s down to formalising this in the next few weeks before we perform it. Thanks Andrew for the pic.

Half-way point review

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Actually, it’s a little more than half-way now on the Artist Development Course, but I felt as if  Matthew, Andrew and I needed to get our heads together and plan the next period and be a bit more productive. Anyway, I called a meeting…

Where we are right now: Recording Course complete; Watching the Rain in progress; The Nonsense Song in progress; Mixing course is now underway on week one after some delays.

General feedback from my close friends on hearing the new version of Watching the Rain has meant that we need to take some practical steps to improve the song. Last week I’d sent across a list of changes, which, I understand, Matthew’s worked on.

The coaching so far has been an enjoyable and liberating process. Who would have thought that I would even be able to get up on a stage and perform my work six months ago? Certainly not me. Big praise for Andrew particularly here, but also for Matthew, who has equipped me with vocal warm-ups and a way of pulling a bit more out of the vocal chords than I ever expected. Credit also for Matthew, who has shown me tips and tracks in recording and mixing during the recording sessions we’ve had, and some tips as to which plugins he uses in his DAW.

I thought it was necessary for the meeting to re-focus on my goals and aims here, and so I mentioned that although we are looking to produce five songs to mastered level here, my aim is beyond that…. to an album. I’ve chosen to put more into performance coaching now, moving forward, as it’s the live side of things that needs to improve and grow.

I also wanted to discuss which five tracks to record… The fact is, since beginning this process my songwriting has become more frequent, to the point now where I’d say I’m writing at least one song a week. My enthusiasm is always for the newer stuff, but, as Matthew rightly pointed out as we spoke, to everyone else, ALL of my songs are new! That is, except perhaps for my ‘inner circle’ of friends who have been good enough to listen to the older stuff and give me feedback and encouragement.

Anyway – I’m tasked this week with providing a third song for Matthew to begin work on. I’ve chosen Get Out of This, perhaps one of my favourite of the ‘old set’. Lastly, we’ve still to decide on the remainder, but there are a couple of songs I’d like to explore which maybe weren’t on the list of five to begin with.

Recording Course

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thesongwriting.schoolI haven’t really written anything about this yet, but I’ve just completed the final week 8 of the Songwriting School’s Recording Course. Now, I already have a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) in Apple’s Logic Pro, and I have a few key pieces of recording gear to go with this, but in light of previous feedback from Matthew and other music producers, there were real gaps in my knowledge and this needed addressing. Matthew thus recommended the course that he runs on the Songwriting School website.

Now I have to say, that the first three weeks of the course were very familiar to me, simply because they covered the basics: how to set up your studio for recording;  speakers and microphones; and recording MIDI in particular. Anyway, I dutifully went through these weeks, and where there were testing questions, I answered them confidently…. and got a couple wrong, I admit. This is the disadvantage of being self-taught. So by the end of this I feel it filled in the gaps nicely. The real eye-opening part of the course for me was the guitar recording part, and this really got me thinking again about the way I’ve been recording my guitars up until now. The great advantage of having an acoustic guitar with transducing pick-ups is it’s immediacy in being able to just plug it in and record away; the disadvantage of this is the quality of sound it produces is limited to the quality of the pick-up, and this can never match the quality of a good high-end condenser microphone, placed correctly to get the whole spectrum of sound of the guitar, not just the electronic signal from the pick-up.

Week 7 was really the key part of the project: the practical. It was my chance to show what I’d learned and put my new skills and knowledge into practice. I decided it was worth doing a new piece, as there was no point in going over old ground and making it too easy for myself; these needed to be real problems and not things I’d faced before. This posed me a new set of challenges for every instrument I recorded. In the end I picked new song Waiting on the World to try and give it some of the new guitar recording techniques I’d been studying.

Here’s Matthew’s comments:

Final Project:

“Craig, this is an outstanding effort and you should be very proud of what you have achieved.

You have a lovely use of stereo in the guitar recording and the guitars are full sounding and shows that your mic placement was well thought out and successful. There are no phase issues that I can hear.  The drums come in musically and the use of cymbal is well placed.  It is difficult to hear the drums generally and you may wish to consider whether the kick drum sound would benefit from layering, or some more compression to make it ‘kick’ better.  You have followed the instructions of setting up the virtual instruments well.

The recording is clean and your fades are perfect.

The use of compression and reverb is appropriate for the musical style. Perhaps not for this track but generally speaking don’t be afraid to experiment with effects – sometimes you can do something crazy and get a really excellent effect from it and the more you use your plugins the more you will gain confidence at knowing exactly how to get the sound you have in your head each time.

Your backing vocals really lift the track at the right point and nicely compliment the main vocal.

This is the best final project I have had the pleasure of marking.  Because I know how you have recorded in the past, I can hear that you have really taken on board everything from this course and put it into practise in a way that has vastly improved your recording skill.  I thoroughly look forward to your work on the mixing course.”

Anyway – I’m really encouraged by the feedback. It’s given me a real positive look forward to the mixing course coming next. Again, I think some of the knowledge will already be there, but again I’m feeling confident that the gaps in my knowledge and some of my inherited ‘bad habits’ will hopefully be addressed.

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