music is the language of us all

I’m really enjoying the new Relient K album. The first 13 tracks are all original, and they have a very ‘country’ feel to them. Still quite punky at times, but the country flavour makes it very different indeed. The rest of the tracks are all b-sides and acoustic versions. Quite cool as well. But I am greatly enjoying the new sounds.

Yesterday was quite the busy, but awesome day…

Got up nice and early and headed to Hornsby station to leave my car. I jumped on a train and found Sammy at Beecroft station and we headed into the city. The Aroma Festival was on in the rocks. It’s apparently for lovers of coffee, chocolate, tea and spice - but all we cared about was the coffee. We started with some turkish coffee, but that was a big mistake. We tried some awesome 100% fair-trade and organic Republica coffee, which was pretty brilliant. But the peak of the day came a few moments later when we had a perfect latte from my friends at Velluto Nero. It’s quite possibly the closest thing to coffee perfection that I’ve tasted, and perhaps will ever taste. I will definitely miss that place with not working in the city anymore. After having some Danes Gourmet Coffee to finish it off, we headed back to Wynyard and back on a train to Hornsby… Just slightly buzzing.

edit: Forgot to add here in the middle that I had lunch at Cathy Bell’s place. Hang time with Thornleigh people was quite fun :) It was a pity that I could only stay for a couple of hours… but it was still a great time. I got in trouble for not including that.

I headed back down to Toonie for band practice. I found out about half an hour before practice was due to start that there was no drummer. It was a bit frustrating to hear… but surprisingly, it didn’t actually get me down too much. I told all the musos straight up, and just suggested that we focus on working each song acoustically, and just really listen to each other. The first run-through was very rough, but once we worked out an order, and then decided how each song would be done, it sounded tops for the final run-through. It was a challenge and a half, and I was definitely feeling exhausted by the end of the service… but it was a great experience. And importantly, it was a great time to sing cool songs to God :)

And then it was dinner time at Hogs Breath! Debbie was visiting, so she came with all of us Toonie people. And it was a really fun night out hanging with those guys. We had some good times reminiscing about old House of Bach days, and all-night LAN parties and Bathurst challenges on the Xbox. Ahh good times :) But then it was time for James to go home and clean his room. It looks good now though!

Monday has gone fairly quickly. I’m loving the fact that I woke up at 7:30 this morning, left the house at 8, and was still early to work. Love it.

Why is the new Relient K album not on iTunesAU yet?!

Kutless’ new album was there on its US release date. But no Relient K.

I’m sad.

edit: It’s ok. I found it at Word bookstore in the city. So a Saturday morning adventure into the city just to get a CD was on the cards. I don’t think I’m going to be able to do silly things like that later on… :)

Having quite a bit of fun this morning. I have awoken after a few hours sleep to watch the Keynote presentation from Apple’s WWDC. I’m very much hoping my early rise is worth it and that I get to see a 3G iPhone :)

I’m just doing the reading of updates on AppleGazette while I listen to the new Offspring album that is streaming. I do indeed love this new Offspring album. Definitely very Consiracy/Americana. Very cool indeed. I’m hoping it’ll still be up on their site when I get to work later on so I can listen to it a bit more.

After the presentation, I will try and head back to sleep for a few hours before work, I think.

edit: More Offspring thoughts… There’s piano on an Offspring track! Perhaps for the first time ever? And another interesting point is that 4 out of the 12 tracks are 4 minutes+. 

Glorious Sunday - two of my favourite things: Whitlams music, and wireless internet.

Yesterday arvo I finally got myself a new wireless router after B’s Airport base station, which had served the House of Bach for many years, headed to its new home at Morling. I headed to DSE Powerhouse, where I’d seen a D-Link wireless router with USB print server for $147 - pretty decent price. Took it to the counter, along with a $20 cable that I grabbed as well, and somehow managed to walk outta there paying $150 for the both and an extra year’s warranty on the router! Thank you check-out people! [They were supposed to discount the router's extended warranty to make both items $150... but instead discounted my entire order - score!]

So this morning, I had a bit of fun setting that up. It was fairly quick and easy… but the internet wouldn’t work for some reason. After much stuffing around, I finally decided to just power-cycle our cable modem… and voila! I guess the cable modem was just a bit upset about being connected to a new MAC address without it being reset.

Anyway… enough of the nerd-talk. Time for the more important bit: music.

The Whitlams released an album this morning; an album that came free with the Sunday Telegraph. It was a live album of their concert they played with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra back in September 2007. At the time, I was flawed by the evening and the music that filled my head. Tim Freedman describes it best on the cardboard sleeve that the CD came in this morning:

You sit in the middle of a symphony orchestra for two hours and you come out feeling you’ve been hit over the head with a velvet hammer. It’s not even that loud up there, but it’s lush and heady and very powerful.

The CD is just brilliantly mixed. The sound that I heard that evening was phenomenal (it was the first thing I’d seen at the Opera House) - I couldn’t believe how amazing the sound was for a live performance. But then hearing the recorded product was just incredible as well. I can’t believe how well they captured that atmosphere and how they managed to mix 100 odd musicians onto one CD and make it sound amazing!

The bonus bit was one track on the CD, and two tracks for download from Warner’s website, that have been lifted from Tim Freedman’s solo album that is apparently due out in 2009 - Piano / Vocal. Very, very cool indeed. They are all just previous Whitlams’ songs, but re-recorded with pretty much just Tim and his piano. I’ve always very much loved Tim’s playing and his lyrics - so hearing his songs very simple and “bare-bones” as such, will be very, very cool. Looking forward to that album.

It seems as though a lot of bands are realising that providing your first single off a new album for free un-DRM’d download is a very good way to generate hype and get people interested in your album.

Good stuff I say.

Kutless have joined the fray and are offering their new song for download here. WIll have to listen to it later on today, but looking forward to hearing it.

