Online Jamming 4.0

If you’d like some background on online jamming, you can check out my previous posts: Online Jamming 1.0, Online jamming 1.5, Online jamming 2.0, and Online jamming 3.0.

It is now 2024 and 2020 is starting to feel like history, but for obvious reasons, that was when we got our first taste for online jamming. First it was through Zoom, then Jamkazam and Jamulus, but finally we settled on Sonobus due to its recording capabilities. Since then our online jamming collection is almost outnumbering those carefully crafted multitrack albums.

I was driven to write about this again because I feel like things have reached a new level. It might just be because I have a better internet connection or thanks to updates, who knows? All I can say is that in the last jam we had Zoom and Sonobus running simultaneously and I could actually see Doug playing those funky bass lines with what seemed to be near zero latency. Not only that, but we were playing publicly with random people from all over the world.

I’ll stick the ‘album’ here ____ when I get round to mixing it.

This all opens up a couple of new possibilities: The first is live streaming a jam on a fixed day/date; The second is setting up a ‘hybrid’ performance in a venue. Both of these are exciting prospects and I will let whoever reads this waffle know if it should ever take place.

L’aldilà

Now for the forgotten fourth Arezzo album. You can check out the other 3 here, Orange Chess Set, UnEarthed, and Spirals.

Before leaving this period of musical creativity, I’d like to comment on the process of looking back at past recordings. Recording music has always been like taking photos for me. When I listen to the music not only do I remember the time but I also feel it. Similar to when you listen to an old song, but the investment in the composition makes it more visceral.

Mind Warp

Now press play and suspend your disbelief for a couple of paragraphs while I indulge in a mind warp inspired by this quote from Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

‘All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.’ (Vonnegut, K. 1969)

The Tralfamadorians also deal with the persistent horrors of the universe by simply focussing on the good bits. I’m not one for positive thinking, as it blames humans for their predicament, rather than blaming the environments they were grown into for making them unhappy and sick in the first place. But looking at all the shit in life takes up a lot of energy, and humans do stop thinking to avoid psychological collapse. This survival reflex helps humans get through difficult times. It pushes attention to the better bits in the universe, at least for a brief space in time. Nevertheless, humans can get stuck in this happy place for too long and do nothing to change the shape of the systems they exist in. No-one need feel guilty or proud about this, humans have no choice but to act, or not to act. Human lives are fixed patterns across a patch of time like everything else after all.

End of mind warp, please go back to whatever reality you were living in before.

What did that have to do with anything?

Well, moving between the present me and the me in Arezzo in 2003 has regrown some tangled parts of the rhizome in my head. And when the current me feels the past, the me that is feeling is not the me who felt the feelings in the first place. After 4 albums I’m feeling quite tired and disoriented. So, although there is much to learn in the crevices of the past, I do not intend to spend too much time there. So, for the last Arezzo album I’m going to give you a very brief description and then flee safely back to the present.

The Album

This album was a collaboration with Ric (Vox), Flora(Vox), Valentina(Whistle), and Jary(Monologue). The music is fairly light with a dub/reggae feel, perhaps influenced by having grown up in South East London, or perhaps due to a rather good Manu Ciao album that was floating around at the time. The lyrics are blasphemous, tongue in cheek, and talk about god knows what. I didn’t understand much Italian at the time, and there are still bits of Neapolitan that I don’t quite get, but it makes me laugh now that I get most of it. The cover art is by Matlakas, an artist you should definitely check out 😉

The recording was definitely all in the box on this one. The drums were arranged in Cubase using virtual instruments, but there are some layers of live instrumentation and field recording here and there. If you have made it this far down the page you might as well give the whole thing a listen, or download it.

Spirals

Part 3 of the Arezzo anthology moves away from the hissy 4-track to a decidedly more digital sound. The flat had become a kind of bat cave for me at this point. I would put my costume and wig on and sneak down to the courtyard, select one of my Johnmobiles, and glide into the centre of town to disturb the locals.

They didn’t all hate me, in fact I felt like I could have quite a dramatic musical effect within such a small territory. I had about 3 hours of music under my belt and had started playing in restaurants and children’s parties. I even started printing CDs and managed to sell a couple here and there. Despite this, 2 years busking had taken its toll and I would soon be compelled to leave for Barcelona, fail on the Ramblers and then crash land back in London.

