Any More Than Four Strings and He'd Be Lost

Hi, my name is Ben and I'm banned in the state of Utah.

I often talk about how I'm so lucky to be surrounded by friends who are either more-than-adept musicians, or avid afficionados of music in general. I never used to consider an appreciation of music to be an unusual quality in a person, until I started growing up a little bit and meeting a much wider variety of people. Now, in the same way that I've grown to be the only person in certain groups of friends who (thanks to a healthy time spent living in the countryside) considers two miles to be well within walking distance, I've come to realise that living surrounded by musician friends is more of a rare gift than I'd previously imagined.

If it's rare to find enough of these people around to figure out an at least semi-functioning social group, I can't even find the probabilities or metaphors to say how fortunate it is that I've got the best of them all for a brother. Yesterday, Joe and I went to Luke's studio to carry on recording the new album by spending the day tracking bass. Building on Frank's still-steaming drum parts, the recording process went very smoothly - Joe's managed to write and learn bass parts for nine songs on the album whilst juggling changing jobs and planning moving away within the next couple of weeks, so to be honest I'm amazed he even managed to wound the tracks, let alone kill them completely.

Joe and bass playing, sitting in a tree

Joe describes his bass playing as being popular through being unconventional and if I can offer any unnecessary analysis of his contribution to my solo recordings, this is exactly what makes his parts so perfect. He's not playing restrained by any (and I mean any) knowledge of silly things like 'musical theory' at the best of times, so when my solo projects push his playing style further away from the music we've made together in the past, it doesn't faze him in the slightest - possibly because these different styles all just twist and meld into the maelstrom of musical misapprehension that is his bass playing anyway. I think the best way to sum it up is that he's able to communicate his musical ideas without having to translate through scales or time signatures - and I figure that's not a bad way to be.

K-I-S-S-I-N-G

As far as the state of the album goes now, with the rhythm section at least recorded (if not mixed or treated at all yet), the songs are really starting to take shape. The drums have given each of the songs their general 'feel' and now, the bass lines have filled out these suggestions and started to colour them in a little - where before there was a simple, mellow break, now there's an ominous musical landscape; what used to be thrashed out power chords for a chorus has now become a running, melodic sing-along. All of this is going to help me over the next few weeks in figuring out final guitar parts and vocal arrangements.

I hate to announce timescales like this, because nothing is ever as simple as you first think, but at this rate (and with Luke and I both away for a couple of weeks coming up) we should have a finished album by the end of March, ready for release around late spring. This is, of course, open to a lot of change, but that's the plan at any rate.

Look at Luke's positive mental attitude!

I'll try and keep you posted if anything interesting happens over the next few weeks - it'll be a bit of a wait before I record guitars, but who knows what may happen before then?

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben

Imagine If We'd Actually Toured The Songs.

Hi, my name is Ben and I came runner-up in Mr. Universe 2007.

I've just realised that I never told you all about the day we had recording drums the other weekend, so here goes:

Luke, Frank and I hit the studio pretty early (for us) and started by importing the demo for each track into its new home as the guide we'd use to then lay down all of the final instruments. These demos are shall we say 'not of the best quality', but like ugly kids, I have to try and see past the acne and overbites to their potential within. These little babies are the caterpillars, now become chrysalids, that will give rise to things that are hopefully a little bit more beautiful over the course of the next couple of months.

A day's recording wouldn't be complete without a little creativity in the face of adversity - in this case this came when Luke cast his eye over the live room and said "Hang on guys, I'm missing... three microphones. And stands. And where are the XLR leads?". The actual answer to this is 'they're in the back of my Dad's car, from that gig what we played at the end of last year', but I insisted that we didn't dwell on details (particularly which lanky, bespectacled musician's 'fault' it was) and instead Luke got down to Bear Grylls-ing together a decent drum mic setup with whatever gear hadn't been scavenged. Luckily, necessity is still the mother of invention and we ended up with a very, very nice naked drum sound indeed.

Once this was done, Frank, as always, was an absolute machine when it came to playing - this time round, we'd broken our previous recording tradition of having his first listen to the songs on the actual day of recording. With chance to mull over the songs for a while before we went into the studio came so many of the lovely rhythmic motifs that generally come from gigging a song for a few months before recording. The best way I can describe it is that Frank went from, at worst, laying down exactly the right beat for each section of each song - at best, he was hearing ideas that I hadn't even considered within those ugly little demos.

