Dag 1104: I must have been blind

While pondering over how my new "This Mortal Coil" style musical project would start I dug out some of my old recordings from when I had a very small and very basic home studio setup. I soon realised that the music I was making back then already was pretty similar to TMC. Not many people heard what I recorded then, but I did send a four track demo to Home and Studio Recording magazine and when it finally got reviewed one of the comments was that the music was pretty sombre.

Back then I had limited equipment and recorded using midi, a 12 input mixing desk and a 4 track portastudio. I only had 2 synth modules (Roland D-110 and U-220) and I found that if I tried anything with too many parts they wouldn't be able to cope and timing would go to pot and various notes would get dropped. So rather than go about trying to write a load of new songs I decided to revisit my original collection of songs and re-record those that I liked the best.

In those days I used to subscribe to Home and Studio Recording Magazine and when editor Paul White left to become editor of the newly founded Sound on Sound I started a subscription to that magazine. HASR fell by the wayside, but Sound on Sound kept going and is still going strong today.

I started a new Sound on Sound subscription around a year ago, and it was in the December issue that I spotted The Korg Micro X.

I managed to get one of the limited edition white ones for my birthday. It arrived last week and I am really impressed with it.
I bought it without ever seeing one or hearing one in the flesh so it was a bit of a risk, but it has turned out to be just perfect for what I needed.
I have a number of other synths, but most of them are either monophonic, or have limited polyphony or are locked away in the attic.
This one is small and has a really neat case to keep it in and has some great sounds.

When I first switched it on I held down a chord and what sounded like a whole band started playing. Although the quality of the sound was awesome, I was initially a bit put off as my first thought was "This is one of those home consumer thingies that provides the accompaniment automatically". But I soon realised I was completely wrong. These patches are just showing what can be done using the built in dual polyphonic arpegiators. The possibilities are endless, and, I have to admit, it is great fun just going through all these patches and seeing what you can come up with.

For the style of music I want to record what I really need are some really good pad and string sounds and it didn't take me long to find quite a few that sounded similar to those used by TMC. It got me thinking that I would probably add the odd guitar part with my Shergold, which I haven't recorded anything on yet as the 1980s synth music of Strange Devotion did not require guitars. This then got me thinking about what I would use for bass. Before, I played all the bass parts on a keyboard and although they filled in the bass regions of the song, they didn't sound like they were being played on a bass. The bass guitar is quite often prominent on TMC and Cocteau Twins songs and I realised last week that, even though I've only just got my new Korg, if I was going to do this thing properly I also had to have a bass guitar and I needed one now.

once I was...

I used to play bass in a band when I was student and at the time I had a red Yamaha bass which I had really liked that hadn't cost a fortune, so my first thoughts were to get one of those again. I looked on the web and saw plenty of reasonable priced Yamahas, but the body shape was different to the one I had had. The new ones seemed sort of space aged to me and I didn't like the look of them. It didn't take long to find some Fender basses and although these were more expensive I thought I might be able to stretch to one, as after all it is unlikely that I will ever buy another bass again. The Fenders I had seen were made in Mexico and the world wide internet soon informed me that the Mexican Fenders are not the ones to go for as they are made of cheap parts and the ones to have are the ones that are made in USA. So I started looking at these. The trouble is they seem to be about double the cost of the Mexican ones and my initial budget was set at half the cost of the Mexican ones. I kept going back to look at various cheaper models, but the name Fender just seemed to be stuck in my head. By last Monday I had realised that my new bass had to be a Fender and it had to be made in USA.

I then started looking at the colours available. The first guitar I ever bought was a fender copy with a sunburst colour scheme and a white pick guard. It cost about £25 and it was a piece of junk full of buzzing frets. Most of my friends had similar guitars or basses and ever since then I have hated guitars in that colour scheme. It was obviously copied from Fender as most of those available seemed to be that colour. However I spotted a colour called Orange Sunset that only seemed to be available on the USA made Fender basses and I was instantly smitten. The trouble is this option adds another £100 to the cost so we are now looking at around £1,000 for a new bass. I didn't really see how I could justify this.