Let’s see what the tracks have to say

Windy: The first track sucks us straight into a digital storm of Cubase plug-ins and automated notch filters.

This: This was sculpted around an instrument I built from Tuna tins and metal rods. That Yamaha keyboard sampler is back with confidence and purpose, and it will feature prominently on this album.

Lady: Two years of strumming for a living can be heard in the guitar, the lyrics seem to place the turmoils of relationships within the context of the end of our meaningless existence on this world.

Small Town: A blatant description of Arezzo and its decision to stop hosting the amazing free festival Arezzo Wave, which moved to Livorno.

No Point: Using that Yamaha again. Simply sample a rhythm, then hold down three octaves of the same sample, and Voilà!

Higher: The lyrics kind of explain this one. Inside you will find claves, clapping, fingerpicked and slide guitar.

I know what you like: Another one I busked quite a lot, but arranged for a ‘band’ bass, keys, guitar, vocals. No percussion though, must have forgot. If you make it to the end of the track you will experience a strange extended dodgy timing ascending ‘chorus’ thing.

Quanto costa?: Safely recorded in the box this is a taste of some of Matlakas at his best, unfortunately recordings of his ‘freestyle’ are rare.

One: Even more in the box, this ‘dance’ sample loop midi based track is closer to music from Rita, which I will reflect on soon.

Now: Vocal harmonies galore here, not sure what the song is about, but it is in complete contrast with the previous track.

For someone else: Back to the box! There’s a moody baseline and I appear to be moaning about everything but the language is just below audible in the mix, probably for the best.

The sun is in my eyes: When you think of a sunny day it is impossible to be unhappy, right? Well, what if it is sunny every bloody day!

Duck: We have come far since Orange Chess Set and it seems fitting that we should end which balloons pretending to be ducks. Goodbye Arezzo! But wait, there is another…

Here it is in its entirety

UnEarthed

The second Arezzo album was recorded around 2003ish, probably. By this point we had found a place to live and I had managed to create a little recording corner.

The sound seems to grow out of the previous album with layers of hissy analogue guitar arpeggios.

The musical arrangements on some tracks are unpredictable and the songs focus on everyday reflections or friends, such as Pete the ex 261 bus driver. Judging by the sounds I think I must have managed to bring the Ibanez analogue delay pedal I saved from Headjam’s drummer to Italy at this point.

In general, there is a wider range of instruments compared to Orange Chess Set, and a drum machine (probably Alesis SR-16) plays quite an important role in parts. This electronic sound was complimented by the dulcet tones of the Yamaha Portasound VSS-30 occasionally.

Ric had also lent me his squire bass, which I ‘decorated’ and still have hanging on my wall, so no need to pitch shift the guitar anymore. Not sure he was so pleased with the design initially. 🙂

The piano, played with various objects, was from Claudio’s house, just some rich guy with a piano and a pool table, and a Mercedes, and a nightclub, and a permanently bored look on his face.

Most of the songs where put together for busking and I’d been playing them everyday to the poor ‘Aretini’. In the beginning I was slapped round the face for playing the same 5 songs for hours, so was quite motivated to write more.

It wasn’t all songwriting though, sometimes it’s just nice to record sounds.

Other tracks were born out of jams with Titto and Marianna. Like these two, amongst others.

Marianna is singing on the last track.

I’m pretty sure a minidisk, the 4-track, and maybe a fridge-sized PC were involved in this recording. Some of the recordings were made in different locations on minidisk, added to the 4-track, then the whole thing was mastered with T-racks, probably. Here is the whole thing!

Orange Chess Set

The Album

Let me take you back to Tuscany in 2002ish. I lived in Tuscany for 2 years busking until ill health and life drove me on. While I was there I recorded 4 albums. Orange Chess Set was written and recorded in a week, on a wonderful Tascam 4-track cassette recorder. I had a guitar, some sunshine, and a flat full of cheap plastic toys all to myself with nothing else to do. The results led to some music bordering on the cheerful side of things, even if the lyrics rarely are.

The Track Breakdown

Dawn: The first track starts with some TV, a melodica, and the toy orchestra at my disposal. To me it sounds like the sun rising on the gentle hills of Tuscany, with a bit of imagination.

TheSameMoon: No matter where you are on Earth, two people can look at the same moon, amongst other celestial objects, simultaneously. The lyrics suggest I was feeling slightly homesick and isolated in that sunny flat full of toys. The music is built on an over-bounced detuned analogue tape distortion drenched guitar chord sequence in 3/4.

