seamajesty-blog - Tumblr blog

[seamajesty-blog]

So here it is the last instalment of Tea & Biscuits - I originally intended to start this series as an experiment in writing things quickly and going more with instinct than over analysing and to just accept that mixes or compositions may not be perfect… All of these tracks have been composed usually within the same day of release. Ambitiously I also made the videos on the day as well - which turned out to be a total pain in the ass, as iMovie leaves a lot to be desired for quick and easy video production. There were a couple of weeks in this 10 week stretch it was really difficult, but if nothing else I can keep to a deadline. My plan now is to take this material and form it in to another more ‘official’ release, which I suppose looking at it will be about album length - I’m looking at the 3rd week in June as a release date, they’ll be (I think) another couple of tracks on there as well, which I haven’t released. 

This weeks Tea & Biscuits

So Tea & Biscuits #10 - I originally started with an older track I Paulstretched - I chopped it up and tried to create a rearrangement of Steve Reich’s Clapping Music, which is this rhythmic pattern and every 8 times round the second player moves one 1/8 note along to create a canonic type of effect: 

As these things often go, that didn’t work so I built the loop up  around some acoustic guitar loops, tuned percussion and synth, I recorded many of the guitars back on to the trusty old tape machine, so hopefully you can hear the warble in there! The acoustic was mic-ed with a CAD M179 at the 12th fret and the tuning was EADGAE with a capo on the 2nd Fret to give me a kind of open E. Thanks for checking it all out, as always it’s available for free download from the Plain Sailing Records Soundcloud. Thanks, J x

[seamajesty-blog]

Tea & Biscuits in The Quietus

Tea & Biscuits gets a pretty banging feature in this months Rum Music in The Quietus:

http://thequietus.com/articles/17630-rum-music-russell-cuzner

[seamajesty-blog]

Seamajesty - Tea & Biscuits #9

So here’s the second to last instalment in my 10 week Tea & Biscuit series - this week I sort of cheated and did it over the bank holiday weekend - I guess the theme of this one is deleting stuff. I started out with a keyboard drone and arpeggiated thing, which I then put some prophet 5 over - for some reason the prophet part had a strange rhythmic figure, which I then composed the drums around - then deleted the prophet part. It feels kind of strange because of where the snare falls, but it is in four. I used my old Yamaha toy keyboard extensively. Hope you like it! Thanks for listening, J x

Free download: https://soundcloud.com/plainsailingrecords/seamajesty-tea-biscuits-9

[seamajesty-blog]

Tea & Biscuits #8 - I built this track out of several tape loops made the old fashioned way with a razor blade and sellotape, the loop at the beginning was made with frippertronics/tape delay and a kaoss pad… I then gathered these in pro tools. The tracks are:

Arturia CS80 & Minimoog, CR78

Leedy Vibraphonette, Jenco Xylophone & Bechstein Upright Piano (kontakt instruments - for release soon!)  

Slate on Fgx & VBC Grey on the master - I wish Steven would do some kind of pultec eq… In terms of the video, iMovie went a bit mad and put this weeks track over the top of last weeks 1st layer of video - weirdly it fitted really nicely so I thought I embrace the chance and leave it. Thanks for listening! Loads more coming soon. Biscuit of choice this week: Choco Leibniz Tea of choice: - Earl Grey J x

Free download here: 

https://soundcloud.com/plainsailingrecords/seamajesty-tea-biscuits-8

[seamajesty-blog]

Awesome.

