New Tascam Jam tune.

Ingredients: Beat programmed on my Yamaha QY70, Delay on snare mixed live through my Zoom 1204, One synth line on the Yamaha OY70, Some vocals sampled on my Yamaha VSS 200, All recorded on my Tascam Porta 02, Then bounced down to two channels on my Tascam 488, Played a bass line, Played a guitar line, Seasoned liberally with my DOD FX25, TC Electronic Rusty Fuzz, A sprinkling of TC Electronic Hall of Fame Reverb.

Tascam Jams.

This is going to be where I upload a series of jams on my Tascam 8 track 488 cassette portastudio, they're a bit rough and ready as I'm playing it all live apart from some of the drum beats which are programmed... this means mistakes are kept in, which is f****** great as it mirrors life perfectly, our mistakes are kept in our lives and we learn to live with them; as in life as in music.

Also recording to tape mirrors the direction of time, when you record digitally its very easy to grab stuff in a non linear way, which is great if you are not lazy. However for someone like me I tend to cut and paste a lot and it leads to repetition.

I record these basic tracks on a Tascam Porta 02, then squash them onto one or two tracks of a Tascam 488 and then add overdubs... then they go into digital, then they bounce around a few satellites, go down a few wires and into your ears. Cheers.

Obsidian Thrust

New Acoustic Song

Here's a new Acoustic song, played on a Taylor Big Baby. I'll be doing more videos in the new year. Download the original song here for free :

Some old electronic music WOT i DID.

I also dabble in EDM, here are a few links to the thing I did a couple of years ago called Surf Prophets... I haven't posted that side of my music online before, but it's time to put the stuff up on Bandcamp, Youtube, ans Soundcloud (The usual suspects).

It's mostly instrumental, some have vocals, i'm aiming to use the tunes as backing tracks and release a version with vox.

Things have been a bit quite on the Broken Mono front as usual, however I've been collaborating with a Mr Lee Hoggett (AKA) C60 over the past year or so... I thought it'd be nice to post a tune here, so here we go.







This song is called Freedom:


Lees music can be heard Here

Cheers.

Where your treasure lies

This Demo was recorded on a Tascam Porta 2, a VERY primitive 4 track tape recorder... I enjoy recording without having to use a computer, the sound quality isn't as good, but it's more immediate and feels more natural.

The Octopus Sound

I'm in the process of digitizing a old album I recorded on a 4 track Tascam Portastudio about 10 years ago, it's called "The Octopus Sound". I've Only found half of it so far, so I imagine I'll soon be rummaging though my box of tapes trying to find it. I'm posting it on Bandcamp as I find it.



Here is a YouTube clip of the mix of Easy Engine, I was going to do this for the whole album, but It's probably not going to be that interesting, so will be just putting up the audio.

All The Words

Here's a year old YouTube clip I recorded on my posh camera and with my proper posh mikes.

All in the game

Here is a YouTube clip of the latest song I've written "All in the game". It just came out of nowhere last month, it's always nice when songs do that. It's on YouTube, and all the usual places. It's got a bit of Nick Drake in there, minus his dark magic maybe, but hey.









Here is the song on soundcloud recorded with as few mistakes as I could muster in my studio:







Here it is on Bandcamp for free download at the moment:

Roland SPD-6

 I'm really not a drummer, but I got a used Roland SPD-6 off Ebay a few months ago to add a bit of live drums to my tracks. I used to program all the drums, but it's more fun to make up loops with this thing by playing them rather than putting dots on a grid in a sequencer:

It's got a few nice kits, loads of useless stuff like guns going off, explosions etc. 

I recorded the drum parts to this track with them.

Old School

I grew up in the Analogue world, as a musician that meant using 4 track porta studios to record half assed songs, and this frequently involved banging my head against a wall more often than not. Using ye olde drum machines was a lot more hassle than putting dots in a grid on a computer. 


 Then the digital age dawned, at first it was great, Myspace was really good. People genuinely found your music, I made some great contacts and found people who supported my music. Plus about 9 years ago I actually put together my first album using Cubase, I called it "TuLK"

 Move 10 years on I realize the digital dream, is a digital nightmare in some ways. Myspace died, and the sharks came in... people stopped buying music, NME and Melody Maker died, and one or two great bands who we'll never hear off never achieved the success the would have had they not disappeared in a digital swamp. To a certain extent that is all down to the digital world.


 So why am I moaning?, we'll I know it's not all bad... there's still some good music out there, and I don't miss paying £15 in 1995 for "First Rays of the Rising Sun" by Jimi Hendrix thank you very much!... But, i'm REALLY sick of looking at computer screens when I record my music... if I wanted to do that then i'd have gone into IT.