See This Is Why I Can Say 'Guitars', Plural

Hi, my name's Ben and I'm currently directing the new Fresh Prince of Bel-Air movie.

Sometimes the sweetest things happen over the shortest time. It's sort of like when you know there's only a short time for something to last, or a short time in which to get a job done, everything becomes a lot more vital and focused. Luke and I had this experience the other day when we recorded the acoustic guitar tracks for the album.

The optician in me abhors this picture. Or should that be aberrates? OPTICS!

It only took about four hours to record all of the parts for eleven songs, which is - even for someone who normally records pretty quickly, if I say so myself - pretty quick. Luke is a master of setting up to record a great sound within a short space of time and as always creates a more-than-conducive environment for people to record in. Aside from being a talented engineer (as well as every other studio role he fills), Luke's one of my best friends - we always talk a load of shit when we hang out (and the thought's crossed my mind that a load of our talks about everything from delay times to astronomy somehow work their way into the music we record) and the sessions always start to feel more like the music happens while we aren't looking. This happened with the acoustic guitars and before we knew it, some bugger had come in and finished all of the recording for us... I like to think this was also partly a result of having intentionally extended the writing and recording process over a much longer time so far than I have done previously. It means that the songs feel a lot more natural and almost habitual at this point, like either I've been playing them for years, or they're simply playing themselves. That can happen, right?

I've been throwing down acoustic guitar parts on my solo recordings for a fair old while, even just to add a bit of depth to the guitar sounds. A lot of the time, there's an extra presence to acoustic rhythm parts that fills out the electric guitar sections and, I think, gives everything a bit more vibrance.

The other nice part of laying down the acoustic parts means that not only is that one great big box we can tick off on the recording process, but I can also use the fledgling drums-bass-acoustic recordings to work on the other final guitar parts while I'm away from home over the next couple of weeks. When I come home, we'll be diving straight into recording those, then it's onwards and upwards to the heady heights of vocal tracking.

Until then, though - I love you all, leave me some comments to read, ask me some questions to answer, spread the blog around... as I get closer to finishing recording  the album, it's going to get even more interesting, intense and action-packed!

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben

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

Names Beginning With B

Hi, my name's Ben and my two index fingers have never touched each other.

There is, as I'm sure you're all aware, an interesting correlation between names and destiny. There are disproportionately more butchers called Butcher, as well as statistically significant alliteration linking people's names with not only their jobs (more dentists called David), but where they choose to live (like Brewers who move to Barnstaple). Hell, even my choice to give Butcher as the first example is probably because I particularly like the letter B, for some reason.

Names, like it or not, dictate a good chunk of who we are and what we become. Something with a name has an intrinsic quality and purpose, which is exactly how I feel about the album now that I've named it. A few days after first thinking I should start deciding on a title for it and starting to wrestle with a few ideas, it came very suddenly (as the best ideas do) and on a completely different path from where I'd been heading.

With such a clear and definite title in mind, the album artwork was almost obvious, really. Since there is, as they say, no time like the present, we're shooting the cover photos next week. My ability to contort my already-funny-looking face into an even more nightmarish version of itself finally paid off when it won me first prize in Andy Casey Photography's Funny Faces Competition (raising money for Children in Need along the way); part of the prize is a shoot with Andy (who I now enjoy a good friendship with, forged in the fires of the Christmas Crew), so that kind of neatly ties up with the album's needs.

This is right before I started pulling the funny face.

I'll probably start 'theming' my online presences with photos from the shoot fairly soon after they're done, so I don't want to describe the ideas too much yet; suffice to say they involve me, Joe and Frank again in a similar vein to the 'Ben Dies at The End' cover. A thought actually occurred to me a while after putting together that artwork, which I really hope no-one else has had and which I'll pre-emptively address here, hopefully not in a 'the lady doth protest too much, methinks' way. A nicely wide variety of my musical friends have contributed to what I've recorded in the past, but they're not pictured in any artwork up to now. The reason for having Joe and Frank in the cover for the last, and this, recording is pretty straightforward - the ideas for the photos need me and two other people; Joe is my brother, my best friend and always plays a large part in not only recording, but writing and producing the albums, Frank is one of my oldest friends and invariable plays on most of what I do. I hope that all kind of makes sense and it doesn't seem weird that I want to explain it; I just have this nagging awareness that people on the outside of the musical process sometimes have different interpretations of what we all do and if there's one thing I can't bear, it's misunderstandings.

As far as the actually important part of the album goes (you know, the music) I'm now done with preliminary writing for ten of the final eleven songs. One, I've written specifically for Joe to sing lead vocals on; it's a song about what we've done together and deals with his imminent departure for more Bristolian climbs. The other is a bit more lighthearted and tells a couple of stories about situations that I've found myself in that have been super fucking awkward; you're going to love it. I've also started putting together the musical foundations for the eleventh song, so it's all coming together in good time.

Over the Christmas break, along with shooting for the album artwork Joe, Frank and I are rehearsing for our (rare-as-a-group) gig on the 30th, which you should be able to find out about by clicking here. It's been literally years since we played a full-length gig together and I can't wait; we're going to be busting out a few old tunes, as well as a couple of covers (one of which is erection-inducingly good). While we're together to practice for that, we're also hoping to spend some time talking over the new album before starting recording in the couple of weeks following.

Just so you know, this jumper is not coming off over Christmas

.

