Using the Producer Edition disc with the limited edition boxed-set version of Dream Theater’s new album, I’ve created a mashup mix of Dream Theater’s ‘Wither and Rick Astley’s ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’. It had to happen eventually. Have a listen with the Flash player below.
Update: How about it going the other way? Wither’s vocals over Never Gonna Give You Up’s music? Here it is!
Update #2: MP3 links on the My Music page.
This entry was written by , posted on July 24, 2009 at 12:09 pm, filed under music, recording and tagged dream theater, mashup, music, rick astley. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
See the ‘My Music’ link over there? Yeah, click that shit and listen to the tunes on there. You might actually enjoy some of them.
Nothing majorly noteworthy happening of late, unfortunately. Get paid on Thursday, though, so shouldn’t be too long before I’m back on the road.
Oh, that’s right, I got shot of my DeArmond Jetstar guitar and replaced it with a nice Ibanez Soundgear bass. Need to get it set up to remove the pretty chronic fret buzz on the lower frets, but once that’s done it’ll be pure bass sexyness.
Pics of bass and eventual new car will be forthcoming soon.
This entry was written by , posted on April 26, 2009 at 9:45 pm, filed under Site, music, musings, recording and tagged bass, car, music, thoughts. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
So I backed Mon Mome, amongst others, in the National last saturday. 93p each way – it was all I had left in my Paddy Power account after I backed all the horses whose form I liked. I picked it based on the jockey silks. Same way I picked Numbersixvalverde in ’06. And probably Silver Birch in ’07. Yeah, I’ve picked three out of the last four Grand National winners. w00t.
Not had much chance to get to grips with Logic Pro yet. Noodled around with some of the virtual instruments and installed Addictive Drums (my favourite source for multisampled drums – they sound terrific with some careful programming. Just wish there was a couple more cymbal slots, mind you), so I might have a crack at doing some proper recording in the near future.
My next door neighbour died of cancer today, and it looks like my mum’s cousin might not be long for this world either, thanks to it. Fuck cancer. Fuck cancer up its tumerous arse.
On a lighter note, my friends/bandmates Toma and Ross produced another comedy music video, based on Biffy Clyro’s song Machines. You can watch it below.
This entry was written by , posted on April 9, 2009 at 11:40 pm, filed under gambling, logic, music, musings, racing, recording, sports, tech. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
As some of you may know, I record my own music (examples of which will hopefully be on this site in the future. Although I said that on the old version of the site…). The program I use to record said music is a Digital Audio Workstation package called Sonar, by the now Roland-owned Cakewalk.
I’ve used Cakewalk stuff for seven years-plus, from Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 through multiple versions of Sonar (up to version 7, the version I use now. Haven’t tried 8 yet, but I bet it’s great), and it’s a great package. It comes with a bunch of nice effects plugins, software instruments and the like. Definitely under-rated in the Pro-Tools-dominated DAW world.
However, I now have a Macbook Pro, and I quite fancied the look of Logic Studio, having had a shot of the previous version on my friend’s machine. The latest version, Version 8 is a whole different kettle of fish to the version I’ve tried previously though – a totally revamped single-pane interface, plenty of bundled effects, instruments, samples, sounds, content, several additional programs (Soundtrack Pro, a stereo audio editor that also comes with Final Cut Pro and Mainstage, an app to help you use your virtual instruments in a live setting, are the two biggies for me) and best of all, it’s cheaper than most of the other equivalent pro-level DAW packages (Sonar Producer Edition, Cubase et al). And to top THAT, I got it for even cheaper on eBay. £175 to be exact. Just. Over. Half. Fucking. Price.
As Chris Kamara would say, “Unbelievable, Jeff!”
So, the box turned up today, and it’s a sexy beast indeed. As one might expect, the packaging is up to Apple’s usual standards. Heck, even the shipping box is up to Apple’s usual standards, with nice foam inserts to protect the box in transit, and an internal sub-box frame thingy with handles to help get the main box out of the shippong box.
That last sentence had more boxes than a lesbian orgy.
Inside, you get a stack of manuals (including two big ones for Logic itself and another big-ish one for the software instruments – I forsee stuff like the big ESX24 sampler taking up a lot of that), the seven or eight DVDs for all the software, sounds, content, et cetera, a couple of things about Applecare and the likes, and another bit of Apple Foam (you Apple fans know the stuff I’m talking about) to keep everything snug in the box and provide a little bit extra transit protection.
A very nice package so far, and I haven’t even installed it yet! I plan on using The Metal Shop Podcast to air my thoughts on Logic in audio form at some point in the future. I’ll blog here about it when that show’s done and up on the feed.
In the meantime, I’ll be taking the big fat Logic manual into work with me tomorrow. Those double shifts can tick by slowly indeed….
