7th (Week) Heaven

Hey guys, time for another post and this week it's live from Alness. I bet you are just overwhelmed with excitement. Happy Halloween by the way. This week I joined the gym, but upon reflection I should have joined it earlier... Also in my spare time I wrote some lyrics for one of my pop songs for specialist production, they are rancid. You'd think that they were written by an actual cheese-monger. Oh dear. Despite the 'fromagual' resemblance, they actually work quite well with the song, I hope...

Well Monday morning brought a 'surprise' ensemble meeting which I was quite lucky to attend because it was on the off chance that I was early. In the meeting we discussed our 'progress' with the Blues Brothers band. Marlisa was impressed to hear that we had not been practicing, not thought about our ensemble research project and our dance moves were just not up to scratch. Well, actually she was impressed with the dance moves, we are really good. So she outlined what we had to do for the research aspect and gave us a clear goal to head towards. My goal for this week is to analyse the original versions and Blues Brothers versions of Gimmie Some Lovin' and Sweet Home Chicago. She also helped us out by getting us a new bass player for the band. More on that story later. Next up was Digital Audio Production Multimedia, which was very similar to last week. Went in, sat down, opened the work, did some more of the work, left. So that is starting to shape up nicely, I will need to get the footage soon though so I can progress further.

The last class of the day was band practice which, for a change, went really well. I mentioned a bit earlier that we were assigned a new bass player, one for HNC no less. I was very impressed with his playing and his enthusiasm. He just came in without really knowing the material and jammed along with us, he picked it up very quickly. Good man ! This was good motivation for the rest of the group and we nailed four songs straight up. easy as pie. I look forward to the next practice as I can see it becoming more productive and highly polished. But I hope to see more players such as brass and keys soon.

This weeks dissertation meeting was again very helpful. I came along with whatever little research I found on Jstor on my subject and presented it to Marlisa. We went through the three essays that I had found on the effects of alcohol: the first having absolutely no relevance whatsoever (upon reflection), the second with very mild relevance almost not worth mentioning and the third which was actually quite good which talked about the physical effects of alcohol in depth. So not a total waste of time. She then suggested that I look at some alcohol awareness pamphlets and then I said 'Hey! Woah! Hold the Phone now! Just because I haven't shaved?!?'. Not really, but I should of said that, that would have been hilarious to epic proportions. You can't really say that I don't entertain with this blog, my jokes are world class and you know it. ANYWAY she suggested those because they would have accurate, government body information that couldn't be beat! So that is my task for next week. I've already picked up the leaflets from the Student Services. She also suggested that I don't throw away my bad references as I can use them in my literature review ! Wow ! So many suggestions !

So afterwards we had our 'art class', which was mildly more productive than last week. My designer did show up this week and was keen to get a picture of my face for my portrait but hold the phone son ! Where's my logo ? He didn't have it with him, but it was 'at home'. I'll be interested to see it next week. However I did get my case study finished which is just proof that a degree can give you the skills to be able talk about something that you have no real knowledge of and still fire out gold.

Finally this week was production. It was the first recording session for the class and I think we got off to a good start. This week we started on my pop song Be In My Arms. Me, my bass player Ricky and my producer met up in Eastlake 2 after a short delay and began work. Our initial plan was to record guitar, bass and drums that session. Well you know what Mr. Loaf says: two outta three ain't bad. Guitar and bass done. We didn't get the drums done because the drummer had to leave. But I think we made some progress this week, however I think we may cut it fine...

Tonight I'm playing a 'rare' gig with my estranged band The Xylophone Race in Evanton, hence why I'm in Alness just now. I'm really looking forward to it as I love gigging and there is a FREE BAR !! I probably will need those pamphlets later. I also had some good news the other day too, which I would like to keep quiet until it's final but basically I got offered a job teaching for the college in the evenings. I am very excited about that too!

Until later.

Goodbye.

Daryl

6th (Week) Sense

Hello once again, I hope you're 'holiday' was refreshing and more productive than mine. You would expect that I bring back many tales of adventure and redemption from my week off, but unfortunately I have no real resemblance to a buccaneer of any sort. I did however get Internet at my flat during the break so now I can blog LIVE. How interesting. But I did do one worthwhile thing during the break and that was a gig. I was asked to do a bit of depping for an ABBA tribute band in Montrose. I played the gig, made some good contacts and made a few quid doing it. I did also met up with my producer for my specialist production class. We discussed the material for the project and I showed him some of the material. He seemed keen to start the project after he had a reminder of the studios and the equipment. We met again and discussed more stuff, but that's for later on in the blog... Other than those things not a whole lot went down.