Further on the excited musical ventures that are in the wings to be released in the next few months - I forgot that Relient K also have two albums slated for release during June or July! Matt Thiessen has blogged that the new songs will all be mixed by now. He refers to it as the Christmas Eve syndrome… so I’m guessing they’ve left it to the last minute… perhaps suggesting that the album is only a few weeks away. That would be fun!

My sister is quite awesome.

She messaged me during last week asking if I was interested in an organ that was going for nothing. I curiously asked about it (not wanting a huge church organ). She called me today from her mother-in-law (to be)’s place and tried to describe it to me.

It’s a Baleani Altimoro. Although that could just be the brand name. It’s all Italian apparently. But some searching on the internet finds that most Baleani Altimoros are accordians. And this is an organ. But I found a band’s myspace, where their keyboardist had blogged about his - saying the same thing, that it was hard to find any info about it. But there’s at least a picture there, and the guy describes the sound that it makes, which potentially could be quite interesting.

At any rate, I’m looking forward to getting it and hearing how it sounds. Perhaps it’ll make sounds worthy of playing more often. If not, perhaps eBay will let me know that its seeming rarity might be worth something…

We’ve only been waiting about 5 years.

They have released their new track, Hammerhead, on their website as a free download. And encoded at 320kbps, DRM free. Very sweet indeed. No point in paying $1.69 on iTunes for it, that’s for sure. I do indeed like the sound of the song. Someone on Facebook compared it to Million Miles Away, which I would agree with. The other thing is that it’s quite long for and Offspring song - 4 and a half minutes. And I don’t think it needs to be that long. It feels they they just played random chords and repeated them for about a minute longer than necessary.

It doesn’t actually sound like anything wonderfully different from Conspiracy and Splinter days… very similar sound indeed. But in the end, it’s been so damn long since we last heard new Offspring that I don’t care. I love it :)

And excitement continues, because they have finally announced a date for the new album, Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace: June 14 for Australia… 3 days earlier than the US! We are so special. This album was beginning to feel a bit like Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy, in that I wondered if it would ever eventuate. But it is finally done and I can’t wait to hear it.

Hopefully Revive’s new album will arrive in Australia sometime this month, and then all I’ll have to wait for is Jack’s Mannequin’s new album, which was supposed to be out April, then June, and now not until August.

The amazing Ellie Magill is on iTunes!

Fantastic music. You definitely should buy and listen.

Excited that there’s two new Relient K releases coming out in a couple of months!

That is all.

Fun weekend it has been.

Yesterday, Debbie and I had our great big markets adventure. We started off at the Fox Studios markets in Moore Park. I loved them, cos they’re all food stalls. Lots of cheese, pasta, coffee, vegetables, desserty type things. Yum. But Debbie was keen for more “markets” type things, like artsy stuff and clothes and such. So we then ventured off to Paddington Markets, which were actually quite cool. There was some amazing photography there - this one stand had beautiful beach type photos, but block mounted and printed on canvas. They cost a lot of money, but they were awesome.

And then it was off to a BBQ with Debbie’s teacher friends. It was a great night, and I enjoyed meeting all these people that I’d heard so much about. As is inevitable when you get a bunch of teachers together, many stories involving kids doing stupid things, or saying stupid things surfaced and made for many laughs. Hearing all those stories made me realise how naive I, and every other kid for that matter, was as a school! Teachers are so sneaky sometimes.

Right now, I’m enjoying listening to Fall Out Boy’s cover of Beat It. Even though I’ve heard it 27 times this week on the radio. And thinking that I might take a small break from thinking about church and stuff tonight, and watch some of the live Fall Out Boy DVD that I bought on Friday.

What a highly productive and wonderful Friday it has been. Started the day early, cos I knew I wanted to take off after lunchtime and finish the day not in the office. Got through quite a few emails, and then headed off to some training on some industrial type modems for Next G. Quite interesting.

I headed over to the Pitt St office to be my boss’s IT monkey, but then we decided to try and get her new laptop sorted on Monday. And so I hung around there annoying her for a little bit before I came round here to Debbie’s place to do some more work. She’s not feeling to well at the moment, so I decided it would be fun to come and keep her company on a Friday afternoon and just finish of the day of work quietly.

But then the awesomeness began. Earlier in the day, I’d gotten an email from Turramurra Music man telling me that my keyboard case had arrived. It was tempting to get very excited early on… but I’d been down this path before and had my heart broken. So I refrained from being all excited until I actually saw it.

So once some more work had been done, Debbie and I set off for Turramurra Music. I found the guy who I’d been emailing, and he referred to me as “the guy with the blog.” I was puzzled for a second, but if you read my previous post, you’ll note a guy who commented - I emailed him back letting him know that I’d taken the case back to Turramurra Music, and so he called them letting them know that he’d read on my blog that there was a smaller case that I’d taken back! Funny story. Guess you had to be there.

But the nice Turramurra Music man eventually walked downstairs and out the back and returned with a box, and inside was my glorious keyboard case… right size and all! Happy boy am I. Can’t wait to get home and actually put a keyboard inside it. And probably take it back out again, cos I don’t need to take it anywhere right now.

And that is why today was a good Friday.

Mondays haven’t been too bad of late. That’s mainly been because Monday evenings have been Debbie and my evening for dinner together - so my day has always had something pretty cool at the end of it to look forward to.

Today is doubly good, because as well as hanging out with Debbie soon, I also get to head off to La Porchetta this evening with bible study peoples to enjoy all-you-can-eat pasta! I called it no-lunch-Monday. Good times a plenty shall be had tonight I think :)

Today has just generally been a nice day - the customers have been a bit quiet, and the emails haven’t been overly shocking, which is always a plus, no matter what day of the week it is. I was supposed to have an hour and a half phone meeting at 3pm. And I thought that would be far more bareable from the comfort of my couch… so I began my trek home a couple of hours ago… but just as I was leaving, they cancelled it! So score one for me: I’m already home and just doing a couple more emails before I log out of work and relax on my couch :)

I was trying to chase Turramurra Music up for my keyboard case this arvo, and went to their website to grab their email address. While I was there, I got severly distracted… The Nord C1 Organ. A two-tiered organ with thre modelled vintage organs. It looks stunning, and the sound clips on the site from it are just amazing. But alas, it costs a fortune (about $4.5k) and I really don’t need it. The other distraction was looking at the updates for my keyboard - yep, I can just download a couple of files, and update the sounds in my keyboard to newer samples. There’s even a full OS update being released soon, which is very exciting.