The rest of my Christmas week is going to be taken up with shooting a video for the acoustic song I recorded last week. The very talented Sam Brown, fresh from shooting the new SevereZerø video, is coming down for the shoot, which should fit into a couple of days - I've got a couple of loose ideas for the video, but I should kind of get those finalised before the camera starts recording, I guess.

All in all, it's going to be a pretty busy festive season - in the best way. I hope all of you lovely people have a great time and spend it doing something that makes you smile for a bit.

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben

We Don't Just Get Drunk, Sometimes We Write Music

Hi, my name's Ben and I live in a small network of burrows underground.

This is totally more of a 'keeping you up to date' post, rather than a 'groundbreaking news' post (and so should be mercifully short). I spent the early part of this week testing both Joe's laissez-faire relationship with my writing process, as well as the eternal patience of his girlfriend, by putting together the demos for what songs are written for the new album.

Laying down even these rough guides for the songs moves them on to the next stage of songwriting - now that I can actually listen to them without having to just remember them, it frees up a little bit of brain space to start hearing harmonies or extra guitar lines. It also helps to hopefully pick out any sections of song that just aren't working; maybe a break's too long or a particular section doesn't have enough prominence.

The other obvious benefit to having demos for these songs is that I've got something to actually give to the other people who are going to be playing one part or another in the album's recording. Frank, Joe and I will be working on them live to start with, but then the demos give both of my cohorts something to mull over when they're going about their day. Of course, I've now got a version of Go Team to show to Jackie and Ellie, too - and that demo is probably one of my favourites so far. Not because the song itself is particularly a favourite (I'm still in the happily ignorant stage of having all of the songs holding on to an equal chunk of my heart), but because this is the only song that I couldn't really play by myself in anything resembling its final form. I seem to have a masochistic love for writing interweaving vocal lines - in the songs where I've done it before, those songs are all amongst the ones that still elicit a wave of pride when I listen to them now, but dear lord they can be a challenge to put together. Hearing the lines sit together and work on the demo (although admittedly with a rather manly-and-Bennish sound to the girls' voices) is almost a gift and although the three of us will more than likely tweak and rewrite it beyond current recognition, I can let out the first big breath of relief in this project.

Pictured: very talented musicians. And me.

With eight songs written and demoed, I've just started moving on to developing a couple more musical ideas to fill out the album. One has lyrics for a couple of sections already, the other is, I think, going to be a song for Joe to sing. A small part of me was worried that the kind of natural break that came in what has been a very smooth songwriting process so far meant that the creative sponge had been squozen dry for the time being. Luckily, though, these two ideas are so far shaping up just as quickly and smoothly as their brethren - and the feeling I'm writing a pretty good album is only growing with them.

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben

One Easy Song, Three Elusive Ones

Hi, my name is Ben and I have the power to regenerate severed limbs.

A few little bits and pieces to tell you about for the new album - firstly, this is how the tracklist is shaping up so far (this is so open to change in practically every way):

The song subjects, in red, appear to be stuck in my college days.

In fact, the evening that this was drawn up, I went on to write and finish an eighth song. It came together really quickly once I started writing, partly because of how clear and crystalised the inspiration was. Maybe one day I'll tell you all about that, but for now (or at least when you get to hear it), it can just live as a song that I suppose can be interpretted by everyone in that magically ambiguous way that songs are.

Whenever a song is easy to write, or I have such a well-defined subject to write about, or an extensive and apt metaphor lands itself in my lap, I feel like I've almost been gifted the song. I've written before about how I see songwriting as more 'finding out how the song goes' and this song is a textbook example. Unfortunately, the song is also destined to be the eleventh song on the album. While I would love for the product of such an unlaboured, organic writing process to be able to fill one of the three spaces in the list above, it will only ever fit as an epilogue to what is shaping up to be a collection of songs that I'm very proud of. Trying to put the reason for this into words is kind of difficult, but it's partly to do with the nature of Nothing Wasted, Nothing Gained, partly to do with the style and subject of this new song, and on an even greater, meta-level, partly to do with the relationship between these two songs. It's a decision that ultimately fits into that greatest of artistic reasons - it just feels right.

The reason why it's an unfortunate eleventh song and why I'm bothering with struggling to justify the new song's avoidance of one of the empty three slots is mostly to justify to myself the fact that this leaves three songs still left to be written; the reason why I even need to justify that is that I need to get this album written - I have a start date for recording.

Black and white is WAY more arty.

My good friend and long-time collaborator, Frank, is stepping up once again to play drums on the album and we're going to start tracking in early January. We're going to spend time with Joe doing some live rehearsals/tweaking sessions over the next month (especially since we're playing a rare collaborative gig on the 30th) to hopefully keep the final recording process as slick and natural as possible, as well as uninterrupted too much by on-the-fly re-writes or uncertainties. 

For this album, the recording process is going to be drawn out over a much longer period than before - the plan is that once the drums are tracked, we can spend a few days (or even weeks) wrangling the written bass line so that it doesn't miss any musical opportunities that present themselves in what Frank's played. That's the plan, anyway - I refer you to the golden rule of studio recording, which is that although preparation can make the process easier on the day, everything changes once you're in the studio.

However, one thing that is (nearly) always a given is that you'll probably only record songs that you've, you know, written. Hence why I'm kind of keen to fill those three gaps. I'll let you know how that goes.

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben