Pagan Wanderer Lu - Independent Blogs Pt. 4 - DIY Recording & Oddball Instruments
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paganwanderer
paganwanderer
Today PWL gives us a tour of his home studio, and talks about shining up his recordings and doing live takes at London's famous Dreamtrak Studio.
My friends Keyboard Choir did a blog like this last week and went into a pleasantly geeky amount of detail about their gear. I don’t have as much stuff as them – I’m generally limited to what I can carry to a gig in a bag on a train – but I have a few fun gadgets to tell you about.
Here’s a little video of my studio at home showing off a few of the toys I use:
I record all my stuff myself at home, as I nearly always have. However for added pop sheen I’ve taken most of my recent stuff to Dreamtrak in London. This a great little studio run by Oli Horton of electro-pop titans Trademark.
He also runs live sessions there. Here’s one I did with some friends:
This is a jammed-out version of ‘England Expects’ from my album. The people in the video are Oli (piano), John Brainlove (tape loop vocals), plus Laura Wolf (synth/shaky egg), and Chris Alcxxk (drums/fire extinguisher) of Internet Forever. I’m playing an omnichord through a Korg Kaoss Pad.
The omnichord is an instrument that regularly incites cries of ‘what the hell is that?’ when I whip it out at gigs. The basic principle is that it’s an electronic version of an autoharp. You press buttons for each chord (annoyingly there’s no F#) creating a pleasant hum, and then strum your fingers on a touch-sensitive metal plate which creates a twinkling ‘harp’ sound around that chord.
Despite only making two different sounds it’s really versatile, especially when coupled with various effects. I’ve played it backwards, through a distortion pedal, through a sampler, re-sliced it using a monome, taken it apart and circuit bent it using my hands to play the connections… great fun.
You can hear it twinkling away on these songs:
MP3: Repetition 1
MP3: Knight -> King 4
These recordings are unusual in that they’re from the only EP I’ve made which I didn’t record myself. They were done with my friend and labelmate Napoleon IIIrd at his studio in Leeds. He plays the brass instruments, plus some guitar and bass on the second one. They came out on ‘The Independent Scrutineer’ EP in 2006. This was the first ‘proper’ release I did with Brainlove.
This is a video John shot a while back of me playing ‘Knight -> King 4’ at Abney Park in Stoke Newington, on the omnichord, alone:
That’s all for today. Those of you who now want an omnichord, try eBay.
Happy bidding!
My friends Keyboard Choir did a blog like this last week and went into a pleasantly geeky amount of detail about their gear. I don’t have as much stuff as them – I’m generally limited to what I can carry to a gig in a bag on a train – but I have a few fun gadgets to tell you about.
Here’s a little video of my studio at home showing off a few of the toys I use:
I record all my stuff myself at home, as I nearly always have. However for added pop sheen I’ve taken most of my recent stuff to Dreamtrak in London. This a great little studio run by Oli Horton of electro-pop titans Trademark.
He also runs live sessions there. Here’s one I did with some friends:
This is a jammed-out version of ‘England Expects’ from my album. The people in the video are Oli (piano), John Brainlove (tape loop vocals), plus Laura Wolf (synth/shaky egg), and Chris Alcxxk (drums/fire extinguisher) of Internet Forever. I’m playing an omnichord through a Korg Kaoss Pad.
The omnichord is an instrument that regularly incites cries of ‘what the hell is that?’ when I whip it out at gigs. The basic principle is that it’s an electronic version of an autoharp. You press buttons for each chord (annoyingly there’s no F#) creating a pleasant hum, and then strum your fingers on a touch-sensitive metal plate which creates a twinkling ‘harp’ sound around that chord.
Despite only making two different sounds it’s really versatile, especially when coupled with various effects. I’ve played it backwards, through a distortion pedal, through a sampler, re-sliced it using a monome, taken it apart and circuit bent it using my hands to play the connections… great fun.
You can hear it twinkling away on these songs:
MP3: Repetition 1
MP3: Knight -> King 4
These recordings are unusual in that they’re from the only EP I’ve made which I didn’t record myself. They were done with my friend and labelmate Napoleon IIIrd at his studio in Leeds. He plays the brass instruments, plus some guitar and bass on the second one. They came out on ‘The Independent Scrutineer’ EP in 2006. This was the first ‘proper’ release I did with Brainlove.
This is a video John shot a while back of me playing ‘Knight -> King 4’ at Abney Park in Stoke Newington, on the omnichord, alone:
That’s all for today. Those of you who now want an omnichord, try eBay.
Happy bidding!
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