A New Year…

And that was 2013. Oddly enough, I have never counted the last day of the year along, simply because I keep thinking of all the things I want to do in the new year. I find closure and closure is required for such a heavy year as 2013.

There’s plenty set in motion for 2014, one of which being recording and writing the follow up to Sylvium’s “The Gift of Anxiety”. So far, one track is finished, and several other tracks are in the pipeline to be worked out by the band. I wish we could divulge a little bit more about the whole project, but for now I will only say this thing is becoming awesome!
Nur Armata is gearing up for recording the songs we’ve written so far, be it for an EP or a full album. We’ve also begun looking for a keyboard player and bass player to finish the line up we require to play live. For any Dutchies reading this who are musicians themselves or know people looking for an atmospheric postrock/metal band, let us know. You can find us on the interwebs at http://nurarmata.nl/ (dutch website only).

As for Ghost, I’ve had to make a bit of a sad decision: Given my lack of time ( considering I’m busy with Sylvium and Nur Armata), I’m not going to be able to release ‘Shifting Mirrors’ in 2014, as the plan was. Writing and rehearsing with both Sylvium and Nur Armata, plus the fact I have no backing band for Ghost, have pretty much made this a clear cut and indisputable decision. It will allow me to write, record and perform with both bands.
That said, I will be recording “Shifting Mirrors” in the coming year, plus some extras to make up for all the delay to this project. I want this album to be noticed, to resound and leave a mark. I don’t feel I can commit fully to that without a backing band or with my attention with my other two bands. This is not a project I intend to hastily finish and release even faster. This is a project I take very seriously.

So that’s the bad news for 2014. Here’s the good news:

– I can work out a unique marketing strategy for this album. I’m not expecting to become a multi-platinum artist, but I can make sure my music is heard far and wide 🙂
– There will be extra music. Without going too much into detail, this could mean me covering tracks I love or extra b’sides to “Shifting Mirrors”.
– I am currently looking into having several videoclips shot for songs on “Shifting Mirrors”. “Parting The Seconds” will definitely be featured should this plan work out, both financially and scriptwise.

So that’s that! I’m done with 2013, that has turned my personal life upside down several times in a row. I’m ready for a new year of new opportunities, new challenges but most importantly, new and exciting music I get to work on and perform for you all. Be well, I wish you all a great, superb and loving 2014 🙂

… And then it hit me…

It’s quite funny that, although I’ve been writing my own songs for years now, I’m still amazed at how easy the new songs are coming together that I have been working on for Sylvium.

‘Coraline’ is proving the most difficult one of all and not because of the time signatures. The song has been experiencing a lot of trimming lately, as the only bit remaining is the beginning of the song, the rest has been removed ( but not deleted as they are great songs/bit in their own right).
Whereas the song wasn’t a collection wibbly wobbly timey wimey solo’s and odd time and tempo changes, it’s now been changed from a body of work spanning around 9 minutes to a much more precise song with its verses in 11/8 and the chorus in 6/8.  Although the verses are quite poppy, the chorus is where the power lies. The tuning of this song was changed from Drop D to Drop C, not because I wanted to sound all death metal like, but because it sounded amazing with clean sounds. If anything at all, it matured the song. I’m still due to write a bridge for this track, I’m pretty sure that’ll work out over the coming days!

‘Tool(s)’ is the heavy metal middle 8 section that was salvaged from ‘Coraline’ which will be worked out for something else. It’s an almost military rhythmic track in 7/8 with a harsh ending. So far, I’m liking it!

‘Bridge Burning’ is a funky rock tune in 6/8 I tried to add to ‘Coraline’ but it never really gelled for me. So right now, I’m looking as to where I would use such a piece. It’s the most Ghost-like tune I’ve got out of the bunch I wrote, so I might bag it for myself!

‘Lilypad’ is so far the quietest thing I’ve written in a while. Clean guitars with massive delays and some gentle keyboards going with it. Not sure where this track is going, to be honest, but it is sounding very good to me!

‘Wrong Side of the Reel’ is a new track which I began writing when the delay effect I had added to a specific guitarsound began to feedback. So far it’s almost like ambient space rock.

Apart from these songs, is a stack of riffs I have which I will figure out in due time once these tracks have been demo’ed. Given I’m going to follow a course on how to work with Cubase ( as I have worked in the past with a horrible DAW that shall remain unnamed) I should have demo’s soon! Exciting days are ahead! 🙂

I’ll be away for the holidays, spending it with my lovely girlfriend and our cat. For now, I wish you all a merry and happy christmas!