Around mid 2013, whilst I was working on The Visitation, my computer decided to go to sleep and not wake up, like they sometimes do. Instead of spiralling into despair, or maybe as well as, I walked away from any attempts to fix it and chose instead to set up my 4-track and record some folk songs that have been with me since childhood. They have remained unreleased ‘til now but I thought I’d throw a couple up here for the hell of it…

[seamajesty-blog]

Tea & Biscuits #7

So this week I tried to use as many instances of Soundtoys’ Free Download 'Little AlterBoy' - It is a great plugin, which if haven't downloaded, I strongly recommend it!  As you may have guessed from previous weeks I'm a huge fan of pitchshifters, and as a freebie, this one is unmissable - if you're searching for a code here's mine: 378 8642 326 - This track was built up around a drone in Logic then the arpeggiator is (again) Arturia's Oberheim SEM - I then transferred it all to Pro Tools to continue. All the other instruments were sample instruments that I've made for Kontakt - the vibraphone is a 1920's Leedy Vibraphonette and the drums are some tuned Roto-toms and a snare drum sample I recorded at Hoxa last summer. The video is a creative commons tour of San Francisco from the 50's - I've always wanted to visit SF… maybe in 2016. Mastering wise - Slate all round. Thanks again for checking it all out, you can download this and more here:

https://soundcloud.com/plainsailingrecords/seamajesty-tea-biscuits-7

[seamajesty-blog]

Tea & Biscuits #6

This week I’ve been listening to loads of synth stuff and I wanted to do something with an arpeggiator - I used Arturia SEM and then built the track around that… it’s got a weird rhythmic feel but it 3 bars of 4 one of 2, but the drums displace this, so it sounds weirder than it actually is. The guitars were recorded to tape with a sennheiser 441 - that end is some left over frippertronics experimenting from 3 weeks ago, that was left on the tape when I bounced it back in, it worked so I left it!... Mastering was the same process as last week. Thanks for listening/watching! J x 

Free download: https://soundcloud.com/plainsailingrecords/seamajesty-tea-biscuits-6

[seamajesty-blog]

Tea & Biscuits #5 

I’ve been doing this for five weeks and have decided I’m going to do it for 10 in total, so the half way point seemed like a good point to introduce some drum machines. I’ve got Arturia Spark but I rarely use it as it totally kills my computer, which is a shame as the drum sounds are fantastic - I used the Simmons SDS kit and Roland CR78.. Pro Tools crashed about 5 times, so I couldn’t really use it to its fullest potential hence the looping 2 bar pattern… Anyway true to the series so far, I wrote, mixed and mastered this today - All the synths went to my trusty Akai 1731 tape machine and I used my Sony M500 valve tape machine as a summing mixer for all the other tracks then bought up the volume with some Massey L2007. The vocals are me, chopped up and replayed using the structure free sampler. The video is some archive footage with creative commons which I’ve duplicated/mirrored. Anyway, as always there’s a free download over at the plain sailing soundcloud Cheers, Jx 

[seamajesty-blog]

Alright here's this weeks Tea & Biscuits - I've owned these two tape machines for ages but for some reason never tried the Brian Eno/Robert Fripp process of joining them together. This process was named 'Frippertronics' by Fripp's then girlfriend, and it was used on some great records including my personal favourite; No Pussyfooting. 

It works like this: There's a mixer your input goes in there, which goes into the first tape machine - which is set in record - the second machine is in playback that then gets returned back to the mixing desk, so it starts feeding back in on itself and getting ever more lofi and crackly - so because it's running at 7.5ips the gap between the record and the playback create a really slow delay of around 6 seconds. I create 3 loops on the Ehx 2880 before starting the tape machines - I added a bass line and some marxophone after recording this one take…. Here's a handy visual:

I had another experiment with this setup using guitar where the frippertronics are a bit more obvious - (it's best heard around the 2minute mark in this video) - but I didn't record video for that, so it'll have to wait. As always it's available now for free download at the plain sailing records soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/plainsailingrecords/seamajesty-tea-biscuits-4

[seamajesty-blog]

Tea & Biscuits #3 Disintegration loop

I've rediscovered William Basinski's wonderful and beautiful Disintegration Loops albums and I thought I would try and attempt something similar - so the Piano loop looses fidelity as it loops round - granted it's not the same thing, but I had fun doing it, so that's surely the most important thing... It's just piano (recorded with 2 u67's) and digital reverb before and after tape so it gets progressively more ambient. As always - here's a free download. Enjoy! I'm off for some actual tea and biscuits. J x

https://soundcloud.com/plainsailingrecords/sets/seamajesty-tea-biscuits

[seamajesty-blog]

My new single “English Summer” is out now, it was premiered on Tuesday by the wonderful Surviving the Golden Age

I thought I’d share some info about the recording & writing process. It was one of the last songs to be written for the album and was by far the hardest to mix & master.

