www.stevelawson.net

Sneak-peak At A Track From Nie mój cyrk, Nie moje małpy

2013-06-17T18:10:54Z

Just put another tune up on Soundcloud, this time from Nie mój cyrk, Nie moje małpy.

It’s called ‘Supernatural‘, and the lyrics are taken from two of Artemis‘ older songs – Supernatural and Beside U.

COMPETITION TIME:

This has been running on Facebook and Twitter today, and so far, no-one has got close, but if you can work out how I made the raindrop/sonar-like sound at the beginning with my bass, you’ll win a free copy of the album (which is otherwise only available as part of the full FingerPainting set, available on Bandcamp

Here’s the tune. Please feel free to share the link around, comment, like, repost etc

Brand New Music And How To Get It

2013-06-14T20:44:56Z

My internet bandwidth at home is taking quite a battering today, as I upload gig 3 to Bandcamp, in preparation for sending the download codes to all those who’ve bought the Dropbox/Bandcamp versions of the FingerPainting full set. At the same time, I’m putting some of the tunes from gigs 2 and 3 on Soundcloud, so you can hear what you’re missing

The album of gig 3 is called “Nie mój cyrk, Nie moje małpy” which is a spectacularly brilliant Polish phrase that means ‘Not my circus, not my monkeys’. Here’s why:

With this music – the house concerts, the line-up, the idea of releasing 11 hours of music – Daniel and I have embarked on a musical project that rejects pretty much all the ‘problems’ defined by the various major label recording industry lobby groups.

This is music that exists because we wanted it to exist
That was formed in relationship with the audience (particularly the house concert hosts)
It’s music that’s made available because people might want to share in our enjoyment of it, not because we think we’re going to get rich or win a TV talent show by making it.

The problem of ‘OMG how do we get people to buy Led Zep and Eagles albums again on another format so we can have another massive sales peak from old people being conned into replacing music they already own!’ that the lobbyists are trying to answer without actually letting us know what their real concern is (by disguising it with bullshit talk about new artists) is not one that affects us. Neither the problem, nor the idiotic circus of obfuscation and BS that surrounds it are ours.

We make music,
we make it available,
we do it without going into debt because that’d be really stupid.

We treasure it,
care for it,
and invite people to be a part of it.

And as a result, we make things like this – this track, Yosemite, is one of my favourite musical things I’ve ever been a part of it. It makes me burst with happiness every time I listen.

If you want it, you can get it via the ’10 album set’ on the Fingerpainting bandcamp page. If you buy either the Dropbox or ‘all 10 albums via Bandcamp as their finished‘ options, you’ll get FOUR albums today. And another one or two a week between now and mid-July when the rest of it gets sent out

“But Steve, I’ve already paid for it and now I want to get in on the action with the updates! What do I do??”

Fear not, if you’ve already paid for the download of FingerPainting, or bought the USB stick to be delivered in July, you can upgrade and all the money you’ve already spent on the album will be credited against the new purchase. Just email me and I’ll sort you out with a discount code or some other mechanism by which you get all this lovely stuff.

Also, should you want to jump in at the ‘co-exec producer’ level and buy everything Daniel and I have ever done plus all this stuff and some CDs and what-have-you, if you’ve already bought my USB stick, I’ll knock £25 off that level, cos there’s no point in you buying the USB stick again… as I said at the start, building a music economy that relies on people buying the same shit over and over again helps no-one. Viva La Revolución!

Expanding Audio Orthodoxy – Recording, Mixing, Mastering

2013-05-21T22:25:20Z

As you know, I’m in the middle of mixing and mastering 11 hours of new music. It’s taking a long time, but the results are some of the best audio work I’ve ever done. So let’s have a chat about audio recording.

My thesis: The received wisdom of how and why things are done is, it seems to me, based on a resource equation that exists in a paid studio environment.

The factors are time, budget & complexity.

The assumption is that if a project is simple it’s because the budget is small and therefore time will be tight. Thus mixing from the multi-track to 2 track without getting too fixated on the final version maximises time in the studio, doing what studios do best. You make it sound as good as possible through the speakers there & don’t worry too much about continuity between tracks, consistent leveling etc. Those wouldn’t be a productive use of mix time.

Thus you send the 2 track to a mastering engineer, who has the tools to deal with that. She doesn’t have to worry about multitrack issues, and has a fair chunk of pragmatic resignation written into the job spec. The task is one of polishing and refining, not undoing and deleting. But she can also assume that the basic sound is the best the mix engineer could do in the time available.