We finished recording all of the drums and bounced rough mixes of each song to take away and listen to before recording bass. Even with the drum tracks in the roughest of rough states, it's difficult to describe what they've added to not only the demos, but the very ideas of the songs in my head. The general style of the album is coming together now - since I started writing the songs for it, I've felt like I've been keeping the best parts of the previous two recordings; now that the drums are down, I realise I might have laid the groundwork to not only let those best bits creep in, but also to reintroduce the best elements of what Joe, Frank and I wrote together back in the mists of time. We'll see, I guess, but as I say - I'm very excited so far.

Next week we'll be spending a day laying all of the bass down; then, Luke and I plan to try and spend some time getting all of the leg-work of mixing and giving sounds to the drums and bass done before I'm going away for a couple of weeks. What this'll hopefully mean is that when we come back fresh to recording to get the guitars and vocals done, it'll almost feel like the Editing Pixies have visited and taken care of all of the time-consuming tom-chopping and compressing for us. With a near-finished rhythm section at our fingertips, it'll free up a big chunk of brain-space to be creative, rather than to worry about all of the slightly-less-pleasant grinding work involved.

That's the plan, anyway - I'll let you know how I get on!

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben

P.S. I'm sorry for the lack of pictures that are relevant to this post; here's an alpaca:

It's a camelid.

I Still Think This May Just Be The Start.

Hi, my name is Ben and my middle name is Reginald.

The last couple of weeks have been pretty busy in all aspects of life.I got together with Joe and Frank to play our first full-length gig as a band in around six years and it went spectacularly. We pulled a few old Hollowpoint songs out of the bag, as well as a mix of Halley's, mine and Joe's solo work and a couple of covers (including a version of Man In The Mirror that we were all very proud of). For an intimate (but busy) crowd, it was probably one of my favourite live performances to date; this might have been due to a small part of me enjoying what it represented, or maybe because Joe and Frank are moving away in the next few weeks (making this, realistically, probably the last time the three of us will play live together). Either way, it was a great night and one that I'll remember for a long time.

You can identify me as the artist by the anatomical accuracy.

Meanwhile, the album photo shoot with Andy Casey went really well and the artwork is coming together very nicely - there's one more photo that I need to take, but it needs a specific person to make it work (I'll be taking it the first chance I get) and after that it's finished. With everything non-musical for the album pretty much in place, I've also been finishing off writing the songs themselves. The last song of the eleven to be written is still in need of some more lyrics, but is musically all there - this is kind of handy as we start recording tomorrow!

Tomorrow is going to be spent creating and populating all of the songs' project files (probably using the existing demos as bases), before tracking all of the drum parts. It's going to be a long day and probably the most work-intensive of the whole recording process, but with Frank moving away next weekend it's more of a 'get it done while he's still around' situation. Luckily, working hard in the studio is something that we do fairly well, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem; everyone involved always has the best time recording, but at the same time we all know how to work hard when it counts. Add to this the fact that Frank is an absolute machine when it comes to recording drums and we should be alright - as long as we remember to bring a can of WD40 to maintain the guns.

Once the drums are down, we're going to do something we haven't done before and bounce very rough mixes of each track to take away and listen to. The idea behind this is that then Joe can use these to lock his bass lines in with what Frank's playing on each one and make the most out of any musical ideas that might emerge as we go along (we'll then go on to do the same for guitars once the bass is recorded, etc.). It also gives me the ultimate in exclusive so-indie-you-probably-have-never-heard-it iTunes playlists for a little while, as I trundle along analysing snare patterns and off-beat paradiddles in my free moments.

I'm so, so excited to be recording again, but it's coming along at a pretty busy, weird time for me. I've probably worn out the metaphor of life being a Rubik's Cube, but it's the most apt description I've ever been given (by Bob Penny, a good friend and very wise man who'd never admit it). Music, love, work, money, family, friends all have their own colours - with probably more to add to that (I know that stops it being a cube, this is a metaphor!). For most people, we can only hope to complete maybe one or two sides at a time before either we have to re-jumble the whole thing in search of another colour, or someone else does a bit of well-meaning jumbling of their own. My cube is always a mess, always. At the moment, though, I've got to go for completing that 'music' side and see if maybe the others fall into place along the way.

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben