Category: Music

The current Top Ten of my songs streamed from my BandCamp page

1 Ticking Clocks
2 No Footprints in the Sand
3 Easy come, easy go
4 Festival Friends (Cool as Folk)
5 No symphony for lovers
6 What we have become
7 The people we could be
8 Ebb and Flow
9 Dustbowl
10 Tideline

Ticking Clocks – A sort of sequel to “She’s Leaving Home”

No Footprints in the Sand – When there’s nobody on the beach

Easy come, easy go – Argument for argument’s sake, laid-back funk rock

Festival Friends (Cool as Folk) – Acoustic, fingerstyle instrumental

No symphony for lovers – The Synaesthesia Blues in a Paul Weller style

What we have become – Live studio, singer-songwriter melancholy

The people we could be – Songwriter reminiscences

Ebb and Flow – Singer-songwriter tidal musings

Dustbowl – A nice big slice of Americana

Tideline – Still a Northern Soul at heart

Interesting that the majority of the streams this month have been for the more melancholic singer-songwriter acoustic stuff. I do have quite an eclectic mix of styles across the last decade of recording and musical collaborations. Ten albums worth of my music. And, a triple-album collection of earlier songs here.

TL:DR – I have dozens of songs and instrumentals for you to download or stream through my BandCamp page right now.

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Although, I’m probably best known as a professional science writer and an amateur wildlife photographer, when I’m not involved in those you might catch me singing and playing live with my band, C5 Website/Facebook, or in our community a choir (TyrannoChorus). You can hear my latest solo and collaborative recorded music on BandCamp and SoundCloud. Some of my stuff is on Spotify and iTunes too, including a few cover songs. As of 30th July 2023, Mrs Sciencebase and myself are also now veterans of the Cambridge Folk Festival having performed there live with a scratch choir organised and rehearsed by Ben and Dom.

I’ve always been in love with music, since my first baby rattle and toy guitar as a tot, been attempting to play guitar ever since. It is only in the last fifteen years or so that I have performed live in front of audiences and written and recorded my music, first with a community choir and then in a gigging band C5. I’ve sang at the Royal Albert Hall with a mass choir and recorded at Abbey Road Studios, ditto. Have also sung with The London Community Gospel Choir (twice) and with Pete Churchill’s London Vocal Project (twice). I’ve also taken part in a couple of choral workshops with classical composer John Rutter.

Proud to have played quite a few pubs, events, festivals, and party gigs with my band C5 and also alongside the inimitable Barbara Duckworth. Also to have had a few solo slots in front of audiences of a fair few hundred singing the lead on Billy Joel’s “The Longest Time” with the TyrannoChorus choir (led my Siobhan Lihoreau, with arranger and pianist Tim Lihoreau) the West Road Concert Hall in Cambridge and just before the 2020 lockdown singing “Be the Man” by The Young’uns for two charity events with the choir. I’m also occasionally called on to provide guitar accompaniment on songs we have done by Cat Stevens, Sting, Paul Weller, The Who, The Divine Comedy, The Traveling Wilburys, The Beatles, and others. Many of my original compositions can be found on my BandCamp page. I’ve performed a few of these live at various events and a mental health music festival.

This is a very short list of a few of the musicians, bands, and artists I admire in alphabetical order: Alan Parsons Project, Athlete, B52s, Badly Drawn Boy, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Blondie, Blue Aeroplanes, Blur, David Bowie, Kate Bush, Camel, Glen Campbell, Phil Collins, Crowded House, The Cure, Paco de Lucia, John Denver, Al Di Meola, Thomas Dolby, Doves, Dr Dre, Duran Duran, Editors, Elbow, Fred’s House, Robert Fripp, Peter Gabriel, Genesis, Steve Hackett, Steve Hillage, Carole King, King Crimson, The Kinks, Led Zeppelin, Manic Street Preachers, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Mike Oldfield, Pavlov’s Dog, Placebo, Porcupine Tree, Radiohead, Gerry Rafferty, R.E.M, Nile Rodgers, Rush, Seals & Crofts, Siouxsie and The Banshees, Squeeze, Steely Dan, Supertramp, Andy Summers, Talking Heads, James Taylor, Tears for Fears, U2, Franki Valli, The Willows, Yes, Neil Young, there are many others.