TheSamePain: I sound quite fed-up in this track too, but that was where I always used to find inspiration for lyrics, happiness is boring, or perhaps boredom is happiness. The timing seems to be 6/4 maybe. It sounds like I raided the kitchen on this one.

PlasticAlienHead: As the title suggests the kick drum sound was a plastic alien head. I think pitch shifting was used here to get that accelerated feel and simulate a bass guitar sound with my guitar. You will also hear my lost New York slide whistle in the background.

TurnToMush: Think too much and your head will turn to mush. Without going into details, I think this song is basically a dissapointed conversation with my rather confused self at the time. Anyway, the music makes extensive use of a coconut.

Volpino: This starts with a couple of gentle guitar riffs which loop till the end. In the semi-background Fab’s voice telling a story to Jary is mixed with a field recording of audience chitchat from a concert in Perugia. At the end these sounds are warped with a Boss delay pedal (still got it) to transport you onwards.

AllMustChange: First signs of some class awareness in the lyrics here, something that would grow the more I busked for a living and tried to live outside the rigged class system of my human farm and any consequent prescribed destiny.

Balloony: Balloons! Once, one of my go-to versatile musical instruments, balloons take the centre stage here. The melodica is playing around on a major scale meme and the whole kitchenware range was employed for the percussion. There is also a talking drum I picked up at Arezzo Wave, which was sadly destroyed by a disadvantaged child in an after school club in Plumsted some years later, at least he seemed to enjoy it.

Hisstory: Humming and guitar riffs in harmony (thirds I think) make up this instrumental dreamscape. As with most of my music, lost to my sieve-brain memory but fossilised here in 1s and 0s for your listening pleasure.

Look: We had a car in Arezzo, first and last time in my life, not that I can drive. It was great for getting around, but did feel like I was going to die at any moment. And, we did in fact crash while listening to this album. You are more likely to die in a kitchen, as I did, for the first time, just before recording this album.

OhhEeeUrp: So, you have a 4 track with pitch shifting capabilities, what should you do with it? How about recording for half a second, pausing, changing the pitch, and then recording another half a second until you get bored. That’s what this track is. You will also hear the first track playing backwards on the other side of the cassette. Enjoy!

Oh, I also made an orange chess set around the time of this recording, with the intention to start selling them. Never happened though.

Here is the full album

The Rhizome of selves

Seeing as I am stuck in the red zone, I thought I’d take another opportunity to travel in time and space to Greece and Turkey around 2014. What’s the ideal instrument for making an album on the go? The ukulele of course! The album I’m going to discuss was recorded initially on an iPad using Garage Band with a ukulele, lots of crickets, a call to prayer, and other bits and bobs. It was then transferred to Logic at home, arranged and embellished with a Nintendo DS, Radio, Vinyl, glockenspiel, drums, percussion and vocals. The colourful results are quite unlike anything I’ve recorded before or since.

Let’s get started!

This track does pretty much what it says on the tin, vinyl and ukulele. It has, I like to think, a slight swinging hiphop loop feel. Unfortunately, my record player from the skip broke recently, perhaps I should crowd fund for a new one 😉

This one is in 5/8 I think, with the main beat in 2/4 of course, and the the flutes in some other time signature. Then there is this hissing sound, can’t remember what that is though.

Cue the crickets from Dhiafananon, a strange little island section of Karpathos where there are remnants of a matriarchy. The Ukulele was recorded on a pebble beach as you can probably tell.

On this track the Ukulele has a clear sand beach feel to it as it rolls along in 7/8. The metallic synth sounds were made on the iPad, and the percussion is a mix of live and electric sounds.

Teşekkür Ederim means thank you in Turkish, at least that’s what I was told. When we visited, Erdogan was just starting to introduce new laws, like no laughing in public for women. Most of the people we met were gentle, kind, and confused by the direction their ‘leader’ was taking. The country is rich with nature and history, truly majestical place. On this track, there are field recordings of the call to prayer and I added the Turkish drum when I got back.

This track starts with a punch in the gut. Ever seen a barbie with a fetus inside? Well I did in Cappadocia. Made me reflect on the idea that each country is a fenced in human farm. Add recent talk of herd immunity to top up the paranoia levels. I don’t know where the music came from in this track, apart from a melody from my Nintendo DS, but if you listen carefully you will hear the sound of the human animal unknowingly caged and bred for the farmers to live it up in their temples and palaces.

