The Echoes Sessions

The Echoes Sessions: Easter, 2017

This performance of 'Echoes' is the culmination of a week's work on this piece of music.

Our Arrangement

This performance is based upon an online backing track, which itself is modelled upon Pink Floyd's performance at Pompeii in 1971. Our drummer and bassist were unavailable for these sessions, but as the vocals, guitar and keys are the most complex parts in this song, it was still of value for Adam and I to get them right between us.

The digital stage piano emerged as the preferred key instrument for this piece after we decided we needed organ or synthesiser voices on the overdrive parts in the funk section of the song. Previously we had been mic-ing up a grand piano but it didn't cut through very well in the mix and could only do one thing. There are no piano parts for the keys on the original rhythm section, only organ parts, but we liked the jazz feel that the piano gave to the arrangement whilst the guitar is in support.

Of my two guitars, the best for this piece is Edgar, the Telecaster. He can play a characterful rhythm as well as a soaring lead, which suits what we were aiming for in this song: for the piano to lead in some parts, support in others, and vice-versa with the guitar. Cassius is very effective on rhythm, sitting lower and more discretely in the mix than Edgar, with a shimmering tone. He also has the advantage of having a floating bridge, enabling heavy use of the vibrato during the overdrive sections. However, the tone was less pure and, when leading, less soaring than Edgar's with less sustain. He did a respectable job of it during a rehearsal the previous day, but Edgar's voice is the most pleasing for this piece.

There are many ways of doing the funk section. Pink Floyd's studio version is sparse at first but becomes fuller, with a relentless, hypnotic beat underpinning it. In Pompeii in 1971 and Gdansk in 2006, the emphasis was more upon overpowering improvisational sections, especially Gilmour's, alternating between the organ and the guitar. Their otherwise unnotable rehearsal in Toronto in 1987 took a different stance, emphasising the rhythm guitar and setting the lead overdrive parts lower in the mix, with the organ more dominant and lending a lustre to the lead guitar when Gilmour took over. We decided the approach we liked best was their 1987 version, which felt more like psychedelic funk than rock, and we took many ideas away from it as well as adding our own ideas on how it could be done differently.

How We Did It

The Journey

From our first 'Echoes' session

We had been mucking around with this song for some while. Knowing it well as I do, I assumed my performance would naturally be up to standard. It came as quite a blow, then, when we filmed ourselves playing without a backing track, only for me to realise that my playing was not up to standard on review, for two main reasons above all:

1. I did not play in time
2. I had misconceived how to execute the funk section

I spoke to a close friend of mine about these problems. He said he had had similar experiences when he had been studying music at Conservatoire, and that he had realised back then that he had to put his love of the piece to one side, in a way, and aim for what he called an 'out of body experience': divorce yourself from enjoyment of the music, lest you bash your way through it in a fit of fun; rein yourself in and focus instead upon precision, execution. 

I took this advice on board. 

I later shared with Adam how I would play the rhythm differently: less of a rock riff, more of a slick soft funk, lower in the mix and in support of, rather than competition with, his piano parts. The overdrive sections would need to be toned down as well: still dominant, but more predictable, less improvised and better mixed with a new organ part in order to give the audience an experience of a euphoric rush, rather than being just an opportunity to show off.

We made a demo track based on a backing track we found online, and were immediately thrilled with the result, deciding that this was it, this was how we wanted to sound. We could not wait to hear how it sounded live.

From our third 'Echoes' session, this time with Cassius

Whilst Edgar was waiting for new strings, on the 11th of April we reconvened, this time with Cassius, and used the same backing track. When we reviewed the film footage, it was obvious that it worked and that we had found the right approach, for us at least, for this song. I proposed we convene again the following day to record the performance properly and produce a video.

The Recording process

In order to aim for a good quality music video, we had to record the sound separately from the video and then edit the two together. 

The video is recorded on a mobile phone. The quality is not what we had hoped for, but there it is. That is the reason the footage is in monochrome: it disguises the picture quality. We shall have to use something else in future. Nonetheless, rendering it so does lend it the atmosphere of an early 1960s performance, which is no bad thing.

The audio is recorded on a portable digital recording unit, 'the black box', which can take down tracks separately from each other, much a like a recording studio, which is why the audio sounds so slick and 'studio' quality. There had been three tracks recorded: keys, fed directly into the box; guitar, which was picked up with a mic at the amplifier; and vocals, which is why I have two mics in the video: one for the PA, so that I could hear myself, and one for the black box. Unfortunately, the vocal mic did not pick up any signal, probably due to a faulty wire or connection, which is why the video only starts just after the second chorus had ended; it had been our intention to present as much of our performance as we could, but this fault prevented us from doing so.

