I record instrumental rock & roll, as simply as possible : I try to get guitar sounds I want using amps/FX boxes and then record them. If I don't do that, I end up forever tweaking the reverb/vibrato etc and never finishing it. Having said that, the amp simulators are great : if I can just fix the settings and resist the temptation to just adjust this ....

I keep the recording simple for 2 reasons - they are mainly demos for my band to get a handle on them, and (more importantly) I have devoted many many hours to polishing and tweaking recordings to realise that they are either no darn good. Nice arrangements, nothing really there.

I record on a standard PC, using Acid Pro 6, mainly electric guitars and recently bought a bass guitar for the first time in many years which has been great fun. I have a small MIDI keyboard that I mean to get set up again ....

I've lost loads of recordings through pressing the wrong button. One night Late on, I put a cup of tea across the keyboard with a Telecaster when I had just nailed a solo on the sixth take, which meant I had to - make the guitar safe, disconnect the keyboard, clean up the spilled tea, swap the keyboard from the other PC in and THEN save. For a solo that in the end I didn't like.

Let me know when / how we share.

Garageband user (I prefer it over most high-end packages). Record quirky lo-fi tracks, usually giving myself a short time limit to write and record, two hours being the optimum. I'd never dream of playing them in my band, they are too personal/weird/amusing. I don't often play them for anyone because I do them for my own entertainment.

I'm a multi-instrumentalist. Started out on the guitar, and from there mastered keyboards, bass, harmonica, mandolin, banjo, accordion, concertina, and many others. A few years back decided to concentrate on harmonica, mandolin and dobro only. Not a bad producer/programmer.

If anyone wants a contribution to a track, to liven it up or move it into a quirky new direction, give me a shout.

It is pretty easy to post your music up on Archive.org, though you should familiarize yourself with Creative Commons licenses before doing anything. The benefit of doing this is that it gets the music out there, and if you select the right type of license, no-one can derive secondary benefit from it. They can't sell the music posted there. Other sites - read the small print.

..and up for sharing.I have been recording and uploading my very low fi( No effectes!!) demos onto myspace for a year or so. Happy to share , happy to hear comments, positive or negative.

Just today the GF introduced me to garageband...which is fun , but still feels a bit like cheating to my tascam 4 track mind!!

I've recently started putting more effort into my recordings of late. At the moment I've been doing experiments with ambient based folk that has psychadelic leanings.

It would be nice to see what else the Word readers record.

I do a lot of home recording - Akai DPS 16 hard disk recorder 16 track and a load of outboard gear - I just use the computer for mixing down to and mastering. I am at the end of a lengthy project recording a dozen self penned songs as a set - I have been in mixing hell for months. But I am, touch wood, almost finished. It is largely acoustic based folky/West Coasty sort of stuff. Lots of harmonies. But English influences in there too - a few in DADGAD for example.

Go here:

idisk.mac.com/adamjsear-Public

Login name: public

Password: I will send this to you in a message rather than publishing it on the web!

There is a folder titled 'Word Massive' - drop MP3s in there - shall we say a max of three each?

Deadline? Don't really need one - we can all go to the folder, upload / download as we wish - then comment on this thread. What do you say? Shall we give it a try?

(Might be best to compress files to .zip if we can!?)

...though I'm in no way a techno-boffin - I don't even have a mobile phone and I've never played a computer game of any sort - but I had great fun with a 4-track tape machine, a couple of guitars and a borrowed moog as a kid in the mid '80s and a couple of years back bought a Boss digital 8-track (designed to seem simple to idiots/technophobes like me by pretending to look like a 4-track).

I haven't really picked up an instrument in the past year or so, but I got a great deal out of my system in 2007-8 with an albums worth of stuff, which slipped out on CD under an alias, most of which was first demoed on the 8-track, including my dreadful voice, before quality artistes/pitying or generous friends were hauled in to do them justice in studios.

Funny thing was, some of the original 8-track parts often had a certain 'something' that couldn't be regained in a pro studio, hence two tracks (one with Judy Dyble kindly doing the biz on vocals, flown in - the vocals that is, not Judy - from deepest Oxfordshire, the other with Duke Special popping round to tinkle the ivories on a digital piano I really must try and learn to play before picking up his kids from school - oh, it's just showbiz central round here!) were pretty much Boss recordings painstakingly reassembled, manually track by track, on Pro Tools. Great fun...

