This is the website of Neil McDougall, a musician/blogger/podcaster/bookie from Ayrshire.

52 Weeks of Music – Week 1: Absentee

So, we’re off and running in this mad project of mine, with a bouncy wee ditty called ‘Absentee’.  I actually wrote this last week (hey, I can cheat a wee bit, it’s my project, so I make the rules.  :P), but I did the bulk of the actual recording today.  The only things left over from my original scratch demo were the MIDI drums, the keyboard solo and the guitar solo after the keyboard solo.

Download the song here – Absentee

The whole tune basically stemmed from the riff that makes up the intro and verses.  The frantic octave-ey riff that plays in the instrumental section…I’m not entire sure how I came up with that.  I just sort of…stumbled into it, I suppose.  Cool riff though.  🙂

I had some disasters recording it.  I actually had the whole thing done yesterday, but when I was doing one last save, Sonar crashed and somehow everything I had done went missing from the project file, even the stuff I had saved previously in the afternoon – the whole thing had basically reverted to the scratch demo.  Much rage ensued, as anyone who follows me on Twitter can attest to.  However, today, I picked up tools again and managed to get the song done without anything dying on me.

Yes, the vocals aren’t the greatest, the playing’s a wee bit iffy in spots and there’s a couple of bits of breathing left in the backing vocal bus, but I’m not bothered about that – the objective isn’t out-mixing the Black Album, it’s about writing and recording music and getting it out there, and so far, I’m succeeding.

Here’s to the next 51 weeks!

This entry was written by NeiloMac, posted on January 4, 2011 at 4:24 pm, filed under 52 weeks of music, music, recording and tagged , , , , , , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.



Back on the gigging trail. I hope.

This year, I’ve decided that my main goal for the year is to get back into playing live with other musicians. This mission gets under way properly this Sunday when I throw my hat in the ring for the vacant bass player position in the Glasgow hard rock outfit Blood Drum.

It’ll be a weekend of firsts; the first time I’ve ever auditioned for a band, the first time I’ll have done any serious motorway driving, and the first time I’ve ever driven myself to Glasgow.

I might do some in-progress updates about the whole deal. No doubt I’ll be tweeting, but I might throw some video or audio updates in there too. Wonder if there’s an Audioboo plugin for WordPress? 🙂

This entry was written by NeiloMac, posted on February 26, 2010 at 3:57 pm, filed under life, music and tagged , , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.



Grab My Tunes

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 NeiloMac, posted on April 26, 2009 at 9:45 pm, filed under music, musings, recording, Site and tagged , , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.




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