Final Thoughts

We are very pleased with our performance on this video, and hope in time to be able to perform it for real. We are confident we have found an arrangement that is at once true to Pink Floyd's composition as well as one that is distinct and right for our own sound and style.

Small Change, Big Difference: Cassius' New Nut

Cassius is a lucky boy: brand new nut and fresh clean strings:

Shiny new strings; gleaming new nut

Coffee and chocolate
colour scheme

Since having been fitted with a bone nut, and now rid of the factory plastic one, the improvement in Cassius' performance is hard to overstate. Previously, his tuning had been intensely unreliable and would degrade into all kinds of hideous sounds half way through the most pedestrian of songs. 

I could not work out what the problem was. I had read on online forums that a tight nut sometimes posed difficulties, and that one solution was to lubricate the grooves with 2B pencil graphite. I pencilled in the groves, and did notice an improvement in the performance but the problems were not entirely eliminated. 

Cheap and nasty plastic nut

I got it into my head that the tuners were knackered, and spent some time looking up upgrades online, and fixated on the idea that locking tuners would be answer to my prayers, but after some more research, and a few deep intakes of breath when I saw how much they cost, the advice that I kept finding over and over again was that the tuners were not the problem.

So, I looked up DIY vids on YouTube to work out how to replace a nut. It appeared surprisingly easy, and the materials were very cheap, so I ordered a bone nut, having seen comparison videos online and marking the extent of the difference, and other materials for the fitting of it. I decided that if it made no difference, it was at least a cheaper gamble than replacing the tuners. 

In the event, the only difficulty arose from the new nut's best quality: it was so hard that I spent a very long time of hard labour sanding it down to the correct size.

Deep and dark

Once fitted, the difference was immediately clear, and I cursed myself for not having done the job years earlier. But how was I to know? Before Edgar arrived, when Cassius was my only guitar, I would not have dared do any significant work on him for fear of screwing it up. The strings feel much more firmly rooted: less slack than before, more responsive somehow. I can't hear much difference in the tone, though the open strings seem to resonate a bit more, and I fancy the sustain is a little better. But the biggest improvement is in Cassius' performance: I put him through four renditions of Echoes and he de-tuned not one. Not once! Only the B string was slightly flat at the end, probably because of all the bends I do in that song. He has gone from being so unreliable that I was often embarrassed by him in rehearsals, to being about as reliable as Edgar.

This all irritated me slightly. Cassius is a beautiful guitar, a Yamaha Pacifica Pac412V (now quite rare, having been discontinued) with a lovely chocolate and coffee colour scheme, a deep and dark wood overlay on an alder body, a gorgeous rosewood fretboard with mother of pearl inlays and an effective two-pin floating vibrato bridge. I cannot understand how Yamaha, who are market challengers, not dominators, would spoil such a wonderful guitar with such a shoddy piece of essential hardware. Fender or Gibson could get away with it, for they really are dominant and can rely upon their brand names more.

It matters not anymore. In summary: tuning problems are likeliest to be in the nut; they are surprisingly cheap and easy to replace; use bone. 

On Completing My Album

That's it! All done!

Well, not quite. I still have to mix everything. However, unless I find a gap during the mixing, all parts are now written and recorded. As a matter of interest, it was the very first two pieces of music that I recorded that longest resisted any lyrics being imposed on them. I might easily have junked them both, yet, unexpectedly, within two days everything finally fell into place.

In Retrospect

Most of the guitar work was done
on this old workhorse, called Cassius

There were honestly times I thought I would never finish this project. It has taken about two years, perhaps a little under - I think I started Easter 2015 but it is so long that I can't really remember. That's much, much longer than the first project which I did with my friend, Adam Steiner, when we were students at Aberdeen. He would come round with a bottle of wine, and I would cook dinner. We would eat and drink by candlelight. Fortified, we would then start jamming, or working on a preconceived idea, or whatever, and our work rate was such that we would bash out a song in a day.

It is likely one reason I was slower this time is that I had no one to inspire me, nor anyone for me to inspire. All my ideas had to be intrinsic, and to a large extent, spontaneous and well timed. During term, I am simply too exhausted and ideas never come. During holidays, I am often sick. At weekends, there are so many things to do. It is difficult to pick up the axe and mic and just churn them out like I - we - used to.