It’s actually two songs joined together - the start was written last, but I couldn’t figure out an end so I tacked on half of a much older track. The majority of the start (the vocal bit) was recorded on my trusty akai mg614 fourtrack - the end was recorded in 2008 in The Pattern Theory’s old rehearsal room (thanks Lukas for the lending of the soundcard!). 

This track and Say Awake were the last two tracks to be mastered. I mixed and mastered it at the fantastic Hoxa studios - so I thought I would put this down to tape, I know 2” is an odd choice for a master - but it sounded good, so why not? 

I’ll explain what you’re seeing - Laptop 44.1khz -> Tape Machine. Tape Machine -> Studio Computer at 96khz... Then dithered down... So if Neil Young wants it - I’ve got 96K masters. I remastered it for the single, using pretty much the same process. Fortunately, I had the foresight to film it (the sound is from the camera). I do love tape. Speaking of, more tape loops coming tomorrow. J x

Check out the single here: https://plainsailingrecords.bandcamp.com/album/english-summer-single

[seamajesty-blog]

Here's the second instalment in my Tea & Biscuits series - quickly composed and released tracks. This particular one features sampled wine glasses played with my finger to get that sine wavy kind of thing, there's some xylophone in there and a rheem key bass all going through loads of digital reverb. Then as with the last T&B I recorded it to tape on my crappy Akai tape machine, then back in to the computer to bring up the volume again with slate fgx. The footage is something I shot, slowed down and duplicated/mirrored - as with last week you can download this for free here:

https://soundcloud.com/plainsailingrecords/seamajesty-tea-biscuits-2

I'm off for some tea and biscuits now. SM

[seamajesty-blog]

Tea & Biscuits #1

http://youtu.be/DD6gKdXh5_w

So I thought I would try and change some things… I do a lot of playing around with ideas, and those ideas sit for ages on my computer. I figured I would try and come up with something quickly and upload it without over thinking it, or any real 'release planning'. So here is the first part in what will hopefully be a regular series. Tea & Biscuits #1. 

I've been listening to an awful lot of ambient records recently and really getting in to Eno & Lanois, so I thought i would try and put some of their ideas of the studio as an instrument, and not obsessing over a mix. So I made this track, in one take for each instrument - everything then fed into the loop device

Tracklisting:

Sine Wave Generator

Piano

DX7

Rheem Key Bass

The effects on them were - Whammy up an octave and analog delay in to an awful lot of digital reverb. It was mixed down live to my crappy (but awesome) Akai 2 track tape recorder and then bounced back in to the computer and the level bought back up with the fantastic Slate FG-X. It's crunchy and warbly and I'm dead chuffed with how I spent my Wednesday morning. Hope you like it, you can get a free download from the plain sailing records soundcloud page:

https://soundcloud.com/plainsailingrecords/seamajesty-tea-biscuits-1

[seamajesty-blog]

Seamajesty - Seamajestea Recording Blog 1

Sooooo.... I finished my album a while ago and it’s been out a couple of weeks. 

It took me alot of work, so I thought I would share some of that process through a series of blogs on here. 

I’ve been lucky enough to be involved with a lot of albums and I had some pretty specific ideas of what I wanted from my own album - I love the idea of everything flowing into one another and a juxtaposition of styles.

I originally did solo stuff years ago under my own name - I did a couple of gigs but I didn’t really like it being under my own name, a fortuatous game of scrabble with my friend Ros provided me with Seamajesty.... I started recording the album in 2010 - still learning and experimenting the best way of doing things - for the most part this is an album made in home studios with very modest equipment. In the liner notes you will notice that there are lots of recording locations - this is for two reasons -

It was recorded over a long period

I moved around

Artwork 

The artwork happened in two phases - firstly the picture of my head was taken by Paul Manasseh on an epic45 tour in Leipzig in 2010, it was then digitally enhanced by Eric Heath also from epic... I did the kind of collage thing, using the free and fantastic, albeit dubiously named bit of software: gimp. That was then taken and sorted out by the fantastic Witshop who did the layout and artwork stuff.

