Zen mastering and Woody Guthrie

Since I'm pretty sure I am done with working on the album (hurray!), I have uploaded one song for you to listen to.

Please buy it and help me fund the release!!!! You can pay a dollar (the cost of about three mouthfuls of coffee), or more if you want to generate some good karma, or want to email a copy to a bunch of your friends without feeling guilty.

It's my version of This Land is Your Land by Woody Guthrie (I wrote new lyrics for it). It's the most stripped back, straight-up folk song of all the songs on the album. Got that down-home country feel, yee haw!

This week I have been getting my head around The Campaign. I met with Lauren (my manager-type person) to talk through all the various things we need to put in place over the coming weeks and months: photo and video shoots, lists of places to contact, press releases, electronic press kit, update website, work out what to release when (and how), where to tour (and how and when) ... the list goes on and on. It will be loads of work but I'm really excited to have the freedom to do it exactly as I want.

I also had a final crack at mastering the album.

When we made the first album I had no real idea what mastering was. I couldn't see why you would need mastering on top of mixing. I mean surely once it's been mixed, it's ready to go, right? Wrong.

Mastering basically means taking a bunch of songs and turning them into an album. You take the final stereo mixes of each track and make sure all the volumes are right - both within the song and from one song to the next - as well as being comparable to other music in the same genre. You make sure the frequencies are balanced (not too bassy, not too top endy), and the loud bits are not too loud, and the quiet bits are not too quiet, while at the same time maintaining the dynamics of the song. And then there's the overall 'texture' or 'flavour' of the tracks - smooth or rough, warm or cold, bright or thumpy. There are a bunch of techniques and pieces of kit for making all that happen, and it is harder than it sounds! I have spent quite a few hours on it now (much longer than a mastering engineer would have spent, though with significantly less efficiency) and have done at least four versions, learning as I go.

With the first album, a mastering guru did the work. He has a beautiful studio designed specifically for mastering and has done work for everyone from Nick Drake to George Harrison to Depeche Mode. But now I am DIYing it and so I have had to learn fast (fortunately learning fast is something I have become quite good at - a bi-product of refusing to stay in one place or specialise in one thing).

And other news - I found out this week is that you need to allow two months from submission of your music before it shows up in digital retailers (itunes, etc.). I thought it would be, like, five minutes or something. So that was a handy find! Better get designing an album cover!

Tomorrow I am heading into downtown Vancouver for a seminar on digital music marketing set up by the nice folks at Music BC. Timely or what???

Until next week...

Padma

WOODY GUTHRIE, A HUMMING BIRD, AND OTHER STUFF

Things have been quite busy of late.

Went to a seminar on placing your music in TV, film and computer games. A couple of music producers came up from LA to talk about their work. So I am taking advantage of being on the West coast.

I’ve always had an interest in the business side of the music business. I think I’ll probably even set up a label one day, when there's a good reason to do so (like I've got to sign this band!!!) and I've got the time. But the whole publishing/placement thing has been pretty much a mystery to me. Esoteric knowledge, like tantric ritual. I have in fact read about it a whole bunch of times, but it’s like physics, I just can’t remember it. So to sit and listen to these guys and to be able to ask a question or two was excellent.

I’ve also been outside of Vancouver for the first time. Out into the wilds. Saw a bear! Amazingly there were a couple of tourists who had stopped the car and were standing extremely close to it taking photographs. Bear attacks usually happen to tourists, apparently. In one famous incident, a German tourist put jam on her kid’s face so that the bear would lick it off while they took a photo. You can probably guess the outcome.

The reason I was out of the city was that I was visiting an eco village. It was great to see people who had actually got something going. They were due to move into their places within a few weeks. They grow their own food on one-acre patches, the houses are ultra efficient, using thermal mass and solar gain (rather than heating and air conditioning) to keep a constant temperature, and they plan soon to buy a wind turbine to generate the electricity. I love meeting people who are out there and doing it. It takes creativity, skill, patience and above all commitment to get something like this to the moving-in stage, so you can guarantee that you are going to meet inspirational people. I may well be playing a gig there on the solstice.

While I was there a humming bird flew up to me and hovered about a foot away from my chest for a moment, before realising that my brightly coloured cardigan was not going to produce nectar, and shooting off. It was amazing, hovering there right at my heart chakra, like a fairy from a Disney cartoon.

When I was living in the yurt I decided that I’d like to write a book to go with the next album. Most of the songs that will be on the album were written during that time so hopefully it will provide an extra bit of context. I met up with the record company when I was in London and they were cool with the idea, so this week I started to write it. I’m going to attempt to chug it out quite quickly., Kerouac-style brain dump. I think it was Ernest Hemingway who said ‘All first drafts are shit’ so my plan is to just get the first draft out and then lovingly sculpt and tidy it once it’s on the page.

Got invited to play the Bodhi Garden festival (an excellent little Buddhist festival in Brighton) but alas I shan’t be in the country. I might try to do something there as part of my UK tour though, later in the year. They are a good bunch.

The week has also seen me in a bit of internal strife about how to approach the sound of the album. I love this period before things have really started, but it’s a painful time. It’s like being a teenager – a time filled with potential but also insecurity. Which way to jump? Who to be?

I think making art must inevitably be this way, assuming you really care about it and aren’t just trying to create something that will get played on the radio. This is especially true when you are producing as well as writing and playing the music. I miss Holy McGrail!

At the moment, the whole thing is sitting there in my heart, beautiful and melancholy, before it has been polluted and compromised by bringing it out into the world. It feels like a great responsibility to be the one whose job it is to turn it into an album.

I read something beautiful and melancholy today which expressed perfectly what I hope to achieve. I was listening to Nina Violet’s album, which I love. I supported her in Brighton when she was doing her UK tour and was knocked out. Anyway, I was listening to the album, and decided to have a nose on the internet. After a quick search on google, I found an article about her. And she was talking about how Woody Guthrie’s music spoke out the suffering of the people, and somehow made it alright:

"Think back to what Woody Guthrie did in the Depression," she says. "He alleviated the suffering of people by singing their suffering aloud. When everybody was thinking these down thoughts and then a charismatic man showed up and sung the thoughts back to them, it made their suffering real and it made it okay. Music has always been an expression from people to God, or to each other or to themselves about the things that they suffer and the joys that they feel."

Amen.