I’ve been really getting into keyboard weeks lately at church. I’m loving the fact that every week I play, I’m always wanting to try something new - last fortnight it was really pushing the B3 organ sound, and using that as a background sorta sound. And this week was doing a fair bit more with syth sounds, and also having a bit of fun with a distorted Wurlitzer (oh how I would love an original Wurlitzer electric piano - their sound would be amazing). And it’s been fun working out how to make the most of the two keyboards, and thinking ahead more to using them at the same time. Loving it.

I’ve always played nicely on the border between fighting against the evil record companies, and enjoying their music and buying lots of it.

I find it very frustrating and disgusting to hear stories of musicians who are signed into 10 year long contracts and who are forced to produce music that is not from them in order to honour their contract and get paid, and then that all their music is owned by the record company and they have very limited rights to it. Let alone not being able to record/release anything else while under contract. That’s quite sucky.

On the other side of the fence, I love hearing that young, unsigned bands who have worked hard writing music, practicing and practcing, gigging around town, recording their own EP for hours and hours in their bedroom finally get picked up by a record label and can get paid to actually do their dream job. And get paid by the record company so that they can spend more time doing what they love rather than having to find time to play gigs in amongst their day job that pays for their hobby.

The Word is a music magazine in the UK, and in their latest issue is a very indepth article on the process of recording an album, and how dramatically it has changed over the last 40-50 years.

No, it’s not you – records do all sound the same these days. Desperate to get their music on the radio at all costs, record labels are employing a new and powerful software to artificially sweeten it, polish it, make it “louder”… and squeeze out the last drops of its individuality.

This article was presented to me by a friend who seems heavily against the pressure from record companies, and also how records are then made hits by commercial radio stations, and who encouraged us to not listen to Sydney’s commercial stations, for reasons this article spells out.

I don’t think I’m quite at that level of frustration at the music recording industry, or rather, the pop-music recording industry. I definitely don’t disagree with his views - I respect them greatly coming from his experience and wisdom in music and as a musician. And I wouldn’t call those views cynical or exaggerated either. In fact, I actually probably agree with his reasons for not listening to commercial radio - the reasons contained in the article. But it’s kinda like me and eating meat - I am definitely against a lot of the inhumane things done to animals for the sake of food, but I’m not quite ready to give up meat because of it.

Hypocritical? Perhaps. But it’s not of eternal relevance, so I don’t feel guilty about it. :)

Nevertheless, the article is a fascinating insight into the process and changing times of recording an album. I particularly loved the chunk in the middle that detailed the process of recording, mixing and mastering. Putting aside the fact that the author is so very against the processes currently used, and putting aside any opinions I might have about why it’s done like it is, I loved reading about how music is recorded, put together and polished in a big studio. And to then read about commercial radio stations in the US and how they operate (or rather, how computers operate them) was incredible too. Well worth a read, and full of some fantastic musical Youtube links as well.

It’s easy to read it and feel it’s exaggerated and cynical. But I don’t doubt that it isn’t - especially for the UK and US market. Perhaps it hasn’t hit that level here in Australia - our music industry is a drop in the ocean of the US’s. But after biting through the author’s very passionate view on the recording industry in different places, it was tops that he finished it off with quite an optimistic outlook on the future of recorded music, and how all this technology could make things better.

I like it when random musical discoveries turn out to be quite awesome.

On Thursday at work, someone brought up to my desk a copy of the self titled album by Boys Like Girls. I hadn’t ever heard of them before, but I listened to the first song and smiled at its catchy tunes and very pop-punk beats… and then saved the rest for the drive home (I always like listening to new albums when I’m driving rather than anywhere else). It’s always fun to find new music that makes you want to smile and jump around. Good times.

And then just now, I was having a poke around in the iTMS, and the sometimes annoying “Just For You” section actually proved to be potentially useful today. It pointed me to Clinging To The Cross by Tim Hughes (the fantastic songwriter of Here I Am To Worship), mainly, I think, because it features Brooke Fraser. But a quick listen to that song and a few others on his Holding Nothing Back album proved that it might actually be quite a quality album. Chalk that up as one to buy sometime soon.

Soon it is time to go and make music of my own tonight though. I am looking forward to making good use of some B3 organ soundige tonight :) 

I visited Debbie tonight on my way home from work, and hung out with her and Jenny and Howie for a little while too - those two are good value and make me laugh :) But I was tired, and I didn’t really want to drive across to Annandale for round two of making me a better church pianist. But I did anyway.

Glad I did, cos it was a tops evening.

We listened to New York by Eskimo Joe, and picked out the piano parts. But then Michael brought up Pro Tools on the Mac in the studio, and there was the song broken down ready for mixing. And we could sit and listen to all the rhythms and piano styles in the song on their own without all the other instruments. It was amazing to listen to a song like that. And then try and apply the styles, rhythms and variations we found in the song to a song we’d play in church.

I also really enjoyed that breaking down a song thing not just from the piano perspective, but from a general musical perspective. If I’m in the right mood, I’ll sit and pick a song apart while I’m listening to it - start by trying to find every single instrument that’s playing in a song, when and how often they play, and then try and pick out the exact notes/chords that they’re playing, and their rhythm. It’s interesting when you do that and realise that sometimes songs are far simpler than they seem.

