Friday was a ‘rest’ day as I had other things to do but it was back to work on Saturday and Sunday, after picking up my acoustic guitar – electrics back in place and playing really nicely after having the action lowered.

I went back to ‘Goodnight’ and it didn’t see to be working at all, so I tied it again with a formerly banished click track. It worked this time, maybe I was just used to it? I added some rhythm with a shaker to go under the solo that gives it an extra lift.

I also did some work on a song called ‘Give me this moment’ that has been around for a while. With Hammond B3 and some twangy guitar it sounds quite West Coast and not at all what I’m used to doing. It sounds a bit busy but with the help of EZmix it seems to be coming together. Some people think EZmix is cheating but I’m a writer not an engineer and I don’t want to spend all day messing around with the computer. I just want to write an record music and the more mouse work I have to do the less music there is.

I beginning to realize that an album of songs rather than instrumentals is going to be a harder task than I thought but my brother suggested I should do some acoustic versions of i ZIngari songs, so perhaps ‘Shine a light’ might make an appearance.

Lets see what Monday brings…….

…. with a trip to get may guitar repaired. Not going to be too expensive but it took a little time out of day. I worked on the slightly jazzy “Goodnight” but when trying to play it with a click track lost all ability to play. With more midi focused stuff I’m OK with clicks but trying to do the real instrument thing with a click doesn’t seem to work for me. It stifles what I’m playing and takes all the fun out so I just play safe. So click tracks are out.

Trying to get the battery out of my trusty Gibson Epiphone acoustic-electric I managed to  get the entire battery housing to jump inside the guitar. Just like the plectrums that as soon as you let go, fling themselves though the soundhole resulting in hours of shaking and rattling And that’s before you try and get the plectrum out. Hey ho, it’s of to the luthier I go – the fine SGL Guitars http://www.sglguitars.co.uk/

I’ll have to start on Wednesday with a piano tune then.

As the hardest part of doing something is getting started  I’m going to take the rpm challenge.  I’m not going to sign up for the website, partly because it doesn’t like any of my email addresses, I’m just going to publicly commit to producing at least 35 minutes of music or 10 songs. I could do a 35 minute jazz odyssey a la the Tap but perhaps not, although at the moment I’m listening to Green Machine by Hawkwind……

What I plan to do is record all the songs I’ve written on acoustic guitar, mandolin and  piano but have never finished and recorded. I’ve got about 10 or so, which should suffice. I’ve written quite a lot of music since the end of  i Zingari but have never really done anything with it. I’ve got lots of half completed things but I always to start the next before I finish the last. My plan is to blog about what I’ve done each day so that I can keep a record and also so that it be will embarrassing if I just write ‘did nothing today’. That should prompt to do something, I hope.

The project is going to be called ‘Almost Real’ because I intend to use real instruments as far as possible. The piano, Hammond and maybe strings will be the almost part. My little stdio is not big enough for a Steinway, a B3 and string quartet

So starting February 1st 2012……….

After quite a break the studio is now back up and running. I hate it when technology gets in the way of making music. It should be music first and ‘technology last’ as someone once said. I’ve had to rebuild the PC, upgraded to Cubase 5 and added an old but new to me  JV1010 for some classic old school noise – well late 90s anyway. I had to reintall Windows 2000 on an old laptop to be able to edit it! But enough of the technology….

I’m working on 3 tracks at the moment. ‘Centralna‘ and the ‘The Hypocritic Oath’ that I originally wrote in Warsaw (on that old laptop actually), as well as ‘New American Reich’, which was inspired by Anne Coulter and Rammstein. One for the music and one for the lyrics. You can decide which is which.