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GregB

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Blog Entries posted by GregB

  1. Album 1 - "Not All It Seems" (2002)

    By GregB ,


    An album cycle
    I've occasionally attempted to write songs throughout my life, but the result were boring and banal.
    In 2001, an ex-colleague and a good friend of mine, died. We were both 49.  This was perhaps the closest death I had experienced to date.  Besides the great discomfort of seeing his family grieve, I felt a deep guilt that I had never expressed my affection and admiration of the guy to his face. Anglo-Saxon men leave so many things unsaid.
    While trying to write a suitable eulogy, words began to form in a way that were a fully fledged song. Lyrics were no longer a barrier and within a few weeks I had the basics of a dozen songs of which I could feel proud. 
    Despite the cause, I was pleased with the words that were appearing and I sent them to Mike, another old work colleague with whom I used to play folk music.  He read the lyrics and pulled a melody out of somewhere and was so chuffed with his creation that he rang me and played it over the phone. We definitely had the kernel of a song. It had a strong melody but repeated itself with little variation. This is where, with a couple of small adjustments, the verse and chorus became different but complimentary. Little embellishments, a cascade of chords for the intro, a second part for the chorus, a bridge, an instrumental and a coda made for a “complete” song that became "Fields & Sunny Skies". The lyrics had come fairly easily to me, a melody easily to Mike, and the structuring and embellishments were a breeze for me once there was a core on which to build.
     
    So here is Songbook #1 for "Not All It Seems" by Mike & Greg (all songs written in 2001, recorded/released 2002).
    The 12 tracks can be heard on all digital platforms, including Spotify.
     
     
    The 154pp PDF is 5MB (fine for screen viewing).
    The 22MB versions may be required if you want to print any pages.
     
    Any questions (or pleads for me to stop), just ask.
     
    Greg
    Vol 1 - NAIS SongBook for Songstuff (smaller size).pdf 265741858_Vol1-NAISSongBookforSongstuff.pdf

  2. Album 2 - "Prescient" (2015)

    By GregB ,


    An album cycle
    "Prescient" (2015) by Nothing At All is available on all digital platforms, including Spotify.
     
    Around 2012, totally disillusioned with performing in public, I had registered on the Bandmix site seeking like-minded locals just to jam at home.  Martin Hale contacted me out of the blue via Bandmix in 2013 (the only worthwhile and non-time-wasting contact ever made through that site) saying he liked some tracks from "Not All It Seems" .  Almost the same age, and both from the UK, we luckily gelled musically and socially.   We began to meet once a week, jammed and had a good laugh while working up a solid and extensive repertoire of songs, with no particular goal other than the enjoyment of playing good music. It was a great combo ... the first time I had ever played with someone who could play lead guitar.  For example:
     
    Towards the end of 2014, we challenged each other to come up with something for a national songwriting challenge.  To our own surprise, within a couple of days, we each had a song!  We started recording on my basically-never-before-used Pro Tools setup.  It was painful learning process, but we got to a point where we had produced one song we could actually submit to the competition. The home production bug had hit us and Martin bought his own setup (Logic Pro on Mac), and we continued writing/recording separately ... only seeking ideas/critiques/feedback from each other.  We were both retired at this point, so we had the time to comb the net for tutorials and slowly develop our DAW skills.   When we reached the point of diminishing returns, the album was released at the end of 2015.
     
    Martin was not enthused with the 'Songbook' concept but I managed to get him to write a few paragraphs on the genesis and development of each of his own songs.  I pruned my contributions about my own tracks down to a similar amount else there would have been an ugly imbalance.  As a result, the companion Songbook is the thinnest of the four volumes, although it still has the full chords/lyrics.
     
    Any questions ... just ask.
     
    I started creating music videos for the whole album, bullying Martin into doing one of his own.  We subsequently pulled these from public view as we could not guarantee that ALL the images were copyright-cleared (the amount of easily-available and specifically 'free' material was much thinner on the ground back then compared to now).   Late in 2020, having completed the videos for album 3, I used my remaining stock library membership to produce the only video I had never managed to create back in 2015 for lack of suitable imagery.  Cleared for public display, here it is:
     
    Box Vol 2 - PRESCIENT.pdf

  3. Album 3 - "The Flat White Album" (2020)

    By GregB ,


    An album cycle
    After releasing Album 2 (Prescient) at the end of 2015, followed by an intense music video production phase, I felt creatively exhausted and mentally spun out. 
     
    However, there were two events that helped kickstart the thought of doing a solo album:
    I scored a short film for a Film Festival competition, and I recorded, arranged and produced a song written and performed by my nephew who visited us from the UK These two projects seemed to get my mojo back, and soon I felt some renewed pleasure from playing guitar and piano again.
     
    So 2016 saw a few songs start to take shape.  Also, by then into my mid-60s and aware that this album could well be my ‘last gasp’, I began to resurrect some bits and pieces that I'd created in the past, but never written down or recorded. 
     
    Now, quietly confident with my basic home-production skills, I felt unconstrained. All options were on the table as I was going into this without any collaborator.  There was now no-one to worry about keeping on-side but, on the flip side, there would be no-one to save me from bad choices and excesses.  It would be the ultimate step in vulnerability, completely exposing myself to criticism as everything would be down to me:  writing, arrangement, recording, editing, mixing, track order, mastering.
     
    While new music had begun to bubble up, I was hard pressed to come up with sufficient lyrics that withstood repeated reading.  By late 2016, I had perhaps 5 completed songs, plus 5 'tunes' that required lyrics, so I messaged family and friends to see if they had any ideas or poems that might help.
     