On Tuesday I decided I had better go and have a look in Music ground in Leeds to see what Fender basses they had in stock. Maybe they would have a second hand Precision bass in Orange Sunset for some ridiculously low price. On the way there I called in at Northern Guitars and had a look at their selection of basses. They didn't have too many and they were all budget makes which were all very reasonably priced. I could have got a perfectly decent looking one for under £100 pounds, but of course I didn't.

Instead, I went over the road and had a look at the basses in Music Ground. They had a good selection and plenty of Fenders. They had a fair few "made in USA" ones, but I just couldn't get that excited about them. I didn't really like the colour schemes of the ones they had, but I realised that not only did they look pretty similar to the Mexican Fenders, but they also looked pretty similar to all of the many fender copies that so many budget manufacturers make. I decided to go upstairs to the Music Ground guitar museum to cheer myself up. I had a good mooch around and spotted a Fender bass that used to belong to Sid Vicious. This was in terrible condition and parts of it were held together by sticky tape. I thought it looked pretty cool and I wondered how much it was worth.

I went back to work and realised that I now felt that the only bass that would do was a Fender USA Precision Bass in Sunset Orange and I would just have to save up for it by working plenty of weekends. All of the websites I could find that offered this exact colour and model of bass did not have any in stock so I kept googling away to try and find one, when I came across the bassworld forum. Someone had bought the exact same bass as I wanted and had posted some pictures up of it. It is truly an item of beauty and I just knew we were made for each other.

However, while reading through the forum I saw the name Sandberg a few times. The name sounded Swedish, but it seems these basses are hand crafted in Germany and quite afew people had written good things about them. I saw that in the UK they cost around the same as the Fender I had originally lusted after, but I read that they could be bought from Germany for quite a bit less. This lead me to this German Site which had a number of Sanberg basses available. The cheapest one in stock was much cheaper than the Fender and was in a fantastic Violet burst colour. I looked at it over and over again fro the next few days and yesterday I finaly added it to my basket and checked out. So 5 strings of glorious bass are currently getting ready to be shipped over and I can't wait to have my first go on a hand crafted Sandberg 5 string.

To celebrate I had a great eveing out with Adrian and Guy in Harrogate. We started off at the Hotel Du Vin with a few Absolut vodkas with assorted mixers and Adrian and Guy had a few games of pool while I relaxed in a very comfy leather sofa.

That's a bad miss.

We then moved on to the Drum and Monkey where we had a very nice meal of assorted seafood and then home to our respective beds.

I got home to find that the copy of Filigree and Shadow by This Mortal Coil, that I had ordered from amazon last week, had finaly arrived. I originally had this on double LP and haven't owned a record deck for around 10 years so this will be getting quite a few plays in the morning.

Dag 1092: Bithday Special

As usual, it was my birthday on 1st feb, and as usual I felt less bothered about it than the last one (apart from being bothered about the incremental effect it has on my age).

As we get older we have more idea of what life is about and what it has to offer, yet we also find that as we get older we have less chance of making dramatic changes to our lives.

Mr Hammill once said/sang "It's a hallmark of adulthood that our options diminish as our faculties for choice increase" and I think that sums it up pretty well.

My last post was written a couple of months ago, but since I got round to adding it to the blog I have been listening to pretty much nothing but This Mortal Coil, though I have been alternating this with Victorialand by The Cocteau Twins. I was an instant fan of the Cocteau Twins when I heard their first LP and have bought everything they released since. I can remember that when Victorialand was released I thought it was quite a change in direction for them and was leading towards the style of music that they would become so well known for. Like many LPs I bought back then I bought the pre-recorded tape version so I could play it in my car. My first car was a very battered and unreliable Renault 5 which had both rear side windows held in place with glue and masking tape. I remember driving to Leeds with Adrian one day and putting Victorialand onto the tape player. I remember him saying that it was probably the most depressing music he had ever listened to, but I can't remember what I put on instead. I hadn't thought of it in that way before. I realised that it could possibly be thought of as depressing, but I tended to find that if you are feeling a bit low listening to this sort of stuff can actually make you feel pretty uplifted. I find the music on Victorialand beautiful and something that one can get become completely lost in. I once went to a wedding where Victorialand was played as people entered the church and it seemed very fitting and appropriate.