Thankfully, I’m not so musically obsessed that I do that everytime I listen to music. I still feel I think about music too much though, and don’t just listen for enjoyment enough. But it’s fun :)

Got home a little while ago from week 1 of Emu Music’s contemporary piano for church course. It was quite awesome! I went not really knowing what to expect, but found it to be quite awesome. As I was driving home, I was thinking that this is going to be really hard, and require a lot of work… but you know, that’s a great thing. It’s going to bring me out of some musical theory complacency that I’m in at the moment, and make me really think about what I’m playing in church, and not just play it as I know it.

What was cool was that it was held at the Emu Studios in Annandale. Those studio’s used to be called Trafalgar Studios, and was where some very awesome bands recorded music - one of them being Cold Chisel (Khe Sanh was recorded there!). More recently, Revive recorded their most recent album there.

I have never seen inside a recording studio before, so it was quite awesome. It’s a very small studio really, but looks fantastic. And Emu don’t have a big mixing desk or anything… just a beautiful Mac G5 with Pro Tools :) *sigh*

I witnessed something pretty awesome tonight. The wonderful Ellie Magill played a show at the Mars Hill Cafe to launch her EP. I went along knowing that it would be very awesome (Ellie is quite an awesome singer), but somehow, my expectations were smashed out of the water by this musician who sang incredibly wonderful songs, and performed as though she’d been doing it for years and years. 

From the moment she started playing, you couldn’t help but notice how filled with joy she was that there was about 150 people crammed into the upstairs part of Mars Hill just to see her. There physically wasn’t any more room for anyone else. It was so cool to see that many people turn up to hear her music.

All this was to launch her EP - 6 songs that she wrote and sang; 6 songs that are very brilliant. And it was packaged so wonderfully too. She put so much effort into printing and packaging her EP… and I’m guessing that it will be fairly limited given that they are all handmade. So that makes having a copy even more awesome :)

I can’t wait to see what’s next… when she’s gonna play more music, when she’s gonna write and record more music. 

I had a bit of frustrated moment this evening as we tried to plan tomorrow’s travels into Macquarie Centre by car… because the campsite manager preferred us to use our cars rather than pay for a bus. In the end, it got so incredibly difficult to organise the logistics of it, and at 11pm, I threw my hands up in the air and said, “we’ll sort it tomorrow!” and came here to my room to sit and breathe… :)

Anyway, it’s a long story that I needn’t bore you with. Instead, I think it would be better for me to bore you with a good handful of paragraphs on music and mobile phones - my two loves, really.

So… I just came across this article from smh - its headline was Musical mobiles take aim at iPod. Now, almost any article in passing that mentions mobile phones in the title is guaranteed to draw me to read it. However, mobiles replacing MP3 players (the iPod will be my example because it’s what I use - but feel free to subsitute for your MP3 player of choice) has always been something I’m so-so about. Certainly at the moment, I’m very sure that mobile phones are not even close to the standard that most iPodphiles would accept as a replacement for their beloved device.

My first qualm is that, to my knowledge, no mobile phone currently available in Australia has a 3.5mm headphone jack as a standard feature of the phone. I would love to be corrected though. Some manufactures (Nokia, as an example) ship adapters for their phones to plug headphones in. But that means you have to make sure you have that with you all the time - not really handy, personal, or easy. And the second major point is much more subjective… but the “media player” software in the majority of handsets is just ugly, hard to use, and slow.

A third and fourth point that just crossed my mind too: thirdly, most of the online music purchasing in this country, nay, worldwide, goes on via iTunes Music Store. Currently, I believe that only one handset can play iTMS music, and that handset is the iPhone. Yes, a lot of iTMS music is now DRM free, but not all of it. And again, as a user, a good chunk of my music is bought from iTMS and I don’t want to leave that behind at my desk and not be able to load it up onto my phone.

Fourth point is the pretty shocking amount of memory that mobile phones come with - most are 1 or 2GB. Nokia pushed the boundaries with an 8GB phone. Cool… for a top-of-the-range, $1000+ phone, that’s on par with the $300 and bottom-of-the-range iPod, and only 156GB short of the top-of-the-range, $800 iPod. Hmmm… something’s a miss there if they want to try and get me to ditch my iPod.

So at this point, and mainly because of the above three points, no mobile phone - even Sony Ericsson’s much talked about and hyped Walkman series of phones - have even remotely enticed me to think about getting rid of my iPod. And I’m all for convergence - I work for a telecommunications company!

At this point I think it’s important to note that I’m only taking into account mobile phones that are currently available in Australia. There are actually a lot of fantastic handsets out there that beat my points above and would potentially change my mind. But Australia is just a little bit smaller than America, and so we get these wonderfully feature-packed handsets a lot later than the rest of the world - if ever. And the bottom line is that, yes, they may be available to purchase from a tech store, or from eBay, but the fact is that the majority of mobile phone handset purchasers do not pay $800 upfront for their phone - they pay $0 for their phone and are quite happy to sit on a 24mth contract with their provider of choice. So that also means that the phones need to not only be available in Australia, but also available on subsidised phone plans. And that range of handsets is what I am taking into account.

After saying all that, there are some exciting things that come out of the smh article that started me writing and thinking about all this:

• Motorola are again trying to break into that music phone market with something that looks pretty cool - it’s the pictured one. I do like the “Song ID” feature he points out on the phone… but sorry Ian, Sony Ericsson have already been doing that for some time, and it’s actually on my current phone. The scrolly-wheel type feature looks sweet, and there’s a possibility that this Moto handset could sync with iTunes, as its last music-type handset did.
• Nokia are where the excitement lies though, with their music store that you buy a yearly subscription to, and then can get as much music as you like. However, I can’t help being a little worried about how many record companies will actually be available on such a service in Australia - look how long it took iTunes to get up and running, and then we’re still paying by the track.

Bottom line is that things look great - but if you live in America. Sorry, I can’t help but be just a little cynical in summary about this article. Yes, these are services and phones that are talked about being released in Australia this year - but the questions in my mind remain:

• Will there be a 3.5mm headphone jack on the device?
• How much memory will come built into the phone?
• What is the extent of music that will be available in Nokia’s music store?
• Will they play iTunes’ music? (silly question, but it’s an important point for me).