This entry was written by , posted on April 2, 2009 at 11:51 pm, filed under Mac, apple, logic, music, musings, recording, tech and tagged apple, daw, logic, music, recording, tech. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Yeah, that band who I’ve been working with on and off since November – the album’s finally in the can and you can hear some tracks at www.myspace.com/themochanights.
Right now there’s Midnight Sleepers (upbeat guitar pop with a cheesy keychange at the end), Chasing Angels (very Queen-ish, big lush ballady thing), Theif of Hearts (no, not a cover of the unreleased Bon Jovi song of the same name, kinda like a cross between ‘Same old Song & Dance’ by Aerosmith and Andrew Lloyd Webber) and The Dinner Party (Like Muse meets The Beatles, all on crack. Or something).
Anyway, enjoy. James Mackenzie (of www.rupturedrecordings.com) did a great job on the mix & master.
This entry was written by , posted on September 15, 2006 at 2:34 pm, filed under music, recording and tagged music, recording, the mocha nights. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I got played on the Tartanpodcast!
Hopefully all those thousands of folk that listen to the cast enjoyed the tune.
This entry was written by , posted on May 9, 2006 at 10:13 pm, filed under music, podcasting, recording and tagged music, podcast. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
…The recording of The Mocha Nights‘ full length album, that is, with me as co-producer/co-engineer (the band will no doubt be doing ‘producery’ things, being the perfectionists that they are, and James Mackenzie, my old Reverend Neil McDougall bandmate and current Tempercalm main man will be aiding the engineering side of things).
We’re doing the recording at Jonny the bass player’s house for the next month while his folks are off holidaying in Hong Kong and other exotic locales. If it’s not finished by that point (likely), then we’ll probably use the drummer’s rehersal garage, folks’ bedrooms or The Shire (the house in the middle of nowhere that Bush (guitar/vocals) stays in, where we recorded the debut EP in January) to do the rest. My main hope is that we can get all the drum tracks done by the end of the month, as theoretically guitars, keys, bass and vocals could be done damn near anywhere, really, with today’s technology.
I know there’s a bunch of tech geeks/GAS hounds reading this, so here’s a breakdown of some of the gear we’ll be using…
Mackie VLZ 1642 16-channel mixing desk (A temporary fix until Mackie get their fingers out and send the VLZ1604 the guys ordered to Sound Control, should do the job in the mean time though)
PC with M-Audio Delta 1010 sound card (external rack-mountable audio interface with 8 analogue and two digital inputs. Mmmm.)
Behringer rack gear (Composer Pro compressor, 4-channel noise gate, headphone amp/distribution/monitoring unit type thingy)
Mixture of Sennheiser, Shure, Audio-Technica and AKG microphones
Mesa Engineering Single Rectifier and Rect-o-Verb heads (and accompanying closed-back 2×12 cabs)
Peavey bass amp with 4×10 and 1×15 cabs
Gretsch Drum Kit (with various cymbals, Iron Cobra double kick pedal and various other bing-bongs)
Epiphone Les Paul(s), Fender Telecaster(s), Godin SD (mine 
), Music Man bass, some sort of Fretless Bass
Roland RD-700 Stage Piano
Big-ass house in Bridge of Weir 
Should be fun. Hopefully I can do a Hitchcock and sneak a musical cameo on there somewhere.
This entry was written by , posted on November 1, 2005 at 10:35 pm, filed under music, recording and tagged music, recording, sonar, the mocha nights. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
A couple of weeks ago, I went off to a farm in the middle of the windswept Glennifer Braes, a big-ass area of farms, hills and other such green-ness in the west of Scotland, south of Glasgow. As the topic title suggests, I was there to produce the debut EP of a band I’m friends with, The Mocha Nights. Last night the mixing & (rudimentary) mastering was done and I gave the dudes their master copies to burn off and send to promoters and stuff.
Additionally, I just uploaded the whole thing to their webspace (with their blessing, natch) and now I’m posting the links here to let my LiveJournal friends get in on the action early (the MP3s won’t be linked to on the site until after they’re out gigging).
So, here we go…right click on each track name and save to yer hard drives.
1 – Midnight Sleepers
The guys were shooting for a funky sort of Dave Matthews-ish sound to this one. Definitely very sunny and upbeat, and a cool opener.
2 – View From The Eyes
More sombre this one, a piano driven melancholy ballad with a big RAWK chorus.
3 – Love In Orbit
A bit Police-meets-modern-rock this one, about interstellar hanky-panky.
4 – Dinner Party
The ‘epic’, so to speak – five and a half minutes in three sections. Good one to close things with, and very Muse-esque in places, with touches of The Beatles. Listen for the nugget right at the end of the MP3.
Enjoy, and constructive feedback on the songs and the recordings are greatly appreciated, seeing as we should be doing the next EP some time in the summer. 
This entry was written by , posted on February 11, 2005 at 8:20 am, filed under music, recording and tagged music, recording, the mocha nights. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.