I’ve been told that I occasionally sound like a Geordie Glenn Tilbrook (that’s according to Dek “Mono Stone” Ham), and sometimes George Harrison, Steely Dan, Stephen Duffy, Peter Gabriel, early Oasis, Phil Collins, Alan Parsons Project, Sting, James Taylor, James, Echo & The Bunnymen, U2, David Bowie (most often, admittedly), and Stephen Stills, and most recently, Cat Stevens, Neil Finn (Crowded House), the latter on the basis of my charity single “Bridges crossed and burned“, and even Elton John, although I think that was only really about the piano loops I’d used on my Meat Loaf pastiche – Fake it Till You Make it by Malt Loaf.

I couldn’t claim to have even an ounce of the talent of any of those people, but I do reckon I’ve finally developed my own sound now. And, more to the point, I don’t wear my influences quite so prominently on my silk kimono sleeves as with many of my earlier songs, although there are almost always allusions to those inspirational musicians in there some
where.

Mastodon

Reboot of my original music page from way back when…my earlier songs from my CCC Arts Night era can be found on the newly branded Sciencebase BandCamp page here.

Mrs Sciencebase and myself once again headed for Cherry Hinton Hall for this year’s Cambridge Folk Festival (27-30 July 2023). This time around, I didn’t take any camera equipment other than my phone. Still ended up taking almost 300 photos and videos nevertheless…I’ve put the photos in a video montage with a piece of incidental music I wrote and recorded once we got home, inspired by the festival and a guitar workshop with Nigel Wearne (pictured below). The tune Festival Friends, is also now available to stream or download from my BandCamp page as part of my Four Missing Keys EP.

We enjoyed the following acts Gnoss, Flyte, Symbio, Ibibio Sound Machine, Nigel Wearne (on stage and for me a guitar workshop), Lady Blackbird (massively who finished hiser set with a tribute to Tina Turner in the form of River Deep, Mountain High and Proud Mary), Folk Camps Party Band with caller Fee Lock, The Longest Johns (quite a tame Wellerman rendition it has to be said, Stornoway (in favour of the second half of The Proclaimers’ set, they do a version of The Only Way is Up on which the intro to our band C5’s arrangement is loosely based), Kate Rusby (very funny), (un peu de) Le Vent du Nord, Niteworks (incredible Celtic EDM with pipes, a little bit of Rufus Wainright, some Arrested Development, Judy Collins, the fantastic Ferris + Sylvester, a spot of Breabach, William Prince, Oi Va Voi, Elephant Sessions, Angélique Kidjo (who did some great Talking Heads covers), Imelda May who did a stunning tribute to her late friend Sinead O’Connor in Nothing Compares 2U.

There were others that we ducked in and out of on various stages…Baskery, Son of Town Hall etc…you can’t get to see everyone and it always feels like you’ve missed out when you hear back from friends who were audience at one stage when you were at another, but all in a lovely weekend again.

One of the highlights for us was that we joined the Festival Choir with Ben and Dom and got to perform a 30-minute set Sunday, on Stage 3 (actually the choir was too big for the stage, so we were in front of it), but we went down well with a captive audience keeping out of the Sunday rain!

TL:DR – Some tips on singing from the vocal jazz maestro Pete Churchill.

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Years ago, I and a bunch of singing friends did a couple of vocal technique workshops with jazz maestro Pete Churchill. He had lots of words of wisdom to dispense. I put together a cribsheet for our choir and for anyone else who might have a need for singing tips:

Get into the groove, feel the beat, get with the swing, get off the page! [No looking down at scores (and if you really must, not highlighting pens!), watch the musical director and keep an eye for the audience].

Understand the “form” (structure) of the song, don’t count bars, feel the rhythm, and know where the repeats and codas fit

Be aware of what the other singers and musicians are doing, from the top sops and right to the bottom bass via the altos and tenors, if you lose your place you can always revert to the main melody

Be aware of your breath, use your breath, it’s part of your voice, especially in folk/jazz/pop/rock singing as opposed to classical singing, but especially Pete’s type of jazz singing

Use the percussive plosives, the buh, pah, bah sounds for expressive emphasis, but obviously not on every b and p, give your singing dynamics

You can hold the consonants not just the vowels, make them rich, “Fall in Llllllove” sometimes, don’t “Fall in Luuuuuv” every time. This is more of a jazz nuance, but useful to have in the back of your mind for bluesier/jazzier songs