Now that I have used almost all of my laptop battery writing that, and I’m now feeling quite tired and relaxed from this evening’s frustration… I think i shall go to sleep :)

A holiday sounds like a good time to sit down and ponder all the albums released in 2007 and what my favourites were/still are…

• #6: All of the Above by Hillsong United.
  This one just snuck into my top list for the year. I have always enjoyed the United albums, and love the fact that they pump out one a year and the quality of music is pretty good. But I was quite keen to hear what their first ever studio album would be like… and it definitely didn’t disappoint. Their live albums have always been incredibly tight for a live recording… and so you had to expect pretty spectacular things from a studio album. And while I don’t think there was a lot of difference between live and studio for these guys except the cheering, this album still is brilliantly written and performed. Stand-out tracks include Point Of Difference and Hosanna.
• #5: Five Score and Seven Years Ago by Relient K.
  The first impressions of this album were that it didn’t grab me as much as Mmhmm did in 2004. This album had been a long time coming, and so I guess that had built expectations a lot and Relient K fans expected something brilliant. But after writing that, it’s still important to note that the album is fantastic - just as an overall experience, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I guess I’d have expected to. Must Have Done Something Right was the pre-release track/single, and is a cute, poppy kinda track that still is one of my favourites… but doesn’t give a feel for the rest of the album. The rest of the album is tight, quick, pop-punk that you expect from RK. Other favourite tracks are Forgiven and Taking You With Me.
• #4: Infinity on High by Fall Out Boy.
  The first taste of this album was back in 2006 when This Ain’t A Scene was released. The track had a much more hip-hop style to it, but still with some raw pop-punky chorus as well. The album was then leaked onto the net just before its release, and was all over the place. I heard a glimpse of Hum Hallelujah when someone posted it on YouTube, and was instantly engaged. And so the day it came out, I made sure I got it. The album hasn’t disappointed at all - there’s a massive variety of punky sounds that you’d expect from FOB, and still some nice catchy pop-punk melodies as well. The music is as tight as you’d expect, but the vocal quality took a step up on this album, with some amazing harmonies coming through during loud choruses, such as Thks Fr Th Mmrs. Stand outs are the previously mentioned Hum Hallelujah and Thks Fr Th Mmrs, the latter of which I maintain was one of my favourite tracks well before it was released as a single and killed by all commercial radio stations.
• #3: Riot! by Paramore.
  What a stellar album this is. Starting with the fact that the average age of this band is around 20 years old, with the incredible drumming on this album being pumped out by a 17 year old. This was a band that I discovered through the wonders of myspace - the catchiness of Misery Business drew me in quickly. I do love the loud drums and very syncopated beats that prevail on the album. Hayley Williams’ vocals are quite amazing most of the way through the album, and the tightness of the tracks is just brilliant. I love the variance of songs throughout the album though - the first few tracks are quick punky numbers, and that leads into some more slower/”meaningful” tracks in the middle before closing out with a couple more loud, fast tracks. Favourite tracks have to be For a Pessemist… and Misery Business.
• #2: So Many Nights by The Cat Empire.
  Again, a hugely anticipated album and one that was written about on many forums before it was released. People who’d been able to hear early copies of the album had been quick to criticise it because it wasn’t “typical Cat Empire”. Trying not to let that influence my first listen to it on the day it was released, I was quite impressed… but not instantly hooked. Instantly noticeable was the increased samples and scratching from Jumps, but in a much better and tighter way - there wasn’t just scratching thrown in for the sake of it… it was delicately placed within each song, and some brilliant samples (such as in So Many Nights. But it was clear from the outset that this wasn’t like their last couple of albums. However I put the comments I’d heard out of my head and just enjoyed new tunes from TCE, and after a couple of listens, the album really grew on me. I quickly fell in love with Fishies because of its upbeat and ska-style feel, and adored the B3 organ work and horn riff on So Long. After a few listens though, So Many Nights overtook both as my favourite track on the album. Absolutely stellar album from TCE, and if it hadn’t been for the #1 album, this would’ve easily been my favourite album for the year by a long way.
• #1: Do You Feel by The Rocket Summer.
  This little beauty was one of those random discoveries. I found them on someone’s myspace page, and followed the link to hear a couple of songs. I was quite intrigued - it wasn’t rock, or punk, and you couldn’t really class it as pop. A Wikipedia look-up later and I found that The Rocket Summer is just one guy who plays all the instruments on the recordings - drums, guitars, bass, piano and vocals. Amazing musician. The sound that’s on the album is actually quite a “happy” sound - it’s piano/drum driven, and most of the songs are quite upbeat. His voice is quite hight at times, but he sings brilliantly. Stand out tracks are the first two, Break It Out and So Much Love - both quite poppy radio type songs - and High Life Scenery - still upbeat, but in a more jazzy kinda way, with a change into the chorus. As time’s gone on, Run To You has been a track that I have enjoyed a lot - just Bryce’s voice and his piano… and some quality lyrics. His lyrics are quite brilliant - not only the quality of lyrics, but also the way he sings them, putting a sentence around two lines in the music, and phrasing in a peculiar way - but a way that works. From reading things on different websites, as well as the CD booklet, Bryce Avary appears to be a Christian. And so listening to his lyrics with that in mind, and listening to his lyrics from my point of view as a Christian, they are quite awesome. They’re generally quite optimistic lyrics anyway, but they do have some Godly meaning behind them I think.

Jon Foreman, the lead singer, guitarist and song-writer of Switchfoot, has released a solo EP called Fall. It’s only 6 songs long, but he plans to bring out 3 more in the next 12 months (one for each season).

During my years in Switchfoot I have been fortunate enough to stumble across all sorts of songs as a songwriter - some are perfect for a rock band to play and others are far too intimate. Some need to be played in arenas with electric guitars, some deserve to be played with simply a cello and a bass clarinet.
Jon Foreman - myspace

It has an extremely folky feel to it, and it definitely highlights both his voice and guitar skills. The songs also have an incredibly personal feeling, and he shares much more of his relationship with God than on any other Switchfoot track.