In a way, the world now resembles how Roy Harper once described the last days of the famous star-making 'Les Cousins' folk dive in Soho circa 1970: 'By the end, every one was a singer-songwriter - there was no audience left'. :-)

...show us all the way, and let's share the embers from the last fires of recorded music before someone switches off the light. Techno-grumbler though I am, I can just about turn a CD track into an MP3 and send it into space... :-)

...I can't see how to send a message via the site (other than posting here). Obviously I'm missing something (a brain... common sense... forwards-compatability...)

Sketches Of You
Breaking Down My Barriers
You Don't Own Me

apologies for mic quality, they're only rough versions at the moment

and one is 8 and a half minutes long...

into the world of Pro-tools... steep learning curve ahead.

hopefully have some tracks up soon.

I too started on Tascam 4 track cassette then Zoom hard-disk recorder..but I've always wanted to get into the world of Midi

I'm a guitarist/singer mainly but have collected loads of instruments aliong the way and want to experiment.got one track up here www.myspace.com/strawfields I recorded it a couple of years ago with the good intention of doing more.

But I've been busy with various other bands
my recent band HUXLEY

http://www.myspace.com/huxley013

looking forward to hearing your stuff!

Nice idea,

I also started with a Tascam 4-track, but have been using Cakewalk 2 on my pc since about 2001. There are more advanced versions of this and other software around, but would require a large upgrade to said pc, and I'm pretty happy with it anyway. It's a fairly basic 8-track, but with the option of some digital tweaking. I use a drum machine and play everything else. There are songs on my myspace (link in my user-profile), but I'll add something to your iDisk soon!

I've noticed a few bedroom noodlers on here as well. I use Abelton Live on a standard spec PC to record through my M Audio Ozone midi keyboard though I should look at hooking up to my laptop for portability.

My music is a very lo-fi 'mash-up' of alesis sr-16 droop loops, acoustic guitar, glokenspiel (or xylophone, people can never get that one right), mandolin and whatevers lying around. I've been known to use pepper grinders as percussion. Sneezy. Beck, Eels and lo-fi artists like Moldy Peaches are probably my biggest influences songwriting wise. I'm not much of a producer but enjoy the songwriting side of things and messing around with layering up sound. Would be more than happy to share...

come from the greek root Xylo for wood...ya see?
sorry.

Beck was my main influence for considering home recording ...him and Gomez.

Will email you the password for my iDisk asap. Or email me via this site & I will send you the info! Glad to see people getting into it!!

Better As A Memory
You Can't Touch Me Now

Both recorded in my dining room on an iMac with GarageBand. Used a cheap Samson USB mic & a Variax guitar. All FX are in GarageBand. Also use an M-Audio USB keyboard to access the soft-synths, etc. Monitored on cheap(ish) Edirol micro monitors & *nice* Sennheiser er, 'cans.' Chiefly think of what I do as songwriting - these are fleshed out demos, really. I'm no musician (or singer!), but I think it's a pretty good sound.

Welcome to Twangsville
Hit The Waves

Straightahead surfin' instrumentals.

As people couldn't access my .RAR file I am now attempting to put up the mp3s.

Same 3 as before:

Sketches Of You
You Don't Own Me
Breaking Down My Barriers

I've got some older stuff recorded on a Roland VS-840 sync'd to my PC running Cakewalk. For a few years my band (Split the Kitty) took precedence, but that's now on hold since our singer moved to Amsterdam. So it's back to the home recording, the plan being to move everything onto the PC and upgrade to Sonar. In the meantime I could upload one or two of the older tracks.

and is unlikely to be worth the wait but I've somehow, finally, overcome my first idisk experience. It's not them, it's me but I somehow managed to get three tracks up. They're in:

Word Massive> Gav Leonard - My Great Fanclub

Crocodile
The Day I left the House
What's the deal with Dinosaurs

I can't really sing for toffee but enjoy writing lyrics and xylophone riffs!

Now that I've got the hang of it, I'll try to check out previous uploads.