Start your oohs and aahs with a hushed “h” (h)oooooh, (h)aaaaah to protect your voice from hard ah, eh, ooh sounds that clack your vocal folds (cords), this applies to the starts of lines not only to the harmony ooooohs

You can hold vowel notes a little longer by changing the vowel sound as your breath expires, it does work, although I reckon it’s partly psychological but possibly just changes breath rate enough to give you extra time, it also sometimes leads to a bit of vibrato which helps you to sustain a note too because the vibrato, or is it tremolo, is putting in extra energy

Feel and learn the sounds with your mouth, this is an ongoing thing for learning any song…and ties in with the following in terms of expressiveness and knowing a song better

Here’s the non-vocal bonus tip from Pete:

Your eyebrows can transmit emotion to your audience, facial expressions hinge on the eyebrows and you can get away with a bit of exaggeration when singing to engage the audience in the song people expect emotion from singers not deadpan stares, so go for it

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We’d all done a couple of classical singing workshops with John Rutter, prior to the Pete Churchill jazz workshops, and some of us had done some classical recording with Karl Jenkins at Abbey Road Studios, as well as sung one of his choral works at the Royal Albert Hall. There were numerous singing tips from those happenings too, they were commonly about dynamics, not looking down, lifting one’s chin to allow a low not to resonate, and other such matters.

During covid lockdown when we couldn’t sing together, we had a chance to chat to various composers and performers on Zoom with our choir, including Mike Batt (The Wombles), Aled Jones (The Snowman hit), Phil Coulter (composer of Puppet on a String), Howard Goodall (choral composer and lots of TV themes, such as Blackadder, QI, Red Dwarf, and the Not the Nine o’Clock News comedy songs), Thomas Hewitt Jones (composer perhaps best (not) known for Silly Song on social media) , and Eric Whitacre (Seal Lullaby etc).

Whitactre had a great tip regarding vocal warmups. He suggested that instead of doing the usual doh-rae-me exercises and arpeggios and stuff, that singers should all just immediately jump into the song they’re hoping to perform. Not full blast from the top, gently, everyone just chugging along on the melody and maybe heading for their harmony parts, but warming up, like gentle jogging before a proper run.

I hope I do utilise some of these experiences and vocal techniques and singing tips in my own live performances with the TyrannoChorus and bigMouth choirs, with my band, C5, and when I perform solo.

TL:DR -Newspaper story inspired me to write a post-punk folk song telling the tale. I rewrote the lyrics the next day. Download/stream here.

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As you may have noticed I wrote about the news story concerning the so-called brain-eating amoeba. I also felt the tragic tale deserved a modern, post-punk, folk song as a lament and so I pulled one together in on an otherwise dull morning. Later that evening, I had second thoughts about the original lyrics and rewrote them entirely the following wet morning. The original song became Old Nick is Quick

Old Nick is Quick

I woke up today
As you might have easily guessed
There’s one thing I must say
You might be less than impressed

I read in the news
There was a man with the answers
For shaking off the blues
With a shot he took his chances

He made a pact with a bottle
One more drink, he’s on his way
But, he had forgotten
The liquor’s quick and it made him stay

The girl she had a message
It was hidden in her underwear
The punter paid his money first
And took her in the chair

She shivered at the thought of it
His weapon in her face
Sadly, so the story goes there is no other place

She made a deal with her ego
One more trick, she’s on her way
But, he’s no amigo
The money’s quick and it makes her stay

I woke up this morning
As you might have easily guessed
There’s one thing that I’ve got to say
Aren’t you just a little impressed?

They made a deal off the level
One more trick, they’re on their way
But, they were bedevilled
Old Nick is quick and he makes them stay

To take them away

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You can stream or download my new song for free from BandCamp here.

As you have noticed, I used MidJourney to create some artwork although it’s very much modified from the software’s output.

Here are some of the other images my prompts about someone with a hat drinking at an outdoor bar in the desert generated. The prompt was something along the lines of: “A photographically realistic image in the style of album cover designers Hipgnosis. A man sat at a dusty bar in the open air in the desert. There is a bottle on the bar next to a wide-brimmed hat. He holds a glass of whisky in one hand. Also on the bar is an ashtray with a cigarette. The smoke from the cigarette rises up hundreds of feet.
On the horizon is a distant bridge that looks like the Devil’s Gate bridge. He is not a cowboy. No words.” MidJourney was quite free with how it interpreted my prompt, wouldn’t you say?