Category Archives: Antikrish Music

Blood Red River – Full version

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My first venture into playing slide guitar, I’d only been playing a few months and this track (Originally written and performed by the legendary Brownie McGhee) is in Cmajor. 

During the first few years we used to do music, most of it was written on Alex’s upright piano and I think this track sums that up for me perfectly; images of visiting Alex during a gorgeously warm summer and hearing the piano piece come together is still very fresh in my mind. Alex was taking piano lessons at the time and I remember him practicing this for weeks and always wondering how the bloody hell the bassline went as well?!?

I think this was the first time I’d really contributed a half decent guitar track to a song and remember the feeling of shakily getting through the whole thing. The slide guitar is in Cmajor tuning for anyone who gives a shit!

Overall, one of my favourite tracks. So here it is.

Cort ‘Earth Grand’ acoustic guitar

Alex and I had a funky doorstep chat outside his flat last Saturday, South London style.  It may or may not have gone something like this:

“‘ere!!! Do you ‘ear about old Missus Miggins and her prosthetic fanny?!?”
“Oooooooh, well I never?!?! Is it a nice one!??”
“Yer, she got it from Argos you know!!  Sounds like a bleedin’ fog horn it does when her clam coughs”.
“What a cunt…..”

After 20 minutes of the usual Krishnan/Ghandi banter it eventually came to light that El Baldie has some new ideas for music bits. Huzzah. Alex has recently sold his drum kit which means the days of live jams are gone, certainly for the forseable future anyway which is a bit of a shame because I felt we’d started churning out some decent ideas during the sporadic sessions including “Come On!” and old tracks like “Blick”.

Nevermind though, it’s just not practical with noise levels/storage and all that jazz.  It’s just not cricket! However, all is not lost it seems because we intend to start doing acoustic based stuff instead.  Double huzzah!!!

So, on Saturday, 15th of August I’ll be toodling over to Al’s with the Tascam to lay some new ideas down and possibly rethink some existing songs like the new latin version of Marvin/Carry on which we came up with in October.  I really like the new arrangement on that track.

I’ll also be taking my brand new Cort ‘Earth Grand’ acoustic guitar which I purchased today from Martin Phelps music shop in South Croydon for the tidy sum of £199.99.  Yes, just £199.99!  That’s more than reasonable for an acoustic I think?  I was going to get a Yamaha as they’re great guitars but was so taken with the Cort that I almost ran out the shop with it.  I bought my Danelectro from Martin Phelps, I also get my amps serviced there and would highly recommend as they are fantastic they are to deal with.

I’ve never heard of Cort guitars before if I’m really honest, but I was really taken with it because it pretty much looks like a lump of wood with strings on, no fancy varnish or scratch plate which I found unusual.

I’ve played it tonight for just over an hour and my first impressions are that it’s a solid build, no string buzz, good construction and it has a lovely clear tone which makes it perfect for chords and picking (precisely what I was looking for).  So I’m really looking forward to Saturday week when Alex and I meet up and see what’s what.

So until then, feast your eyes. Party on garth!

But I Carry On (With a latino twist)

Today saw me mark my 31st birthday; It got an A+.  Ho ho ho………….

I write this particular entry having spent my day revisiting an age old tradition of mine; spending it with Alex scoffing profuse amounts of food and writing/recording music.

I was very graciously received by my hosts (big shout out to Alex’s bird, Josie for the rum induced Guitar Hero entertainment) who quickly bestowed upon me the very finest homemade pizza and chips I have had the fortune of consuming; I am still rather full now (photos of said pizza to follow courtesy of the bird shortly!).

After Josie nodded off, Alex and I retired to the lounge with the acoustics and sat working out the ‘Marvin’ riff with the original chords from ‘Carry on’.  My post on the 7th October centers around a quick recording I did of the original chords coupled with the riff; click on the sound sample below to get a rough idea of what we’re moving way from.  Apologies for the dodgy guitar FX sound; I used one built into my Tascam and it’s a bit pants but I was in a rush!

The older version of the marvin/carry on

Both Alex and I became bored of the slow tempo and also how rigid the arrangement was, Al then proposed a new direction and fortunately we found it pretty quickly, a change of rhythm and a slight change to the riff produced a Latin version of ‘Carry on’.

I have uploaded several videos (my favourite is Alex and the bassline due to the banter) onto youpube (please see below) which were taken at various points in our little session, I was really glad I had my camera because we worked out several guitar ideas, the bass, and also a new vocal line.  All in all I’m really excited about this track; hopefully we can get something recorded down properly onto the desk in the coming weeks.

Thanks again Baldie and Bird for a funky day. Areeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeba!

I should add that I am the main guitar player on video here (it’s a little dark) and Alex is generally out of shot but playing as well or providing percussion etc.

How the Marvin riff has changed

The first take using the new riff and arrangement

Alex’s new idea for the rhythmn, caught on camera!

Baldie comes up with the bass line

A reasonably good idea of how the song sounds at this point in time

Come On!!!! – 1st take

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This is a very roughly recorded snippet of COME ON which Alex wrote last week before we did our recording sesh on the 15th Feb.

It’s a punky number and I literally learned the chords during the warm up that morning, Alex similarly put together the drums and I am only slightly disappointed that we never recorded the early takes of it because it was full of such amazing energy.

Playing this really knackered us out. Anyway, this is definately one for the future and I can’t wait to get my teeth stuck into it properly.

Give A Little Help – Rock Version (rough take 3)

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Following my post of Give a Little Helps new arrangement a couple of days ago I’ve been fiddling about on the desk listening to the track and chatting with Alex at great length about getting our first complete track up on the site for people to download. Our goal is to have a track up, hopefully, before I go away to the States in March.