I'm not going to lie, but this week of college had very minimal activity. We all got a nice lie in on Monday morning as Research and Management has been replaced with nice new, shiny individual dissertation discussion feedback slots (I don't think that's what it's actually called, but we'll go with it just now because 'individual slot' sounds a bit vague for what it's worth). I can't talk about that yet as I have not reached that point chronologically in my blog, so just wait a minute or scroll down. ANYWAY, that means that our first class was Digital Audio Production Multimedia, which for once I got something done of some mild value. I previously mentioned that I received my friend's script for his animated action/thriller trailer, which, to be honest I thoroughly enjoyed. Well this week in class I went through his script and took note of the various locations and characters in the script to see what instruments, styles and sounds I should use in each part of the trailer. So far I have selected some sounds which create a general tense ambience underneath the various melodies. I have also added some orchestral stabs as this seems to be a recurring trick within action/thriller trailer soundtracks. However this may all be in vain as I don't have the video yet so I don't have timings for each section of the trailer, so it'll all just be ideas up until then.

A major disappointment with Monday is a recurring one. Yep, you guessed it. Band work that doesn't happen. This Blues Brothers thing isn't really going anywhere. However, we have discussed that we really do need to practice next week. Whither it happens or not, I don't know, but it does need to happen and soon. Despite this predicable set back my time was not totally wasted, as I decided to fill in playing bass in another band playing various soul tunes. It was good to finally play some music.

Tuesday brought me some mild activity with my first dissertation meeting thingy. This was really helpful and gave me some direction for my dissertation on Music and Alcohol, which I had been struggling with to find a starting point as my references seemed to be all invalid and redundant. Marlisa pointed out I should go down the avenue of looking at medical journals on the effects of alcohol and how that would affect various people .eg. musicians, listeners, composers .etc. I have taken note of all these things and I have researched for various essays on those subjects, which I have to comb through for next week.

Next up was Helen's art class, which could have been productive if it weren't for the absence of my less than productive designer. This threw a spanner in the works, design wise. So I researched stuff for my case study, which was great fun. I didn't find much, but I will when I attempt it at home... honest...

Finally came the production class which was pretty much just like my meeting with my producer earlier in the blog. However we decided that next week we will start putting down some drum, bass and guitar tracks. Good !

Other than that I put up some shelves, which I'm pretty proud of.

Yeah, totally.

See you later.

Daryl

Mambo No. 5(th Week)

Hello once again, I’m probably going to sound repetitive this week as once again not a whole lot has went down aka ‘this week’s blog is going to be pretty dry’. I might just ask you from now on to presume that ‘this week’ will be dry until further notice. How about that? Anyway this week I met up with Kev (from the drum shop) as he is interested in playing drums for my individual project (slide guitar). We listened to various tracks and discussed options for my set list. I found this to be very helpful as it broadened my slide guitar ‘vocabulary’, if that makes sense. I also revised my set list to include different genres of slide guitar, including Hawaiian. Yeah! How many Perth college folk have done a Hawaiian style? I’ve also considered the performance aspect of the show, as I propose to join certain songs together. So anyways here is my new set list.

1. Ry Cooder - Get Rhythm
2. The Eagles - Heartache Tonight
3. Keb’mo’ - Henry.
4. Little Feat - Dixie Chicken.
5. The Pahinuni Bros. - Jealous Guy
6. Ry Cooder - Feelin’ Bad Blues .
7. Elmore James - It Hurts Me Too
8. Sonny Landreth - Storm Of Worry .
9. Bobby King & Terry Evans - At The Dark End Of The Street
10. Ry Cooder - Let’s Work Together

Isn’t that great? Anyway the proposal for that will get done soon... So, what else happened this week? Well first up in research and management we learned about the new referencing system, which I don’t know the name of but I do know that it uses footnotes. I really need to download the PowerPoint on it. Then we talked about how to write and structure our actual dissertation which was also quite helpful as it gave me a solid idea of how to go about the dissertation. We were also assigned to our supervisor for the dissertation. I have been paired up with Marlisa. She told me to go and read some of my sources. There.

After that was digital audio production media, which was far more productive than usual, but still a bit dry. Firstly I watched some trailers for action/thriller films to take notes and inspiration from the music. I watched three trailers and took note of the styles in the trailers and the instrumentation. I noticed that most of the trailers had very similar music. I then took my information into account and sat down and wrote a few bars of ‘ambient trailer music’. I don’t think it was the best of work, but I got an idea of what voices and feels I should use for the trailer. I also forgot to mention I received my friend’s script for his trailer he is animating. I enjoyed reading through it and I think it will be a good project for writing music to.

There was no band work this week as everybody went home. I’ll let you guess what I’m thinking about that.

The next day we had the personal portfolio class which was actually good fun. First we went over various styles of portrait that we could have. It gave me a good insight into the different artistic effects for my posters and Daryl Hockin branded tea pots. After that Helen clarified what we have to do for the case study thing. I’ll report back to you on that once I have done it. But for the main task of that class we had to draw an example storyboard. I think it was to help with idea’s for drawing a storyboard for the videography for the background of my show. The subject of our storyboards was ‘the journey to college’. I didn’t finish it but I enjoyed drawing my very melancholy, predictable morning routine. I would describe it as a very drab comic. In every scene my character would be sighing about something. I found the mediocrity hilarious. But I did find the class quite helpful.

Alas production was also a lost cause, as some little bastard had taken my pen drive with all my work on it. Therefore I could not do anything, but I plan to write all the songs this week so I can catch up.

Time for a holiday.

Chow !

Daryl