This one song, Equally Skilled stood out to me this morning as I listened to it though - it has some amazing lyrics and it sharply contrasts our impurities and imperfections and horridness with the amazing perfection, love and glory of God…

How miserable I am; I feel like a fruitpicker who arrives after the harvest.
There’s nothing here at all, nothing at all here that could placate my hunger.
The godly people are all gone; there’s not one honest soul left here on the planet.
We’re all murderers and thieves, setting traps here for even our brothers.

And both of our hands are equally skilled at doing evil;
Equally skilled at bribing the judges;
Equally skilled at perverting justice;
Both of our hands.

The day of justice comes, and is even now swiftly arriving.
Don’t trust anyone at all, not your best friend or even your wife;
For the son hates the father; the daughter despises even her mother.
Look! Your enemies are right in the room of your very household.

And both of their hands are equally skilled at doing evil;
Equally skilled at bribing the judges;
Equally skilled at perverting justice;
Both of their hands.

No, don’t gload over me;
For though I fall, though I fall, I will rise again.
Though I sit here in darkness,
The Lord, the Lord alone, He will be my light.

I will be patient as the Lord punishes me for the wrongs I’ve done against Him.
After that He’ll take my case, bringing me to light and to justice for all I have suffered.

And both of His hands are equally skilled at ruining evil;
Equally skilled at judging the judges;
Equally skilled at ministering justice.

Both of His hands are equally skilled at showing me mercy;
Equally skilled at loving the loveless;
Equally skilled at ministering justice;
Both of His hands.

Enjoying sitting in the a/c at home this arvo. There’s still quite a bit of work I need to do this arvo, but it is nice to be doing it at home. My morning went very well and I’m finally done with all the preparation for a fleet migration of this customer that’s taken up the majority of my time for the last week and a half. Now the migration takes place on Friday - *fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong*

While I was in Parra this arvo dropping the magic address book transfery machine off for the last time (hooray!), I dropped by HMV - I’d been itching for new music almost all weekend. That was partly cured by the muscial fun-ness of Friday and Saturday night, but earlier this arvo, I was drawn to looking at CDs. Here’s my findings:

• Ben Folds Five - Whatever & Ever Amen - found this for $10 - score! Have always been interested in Ben Folds, but don’t have any of his albums. And how can’t Brick be up there as a favourite song for most people?
• Ben Folds - Songs For Silverman - also found this for $10!
• Matchbox 20 - Exile on Mainstream - heard the second single from this EP/greatest hits this morning and decided I very much liked it.
• The Basics - Stand Out/Fit In - found this in HMV for $36. Crazy. I then came home and bought it for $17 on iTunes instead :) Have heard much about The Basics wonderousness, but never grabbed their album (and am still yet to witness their apparent awesomeness in concert). I’m listening to it now, and am quite enjoying the uniqueness of it.

And more musicalness that I’m looking forward to… this weekend begins the James-on-keys fiesta that sees me enjoying my keyboard playing at church for 3 straight weeks :D I realised this on Saturday night, and I was quite excited by it. It’ll give me a great chance to get into a nice rhythm and stay in the keyboard mindset without switching to guitar inbetween.A musical Monday indeed.

Nervousness is a strange feeling.

I remember when I first started to play keys at church, I was nervous every week - without fail. It was frightening stuff. But that was some 7 years ago or something. And now, playing keys or guitar in church just doesn’t phase me at all.

But tonight, a few of us jumped up at the Christmas Celebration night at church to do an item, and I was nervous like I haven’t been in years - heart beating, butterflies in the stomach; it was insane. Perhaps a combination of knowing that everyone was watching and listening closely, and that perhaps we weren’t as rehearsed as what we would’ve liked :) But it was just incredibly unexpected.

Still, it was great fun - we were just playing a Christmas carol, but at the last minute decided that it would be cool to try and not play it like it’s done every year, but rather, take advantage of the fact that it was an item and change the feel just a little. I think we kinda succeeded. Perhaps it can be refined a little more for tomorrow night.

Fun times though.

Mid way through this week, I thought that this weekend might be a bit of a quiet one… But clearly I just forgot all the things that were happening that made it quite the busy weekend.

Last night it was down at the church having a band practice for the Wisdom For Women night (which was tonight). Then today was out to Windsor Baptist Church for a wedding. The wedding wasn’t until 3, but we headed out there about 10 to set up amps, sound-check and have a run through of the songs. We then headed off to the local pub for some lunch before back at the church for one final run through and then the wedding. And then it was racing off from Windsor back to church for W4W tonight.

At both events I was bassing, and I had a pretty tops time. I really got into the fretless a lot, and I’m enjoying seeing what it can do, and enjoying the precision that’s needed. It’s definitely going to make me a much less lazy bass player and force me to really do a lot more learning. I had a tinker with the bass effects pedal last night… but not enough for it to be used at either event. I may not be playing bass regularly at church anymore, but it means that I get to enjoy these once-off things all the more.

I just read a really interesting post over on Reason.mu about song-leading and playing guitar at the same time - something that I am aiming to be able to do in the new year. As I read through each point, I recalled a lengthy conversation that B and I have had, and each point is nearly exactly what we spoke about. It was good to know that someone “random” has exactly the same thoughts on the topic.

Today was an incredibly busy, but awesome day. Busy not just because of work either…

As I updated below, nowhere near as much excitement as I’d hoped. The iPhone was rumoured to be launching tomorrow, but it was one person mishearing the name of a new handset, and then telling someone else, and it just snowballing. Ah well. Tomorrow will still be sweet, and will still see a couple of new phones launched that are quite cool. The set up and prep for all that was at about lunchtime today, and that all went smoothly… just a lot to take in about the day’s activities - I’m at the Investor Day from 7am til about 5pm, and then at the opening of a customer demonstration centre in our building from about 6pm into the evening. Yep, it’s gonna be a long day!

