arifah

Halo a Iain, Ciamar a tha sibh? Tha mi toilichte coinneachadh ribh. We are still at the beginning stages of learning Gaelic when a lot of what you learn has no real practical application unless you want a slightly surreal conversation. But we did find some fun things to do with it - a Gaelic animation by my son Sebastian. I don't think it'll win the Oscar, but it made us laugh. You can see it here. How is Glaschu these days? I was brought up in the Glasgow Cross area of the city. I know that area has changed a lot, but I get conflicting reports of whether it's gone upmarket or downhill! Beannachd leibh Arifah

Hello Donna, Did you know that Orkney originally belonged to Norway and was given as a dowry by an old Norwegian King to an old Scottish King when their children got married. People on Orkney are as likely to be called Erland, Magnus or Inga as they are Hamish, Donald or Morag. If you or your friends ever do manage to make the trip you won't be disappointed, it's a magnificent place, wild and untamed. It was Farlans favourite place, it matched something within him, something that wouldn't be tamed . We had a house just 100 yards from the shore, and were treated on a daily basis to some of the islands fabulous birds, hen harriers, curlews, fulmars and owls with thier evil hungry eyes upon our kittens. (They never got any). Sometimes they seemed to have their eyes on us too. They swooped on us one day as we were coming down the path towards home, and I remember Farlans covering his head with his coat and sprinting for the door saying "quick we gotta get in outa the owls!" I thought that would have been a good line for a song, it never was, but Orkney was a great source of inspiration to Farlan - the landscape and the people. Arifah

Hello Donna, It's nice to meet you. The technical side of music is certainly a challenge, I've been getting on better since I found songstuff which has great resources and a nice attitude towards the novice. Something else which has helped me on the technical front has been learning Gaelic, the language of my ancestors. It's not an obvious connection, but nevertheless in my mind the learning of the Gaelic has opened the way for me to connect with a side of life that has always been a problem. We never heard of the Transalpine Redemptorists when we were on Orkney. We left Orkney in 1989 so maybe they came after that. I can't imagine if they'd been there that we wouldn't have been told. Nothing goes unnoticed or unreported on Orkney. Gossip is a way of life and binoculars the Orkney farmers ornament of choice. The nights are long - and light. Arifah

Thank you Nightwolf and John for the info on frequency selective filters. It's very nice gathering snippets of information this way. The fact that they come as a personal response or recommendation seems to make them more accessible, certainly more enjoyable than ploughing through stark facts gathered from the internet. I suppose it's the same principle that works on songstuff, if you know someone a little bit through their posts then it clears the path to go and listen to their songs, and it makes the songs more accessible too. Arifah

My husband Farlan, wrote many beautiful songs it's hard to pick just one, but this song, called "If you have lost it" is a very powerful song - it has a message, it has startling imagery and he sang it with great authority. The song is about grief and loss and how to deal with it. No matter how great your loss, whether it's a culture that's gone , or a great personal loss, if you stay with the pain and don't turn away from it you don't really lose anything. The world you're in may be different, you may be different, but the space you inhabit will be bigger, brighter and with more possibilities. The song also speaks about how your mind can trick you at times of grief, leading you away from your pain into a world of illusion and emptiness, far away from yourself. "If you have lost it" If you have lost it Well it's gone forever Until you find it again But then! it's changed It's a different shine It glitters in a different way If you have lost it It's gone forever It might only be a day You learn how to say good bye And the wild gulls fly About your furrowed brow Feed upon your years Count nothing as lost Live upon your countenance Live upon your slow smile Turn in time before you Like so many worries And you! you're so clever You play chess with oranges upon a black wall Speak of the stars moving house Speak of yourself in the fourth person And all the while the wild gulls unravel your brow...unravel your heart Unravel your heart

Hi Steve, I didn't answer your questions. Farlan recorded onto a small 4 track fostex. Some of these tapes he mixed down, some he didn't. We have a bit more room for manouver on the the non mixed down tapes, but on the mixed down tapes I want to try and increase the volume as they are a bit quiet. I've heard about frequency selective filters that can give more options for working on final recordings, do you know anything about those? Maybe when I'm rich I'll hire myself a great frequency selective filterer. Arifah

Hello John, Thank you for the info about EQ. I've had quite a lot of fun with that. I have made two more recording of Orange Blossom, one with EQ here, and one with EQ plus compression here. On the first version the compression setting I used was soft knee. On this one I used the default setting on the programme which caused almost no clipping. Obviously there's a limit to the extra volume I can get without distortion, but which of the four versions do you think is best? Farlans deep voice was responsible for the loss of many a cheap tape recorder over the years. A few weeks, sometimes days of that low rumble and like Victorian Ladies they used to faint away, never to work again. Our son is the same, you can't talk to him on a mobile phone as the timbre of his voice distorts the equipment. It's in the genes. Arifah