Need cheering up after the last track, this trippy bouncy looper should do the trick. I think this came from a midi track piano composition on Garage Band, before being peppered with glockenspiel, and Ukulele riffs of course.

I find this track quite meditative, nostalgic and sunset worthy, hence the title è morto venerdì, Friday is dead in English. The ghostly sound at the start is the sea through delay, and the synths are all from Garage Band. The drums were recorded and looped on Logic after. Made a little video for this too.

If the last track didn’t zone you out this minimal loop certainly will. This was recorded at Level 1 studios (‘my’ mezzanine) in Logic with vocals by Matlakas and The Wrong John. Interpret the title as you feel fit.

Bringing you back to the physical world with classical guitar and something scraping down a bass guitar string.

Post travelling indie rock sounding reflection on the ‘age of man and the plan to expand’.

Here is the whole album

Wuxi

Today I’d like to explore an album I recorded around 2007 in Wuxi, pronounced /woo’she/ with a high pitched /she/. Below you will see an image with the flat we lived in and the location of the rehearsal room on the other side of the heavily polluted green/black/brown river.

The rehearsal space housed an array of dusty musical instruments, one of my favourite rooms was full of coffin-shaped harps (Guzhengs), but the room I used the most had a huge blue drum kit in it. I recorded the drums with a stereo mic onto minidisk and then used FL studio on a clunky laptop to layer the other sounds.

The other sounds were ambient sounds from the streets, fireworks from Chinese New Year, bicycle horns, and my favourite Chinese instrument the Hulusi (The one that sounds like whining dogs).

Anyway, let’s have a butchers at the tracks.

No recollection: This track mixes my best riot girl drumming experience with classical guitar and my monotone reflections on a resignation to the meaninglessness of repetitive infinity. I think…

Can you not love: Putting those Chinese wind instruments to good use here, this song is basically about insomnia and my techniques for getting to sleep. One is continuous closing of black curtains on the stage of life, the other is watching the Earth move away, which was a bit alarming when I realised I was in China.

Selfless: Instrumental dub track with extensive use of those bicycle horns.

NoTin: Named after the town Wuxi, which means no tin. I sat between two coffin harps (Guzhengs) and messed about. Occasionally, someone would poke their head through the window with a typical expressionless face that made me feel guilty to have a whole room of Guzhengs to myself. Fireworks from Chinese New Year in Wuxi.

NoSky: Drums and guitar inspired my Neu!, that German krautrock band.

TheGreenRiver: Inspired by ‘you’re not listening to this’ from the album NIM, the jangling sound is my guitar layered 20 odd times. The effect could be water-like or like a swarm of wasps depending on how deaf you are.

NotDog: As the title suggests there are no dogs in the recording, only in my stomach after naively mistaking it for chicken in the supermarket. There are far worse things that can end up in your stomach in Wuxi though. This epic track is built around my now sadly broken Hulusi.

LifeItMustBePaidFor: this guitar grating, shuffling snare drum track gradually speeds up as it progresses. Th lyrics reflect on the financial cost of being alive, and the fact that the less well-off sacrifice their existence to support the privileged few.

Hope you enjoyed that. There is also a video for No recollection, entitled The Simple Truth below.

Adverse FX

This album was recorded through the Jamulus platform online between Guilford, London, and Naples. Unfortunately, only three of us made it to this one. There were 4 tracks in total though, one stereo and two mono. All these were recorded in London through two audio interfaces (I think) outputting to 4 tracks on a Zoom R16.

Meanwhile, in Naples the main ‘rhythm’ section was recorded by running local sound from a mixer to an iPhone via USB. This gave me two options for the stereo track, the one recorded in London and the local one. It also made it easy to line up the different versions. All of us were using ethernet cables this time which made a great difference to the guitar sound coming out of Guildford. All in all, this was probably one of the most successful online jams to date.

Let’s run through the tracks of my new favourite album.

Fizz Pedal 

The first opens with Andrew’s warm fat fizzing guitar sound. The title is inspired by the organic wine I was drinking which likely caused a couple of weeks of bad health, hence the title themes on the rest of the album.

