peter wyeth

Stumbled upon this again the other day. I made a tape last year and these lovely people wrote about it. Butterfly Polite are a wonderful group, you should give them some of your time.

I thought home taping had already killed music.

This week, for the first time in some years, I bought a new album on tape – Peter Wyeth’s album “Safe, Sweet, Happy Journeys”, and lovely it is too – being as beautiful and delicate as Peter always is, and as hissy as tapes always were.

I thoroughly appreciate the two-fingers-to-the-world attitude implied by the decision to release it on cassette only, but also applaud the (perhaps unintended) effect on the listener. By asking me to go to the extra effort of setting up (or remembering how to use) a tape player, then I am more inclined to sit and listen to it, rather than pop it on passively. Also the short playing time per side means a concentrated listen is not an unreasonable thing to ask of this listener. I have often decried the CD as killing music through nothing other than the format itself encouraging long albums of musical wallpaper to put on whilst you iron. Here Peter Wyeth has said “you shall not iron, you shall try to remember what the ‘NR’ and ‘Type II’ switches on your tape deck do – and once you have worked that out you shall need to have a sit down and a rest. Whilst you are sitting, why not listen to this relaxing music”.

I’ve just started reading a new book and I’m at that point where possibilities reveal themselves. Different paths. Rivulets of verse that could lead anywhere should I choose to follow. Should my interest be held in this particular courtship. I like this promise.

I love music that speaks of a particular time and/or place, that documents a moment when something happened. Just that once. And that it was captured. Southern Souls seems to do a lot of this. Enjoy.

(Discovered with much thanks to Christine Bougie)

Sunday morning and through the bathroom window I can hear the wind rustling the leaves of the trees, whistling over the overflow pipes. I can hear a Wood Pigeon wing beats, the clap as it swoops from one tree to another. I can hear a Chaffinch too. I can hear a neighbour’s youngest daughter shout to her mother and her calling back, their voices ricocheting off the houses behind ours. Sounds both ordinary and fascinating, comforting and engaging.

As I wave goodbye to analog recording (again) and open my arms (slightly reluctantly) to welcome the world of digital (again), I’ve been pondering what it is about the world of cassette recording I like so much. The question of quality is an irrelevant one to me, I really don’t think it matters. Each format has it’s own unique quality – like a lens filter, like polaroid film – I don’t really feel it’s an issue as long as an idea is captured. This in itself may be because of my age and living with/through a variety of formats but that’s a conversation for another time.

No, what I think it is I like about cassettes is their tangibility. I can hold them, I can see the reels turning round, the hand writing on the sleeve. I notice I feel the same about minidiscs too (and I love minidiscs) and I can’t see anything thing about them when I put them in the machine. But I still twirl the case in my hand, listening and jotting notes down in my MD notebook (I catalogue it all, just in case). It just seems more real. And that’s the one thing I really miss with digital.

From Touch the Sound.
Evelyn Glennie.

At the begining of the year I boldly attested that I would be doing a whole raft of recording with the view to have something to wave around mid -March. Er….that hasn’t quite happened but it’s not for the want of trying, believe me! Trying to capture what I do live has proved pretty difficult despite theoretically being quite easy to do. I tried a few things….

First I went to the Methodist Church in my village with John Meredith of Make Recordings. It has a fantastic long wooden floored room with loads of ambience. Too much ambience. And the number 85 bus going past. We went tooled up though with a plan but it just didn’t happen on the night.

The whammo Behringer stereo pair of mics sounded ace though.

You can read more about what happened and see photos on John’s blog here

Then I tried some stuff at home. This is trickier than it sounds. The house has to be empty and I have to make sure the neighbours are out. Actually recording is harder still as it involves a mass of tangled wires, mic stands put up in the oddest of placests and singing into a microphone whilst stooping down from a chair combined with my limited skills. And patience. I also have to be able to pack it up and prepare supper for 4 with only five minutes warning. Some of the jazz form this session sounded OK.

Next up I went to what shall remain a nameless studio in North Leicestershire where I paid a premium price for some equipment that was ‘the best you’re gonna get I’m afraid, mate’; a ruined take due to the engineers phone going off and the signal being picked up by EVERYTHING!!! After around and hour and twenty minutes of pissing about we got going and recorded about 40-50 minutes worth of material. At least that’s what I thought but when I got back and checked the takes seems bits of audio were missing…as if somene had knocked the faders down/muted/ generally not paid attention whilst they were monkeying about on Facebook! Which is a shame as some of it sounded pretty good.

So we keep plodding along. I definately think it’s getting closer and I promise I am trying to have something ready soon.