Hi Steve, I'm trying to transfer Farlans music from tape to CD. Quite a job for me, since, as I said, I know nothing about music technology or technical things in general. Actually getting the music into the computer in the first place was a major achievement, and the result of a great deal of head banging. My brain seems to have been much maligned in this area, but by taking on the technical side of Farlans music, I've been able to discover why I have these difficulties. Partly school, partly other negative experiences that I didn't remember, but by re-experiencing the obstacles I was able to remembered how they got there and to some extent free myself from them. This doesn't make me a technical wizz, but it does free me up to experiment and play around without anxiety, and if I can get the odd explanation or someone to point me in a direction, as John did with EQ, I'll go and play till something does or doesn't click. It was nice of John to take the time to listen and offer advice, especially when he must have been busy. I think many people experience similar difficulties to mine in at least one area of their lives. Inhibition and confusion to an extent that they can't approach a subject that they'd like. It's often in the creative arena where people have been squashed or sat on. I remember watching a programme about famous musicians and their other interests, one was Charlie Watts and his interest in astronomy, no problem there. But there was another heavy metal singer. They showed him performing, wild, crazy, extrovert, over the top, a stranger to inhibition - or so you'd have thought. His other interest was painting. he brought out a small painting he'd done, he showed it to the camera with a shy, timid, please don't hurt me look. It was easy to see where his major malevolations had taken place, and perhaps what he should have been doing with his life. Farlan was the opposite. Painting was easy for him, his big struggles were with the music. He knew that he wanted to do music for about three years before he could even admit it. And that was just the start, he battled huge obstacles, and to get from the level of restriction and inhibition that he had at the beginning to the level of freedom and expressiveness he achieved at the end was very impressive. And that personal victory is part of the spiritual content of his music and is probably one of the reasons why listening to Farlan sing gives me great heart and hope. How does your music rate in your life. Does it come easy or have you had to struggle to get there? I visited songsparrow and listened to all of your songs. Your lyrics have a leaning towards the sad and sorrowful side of life - clearly you've not found life entirely plain sailing and you sing these songs with great feeling. I like the ballads best, the gentle songs and some of the instrumentals have a great sweetness. One thing that struck me particularly was your poem "So bright the day" It is tranquil and peaceful. You seem very at home with the theme of nature. Was this ever set to music? Arifah

Thank you for your suggestions John, Yes, please do move this part of the topic onto the recording section. I've made two version of one of Farlan's songs. One without compression here and one with compression here. The compression settings I used were :- Ratio 1.9:1 Threshold -20.4 output 1.4 release 206.0 attack 0.90 Do you think, if you have a minute, you could listen to these. I think your proffesional ear will be more intelligent than my non proffesional explanations. There is some clipping, but only on the voice. The volume of the voice and music is not equal. I hope this problem can be corrected, as there's no chance of a retake now. We did have some professional CD's made once. I'm not sure how profesional you get for £40, they were fine, but there was something missing too, something esential stripped away. Maybe it's an emotional thing for me, but when I work with Farlans music myself that essential feeling is there - even if I do lose out on sound quality. So for that reason I'm keen to do as much of the work myself as possible. I appreciate your help very much. Arifah

Hello John, Thank you for pointing out Graeme's article. It helps me a bit, especially the diagram. For the technologically challenged amongst us a diagram is worth a thousand words. I'm not even a musician let alone a music technologist, and like Rudi, I'm no good at maffs. I probably could have been, if anyone had bothered to teach me properly, but my difficulty with maths was used as a tool by evil teachers to ridicule and humiliate, and is probably the reason why I now have a mental block to understanding the technological side of music. My music programme seems as complex to me as the space shuttle controls, so far I've figured out enough to keep a steady orbit, but not enough to get back to Earth. I've asked advice before on other music forums, Perhaps I've been unlucky with the people I've run into, but they all assume a level of knowledge that I don't have and their answers leave me with more questions and feeling like a dunce. I have several problems I'm trying to grapple with, but for the moment I'd settle for an answer to this one, about compression. Farlan recorded his songs onto a four track fostex and mixed down onto ordinary casette. When transferring the casette tapes to CD some of them are a bit quiet. I understood that compression could help raise the volume a bit, so I've tried applying random settings which do raise the volume but they make the overall recording sound a lot worse. The problem that I have with Graeme's diagram is that the numbers on my controls are not the same as his and I don't understand what my numbers mean. In my mind low starts at 0 and high is 10 or 100. But the numbers on my release control start at 200.0 got down to 186.0 then up to 208 then back down to 200.0 and these make no sense to me in terms of what is low and what is high. Can you offer any insight or help with this problem? Arifah

Hello Joe, That sounds like a very exciting step you're taking, I wish you lots of luck. I don't know much about the music industry, but I do know about taking it on and going it alone, and you stand to find out a whole lot more than the workings of the music business. Taking it on like that is a bit like a journey of self discovery, or a spiritual journey in that you not only meet the obstacles that are out there that are keeping you from your dreams, you also meet the ones in yourself and by meeting them you're then in a position to overcome them. You don't always get where you think you're going, sometimes you get somewhere a whole lot better than you ever imagined. It will be interesting to hear all about your discoveries and the highs and lows that you experience discovering them. I listened to some of your songs, you have a lovely voice, friendly with a lot of character. I particularly like "the frog next door", both the lyrics and the rendition, oh and the title. I hope you don't let your audience change that one because it's an intriguing title, it catches your eye and makes you want to find out what about the frog next door. They might change it to "The Froggy song" which wouldn't quite have the same appeal. Wishing you all the best, I hope to see you on the next Country Music Award show winning the top award. Arifah

Thank you for changing my name, John or Steve or both. I feel happier using my real name. Seraphina was the name of a lovely cat we had once when we lived on the Orkney islands. He was lovely in nature rather than appearance, being a modest beast with only a stump for a tail. We thought he was a she initially, hence the very female name, but he turned into a big tom cat, went off and did tom cat type things. He came back one evening severely mauled, he looked like he had run into a tiger at least. He never recovered from his injuries and had to be put down. But that was not the end of Seraphina. He came back to visit Farlan. Just the once, to say goodbye, and to show off his magnificent new tail. I've read Johns article on compression. It's a great article, very clear. I wonder if you could give me some settings as a starter point for Ratio threshold, output, realease and attack. It is quite difficult to work out how each different setting affects all the others, and having a place to start from would be useful. I use a programme called N-Track. Arifah