Parochialismic Flow

The temperature and rhythmical intensity increases here with what I thought was Doug’s ‘new’ Korg Kaos pad, but was probably his chair going through a constellation of bass effects pedals.

Sub Flatulence

Not happy with all the effects pedals, Doug obviously adds just one more to create a disturbingly wobbly bass riff while the rhythms morph towards Bollywood.

Cross-contaminations

Take the first three tracks and mix them together.

Inflammatory Compression

Truly inflamed bass line here takes us to the borders of darkness and euphoria.

Maladistortion

This word didn’t exist until now. In fact, most of these words were taken from a page on the NHS website about intolerance symptoms. Anyway, this track, with its east-coast modular synthesis and dreamy bass, would sit well in a sci-fi cityscape.

Leaky Guitars Guts

Doomy bass, windy pipes and murky guitar.

Phase Sensitivity

Andrew’s guitar is back and ties the track together as it mutates into a new variant.

Mid-frequency Intolerance

This track starts with the tail end of the previous mutation before melting into a nostalgic mellow game of fifths.

Sample Prognosis

Remember this is an online jam. The fact that the interlinked melodies, baselines, riffs and guitar chops are all in sync is impressive in itself, but this track is also, dare I say it, slightly catchy.

Exclusion Mix

This uplifting doodle helps us climb to the final plateau of the jam.

Loop Immunology

Something is in the air. Are we about to invoke the spirit of our lord Aphex?

Chronic chromatics

This is the part that got stuck in my head after trying to mix it. The FM synth is making all the bleepy sounds, and the recently discovered function key on the Volca Beats is trying to add some fairy dust to that infamous snare sound. All this is built around Doug’s squelching bass and mystified by Andrew’s delay drenched guitar skills.

Digital Diagnostics

Time for a Bass solo?

Withdrawal Sequence 

Bits of this were missing from my recording, so had to do my best with a heavily distorted drum kit. In the end, the guitar takes the foreground and the drums seem to come from the past. A nice chilled anecdote to a dynamic sonic experience.

And here is the whole thing!

HELP!

Ciao Titto! Non sono abbastanza bravo per scrivere come vorrei in italiano ancora, ma spero che il video ti sara’ di aiuto 😉

Back in the early noughties I was looking for someone to jam with in Italy. Not speaking much Italian myself, I was drawn to an ad in the local paper with the word HELP! in it. Let’s be honest, it’s not easy to find people who have a similar mentality when it comes to creating music. I’m talking about the inner punk, don’t ever give a shit what anyone thinks mentality.

Entertaining the locals in the noughties.

So, that’s how we met Titto and Marianna (below), two very talented musicians.

I have no memory of this.

Anyway, we hadn’t seen them for a while, but as social isolation has reunited us all, we had a chat online a couple of weeks back. It turns out that poor old Titto has also been inflicted with the Volca virus and was looking for something to alleviate the symptoms.

So, here is my first Italian tutorial for Volca Beats, let’s hope it helps somewhat… in bocca al lupo!

Online Jamulus Part 3.0

After the jam part 2.0 in two at the end of January, we moved onto the next phase of Jamulus experimentation with four musicians.

As always the usual preparations were made to make sure everything runs smoothly.

Unfortunately, the jam did not quite go to plan when it came to capturing the magic, but there were plenty to things to learn.

1. Even if your bass player is capable of some incredibly funky bass lines, they should not record themselves on all the tracks. Basically, if you are multi tracking be careful with that direct monitoring switch on your sound card.
2. Remember to use an ethernet cable! The sound of a breaking up WIFI signal in the midst of a mouse hunt is still ahead of its time, even for Aphex.
3. Remove all cats from the building, especially if they are called Toby and they like playing with mice near your WIFI router.
4. Limit yourself to less than 10 sound sources each if you want a clear signal.
5. Unmute those mute buttons from time to time in Jamulus, someone might be singing along.

Anyway, after dissecting the 2 hour jam this is what I extracted. See if you can hear the mice.

Recording is an issue with Jamulus. There is only so much you can do with pan pots to separate the sounds. So, my mate in Greenwich has a cunning plan. Why not set up 3 computers with 3 sound cards, running 3 Jamulus programs? Obvious, innit? Then you can pan them all hard left and right and route them to a multitrack…(Zoom R16) and record your bass 6 times with direct monitoring on 😉

Let’s see what happens next time!