If the budget is big enough to not have the time constraints that lead to this particular set of assumptions about the process, it is further assumed that the project will increase in complexity to the point where trying to do any mastering type tweaks using the studio outboard gear will result in a signal path of such fiendish complexity, the risk of losing all perspective and not getting a great record out of it is too great. You also have the issue of limited numbers of each compressor / preamp in the studio…

However, the ratio this is built on is completely broken by recording at home. Suddenly a project can be simple, can take ages & can be done with the very best of equipment, or at least equipment of such quality that the combination of skill, vision, time and resources makes other kinds of process that exist outside of conventional orthodoxy useful & even preferable.

All this is to say that my reasoning for mixing and mastering my own albums in Reaper in the same session, non-destructively, is that I have the space, time, resources & equipment to do it very effectively, sharing mixes around the globe, listening on different systems and tweaking elements of the mix in relationship with the mastering processes that are happening on the stereo buss.

The recordings for FingerPainting involve:

one stereo bass channel,
one mono loop channel
one stereo loop channel (through the Kaoss Pad),
a stereo pair from Daniel
a vocal mic channel from Artemis on the tracks she sings on.

So Daniel is already submixed, often requiring a fair amount of plug-in automation to treat the uke, gravikord and percussion separately.

But with the set of UAD plug-ins I have I can emulate different brands and speeds of tape for each instrument – something that would be almost impossibly complex to do with hardware. I can balance the relationship between the compression on Daniel’s channel with the one in the mastering set, tweaking them for optimum interaction. And I can listen and compare the mixes as I go along on myriad systems, take them to friend’s houses, even bounce a low res MP3 to see what’ll happen if someone downloads it like that. I have maximum malleability.

And the result? You tell me. I *love* the way these recordings sound. I’m SO glad I did Ian Shepherd’s mastering course, and learned about signal path, phase, perceived loudness, and all the other invaluable stuff I picked up. Because, of course, the bit of the standard equation that is irreplaceable is skill. New toys don’t replace learning, they replace overly complex and expensive practices required to act on your learning. I took the wisdom and learning of orthodoxy in mixing and mastering – as gleaned from two decades of making records, watching, listening, learning, making a bad noise, watching other people make a bad noise, watching some people make a really great noise, noting what they did, and finally doing a mastering course that stuck all those pieces together – and applied it to a very different time, budget, complexity ratio.

And won

(…do I really have to say this? …obviously, this isn’t suggesting that studios are useless/dead etc. or that some kind of mythologically brilliant DIY ethic and process will now replace all other forms of music making. Of course not. Lots of projects – perhaps most pop music projects – still broadly fit that initial ratio. And not everyone has the chance to develop the skills required to be able to operate the tools at home (don’t gloss over the fact that most of my formative practical learning happened in traditional studios!) - that’s why I called this Expanding Audio Orthodoxy – I’m not trying to do away with it, I’m applying the same wisdom to a different ratio. And noting that the margins are growing, at a disruptively fast pace …more on this soon)

Twitter Brain-dump About The New Music Economy

2013-05-16T12:02:22Z

Just had a rather extensive twitter-rant about art, commerce, indie, labels, work, commerce… that sort of stuff. Here are the tweets:

the reaction to @colfaxsound & I releasing 11 hours of music is interesting. Some people are amazed, others see it as ‘the new normal’ …

— Steve Lawson (@solobasssteve) May 16, 2013

It’s going to take us a while to extricate ourselves from the single/EP/LP release format strictures. They *are* useful, just not compulsory

— Steve Lawson (@solobasssteve) May 16, 2013

Finding ourselves with 10 complete improvised shows of music that we love, and not having to whittle it down for a label to release is fab.

— Steve Lawson (@solobasssteve) May 16, 2013

Indie musicians seem to have gone from naivety to disillusionment to, hopefully, a pragmatism that sees our priorities shift back to MUSIC.

