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There are a lot of things to love about the city of Vancouver. There’s never any smog, it doesn’t get very cold, there are mountains, we’re right on the ocean, people are attractive and friendly, politics tends to be left-leaning, and there are a lot of different kinds of people living here. It’s a pretty sweet deal.
But hands down, without hesitation, my absolute favourite thing about Vancouver happens around this time of year. Winters here are rainy, grey, and not terribly exciting. But as we approach April, the city transforms into a goddamn fairy wonderland.
Trees all over the city turn pink and redolent with cherry blossoms. These trees are planted all over the city. For a three-week period, pockets of pink explode into fragrant bloom. This, for example, is my street: … Continue Reading
Vancouver is a city bursting with talented musicians. Two such folks are my friends Stuart and Faith. Stuart you may well recognize as a member of my band Even Handed Odds (formerly CROWN), but he’s also got his own solo stuff going on. He was one of the first people I met here in the city, and we’ve been collaborating ever since. Faith is someone I met through Stu, and is a country-fied singer/songwriter who has penned some really catchy tunes. When I was asked to fill out a showcase at the landmark Railway Club, I was happy to include my two friends on the bill.
At the end of the night, the three of us got together and played this classic Beatles tune:
In what might be the nerdiest I’ve ever done, I have arranged and recorded another all-viola cover. This time, I took on another classic, “Don’t Stop Believin'” by Journey.
This video also allowed me to address one of my pet peeves about the song: “South Detroit” is Windsor, Ontario. Downtown Detroit is right on the rover, south of which is the border to Canada (it’s weird, I know). So there.
This is a ‘music video’ of sorts that I shot for my song Voice In My Head.
I am reasonably certain that I can cross “film-maker” off of my list of potential side careers. I shot this in my apartment using the webcam from my laptop. I figured it was better than a static image for the full 5 minutes the song plays for.
If there are any of you who possess actual talent at shooting film, I’m definitely interested in having some actual non-terrible videos done.
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When a romantic relationship ends, you don’t go back to being the person you were before the relationship started. That has been my recent experience, anyway. My relationship with my now-ex was a big deal for me, because it was the first one I’d had after 8 years of being single. It was amazing to me how much I needed to learn not only about how to be in a relationship period, but about myself and what kind of person I was.
So I wrote a song about that. Lyrics, as always, are below the fold.
Getting good live video is tougher than I imagined. The lighting is always wrong, and the built-in audio on most video cameras is not that great. Luckily I managed to grab this tune from one of my gigs at Darby’s Pub.
Want to get some acoustic stuff up online soon as well, so look for that.
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Muse’s Absolution shares the coveted title of “albums I bought after hearing the single for the first time” with Radiohead’s Ok Computer. It wasn’t the big single “Time Is Running Out” that did it for me, incidentally, but the somewhat less-popular “Hysteria” that pushed me to the record store. From the first beat, “Hysteria” appealed not only to the part of me that loves hard rock, but the part of me that can’t get enough of cerebral and complex soundscapes. The rest of the album (those of you who have listened to it know what I’m talking about) is almost theatrical in its presentation – blistering rock woven into a tapestry of operatic composition. It’s a masterpiece.
Since then I haven’t missed a Muse album release date. While they achieved galactic superstardom on the back of the Black Holes and Revelations album, I was far more partial to their next album The Resistance which stands out to me as their best work. Their most recent album, however, gave us the song that is probably their single best individual contribution: “Madness”.
My dad was a big fan of legendary Brit-rock band Queen, so we heard a lot of Freddie Mercury in my childhood home. The thing that makes me love Queen and Muse is the fact that they do not shy away from classical European music (largely of the Romantic-era vintage, another personal favourite), with all its bombastic overtures and haunting ballads. It’s all there. Beethoven would feel very much at home playing backing keys for both bands. “Madness” is what happens when Muse tries to recreate Queen’s magic touch, and it hits all of my musical pleasure centres.
Because the song is so closely tied to its classical roots, I thought it would be an interesting experiment to try and re-create the song on my favourite classical instrument: the viola.
All parts, including percussion and ‘cello’ were produced using my viola with an occasional assist from my Line6 POD HD500. Most of the ‘effects’ on the string parts were added in production/mixing. This song sets a personal record for “largest number of tracks”, weighing in at a total of 18 separate parts. It was a monster to put together, but definitely a fun experience. Recording it forced me to come face-to-face with my own limitations as both a sound engineer (obviously) but as a player as well. I also got to stare the sonic limitations of my viola in the eye in a way that I don’t normally have to when it sits under my chin.
All in all, it was a fun project and I’m looking forward to doing more. If you like it, please share it!
A year and a half ago I wandered into Tom Lee Music Store and found myself in the midst of a year-end sale. Because it was marked way down, and because I had wanted one for a long time, I picked up an Ovation round-backed guitar from the Celebrity line. While I loved the guitar to pieces (especially in relation to the one it was replacing), it wasn’t too long until I felt like I had outgrown its sound and was looking for something a bit warmer and brighter. It was along those lines that I found Emily, my new guitar, who is a Seagull Entourage manufactured by Godin.
In this video, I take her out for a test spin on one of my favourite covers to do at karaoke:
I’m looking forward to recording a lot of great stuff with Emily. Incidentally, my recording of Niall Connoly’s “Skin and Bones” was the first song I recorded with Emily, and you can really hear the difference in the guitar tone between that one and my older recordings with Sarah (my Ovation).
A local singer-songwriter with whom I am acquainted posted a new song she had written on Facebook. It’s broadly representative of why I love her music – elegant, deceptively straightforward, and full of potential avenues for reinterpretation and addition. I’ve been looking for opportunities to collaborate with Stephanie for a while, and when I first heard her song ‘Grown Up’ my mind was immediately flooded with ideas of how I could augment it.
The result of our collaboration is now available on Youtube:
Guitars and vocals are Stephanie, strings are me. I was going for the suggestion of strings rather than making the strings the driving force. As a result, I was able to add layer upon layer upon layer, in an attempt to re-create the effect of an entire string orchestra from a single instrument. There is a cello part (I used an effects pedal to drop my viola by an octave into the cello’s range), 6 syncopated ‘brush’ string parts, 2 upper-range ‘descant’ parts, and a solo/countermelody of three voices, as well as 2 ‘pizzicato’ parts. I recommend listening with headphones if you want to try and pick them all out (especially the cello, which sits underneath the bass guitar part).
I used a similar arrangement in my song ‘Saturday’, but made a conscious effort to make the strings more subdued to allow Stephanie’s haunting vocals to shine through. Stephanie too is a multi-instrumentalist, and I look forward to finding an opportunity to return the favour and have her contribute something to one of my songs.
Crommunist 