Gears of War, continued

A while ago I made a post on some of the equipment I would be using for live shows with Sylvium ( and also with Nur Amata and Ghost, when we’ve got some shows lined up). However, things went awry again as usual. Murphy, seriously dude, we have to stop meeting like this!

The Schecter proved a bad buy, as it was suffering from fretbuzz quite badly. I took it to my local guitar luthier who noted that fixing that guitar would almost amount to the total I paid for the guitar when I bought it. Bit of a shame, but the company where I bought it ( Thomann.de) were quite understandable about the issue and noted I could easily return it to their store for a full refund. So in all, a shame I couldn’t use the guitar in a live situation, but at least I’m happy to see that Thomann keeps up great service. So I went back to the drawing board to work out another cunning plan.

And here it is!

It’s a guitar I never thought I would’ve bought, but once I got it ( after a friend recommended it to me) I was happily surprised by the level of quality for the price! It’s a Harley Benton L1000-progressive. Coil tapping is impossible on this one, due to the fact it has active pickups, but for now it’ll do as a riffing guitar and occasional solo’s. It played absolutely lovely during the previous Sylvium rehearsal so I’m very happy with it! I’ve also purchased a second hand 6 string acoustic I can use for live gigs, but I’ve been unable to get any pictures of it yet, so I’ll get you those next time I make another gear-anorak post!

Right now, I’m fighting my occasional bouts of GAS ( Gear-Acquisition-Syndrome) and just making lists of the stuff that I need for performing live and/or recording with my bands. A while ago I got this amazing Marshall MA50H with cabinet, which has proven to be a reliable amp during both gigs we did ( the second one I will write about very soon!). However, when confronted with the Bugera 333XL Infinium head and cabinet, I was blown away. It’s a bit thicker and fatter in tone than my MA50H, and delivers a whopping 120 watts instead of the 50 watts I now have at my disposal. So, I may trade said Marshall for the Bugera after having tried it myself. For now, though, the Marshall will stay where it’s at.

Effectswise, I’ve noticed that with Sylvium the sound is just perfect at the moment, although I still occasionally tinker with the effects if I ( or a bandmember) notices that the sound is too loud, too quiet, not doing it’s job etc. The Boss GT-10 has been out of the box a lot the past few weeks and it’s proving to be a proper match ( soundwise, that is) with Ben’s Line6 POD HD. I did notice recently that the effectsloop on the GT-10 is broken sadly enough, so  eventually I am going to have to replace that little bugger, most likely with a GT-100 as I like the Boss units too much.
For Nur Amata, however, I’ve noticed I am wanting to return to using separate effects pedals instead of my GT-10, as Patrick ( Nur Amata’s guitarist) recently upgraded his pedalboard with some new shiny gimmicks and has been having a lot of fun with them. Setting up a build for a separate pedalboard has proven extremely expensive as I know exactly what pedals I am after, but with time I can get those and just build something that is unique in terms of sound design. Having different sounds per band isn’t a bad idea after all 🙂 With regards to Ghost, though, I haven’t made up my mind yet, but I’m sure I can work that out as well in time 😛

That’s the gear-anorak post for this time again, for now you all be well and rock on!

Inspiration Bug And How NOT to repel it…

It’s been quite a busy time for me, job hunting, family related issues and whatnot and, of course, songwriting. Especially the latter since a couple of days.

After finishing up on writing the songs for ‘Shifting Mirrors’, I encountered a dry season with regards to songwriting and simply just sat back and decided to wait for it to return. It always did before whenever dry season would come in sight. That was at the end of 2011.

*cricket noise*

Not counting the lyrics I wrote for Sylvium’s “The Gift of Anxiety’, that’s a lot of work I didn’t do. As for the songs that I wrote for Nur Amata when I joined them early 2012, those had already been written prior to me joining the band. So all in all, it was quite a bit of a quiet period. Truth be told, I didn’t really mind it, I just had other things to take care of back then. Besides, I find that rushing any songwriting that I do screws over the song.