Cheers again Adman.

have listened to all the tracks so far. an interesting mix. we all seem to be into lo-fi sounds.

the list of musical influences so far seems to be:

Duane Eddy
Bauhaus
Television Personalities / Half Man Half Biscuit
Panda Bear
Giorgio Moroder / Robert Johnson - a logical combination (thanks Andrew)

I'm excited to hear more

I've uploaded the following:

Sweet Levee Moan (the Moroder/Johnson combo that BK refers to) - this is actually a proper recording. I got paid for this one, it was used in an advert.

The rest are 'two hour challenge' tracks... done from scratch in two hours... purely for my own entertainment.

You Can All Go Home Now - a bitter little tune aimed at boring dinner party guests. I like to think of this as a tribute to Warren Zevon.

Oranges - a parody of a heartfelt song. Uses the tortuous metaphor of a football half time snack of oranges for a mid-life crisis.

Tablets of Stone - a blues hymn to prozac, with very dodgy FM synth

I've Got A Fairlight - a 'tribute' to the musical arms-race of the mid 80s. Refers to Peter Gabriel's sampling of paving slabs on PG4, Thomas Dolby, and of course the old favourite, the orchestral stab. The only track that uses any of the built in loops from GarageBand.

That's a description from Word Magazine regarding most of the people on Myspace. I laughed for several days at this, until I looked in the mirror...

I don't consider myself an unsigned act, as I have no aspirations for my own recordings to be anything more than a hobby. Hardly anyone ever hears them. Do any of you have any genuine aspirations here? What does home recording mean to you?

until I get money for a producer / recording studio - it's good to have rough demos, should the opportunity arise

my actual stuff would be a lot less lo-fi, I'm just rubbish at producing myself

Well, against the odds (ie against my latent technophobia) I've managed a couple of nights back to upload three tunes (took AGES, mind!), two of them might even be in the right folder... But my blasted internet access has been down ever since (currently, briefly, on a relative's PC), so I've had no chance yet to hear anybody else's stuff, for which my sincere apols...

As for aspirations, I won't deny I'd love someone with a vast worldwide audience to cover one of my songs (I haven't yet uploaded the one which, in my utter delusion, would be The One - and if I do, you'll all be very welcome to say I'm deluded!) and take financial worry out of my life forever. But the odds are massively against that ever happening. And, as someone said above, it's a nice hobby - I've absolutely no desire to be 'an artist' myself - even if I was the right age/looks/craziness to try, it just isn't in me. C'est la vie!

Recorded this today, it's an arrangement of a Brian Patten poem I've done.

I got the guitar and ukulele to sound right, but the voice still distorted, as I had to boost it to get volume, as it sounded a bit muffled.

I think I'm getting there.

Please add as many tracks as you like (the storage will take it for now!) and let everyone know via the thread.

Remember, if you need the iDisk password / protocol contact me via this site & I will email it back to you.

Am looking forward to catching up with all the tunes this week...

Standby for a collaborative music making thought... will explain soon...

We select a key (say C maj) and a tempo (say 100 bpm) and we all upload short home made loops. We then all work on a track which incorporates these bits and upload them to the iDisk by a given date. Any thoughts? Should give some varied and interesting results!

Have uploaded some of these. Title is synonymous with the wav. I believe it to be in 100bpm, but I'm not sure if I trust my computer or not.

Anyway, it's easy enough to change the speed of the track.

A bit of harmonica vamping, a complete chord sequence on mandola, some individual mandola chords, and a dobro phrase. Do whatever you want with them!

If anyone has a chord sequence in mind, let us know.

A few bits of generic synth noise uploaded too (Andrew stems 2.zip)

Drag & drop to there!
(Still haven't done any myself- have spent my 'day off' editing a film for a school - no they don't pay me for that sort of thing! I love it though, so mustn't grumble!)

Am wondering if we should call the collective Wonk Face & the track 'Egg Friday' as a tribute to the great lost pop act...

actually, rough and ready, but it's a proof of concept if nothing else.

It's now up on Adman's idisk, in the wrong directory, naturally.

I've just uploaded Egg Friday Omlette Mix (by Wonk Face).