    In early 2017, my family had a two-week holiday in Sri Lanka.  Each morning around dawn, overlooking the pounding Indian Ocean surf and with no-one else around, I would sit with a coffee, pad of paper, pencil, MP3s in earbuds, tiny printouts of the dozen poems people had sent me ... and just manually work through options.  I eventually used 4 poems as inspiration for new lyrics. 
     
    Returning to Australia saw me refining the existing songs and continually adding more ... the lyric logjam had been broken.  As the track number got above 24, I decided to cap the project at 30 ... the same number of tracks on the “The Beatles” (aka the “White Album”).  I wasn't going to record anything until the writing had stopped.  I kept refining every song/instrumental acoustically at the kitchen table, a word/phrase here, a chord change there, the melody, until each was complete in terms of chords, lyrics, and structure. I began laying down some simple guitar/vocal demos in Pro Tools mid 2018, nailing the keys and tempos. 
     
    I didn’t intend to start to start recording in earnest until at least March 2019 when the peak summer heat had subsided ... my 'studio' is my Study, an ordinary room with a large window and untreated walls, which gets uncomfortably hot in summer.  In December 2018 I came off my motorbike on a corner at high speed.  The machine was a complete write-off but, luckily, my body landing on grass, and I walked away with just cuts, bruises, and a swollen hand.  The injuries healed within three months: I was extremely lucky both for my overall well-being and also being left physically able to perform and complete the album. WHEW! 😵
     
    The songbook is large due to the number of tracks, but also an extensive “Making Of” section which details the writing process, my studio set-up, the production process, and some specific notes on each track.
     
    Any questions ... please ask.
     
     
    Box Vol 3c - The Flat White Album 'Making of' Story.pdf Box Vol 3a - The Flat White Album Songbook.pdf

  4. Album 4 - "Not All It Seems - REDUX" (2021)

    By GregB ,


    An album cycle
    So, lastly, we come to Album 4 “Not All It Seems – Redux” (2021).
     
    ‘Flat White’ had taken 2-3 years to gestate and create.  Each song was something I was proud of, was quite unique, and had been taken as far as my non-professional abilities would allow. 
     
    It was therefore quite chilling to realise, especially after my near-fatal motorbike accident before the full recording began, that all the time, effort and creativity actually counts for nothing if you never get to press ‘ENTER’ to digitally release an album onto the global stage.  “If a tree falls in the forest ...”.   Its 2020 release date had been in my 69th year, so the general statistics for age-related decline in health and senses were increasingly less in my favour for starting and satisfactorily completing any longform project.  Also, now on a fixed pension, technical problems, replacements, upgrades, subscriptions etc. all loomed as possible project breakers.
     
    Waiting for the usual post-album blues to come and sit on my shoulders for a few months, I embarked on the challenge of doing the 30 music videos required.  But while doing these it occurred to me that there was one short album project that I could do and complete within six months that would not only be fun itself but would allow me to address a number of issues that had irked me for years.
     
    My first album in 2002, done in a commercial studio, had been a fabulous experience but tackled as a complete novice ... hell, I couldn’t even play accurately to a click track!  There was no production help from the engineer supplied by the studio.  The 3-day studio booking demanded that things just keep moving with little to no time to experiment and polish.  I still felt, after 20 years, that those songs were strong but needed some production skills to make them shine.
     
    This is where making my Songbooks actually paid off in spades.  I’m no professional and I've always had huge difficulty in remembering chords and lyrics ... even my own songs!!  The Songbook for Album 1 “Not All It Seems” was an immediate solution, and probably saved me a solid 30% of the overall album timeline.  Not only did I not have to write anything, but I could treat the whole original album as a good demo version for each track.   All I wanted to do was improve the arrangements, then perform and record all the parts on my own.
     
    The melodies and lyrics stayed the same. Tempos were generally increased, and there were some tempo ramps added within songs.  Song pitch was usually lowered by one or two semitones to suit my voice which had deepened a little over the 20 years.  Still led by my 12-string, new instruments were added, along with new riffs.  A few choruses were changed to minor keys, and some intros/endings were enhanced. 
     
    With the permission/blessing of my original collaborator (he was a little wary until he heard my re-do of the first track), everything went smoothly, and the album was released well within the anticipated six month window. Again, all the recording was done during the cooler months here (April-October). 
     
    I decided to keep the original album title, merely adding ‘Redux’ – commonly used in movies for the 'Directors Cut'.
     
    The Songbook PDF is provided here, which includes a short ‘making of’ section.  I’ve also, for the first time, created a book with a screengrab from each Pro Tools recording session to show the song structures.  (The second half of this book shows the video timelines.)
     
    “Fields and Sunny Skies” was the first song I ever wrote back in 2001.  It was a fantastic thrill when a husband and wife team (local performers who run their own commercial studio) did a cover version in the second half of 2021.  They are professionals so I paid them for their work, but I gave them complete freedom to re-interpret it.
     
    This was the icing on the cake for me. I'd rather be considered a writer than a performer/technician, and here was evidence that the songs could shine if only given the right treatment.  It served as a neat and complete 20-year songwriting cycle.  Should nothing else ever transpire creatively for me, I can at least fade into obscurity a happy and contented man. 😊
     
    Any questions ... please ask.
    Box Vol 4a - NAIS Redux SongBook.pdf Box Vol 4b - NAIS Redux Recording & Videos.pdf
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