colartz.com Blog

Yoo hoo! I finally snagged a finalist position at Song of the Year. It is with the song Just a Man and in the Folk category for July 08. It will be interesting to see if this song does get any take up when it is sent around to publishers, labels etc. When I entered it I though it was probably more suited to a US than a UK market, and maybe this result has proven I was right!

Since starting it I have reworked this song and its lyrics a number of times. It is always painful doing that because, even before you start the rework, you know you in it going to be painful and you are going to have to throw out ideas that you really liked. Anyhow, it is no doubt stronger for it, but it also shows me that you have to keep polishing and polishing.

Fingers crossed!

The song ‘Just A Man‘ got a Commendation at the 2008 UK Songwriting Contest. But, more importantly it got some great comments and scores from the Song of The Year critique team, namely "The lyrics are incredibly moving and the music sends chills down my spine for the emotion it packs" and "You might have song worthy of being a single"

Please check out the song (and full critique) from the link about, and let me know here what you think!

The song ‘Boomerang‘ got a Commendation at the 2008 UK Songwriting Contest. It got some really interesting comments from the Song of The Year critique team, namely "This song has serious potential" and "The melodies are spectacular!"

Please check out the song (and full critique) from the link about, and let me know here what you think!

The song ‘You Are The Reason‘ (previously titled ‘You Are My Stardust’) was a Semi-Finalist at the 2008 UK Songwriting Contest. It got some really interesting comments from the Song of The Year critique team, namely "A strong chance of attracting buyers" and "The melodies fit this song perfectly"

Please check out the song (and full critique) from the link about, and let me know here what you think!

Decided I would try to do something every day on Twitter, just for the hell of it. My wife had come across something to do with 6 words that you might wish to have on your gravestone (one day!), and some of the things were really good. So, as Colartz is seven letters long, I thought I would go for seven words, and call it “sevensz” – 7 letters, too, of course!

As it is only a once a day thing, I thought it would not take up too much time, and I can send it in via SMS, so that is also OK. They will all be labelled ‘7z: something or other in seven words only’, for example.

Anyhow, check out the Colartz Twitter site if interested. No doubt it will likely be boring, but there may come out the odd gem . From restraint and limitation comes invention!

Also popped into my head that is possibly a new twist on the Eno ‘Oblique Strategy’ cards. Well, maybe not .

It is possibly in the same kind of area as a Haiku, but that is based around syllables, and sevensz is around words…

Have been enjoying this book Here Comes Every Body, Clay Shirky. It is well written, entertaining, and easy to read, and offers some real insights without being overly analytical (I can’t get on with those kind of books).

It is the kind of book you can dip into and go “oh, yeah” as he helps make a neural connection or two (the “Birthday Paradox” group dynamic being an example).

I have not yet got to the end (too many other things to do), but I recommend it and I will persevere with it (whereas I am finding Groundswell much more empirical and heavy going, even though still interesting).

I finally got around to posting my 3 news songs: You Are The Reason, Boomerang and Just A Man. You hear them from the “songs page” on the colartz website. The lyrics are also there, too.

OK, so I will come clean and say it is me singing again. If you can just get past that, and imagine the songs are covered by a talented singer, then maybe you could find a way to enjoy them . Mind you, I do owe any vocal listenability at all to Melodyne, and for that I big time thank the chaps at Celemony.

2 are just me and my guitar, and on the third I play base and have used a drum riff from Cakewalk’s Session Drummer. OK, I know it is repetetive, but I never was much cop at figuring out drum lines.

Having done these, I think I am going to go and have a lie down

Hoping you enjoy them: Tip – in all cases the best bits are near the end

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I have been really happy with my Lexicon Lamba unit since posting a review of it (below), and have found that most of my problems relating to it are actually with Sonar.

What I mean there is that if I unplug the Lambda, then Sonar 7 seems to require me to go through a number of iterations (start, change audio settings, close, re-open) before it can settle down and work again (with MME or WDM). If I then plug the Lamba in again, to work with ASIO, I have to do it all over again. I cannot see why it should be so difficult. The other gripe I have with Sonar (perhaps only related to the Lambda) is that when I am using another app with the Lambad (e.g. Media player), then I get no noise out of my monitors. But, as soon as I load Sonar, I get some nasty background low level continuous whine/noise. I have no idea why.

Anyhow, I hope to upload one or two of my new efforts soon. The vocal and demo quality is still poor, but then I do not claim to be a good singer or even a good lyric writer. And it seems my playing and arrangement skills are not so hot either. Hmmm. So, why am I bothering? Go figure!

My Lexicon Lambda review (posted at Dolphin Music):

“This is a great looking unit, and broadly does what I wanted it to do. It lets me record a Mic and an instrument at the same time as a MIDI input – the reason I wanted that was to be able to record the MIDI from a Roland GR-33 MIDI guitar unit, at the same time as a direct out from the the guitar and a separate (phantom powered) mic. The bonus for me was that it also has 2 line ins, so I can record old tapes to MP3.

I intially had some big problems with the ASIO drivers. Although I could record (with Sonar), whenever I played anything back I just got bad noise. I had the same problems with MME, but I got it working with WDM. Thankfully, whatever it was now seems to have resolved itself, but I don’t know what it was I did (so I hope it does not go wonky again).

Aside from that, I found that when I hooked up my Sontronics STC-2 Mic I had to wind the Mic knob up to maximum to get a decent level, but I was getting quite a bit of noise from the Lamda the very last 1/10th turn.

I run Windows XP on a Macbook, and the installation CD would not recognise the Windows drivers – which luckily I was able to download from the Lexicon website (www.lexiconpro.com).

It is not that easy to see when the red clipping and peak LEDs comes on, as they seem pretty faint.

If you are not in the US, you can only get tech support from a dealer, not from Lexicon.

All in all, a nicely packaged and presented unit, that sits well on my desk. And, I think it is going to do the job.”

Well, I have been hard at it this last week, getting down another 3 songs for entry into the UK Songwriting contestUK Songwriting contest, which has a closing date of end June every year. I really don’t know why I do it, because i am never happy with the results of what I create, or even where i come up in the results . I guess it just provides the pressure I need to get on a finish a few things..

I am a great believer that making songs is 95% about rewrites, and rewrites, and rewrites…. and having the strength to ‘kill your darlings’ – which is how they describe the (necessary) process of whitling down ideas to only the best ones.

Anyhow, the 3 songs I put in this year are : Boomerang (a fun Indie track about how you have to ride your luck, a bit in the Hoosiers area); You Are The Reason (a song about how special someone is to you, particularly your children) [previously titled 'You Are My Stardust '], and Just A Man (well, not my best effort lyrically, but I like playing it on guitar).

I will be posting the songs on my site in the next few days. These are only ever rough demos to get the song heard (and maybe then covered!), and not finished items – because I don’t profess to be able to create any final masterpiece! I figure I am old enough now that I shouldn’t don’t need to be so embarrassed about my (pretty poor) singing and lyric writing any more. All I can say is thank goodness for Melodyne, which is a FANTASTIC piece of software. Without it, I would never post anything that had my singing on it.

Right, back to work doing skins and screenshots for Mixtikl.