— Steve Lawson (@solobasssteve) May 16, 2013

…instead of music just being the manure that grows money in a finance/debt industry cloaked as being about art…

— Steve Lawson (@solobasssteve) May 16, 2013

Indie-diehards are realising that there are things that labels/’the machine’ do very well that are next-to-impossible to replicate…

— Steve Lawson (@solobasssteve) May 16, 2013

…or at least rely on just as much of a lottery as ‘success’ in that old system. Slow growth frustrates our pre-millennial dreams of stardom

— Steve Lawson (@solobasssteve) May 16, 2013

it’s OK to be angry that the story we’ve been told for the last 60 years is mostly BS. Also OK to *want* to earn more/do more gigs…

— Steve Lawson (@solobasssteve) May 16, 2013

…but pretending that you *deserve* success, that anyone does, leads to a whole world of hurt. Do good work, make beautiful things.

— Steve Lawson (@solobasssteve) May 16, 2013

Hard work is hard. The clue’s in the name. Deep art is a life-long pursuit. Find a way of making it possible to keep making art.

— Steve Lawson (@solobasssteve) May 16, 2013

The metrics of premillennial ‘success’ were gamed to shut out those who wouldn’t play by their rules. There are no more ‘rules’.

— Steve Lawson (@solobasssteve) May 16, 2013

If making music becomes a high profile media career that stops you making art, that’s failure raiding the costume department of success.

— Steve Lawson (@solobasssteve) May 16, 2013

If you get a job making ‘commercial music’, go for it. It’s a job. Don’t pretend it’s something it isn’t. Do good work, hold on to your soul

— Steve Lawson (@solobasssteve) May 16, 2013

this isn’t really about the ethics of art. It’s the reality of the artist mind, & the likelihood of making a living from art-by-committee.

— Steve Lawson (@solobasssteve) May 16, 2013

if you just want a career in music, form a wedding band. If you want to make art, think about how to keep making art. Prioritise that.

— Steve Lawson (@solobasssteve) May 16, 2013

There are people who make a living from their art. There are people who make a living for their art. If the art matters, both are fine.

— Steve Lawson (@solobasssteve) May 16, 2013

most musicians are making less money than you think. The smart ones learn how to live cheaply. The unlucky ones gamble and lose.

— Steve Lawson (@solobasssteve) May 16, 2013

the hard work of making your art viable isn’t negotiable. Web design, artwork, promo, press, gigs, equipment repair, flyering. Do it.

— Steve Lawson (@solobasssteve) May 16, 2013

when you can afford to pay for help, pay for help. Until then, get resourceful, skill swap, learn, study, sweat, practice. Make better art.

— Steve Lawson (@solobasssteve) May 16, 2013

Things that’ll kill your art/creativity: debt, jealousy, pride, laziness. Things that feed it: collaboration, practice, hard work, a day job

— Steve Lawson (@solobasssteve) May 16, 2013

Worth noting that there’s a direct correlation between the music I make and the way I think about the economics of art. They are symbiotic.

— Steve Lawson (@solobasssteve) May 16, 2013

It requires the death of a whole load of myths & sacred cows to prioritise improvised music & house concerts. The trade-off is an epic WIN.

— Steve Lawson (@solobasssteve) May 16, 2013

Lots of lovely press for FingerPainting/ToryCore/Gigs…

2013-05-14T13:08:17Z

It’s probably worth noting that most of the time, I can’t get arrested, press-wise. For myriad reasons, more people are apt to talk about what I do than write about it… perhaps I’ll explore my hunches as to why in a later post, but for now, I get to celebrate one of those rare weeks when this isn’t the case at all!

Torycore ::

So let’s start with Torycore. I’ve just got back from a weekend playing a sold-out show with Torycore at Glad Cafe in Glasgow as the finale of the Behaviour festival. Torycore is me, Lucy Ellinson & Chris Thorpe – we take government words and put them to a soundtrack designed to shine a spotlight on the malevolent evil at the heart of so much that our current overloads are doing. (the idea for Torycore was Lucy’s after the three of us went to see an incredible Cannibal Corpse and Triptykon gig in Birmingham last year – that’s us with Alex from Cannibal Corpse and Tom from Triptykon in the picture).

“the rage is palpable, the impact terrific, and the force of despair almost agonising … #Torycore is a brilliant, brave idea, executed with terrific energy” – The Scotsman

We were booked to go on BBC Radio Scotland’s culture show, but it was pulled, I guess after they read this interview, for being too political… It’s a shame that the set of policies that are causing death, poverty, homelessness and failing public services all over the country aren’t pulled for being too political as well… Seems it’s OK to do shit like that, just not to object to it… Ah well. Anyway, here’s the interview with Lucy and I in the Scotsman.

