Awards all over the place

So, watched the Brits on TV last night, well for as long as I could stand it anyway. Who the hell is buying Busted records? They’re British?

Muse were the best live act that I saw – a huge wall of distortion and compression; Nice.

Not sure what 50 cent was up to; fair enough that the engineer had his back-up rapper miked up much louder than the man himself, but it was still a pretty lame performance, even by pop standards. Beyonce was hot as always, and Missy’s burst of ‘Pass that dutch’ at the end of a Alicia Keys and that woman from ‘Do Doubt’s version of Kiss was a bit of refreshment, before I just had to go back to work on my own tracks to clear my head.

So guess almost all the awards are over now – Academy awards, Golden Globes, MTV, just one left that I can think of: the Bloggies

Some decent nominees, and nice to see a new British/Irish category. Moby makes it into best music weblog category, which is great, as it’s been going for ages, and his posts are wierdly addictive.

As for me, I don’t mind whether it’s an MTV award or a Bloggie that I get nominated for next year, as long as it’s one of them…

New tracks online

OK, I’ve finally got it together to upload some more of my music; Solo material this time, and it’s a spread of stuff going back as much as 2 years!

You can listen to the tracks by clicking on a track title in the right hand column, under the ‘TUNES BY BLUZE’ title. You’ll need Realplayer to hear them.

You’ll notice a couple of unauthorised vocals in there; I wrote them for my live shows, and they always go down well, so I thought it’d be fun to pop them up here too. Until I get shut down by some piracy body or another, that is.

Please feel free to post your comments; I’d love to know what people think.

John B weblog

I’ve finally found another Drum ‘n’ Bass producer weblog!

It’s called john b robo diary and it’s kept by John B of Beta Recordings, obviously. It’s great to see his diary; updates on the progress of hs album, as well as all his gigs – He’s a busy guy 4 sure.

Anyone know of any other d&b weblogs?

Sounds Expo 2004

I visited Sounds Expo 2004 this week. It’s an excellent event for musicians, producers and engineers at the Wembley Exhibition Center, with stands and seminars by all the big players – Yamaha, Korg, Roland, Emagic, and many others.

Highlight for me was an appearance by LTJ Bukem in the 5.1 seminars room – He sharing his experiences of producing Drum ‘n’ Bass in 5.1 surround sound, and played the results, which were amazing – I’ve never heard dance music mixed specifically for surround before, and it was very eye (ear?) opening – A much richer, fuller sound, with many new possiblilites for creative mixing. I spoke with him afterwards (he had phoned me ages ago about my music, and played out a dubplate of mine for a while too) and passed on the latest Bluze/Morph & Bluze CD; Let’s hope he likes it…

I was also really pleased to be able to witness first-hand the new vocaloid virtual instruments – Launched in the UK at the exhibition; These plugins, for those of you who haven’t heard of them, are the world’s first realistic voice synthesisers – You enter the notes, words, and expressions, and the synth sings back at you, just like your own session-singer-in-a-box. I was very surprised at what I heard; the vocals were much more realistic than expected – I can easily imagine using them in my tracks; there’s quite a lot of control on emphasis, tremelo, pitch, tone etc, so lots of creative potential there – I wonder how long it’ll be before we get the first club hit with a virtual vocal from one of these; I reckon it won’t be long.

Also fun was the Future music bar; I’ve been an avid reader of the mag for years, so it was great to meet the team; gave them a demo too, and just hung out for a bit; They had a great auction for charity; a few people got some rediculous bargains on software like Live, Reaktor and Cubase SX. I held back though – I’m after a top pair of headphones for monitoring, so that I can work on my tracks during the day without bothering the others in the offices…

Mute visit

Readin’: “Critial Chain”, by Eliyahu M. Goldratt
Feelin’ : “This is not a test”, by Missy Elliot

Sorry it’s been so long since I posted, more heavy work, but I’ve fitted in quite a bit of music too. I spent the day recently down at Mute Records, in The Instrument’s Studio 1 with Roger Johnson, Moby’s engineer.

It was a brilliant day; I learnt loads, just watching, and learning to listen in a different way, and noticing the way that different mikes have such dramatic effects on the way a recording sounds. Roger’s the bomb – he made a shitty cheap drumkit sound like it was the most fantastic kit ever made.

Hangin out at Mute was good too; the studios have a wicked atmosphere, you can just lounge around and chat with the others using the studios – someone was making d&b in studio 2, and the other engineers and assistants were cool, getting into the vibe, and talking/living music.

I hope I’ll hook up with Roger again sometime soon, and maybe we’ll make a track together, see how it goes.

I’ve been on a hip hop tip recently; heard Missy’s latest cut, and those Timbaland beats just blew me away, I just had to get straight into the studio; I’ll post something up as soon as I reckon it’s ready for you to check out…