Seeing as tomorrow was going to be so massive, I voted myself an early mark and headed off to Bam Bam music to look at some guitars. But who was I kidding, I can’t go to a music store to “just look”. And I didn’t. Having paid off GE Creditline for my Mac, I spent a good hour at Bam Bam before purchasing the following:

• Squier Fretless Jazz Bass
• Zoom A2.1u acoustic effects unit
• Zoom B2.1u bass effects unit

Just quietly… I’m stoked :D

Now, as for that Jazz Bass… I looked long and hard at the acoustic bass and the Jazz Bass. Both were similarly priced, and I really wanted both. But in the end, I decided that buying a fretless bass means that I’m going to push myself to learn more about bass playing. Buying an acoustic bass would just be for the sound. So that is why I went for the fretless. I had a good play of it this arvo, and it definitely will take a lot of practice - just being a millimetre off the mark, and the note won’t be perfect pitch. Thankfully it does have fret markings, just no physical frets. It will be cool to learn new stylings using this.

I ended up grabbing an effects pedal for the bass to get me over the mark needed to use the interest free purchase. Haven’t played with either of the effects units yet… but I probably won’t get into the bass one for a little while. Once I get my acoustic back from a friend who’s borrowed it this week, I’ll be keen to start discovering some nice sounds to get out of the unit for next Sunday evening.

I can’t remember if I blogged about it, but work ran a sales promotion back in May, and the winner got a $500 travel voucher, as did the sales manager of the team overall that did the best. I was the sales manager of the team, and so I scored a $500 Flight Centre voucher a few weeks ago!! So today I took myself down to Flight Centre and booked return flights to Hervey Bay for January, and even managed to get a hire car for the week and keep it all very close to $500. Super!

So my day was awesome: I spent a good couple of thousand dollars… doesn’t that feel good? :)

The Cat Empire’s final Sydney show for this tour didn’t fail to disappoint last night. I guess I hadn’t expected it to be crap, but I definitely went in expecting it to be slightly less than the previous two shows I’d seen - for the simple fact that it was the 8th show in 7 days, and they don’t exactly take it easy on stage.

The setlist was fantastic - it was a combo of Monday (a lot of new songs and only two or three from previous albums) and Wednesday (majority old stuff, and only two songs off the new album) night’s sets. It was fantastic to hear Dumb Things as their first encore song again (we’d heard that on Monday night, but not Wednesday). They ripped through Hello and The Rhythm as well. But when How To Explain? came on, I was a very happy man.

The solos last night were actually probably the best I’d seen all week. They were extra long, but with a lot of meat in them too - not just repetitive stuff that they can do sometimes. Will (drummer) pulled an absolute beauty and went crazy for a solid 6 or 7 minutes or so without stopping. Amazing stuff.

Each of the three shows I’ve been to have been very different, and for that reason, I’m very glad that I sacrificed energy last week to go to three shows! Doing two nights in a row a couple of years ago was pretty special, but this week was definitely a stand out Cat Empire experience for me. It will go down in my memory for quite a while. I was trying to work out how many times I’ve seen them… I think in the end I decided that these three were the 8th, 9th and 10th shows for me. Sweet.

I’m hoping they continue to hang out at the Metro next time they come, and don’t go back to the Enmore :)

What a truly amazing night that was. The Cat Empire were just so incredibly full of energy, and they played for an astounding 2 and a half hours! Oh. My. Goodness.

We heard most of the songs we expected to hear, going by the voting happening on the pickRset website. The songs went something like this, in what I think is the right order:

• Fishies
• The Rhythm
• The Crowd (!! - yeah!)
• In My Pocket
• Two Shoes
• Darkness
• How To Explain?
• Hello
• The Chariot (with some L’Hotel de Califorie in the middle)
• The Car Song

They then brought out The Wine Song to finish up the pre-encore section… which was awesome to see live!

We cheered for what seemed like ages before Felix wandered back out on his own. He announced that they’d been filming bits for a video clip for So Many Nights all week so far, and they wanted to get the majority of it done tonight - we all cheered. So he told us what was going to happen: they were all gonna run out in costumes and perform the song live and the camera guy would focus a lot on us. They would then head off, and come back on again and play the song to the CD so they could sync it properly for the video. Quite cool! I think I’ll surely be able to spot myself in the clip… so I’ll be watching with anticipation. My guess is that they’ll be doing more stage filming during the days between shows when they can have camera’s wandering around on stage focusing on the guys. We’ll see when the clip gets released :)

After that was all over, they finished up with Sly, and one of the longest Ollie keyboard solo’s I’ve ever seen. It was tops.

I have very little voice left, and I’m exhausted. You just wanted to yell every song so loudly… it was an amazing night. It felt like the audience took two or three songs before they really got into it which was interesting. I also stood a bit further back, and a lot more centred than Monday night - literally right in front of the sound desk. And oh the difference it made to the sound! It was brilliant.

I’m hanging out for Saturday night now - I will have had a break to get me all psyched again :)

I don’t seriously know how I’m going to be able to survive this week. Getting home from a loud and exhaustive Cat Empire show at 12:30 am, then up at 6 for a 7:30 am meeting this morning is not a good combination.

Last night was awesome though - make no mistake. The Cat Empire played a tops show… especially the two ‘last’ songs. There was some serious drum soloing going on pre-encore, and the drummer and bassist moved into playing a couple of riffs from other songs for about 10 minutes which was quite cool :) But that was then topped by the last last song where Harry did some cool voice percussion work, and conducted the band at the same time. Amazing communication and musicianship.

I gotta say… during the first three-quarters of the show, quite a few of the boys were looking a bit tired and emotional. Which is interesting considering that last night was only the second of eight shows. Harry was looking particularly tired. Or drunk. I couldn’t quite work out which. But the last couple of songs, and then the encore, they really looked like they were just hanging around on stage having a jam - the Empire Horns boys were dancing around behind the drums, then making up things to play in the middle of a solo… it was just cool.