We also got a review in the same paper afterwards, which is rather good, though clearly I don’t agree with the writer’s assertion that we should editorialise more – here’s the Torycore review from the Scotsman.

FingerPainting ::

“The beauty of many of these improvisations is their total inability to be classified. The final “Reunion” could be thought of as world music, jazz, ambient, funk or improvisation, when in fact it is a subtle blend of all these genres.”

We spent all of last week rehearsing, writing and preparing for Torycore (what a fantastic luxury to be able to spend the time doing that! …Made possible because the show won the Arches Brick Award at the Edinburgh Fringe last year… which may be the first thing I’ve ever won, at least since a swimming race at a holiday camp when I was 10 and the only person who entered…). But all that meant that only a week after FingerPainting came out, I was out of promo mode for most of the week. I’m sure that was a relief for some, and I’m very grateful to those who continued talking about, sharing and buying the music!

We did get some nice press for FingerPainting while I was off being angry and metallic – This write up of the full 11 hour release at NoTreble.com was very much appreciated, and John Toolan wrote another beautiful in-depth review of the album for ThisIsNotAScene. That there are writers of John’s quality willing to keep writing about seemingly unclassifiable music fills me with hope for the new music landscape, when we can let go of the kind of boxes that music needed to fit into for record shop display purposes… (see also Anil Prasad, Dann Chinn and others…)

Sonic Cauldron Gig ::

“With his big wavy hair and long coat, you would be excused for thinking you are watching a mad scientist driving a spaceship, or even Dr Who himself.”

And finally, two lovely mentions of my duo set with Andy Williamson supporting Juffage at his Sonic Cauldron gig at Left Bank in Leeds a couple of weeks ago -

This one from CounterfeitMag.co.uk,

and

This one from MusicalMathematics.co.uk.

…and John Toolan also posted some pics from the gig on his blog.

Hopefully, there’ll be more media activity around FingerPainting going forwards. Magazine reviews take a while to come through due to the lead-time they have on things going into the mags (a lot of records aren’t released til months after they’re finished just to make sure that magazines get their copies in advance… I don’t have the luxury of the time to do that, sadly…) – this means that some places won’t write about it cos they have a policy of not writing about things that are already out, whereas others seem to have grasped that the world of release schedules has changed and a new record is a new record til the next one comes out…

So, if you want to write about FingerPainting, please do. We’d really appreciate any help getting the word out about it. I’ve done a couple of other interviews about it, which should be coming out soon, with more lined up, and some likely radio play. Til then, if you haven’t already, please give it a listen, and if you like it enough to buy the rest of the music in the set, that would be truly wonderful.

FingerPainting track by track – Antidote To Everything

2013-05-06T10:13:10Z

Antidote To Everything: (hit play)

FingerPainting by Steve Lawson and Daniel Berkman

So, imagine this – it’s a year since we’ve last seen each other, we’ve just released a recording of a show that, to us, sounds impossibly wonderful. Listening back to it elicits a feeling of ‘did we REALLY play that? wow!’ Such is the joy of improvised music.

Our initial encounter happened because of Artemis. She had known Daniel for years. She and I had been Twitter/FB/Reverbnation etc. friends with for quite a while. She had a hunch that we’d make lovely music together. And we did.

So, back to imagining – we’ve had that experience, playing two amazing shows, meeting while setting up for the first one, loving the recordings, releasing it to some flurry of online interest. And here we are, a year later, at the start of our next gig.

Were the shows in Jan 2012 a fluke?
Were we deluded, and just taken up in the rush of the excitement of making music in truly post-millennial ways?
What if we sucked this time… We haven’t got a setlist to fall back on…

Add to that the audience being a lot of old friends of Artemis’, mostly, and a few v. good friends of mine, who we really didn’t want to let down, and there’s a certain weight of expectation hanging over the gig.

But then, you look at each other, and grin. You remember how many options you had last time you played, that sensation of being able to do anything, play anything, to pursue otherwise off-limits directions due to the safety net of your partner’s amazing ears and breadth of skill (at least, that’s how I felt!) And you start…

That’s what you’re hearing here. All of that and more, The room goes quiet, and I start playing that opening phrase. It’s a house concert, so everything sounds so clear. The audience are silent, the room is gorgeous. Everything is right.

The chiming harmonics of the opening chord ring out… I’d just started using a Markbass Mini Dist pedal as a preamp, with the gain fully off, and it made the harmonics spring out of the bass, despite – or perhaps in perfect harmony with – the 3 year old strings.