Recording:

The oldest recording on there is the second half of ‘English Summer’ which I recorded in Berlin in The Pattern Theory’s practice room. Almost everything else was recorded in my parents old garage in Taunton apart from Abacat, Stanley Yelnats, Popcorn Sweet & Lyme were recorded in London in my friends studios & houses. During this time I started working in studios. I finished off the album in the studio I was (and continue) to work in called Hoxa.

Here’s an equipment list that I borrowed or used for the album (from what I can remember):

70’s Ludwig 13,16, 22 (Abacat)

60’s Roundbadge Gretsch 20,12, 16 (End of English Summer/Left hand kit of Steel)

70’s Gretsch Concert Tom 6,8,10,12,13,14,16,18,22 (Popcorn Salted)

70’s Ludwig Vistalite 12,13,16,18,22 (Everything Else)

Ludwig 400 Snare (Everything)

Gretsch 14x8 Snare (Abacat/Right hand Kit of Steel)

Zildjian Cymbals (Old ones)

Lots of percussion - cowbells/tambourines etc etc

Jenco Vibraphone (1950’s) You can buy a sample instrument I made of this exact vibraphone here

Jenco Xylophone (1960’s) 

Glockenspiel

Jen Sx1000 synth

Axl Marquee

70‘s Hondo Les Paul

Epiphone Acoustic

Fender Jazz Bass (Steel & Say Awake)

Yamaha & Casio Childs Keyboards

Music Man Bass (Abacat)

Bechstein Piano (Abacat & Popcorn Sweet)

Wurlitzer 200A (English Summer)

Marxophone (End of English Summer)

Oberheim DX (Beginning of English Summer)

Roland Octapad II

Fender Vibra Champ

Acoustic Control Amp

Akai 2 Track Tape Machine (Used as both a tape machine & amp)

Akai 614 Four track cassette recorder (Lyme)

Akg, CAD, Beyer, Reslo & Mxl - borrowed; Royer, Coles, Neumann Microphones

Behringer Reverb Pedal

Kaoss Pad III

Akai Headrush

Electro Harmonix 2880

iPhone 4 (some of the field recordings) the arp on Teufels is from the Tenori-on app.

Everything else was virtual instruments or sample instruments I’d made.

Software wise Logic 8/9, Pro Tools 6.4 &10, Kontakt 5 & Paulstretch, the TAL Audio synths 

Monitor wise - Alesis M1’s, Homemade Auratones (“Seamajetones”) and borrowed;

Geithanns, NS10s, Auratones - Most of the mixing was done on wonderful Focal Solo 6’s - Alot was done on Beyer DT770 Headphones so my neighbours don’t hate me.

Doing the final master check:

I’ll get in to specifics in future blogs about each track and what I was going for. For now here’s the whole album with no gaps - 35:35. Enjoy! Head to the Plain Sailing bandcamp to pick up a copy!

Seamajesty - Seamajestea

[seamajesty-blog]

New live session. Check it out:

[seamajesty-blog]

Seamajesty Album 2 Recording - Drums/Big Bassdrums

Recording some drums the other weekend for my second album…. Anyways, heres a rough balance/iphone vid. Enjoy. 

For the recording geeks:

Mics used:

Kick - Beyer M88 Snare Top - Sennheiser MD441 Snare Bttm - Shure Beta 57 (this was great actually) Floor - Sennheiser MD441 Mono Oh - Beyer M160 (2 sticks height from snare) Trash mic (mic above kick) AKG 451 (then processed pre tape) Rooms - Neumann U67 in Omni about 10 foot back spaced 15 feet apart Kick drum - 26" Hayman, Floor 16" Hayman Snare Ludwig 400, Hats 15" K Zildjian

[seamajesty-blog]

3 track album

New EP for free download! featuring a studio & live track & a remix by My Autumn Empire