The FPO was out, and I was at a loose end. So rather than eat a Fray Bentos pie, I thought I'd give it a go. Took about 2 hours to assemble.

http://virb.com/blindboyclaesson

put up some ideas, guitar noises, vocals, and some ambient noise

also included in the .RAR folder is a speech by Winston Churchill, as I occasionally put in clips of things, influenced by "The Holy Bible" in this respect

is now 'up' on the iDisk.
2 minutes 38 seconds of sonic silliness - thanks for all the loops, seeds, stems & bits - really enjoyed putting this together!

(badger_king - apologies for not including more of your stuff, but my Mac won't open your .RAR - any tips on this for future reference... I'm assuming we'd quite like to do this again sometime - I know I would!)

EDIT:
Have also added "Egg Friday (The Adkids Mash-up)"
As I finished the track my daughter & her friend (both 5 years old) said 'Can we have a go?' and piled into the room with guitar, toy drum, toy sax, Early Learning Centre keyboard & a tambourine. My son (8) added the 'howler monkey' vocals. I hope you like it?! (Actually think they improved my version, little blighters!!)

Good work.

I have uploaded a (very basic) guitar and voice cover of Moby's "In This World", just to see what people think. I was happy with the sound of my voice. Very basic recording onto an mp3 dictaphone.

Also thought people may be interested to see the following. This was me at the beginning of May playing one of my tracks called "Slow Motion Waltz" for an evening of music at church.

Quality isn't great, but you get the idea.

You slightly resemble him, you sing in a similar register & you even play in churches!
'Slow Motion Waltz' - good song - nice minor chords.

Your Moby cover sounds great - is that a 12 string? Voice very strong & recording does it justice. That's a good quality recorder by the sound of it. I find it weird how I can often capture good recordings 'through the air' then when I come to do it 'properly' the spirit is lost. My only comment would be: overdubs! Assume that the listener has a short attention span, it doesn't matter how great your song is - fill in the gaps for them!!

(Am investigating WinRAR by the way - but need to get a Mac compatible version from a reputable source... for the time being I can still only access MP3s)

hopefully I've now uploaded a song from many moons ago - "The Wimp" an 80's-recorded retread of the Nowhere Man theme more-or-less but with considerably less heart.

It's from a time when jangly guitars and diminished chords were popular, and I'd grown a little weary of "worthy" subjects so it's a mite cynical and includes a snatch of something recorded previously (apologies for twisting those lyrics, Jerry, wherever you may be).

It's recorded on a Teac 4-track (originally), at least one analogue generation on from that. Myself plus a pair of acquaintances (Hi Paul and Richard) on backing vocs, analogue synths, bass, drum machine. Myself vocals, guitar, some elec piano, inarticulate yelps.....

Hope to do something with more current bits and pieces once I've located the recording software I had somewhere, finished putting the 80s synth back together, got to grips with the PC-based synth software etc. etc.

it's fairly untypical of what I'd recorded before then - something not too serious with a bit more structure seemed to work better. It pre-dates Belle & Seb by quite some way: you've fingered Orange Juice correctly as they (and probably Aztec Camera) would have been among the contemporary influences.... so it is a bit of a museum piece. Will try & put something newer together soon.

I do have a liking for Belle and Sebastian, and other understated stuff - was interested to see elsewhere you liked Au Revoir Simone (missed the session myself, though).

I have uploaded the Alex Peters remix of Egg Friday by Wonk Face.

I followed a similar vibe to Adman, but it ended up just sounding like an instrumental out-take from Beck's "Odelay!" album. Oh well. That's also good.

I like the sound of all this stuff - sharing our music and that 'upload the loops and everyone makes something out of them' project.

I'm using Ableton Live7 on a fairly old PC with a 88-key midi keyboard and an Aphex mic-pre and a lefty danelectro (yellow for superior tone).

All this is used for various different bands - a 'Lloyd Cole plays Ryan Adams' acoustic thing, a tr*ph*p outfit and an ambient/medieval/chamber/drone/folk/electronica outift that's not as stupid as it sounds

if a place is still needed for hosting these tracks...

everyone could open a soundcloud account for their tracks, and each track's player/widget could then be embedded on a blog/webpage/facebook or wherever, like so...

Icy Solstice Eye (2007) by Far Black Furlong

by the way, that's not my Wonk Face track - that's coming later - it's something else i've done that i already have on soundcloud

Here is my version of the Wonk Face track. Would have been sooner, but discovered i had somehow managed to export the mix in mono.