Still, it was a fantastic night. They played a whole heap of new songs, which I enjoyed… but they missed out So Long, which is a probably a favourite of mine. I’m hoping the set list might change on Saturday. Wednesday night is fan night, and fans have been voting for the set list over here - it’s looking very very old school… only two songs out of the top 25 are off the latest album! So tomorrow night will be fantastic.

Last night was definitely the loudest Cat Empire show I’ve been to. I’m wondering if it was just where I was standing, but the mix wasn’t super awesome at various times during the evening either. I will be aiming for a more central standing spot on Wednesday night.

Anyway… tonight is Kedron meeting #1 - hang out time with a few of the leaders so far for the primary camp. It should be pretty relaxing - not much organising yet. I just have to stay awake until then…

… is now open for business. It consists of me, a few guitars, a keyboard… and Garageband.

But I must say, recording music is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I had a conversation with Nathan over the weekend, and he almost laughed at me when I was all relaxed and blasé about recording music.

I spent about 2 hours in my room just now, and didn’t even get one part of one track recorded! I did record several times, but each time I thought it was crap and wanted to do it better. But along the way I learnt a whole lot about Garageband and what it can do as far as EQs and filters go. Having just had a look through the Garageband website though, I realised that there’s actually so much more to this application that I haven’t even begun to touch.

It may not be up there with Pro Tools, but it’s a damn fine way to record your own tunes with basically no cost (assuming you already have the instruments).

Blackstump was just brilliant. Such an awesome weekend of music and hanging out with friends. It was incredibly dry, and very very windy. This all equated to some serious dust around the place that choked just about everything. Not quite as bad as the Toowoomba dust, but close.

I didn’t realise quite how many teaching sessions there were on during the weekend. There was always something being taught or spoken about in one of the 4 million different venues around the place. But there was still plenty of time to hang back at the campsite and just relax too, which was welcomed. B2, Nathan, Tim and I were rather bored on Sunday afternoon, and with a pack of cards and a packet of wannabe-Arnotts Assortment biscuits, we created our own card game - quickdraw face biscuit poker. Or something like that. The idea being that you draw one card and whack it up in front of your forehead - whoever has the highest card wins, but not before a round of betting with biscuits as poker chips. Cream biscuits were worth more, and Kingstons were worth the most. Good times :)

Band highlights were definitely Maverick & Revive. Maverick played twice during the weekend, and we even got to see a little interview with two of them and an acoustic song as well. Revive shared with us that they’re headed over to the US in January for a while - presumably to record a new album. So that means no local gigs from them for a while.

Playjerise were the surprise package for me: two guys on acoustic guitars, with an occasional string section. And harmonies. Just awesome stuff, and great voices. Chensee’s been raving about these guys for quite a while now, but I guess I just never really thought I’d like them. But they are something special.

Compliments of Gus were also pretty cool - just pretty much pop rock stuff… but they always look like they have a ball on stage. Their second set on Sunday arvo was quite a laugh when his only guitar broke, and so he decided to go and sit with the drummer and do a drum duet. Their keyboard player is something else though - he mainly plays organ for the songs, but he does it so well. He really knows how to play a B3 properly.

I did buy too many CDs on the weekend - I bought Revive’s EP, The Atlanta Sessions, which they recorded when they were in the US just a couple of months ago; I bought Compliments Of Gus’ double album Neon Show / Live at Baker Street; and I bought Playjerise’s Cross The Line album. B2 and I also scored a free copy of Intone’s EP from a couple of years ago.

There was a bit of a big announcement on Sunday night during the gathering/service… an announcement that was awesome for me, but that had a lot of traditionalists a bit grumpy: Blackstump is moving to the Sydney Equestrian Centre! The best bit being that the Equestrian Centre is only about 10-15 mins away from me… so it will be sleeping in my own bed next year, while still enjoying the brilliance of music and teaching that Stump brings.

All my tweets from the weekend are still up on Twitter if you want to read them.

I finally got home an hour ago after an incredibly detoured journey home with Yoie - we took way too many wrong turns - and I’ve realised that I never actually had any lunch, which would be why I’m so hungry right now.

Tim Freedman and 91 other musicians playing together: truly one of the most amazing nights I’ve had.

Music is such an emotive thing. I find that to be so true and absolutely adore the sounds, the feel, the stories, the notes. And to hear the brilliant songs of Tim Freedman played with the accompaniment of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra - well, it was an incredible privilege indeed. Tim Freedman has long been one of the heroes of my life - his musicianship has captured me. Not only his ability to play the piano more, but more the songs that he writes and the stories in them - he writes music that has such life in it. As you listen, you can hear Tim’s life in that song, or you can hear the situation he was in when he wrote the song. Brilliant.

B, Sarah and I shared dinner at a funky bain-marie cafe/restaurant in Circular Quay before wandering over to the Opera House. The seats were definitely awesome. I remember B and I sitting here one Sunday evening for about half an hour trying to work out which seats were the best. And I think we picked good. :)

They played two sets for about an hour each. I think the first set as a whole was the one I enjoyed more - No Aphrodisiac was of course just amazing to hear with a whole heap more musos; Year of the Rat had an amazing amount of energy throughout it, and some very cool xylophone work too; and Fondness was definitely the most emotive song I think I heard all night.

The second was also brilliant, don’t get me wrong. We got to hear the brilliant version of Out The Back that Peter Sculthorpe composed - it has a 5 minute movement in the middle that is just orchestra. The three finish songs (the first finish, then the two encores) were Louis Burdett, The Curse Stops Here and Thank You - I just can’t remember the order. The Curse Stops Here has always been a very favourite track of mine - it’s a Tim solo track, and you can just here the life and feeling and emotion of Tim inside the song as he sings it.

And as a little bonus, we got a little advertising card on our seats as we sat down. The card informed us that Tim Freedman is playing two solo shows at The Basement in December. If there’s one thing that could potentially beat Tim and 91 musicians playing together, it’s Tim on his own.