Daniel joins in, and we’re off on another journey – the first sound of the 8 shows we’ve got booked. No looking back, let’s see how deep we can go with this stuff…

The title? Improvised music is, for me, a place of refuge, of comfort, solace. A place of honesty, reflection, risk, discovery. An illumination of the mind and heart, a conversation about things that really matter. A chance to sum and make sense of things that words have been failing to process. To ask better questions. To fix things. It is, in essence, the antidote to everything. And it doesn’t get any more enjoyable, cathartic, exhilarating than playing with Daniel.

How To Apply A Discount Code In Bandcamp

2013-05-05T11:17:30Z

Today’s the last day for the ‘awesomenessftw‘ 10% discount code on orders for the new album…

Here’s how to apply it.

Click ‘buy now’ on whichever USB or CD package you’re wanting (if you just want the download, it’s ‘name your price’ so feel free to knock 10% off what you initially thought you’d like to pay, and type that in instead )
note the minimum price for the package you’ve chosen (indicated to the right of the ‘Name Your Price’ box).
Click on the invitation to add a discount code (circled in the pic below)

type, or cut ‘n’ paste ‘awesomenessftw’ into the box that appears and click ‘apply’ – type the code without the ‘ ‘ at either end. Keep all the letters lowercase.
You’ll then see that the price to the right of the box where you type in the amount you’re wanting to pay has changed – it’ll be 10% lower than it was. You can now type in that amount (or any other amount above that, though the discount code seems unnecessary in that case ) As you can see in the picture below:

So there you go!

Buying the whole set at this stage helps us to pay for the time it’s going to take to mix and master all the recordings and then to press the CDs and load up all the USB Sticks. It also means that you can get immediate access to the dropbox folder with the daily updates in it (there are three tracks from the 2nd gig of the set in there now), and/or each gig sent to you via a Bandcamp download code every time they’re finished being mixed.

How To Upgrade Your Purchase:

PLEASE NOTE – if you’ve already bought the download on it’s own and want to upgrade to either the CD or one of the ‘get the whole set’ versions, please just email me and we’ll sort that out. The full amount you’ve already paid will be credited against the upgrade. No problem.

FingerPainting OUT now (includes discount code!)

2013-05-02T11:50:13Z

Finally, after weeks of preparation, two preview tracks and a lot of sweat and tears over the mixing and mastering, FingerPainting – the new album from me and Daniel Berkman is out now!

It’s an hour or so live album from a house concert in Altadena, California in January, and two tracks feature the genius that is Artemis on vocals.

It was the first show on an 8 show tour, and with the release comes the opportunity to pre-order ALL the gigs. That’s 8 shows from January 2013, AND the two shows from January 2012. Pretty much every note that Daniel and I have ever played together. We’ve never jammed, never rehearsed. This is all of it.

And if you buy any of it before Sunday night, you can use the code ‘awesomenessFTW’ and get 10% off any of the physical versions.

The pre-order sales are pretty vital for us being able to do this – there’s about 200 hours of work still to go, not including artwork, promo and trips to the post office to send out the CDs and USB sticks. Somehow I need to justify not spending that time looking for other work or playing with my 3 year old son. Getting paid for it ticks those boxes.

So PLEASE do have a listen to it (it’s available to stream in full from Bandcamp as always) share it around, post the link, write a review, add it to your bandcamp collection, and buy whichever physical version makes most sense to you…

I hope you dig it as much as I do

2nd Preview Track from FingerPainting up now on Soundcloud

2013-04-30T23:47:20Z

The release of the album is immanent, so here’s a 2nd preview track to whet your appetites - this one features Artemis‘ beautiful voice. She was on the entire California tour with us (and organised it!) and sang a tune or two with us at the end of every gig. They’ll make an amazing album in their own right when collected together, but for now, it’s here as part of FingerPainting.

Enjoy Invocation ::

New things for International Jazz Day.

2013-04-30T13:21:30Z

Some new music for you to discover on international jazz day. Cos you’ve got 364 days for listening to Coltrane, Miles and Sinatra…

Remote Location by Scott McLemore

Long Pair Bond by Sunna Gunnlaugs

Pipe Dreams by Søren Dahl Jeppesen

MODULAR by Matt Chamberlain, Viktor Krauss, and Dan Phelps

Darn That Dream: Solo Piano Vol. 1 by Neil Alexander