The one thing we both love about the original rock version of Give a Little Help was the main guitar riff. We both decided to kick out the pick guitar for now because it muddles up the track and detracts from the simple formula of the song. The bass stays out (this was the bass from the Ragtime version of old and didn’t go) and just focus on drums, acoustic and main lead guitar for now.

I have also edited down several versions of the track for Alex to practice drums and vocals for; this is in view to our planned recording session scheduled for Friday the 15th February 2008.

So here we go, below is the latest take of the song and essentially will be the guide track for what will be used to make the final master for the song.

There’s a few surprises in store for this track, one of which I’m personally very much looking forward to, purely for the ROCK factor, and also because I think it’ll give a really good edge to the song.

Give A Little Help – Rock Version (rough take 2)

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To prepare for my imminent visit to the States I’ve been doing a fair bit of overtime during the last 3-4 weeks. That along with doing my usual comics business it’s really taken it’s toll. Working from seven to eleven every night. It really makes life a drag, I don’t think that’s right. Ahem.

Anyroad, I finally found myself relatively free this weekend so I decided to do some music at home around my nephew Kai’s 10th birthday which involved a sleepover of three hyper 10 year olds (I got dragged into lots of lightsaber fighting, football, Wii-ing etc).

Alex and I are gearing up to a days recording midweek sometime in February because I have one days holiday to take before I zip off Stateside. So to prepare I thought I’d have a bit of practice on the Tascam.

Dan Murr (sometime session bassist and founding member of rock group Mary’s Dog) is a work colleague and mate of mine who recommended I use the drum software Beatcraft by Accoustica.

tn_beatcraftIt’s very simple to use and has tons of samples of all kinds of kits which you can eventually make a backing tracking from by adding beats and measures a bar at a time. That doesn’t take as long as you’d think as you just edit several patterns and then throw them into a built in sequencer. You can also layer effects on each sample i.e. put distortion on the snare, reverb on the hi hat etc. I’d really recommend it for all you budding John Bonhams out there.

I put the drums down onto the desk on Saturday along with a guide acoustic track thanks to the Ovation electro-acoustic’s input which I plugged straight into the desk. I initially put the main guitar riff down with the Danelectro (again Direct Input or DI) but the guitar effects built into the Tascam are not the best; Alex likened my first take as similar sounding to Gary Moore (which isn’t good folks, too much reveeerrrbbbbbb). The good thing that came from the first take was an overdubbed pick guitar track that I put on the final verse.

The kids eventually cleared off Sunday morning and I had an empty house at my disposal. Ha ha neighbours, suck my plums! I cranked up the fender twin amp, plugged in the Danelectro along with my Marshall Bluesbreaker pedal to get a nice fat tone for the main heavy riff. After that I again used the Fender twin with Marshall pedal and Danelectro to get the pick guitar sound on the final verse.

I did put down a bass guitar track but it was too busy and made the mix even muddier so I decided to leave it out for now.

Fairytale

Just a very quick snip of me sodding about with my Danelectro through the Fender twin reverb ampalong with an original MXR phase 100 pedal for the sheer hell of it during the second bit of the video.

I’m just playing the main verse of a track called Fairytale which Alex put together in the late 90’s, I like it a lot and imagine we might do a new version to stick up on the site soon.

Hot off the press – Little Potatoes

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Just mixed this down after a day in the office doing some overtime. Dug out another track from the same recent session that the snippet of Blick is from (Alex on Drums and I’m just playing the Danelectro electric). I just popped a makeshift bassline on it to fatten it out a bit (thankfully without any blisters this time).

This track originates from a jam and was my attempt to get away from always playing blues/rock guitar chords and riffs. Originally it was a slow moody jazz piece with some amazingly simple but effective shuffle drums, but I wanted to put this snippet on the site because I really love the offbeat drums Alex puts down towards the end of this sample. Definately the funky end of jazz.

Hot off the press – Blick

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Antikrish are proud to present a very basic working demo of ‘Blick’ which was recorded using the Tascam a couple of months ago by Al and I; It represents the first of our new material and marks the first time we have recorded together since the new millenium kicked in.

Blick was always one of our favourite tracks to jam with because it’s one of those tracks that sounded reasonably good no matter how we were playing at the time given our familiarity of the song. From my personal perspective I (Kev) could stick to the basics if playing a bit rough, or improvise my nuts off if I’m feeling confident on a good day (rough translation = put in a few bendy twangs). This particular take is played with a much quicker tempo than normal (in an attempt to brighten things up and change the sound a little).

From memory, the song was originally written by Alex to try and write a track purely starting with the bass guitar first; which when you think about it, is pretty unorthadox and something I always really liked about the song. Over the years we fiddled with the track, put in some extra bits and it changed from a slow latin rock track to a progressive blues rock number.

I decided to add a bassline to the live recording in order to give a rough idea of how it would sound with a little more depth and I have to say I’m really happy with it after mixing down (I put the mixed master through Sony Soundforge Editing Suite to brighten things up a bit).

I would like to also point out that today saw me (Kev) play the bass properly for the first time in years; I now have a blister about the size of an M&M sweet located on both tips of my index fingers. If I were to describe the tight sensation on my fingers, I’d have to liken it to the feeling you get when you try and glue an airfix model airplane as a kid using superglue, get your thumb and index stuck together and then after you prize them free THAT is how my finger feels at the moment*.

More work in progress to follow shortly.

*Please do not try this at home. Antikrish.com does not accept any liability for people who ruin a promising career as a pianist by bonding their digits together with glue.