Yet now, I am staring at a notebook with scribblings and scratchings not unlike a painting in the making, be it of course not a visual spectacle but one that will hopefully be enjoyable to your ears.
The first song is one I’ve been working on for Sylvium and am quite badly due to record/work out, as it’s a bit fragmented so far with regards to the pieces. A song in Drop D tuning with 4/4, 6/8, 7/8 and 11/8 time signatures. No lyrics so far, just a fairly mad piece of music that goes by the working title of ‘Coraline’. Incidently, I have never been able to finish a piece of work by Neil Gaiman due to lack of time ( and also because I still have at least thirty odd books or so to finish before I begin new ones, so no bickering! 😉 )
The second song is a piece for Nur Amata that I worked out in Drop G tuning ( after having found out I was mistakenly calling that Drop A tuning). Although the strings on the guitar were quite floppy, I did enjoy playing it. However, the tuning is now back to standard E in 6/8 as it made playing it a whole lot easier and sounded better than having a string sounding floppy ( if that is a proper term for describing strings not wound tight enough!). The lyrics I have so far are only scribbles that seemed to be about disappointment, so the working title for now  is ‘Hollow’.
The third and final song is another piece for Nur Amata revolving more around a standard E tuning ( although I could play it on Drop D as well I found out later) in 4/4. Much more poprock than anything else I’ve written, but with guitar sounds I normally don’t use for Ghost. I have no lyrics for it yet, but found myself mumbling incoherently about driving while playing the bridge part, so it’s working title for now is ‘Keep Driving’. 😛

So right now, I’m just thrilled this has worked out. I’ll work out recordings later this week or perhaps next week if time proves too elusive ( which it very well may be!). There are band rehearsals later this week, so at least I’ll be able to play them some things on guitar/synthesizer and perhaps work out these songs even better. Given that Nur Amata is in full writing mode with several songs, I’m psyched!

From Here To Oberhausen

The road to Oberhausen isn’t that long for me, given I live about an hour and a half away from the city. Having brought my equipment with me ( and again instantly realising I’d forgotten my guitar stand again :P) we arrived in Germany. Before going to the venue, we found ourselves having to obtain a sticker that proved you could enter the city, as the Germans employ almost mad laws to bar certain ‘un-environmental’ cars from their major cities in the west. Oddly enough, my car was banned from the city ( even though other cars from the same buildyear as mine are allowed). After a bit of a discussion with the mechanic who checked my car, we realised that we would park our cars in a private parking lot and that the chances a ticket for driving into the city with a car that didn’t have the aforementioned sticker was awarded, were next to zero. We decided to take our chances and enter Oberhausen.

As we arrived at the venue, about thirty minutes later Haken arrived as well. The poor guys had been on an eleven hour drive to the venue, so they were royally knackered the entire day. Both bands hauled out their equipment and quickly began setting up the stage.

The venue was situated in what used to be an old West-German factory. Perhaps not the most modern of all places, but it could house about 300 people and had a great location in the middle of town. The stage was a bit small, but that was only a minor issue. At one point though, during our soundcheck, I recall telling the band that at one point I could fall through the stage as where I stood ( centre, in front of the drumkit) I felt the stage shake and groan under the stress of the noise we were making. The stage, however, held it together nicely 🙂

The gig came and went quite rapidly. Going on stage in front of a crowd which had never even heard of us ( half of the crowd didn’t even know there was a support act in the first place!) was a bit daunting, but we held it together and, apart from some minor hiccups, we played a great show. Haken afterwards blew the crowd away, even though they had only had a couple of hours of sleep. Kudos to the men for pulling that off!

After finishing both sets and cleaning out the stage, we all drove back home, content with the work done. Here’s to more gigs, whether they’re abroad or not!

Out Of The Blue…

Sometimes, life is all about getting kicked in the shins by Murphy, as he looms over you after you’ve keeled over, shaking his head in disapproval before walking away without ever explaining why. The past two weeks were not of a good kind, due to a variety of things that I won’t go into detail about; all I can say is that the situation is being contained and monitored properly. It’ll work out and that will do.

But today, that was different. No Murphy, no crap happening, nothing. Just a phone call from Ben, Sylvium’s guitarist, asking me if I were available this coming friday for performing as support act for Haken in Oberhausen, Germany.

It took a bit of tinkering with all my plans ( and mind you, I’m still not done figuring out logistics and whatnot) but so far, the board is green and we’re scheduled to perform with Haken. Just wow. I cannot believe the luck we’ve had with this chance, as they are without a doubt the hottest progressive metal band in Europe at the moment. To open op a show for them is a dream come true!

So right now, I’m working out logistics, as this weekend I’ll also be camping with friends as I always do when my birthday nears. Both events will occur, it just means a bit more driving is involved and after the weekend, I’ll be royally knackered. It’ll be worth it though!

Also, I was pointed out today that on Progwereld ( a superb Dutch review website on progressive rock & metal releases) in their top 20 best releases of this year, we’ve come in at #17 with ‘The Gift of Anxiety’. I am just still stunned because of this news, but in a most positive way! So tonight, once my logistical planning is over, I’m having a beer. Slainthe Mhath!