When I first bought a CD player Victorialand was the first CD I bought to play on it. For some reason I never bought any This Mortal Coil on CD and my original copy of their first album It'll End In Tears was a pre-recorded cassette. The tape has long since worn away and I hadn't listened to it for years so I purchased it from iTunes last night as an extra birthday present and am listening to it as I write this.



As I mentioned in the last post, whenever I start listening to This Mortal Coil it makes me want to make music like that. However, making any sort of music at all is not really possible at the moment, partly due to lack of free time, but mainly due to the fact that all my equipment is stored away in the attic and various wardrobes. It is not really practical to get it out as by the time it was all set up I would need to put it away again. But all this listening to TMC and Cocteau Twins has made me really want some way of recording some music again. I also had the dilemma of what to get for my birthday. I always want more music equipment, but there is no point buying any if you have nowhere to put it. The answer was provided when I read through december's copy of Sound on Sound and I saw that Korg must have realised there is a market out there for people in the same boat as me. When I read about the Korg Micro X I felt it could have been made specially for me. It is small, but doesn't have small keys it has full size keys, just less of them. It also comes in a custom plastic hard case so it can easily be put away neatly, but best of all it contains sounds from their top of the range Triton synths. Editing small synths without many buttons is often a chore, but this one comes with a USB cable and some software to enable all that to be done from the computer. The SOS review mentioned that as well as the standard black case, the micro X also comes in a limited edition white case. Not only does it look far better in white, but as it is a limited edition, if I can get one I can feel all the better about the whole thing. However if I can't find one I will need to listen to even more TMC to cheer me up.

I spent the weeks leading up to my birthday trying to find a white micro X 50. It seemed that not only were the black ones pretty hard to get hold of due to their popularity, but the white ones were almost impossible to find. Digital Village advertised both on their website, but had neither in stock. Another site I had brought from before had the black one in stock, but no mention of the white one. Every day I looked on the Digital Villages website to see if they had got any, but they were always out of stock.

I began to worry that the limited edition white ones may have already sold out, but this just made me all the more determined to get one (I must me a marketing mans dream come true). The day before my birthday I emailed the other supplier to see if they had any plans to stock the white ones. They said they has spoken to Korg and they would be able to get some in 2 to 3 weeks time, and I should order one straight away to ensure I get one. I didn't really want to wait that long so after a few hours weighing it up I emailed and said I would like one of the ones they will get in. They said if I looked on their site I would see that the item was now listed and if I ordered it now I would get one when they got them in. I didn't like the idea of my card getting charged so many weeks before the item became available so I told them I would order it next week instead.

Before leaving work that day I had one more look on the digital village site and the status on the white micro X had changed to in Stock. It would have suited me better to have bought this after the weekend, so it would have appeared on march's statement, but I had the chance of getting one without waiting for another 2 or 3 weeks so I bought it. Once I had gone through the process I checked the item again and it was now showing up as out of stock again. The order has a clause saying the stock level on the web page may not be accurate so either they had just got 1 in that day and I had got it or there was an error and they didn't actually have one in stock. I wasn't likely to find out until the next day so I went home.

Next day I had an email to say the order was accepted and a few hours later another saying the item had shipped. There was also a tracking number. This morning I looked that up and my synth was officially out for delivery. Around 12:30 the status changed to delivered, so I have a brand new white limited edition Korg micro X waiting at home for me. I guess Strange Devotion will now be on hold (though in reality it has been since I left Scotland) and I am now looking forward to attempting some melancholic yet ultimately uplifting music inspired by TMC.

These birthdays may not be quite so bad after all.

There's ice in the cauldron, so look out now.