Andys Wonk Face by spookydirt

.

To make it easier for non-musician types on here to listen, why don't you set up a MySpace site - myspace/wordmassive (say) - and allow people to upload their best-ever song (just one each) that they have recorded.

Set up an email address, 'wordmassive at whatever' with an obvious password ('wordmagazine') and give this all out for people to upload. You can get 10 songs up there, plus YouTube links.

Howzat?

I've uploaded my latest creation of the Wonk Face variety. Somewhat different is an understatement. It is the new sound. Guardian readers would probably class it as a new form of electronic musique concrete. I call it an audio piss take.

Adman: can you clear up the page etc?

New mix is the:
Wonk Face - Egg Friday (Alex Peters Presents ROVO Mix)

You decide....

And also, for those who use last.fm, if you listen to the Wonk Face mixes with the artist as Wonk Face, you may be pleasantly surprised.

Guilty as Charged.
http://www.myspace.com/hrtoad

Hello all -
I am closing public access to the iDisk.
I will leave it open for a week - so download anything you want before I close it.
Personal reasons. Hope you understand.
All the best.

Scrub that! I was in a bad mood.
Carry on sharing!!!

Who wants to suggest another project?

Andrew - do you want to kick off with a slow minor key thing?

I want to carry on - it's rare enough to meet like minded people, without throwing it away.

MY iDISK REMAINS OPEN TO THE MASSIVE!!

don't forget folks, if you upload your track to soundcloud you can embed the file in the forum - and also join the word massive soundcloud page here:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/the-word-magazine-massive (once you have joined there is a 'add track to group' button on your track somewhere)

and it is now moderated, so those pesky techno people don't try taking over!

I'm currently uploading:

piano
double bass
synth (played on ImpOSCar)
drum loop
the sound of the road under my window being re-surfaced

(The re-surfacing is almost in time with the 90bpm tempo)

If anyone has suggestions for the name for this track? (folder might need to be renamed)

Might be a while before I start building a track - am looking forward to hearing stuff from others.

My track:
Resurfacing by Adman

anyone else contributing stems/loop for this one?

Before finishing your next wonk face mixes, please download my contributions. Sorry they took so long. Have been busy at work.

So, to make up for tardiness, there are 18 clips, of more random instrumentation.

:- Agago, Melodica, 12 string, keyboard strings, distorted vibes, conga, and a piano riff, also distorted

Hope they help.

A more political variant of the Wonk Face project.
Is now on Soundcloud here:

http://soundcloud.com/radiohewad/brief-american-history-alex-peters-free...

Brief American History (Alex Peters Freemix) by radiohewad

Also trying to upload to the iDisk.

Good fun this time.

Return of The Wonk Face [Stringy Vibe Mix] by spookydirt

The Word Magazine Massive

on here: http://www.reverbnation.com/helvatones

i'll see if i can put some up on the word thing!

I make it 10 tracks by the Massive so far
An albums worth!
Shuffle and roll!

Andy's Wonk Face
Brief American History (Alex Peters Freemix)
Egg Friday (Alex Peters Presents ROVO Remix)
Egg Friday (Alex Peters Remix)
Egg Friday (Omlette Mix)
Egg Friday (The Adkids Mash-Up)
Egg Friday (The Adman Mix)
elhombremalo Wonky Face Mix 1
Resurfacing
Return Of The Wonk Face (Stringy Vibes Mix)

Ok, call me mad, but I've recorded some drum tracks. It would be interesting to see what you can all do with them. I must warn you, they do change time as not done to a click track.

Done in a late period Scott Walker style. i.e. weird. Would be cool to see how the massive interprets the tracks and makes them individual.

Have put on iDisk. Delete them if you think its a terrible idea.

Consequently, it needs a tidy up Adman, if you have the time.

iDisk now - same password.
Files have disappeared - so upload anything you wish to share again.
Any probs let me know here.

All the best

Adman
:-)

when being told this morning that there would be a delivery of eggs to our house tomorrow, I casually wrote down "Eggs Friday" on my list of things to do

FACT

Ladies and Gentlemen, Egg Friday/Wonk Face/The Word Massive have left the building.

Most of the tracks can be heard on the player below:

The Word Magazine Massive