But there are other reasons. I am more of a perfectionist now, because I am a better musician. I take longer to rehearse parts before setting them down, whereas before, my method was pretty much to make it up as I went along, producing tracks with lots of good ideas but shoddily played and recorded. Also, the parts are more complex and layered with a greater variety of moods, which takes longer to devise and master. Some tracks I had to practise for days and days before I could even think about reaching for the mixing desk.

I also had to deal with some technological issues early on in the process. That didn't help. Two songs had to be re-recorded entirely at one point. But my gear now works a dream and makes it all sound great.

The Record

Edgar will now take up most
of the new work

I still have not decided on a track order yet, so I can't comment on the mood of it overall. Having worked on it for so long, I did not achieve my aim of creating a unified tone and theme. However, there are consistencies. Most of the songs, in one way or another, involve alienation. That includes optimistic reflection upon the opportunities involved in moving on, or confronting failure, departure, or else an angry riposte at someone or something. Some of it is about silent longing. Whatever this all says about me, I would not wish to tell. 

This is not by design. I almost always (with only one exception on this project, called 'Standing on the Shore') complete at least the structure and texture of the music first, before composing a melody into which to squeeze the lyrics. That's the tricky bit: sometimes a vocal line is just obvious, but other times the music poses no obvious solutions for the singer. 

In these cases I have two approaches:

• Download the track onto my phone and listen to it again and a
  gain on my way to work. Eventually, sooner or later, a phrase will just jump out, some few words that fit some rhythm or guitar phrase, and which act as a hook on which to hang the rest of the words. Like a seed, it germinates and blooms, and when it happens, the lines can be written in under half an hour, even after months and months of nothing but frustration, doggerel and emptiness.
• Wail over the top of the music. This usually produces a ghastly noise, like a dying bird or wailing pig, but before long and melodic line begins to take shape. Into this line I then pour some nonsense words, just to get the syllabic structure of it right, then adjust them with more meaningful words. An example of this would be something like 'hold my green waiting room' transforming into 'God save our gracious Queen'. 

Next Steps

Nothing. I just want to focus on performing with my new band. I am content to play covers until we are comfortably in our groove. Then I might push forward some of these songs for us to play, and if the band say yay, then so much the better; if they think it stinks, no matter: it can sit on SoundCloud anyhow.

On TM and the US Travel Ban

On TM and the US Travel Ban

Throat clearing

Like many others, I am concerned at the callousness of the refugee ban, announced on Holocaust Memorial Day, and the blanket travel ban imposed on people based on their country of birth. I am also genuinely surprised that this affects US citizens - green card holders - and British citizens, of dual citizenship, including one of our own Conservative MPs, Nadhim Zahawi.

This is one of those moments where even the quietest of us must say something. But Theresa May has said almost nothing about this in public.

What I admire about May

One of the things I admire most about May is that she is no waster of words and does not allow herself to be boxed into certain positions. This can be irritating for a lot of people, as it means she rarely answers questions directly, either from the press or MPs, but it does mean that when she gives speeches at important moments, such as addressing US Republicans, or setting out her position on our future relationship with Europe, her words resonate both with the public and in political circles. Her silence at the Turkish press conference is therefore, in my view, in keeping with her MO, and does not bother me. In fact, I prefer my Prime Ministers not to indulge in megaphone diplomacy or reflexive virtue signalling.

That is one reason I admire her.

'But...'

The other reason I admire her is that she has shown in the past that she can establish principled and difficult positions on things, such as modern slavery, the Police Federation, reminding the Reps. about the value of NATO, global trade, etc. And in her conference with Trump, she made the point - a good one, too - that a meaningful relationship involves honest disagreements.

Now is the time for such a response.

But so far, the indications are that she would rather duck the issue. This would not be ethical, or politically tenable.

What should she do next?

PMQs is coming up on Wednesday. She had better have an answer by then.

Perhaps something along these lines:

• That the UK-USA relationship is meaningful: communications have been made to the US administration that Britain is opposed to these measures and will not adopt such a policy herself for some very good reasons.
• That some of those affected are British citizens and should be treated with due respect.
• That she has reminded the President of what it says in the front of every British citizen's passport:

Her Britannic Majesty's Secretary of State Requests and requires in the Name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance, and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary.