Category Archives: The Antikrish

Blood Red River – Full version

CLICK TO PLAY

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!

Our 1st Birthday

Today marks the 1st anniversary of our blog, I’d like to commemorate the occasion by popping up a thread to celebrate this most joyous of moments.

Playing music again and having the occasional jam during 2008 has been fantastic and something I truly missed in my old ‘life’. Such simple pleasures should never be taken for granted my friends.

In an effort to record more and step things up a level (to actually record a complete track would by my ultimate aim!) I have been reorganising my home setup and intend to spend more time at the mixing desk instead of the PC; work permitting obviously.

Cheers muchly to all you regular visitors to the site out there who lurk quietly in the background and nag me if I haven’t written anything lately.  I love you all darlings.

Lastly, I’d like to say a big thank you to Alex for updating and hosted the site until it was moved over to a hosted blog this month.  Respec’.

Happy birfinday.

Kev

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

But I Carry On – Work in progress

Phew, I’m knackered having spent the last 4 hours laying down a very, very basic idea on my Tascam multitrack recorder to show how the ‘Marvin’ riff (see the video on this post for details) fits into the original chord structure of ‘But I Carry On’.

The result = perfect fit.

I haven’t got Alex’s opinion on it yet but my personal first impression is that it doesn’t interfer with the original vocal line at all which is pretty cool to say the least (I was worried it might).  I still find it hard to believe that I came up with the ‘Marvin’ riff during a jam and the whole time it was actually an older song.  Spooky.  Anyway, I’ll have a listen in the morning to see what fresh ears can make of it.  Nothing like ’24 hour can syndrome’ to piss you off let me tell you!

All that aside, I feel pretty good having really poured some effort into some music again; depending on what Kojak says I might stick a snippet up sometime tomorrow.

Listening to chooons

Tonight is the second night in a row that I’ve been doing musical bits, It’s fair to say I’ve done bugger all lately.  Last night I picked up the acoustic and barely put it down, scales, chords, running through some old songs Alex and I did together (blah de blah), it was a great feeling.  Indeed, compared to fragging things mindlessly on the xbox it was heavenly; I actually felt slightly ashamed at how quickly I had forgotten such simple pleasures again.

Sitting at work today I promised myself I wouldn’t get caught up in the electronic maelstrom that is the intersnot (save for this post obviously), nor would I go on microshits box of gadget tonight.  I held true to my promise, tonight I literally just sat listening to music, both fiddling on some recordings on the Tascam when I got in, and later on I rifled through my music collection on the PC; it struck me as strange that I rarely do that anymore either.

Ten years ago you would have had a sure bet that I listened to an album per day, now, well, I get distracted by, erm, things and I think it’s about time I put my foot down because I’m starting to get immensely pissed off with myself when it gets to 1am and I’ve done fuck all with my spare time once again!!!!!.

Alex sent me an e mail in the week saying he’d like to start doing some simple acoustic guitar bits again and see if we can record anything that way until Ghandi invests in some new drums. Twang.

Turned out nice again.

Bouncy Bouncy

I’m on lunch at the moment using my colleague Kraig’s wireless dongle (Dongle sounds like an Australian sex toy doesn’t it?) via the laptop. Very snazzy. Although why there aren’t widely available free wireless networks in my area by now god only knows (yes, I know there’s too much money to be made by greedy providers).

Anyway, I spent last night fiddling with the latest mix of GIVE A LITTLE HELP following a prod from Alex; specifically trying to get to grips with bouncing tracks on the desk in order to free up extra recording space. I honestly couldn’t believe how simple the bounce function is on my Tascam, you arm the tracks, push record and off you go! ::insert an ‘I told you so’ statement from Alex here::

For those of you who aren’t familiar with ‘bouncing’ you basically combine any number of the tracks on the mixing desk (each track has an instrument, guitar, bass, drums) onto one or more tracks. This is especially handy if you are using an 8 track recorder like me and only find yourself with 2 tracks left to complete a song with. So for example last night I took 4 tracks including two guitars, two drum tracks (left and right channels) and consolidated them into just 2. That now leaves 6 tracks to put bass, vocals and other bits onto the mix with.

I’m also using the nanoverb effects unit to separate sound out a bit and pretty pleased with the result so far. I intend to concentrate on the mix again tonight and get the levels right, then I’ll throw it through Sony Soundforge to try and get something listenable onto the site. I’m determined to salvage the demo we did and get something decent out of it!

FREEDOM!

Antikrish – Downtime

Thanks to all those who e mailed to advise that the site was down; it was actually rather funky knowing that there’s a fair few of you out there in that have a gander at the site.   I’m touched, genuinely.

I gather a sprocket wotsit or a doo-dah gasket failed somewhere over in Yanksville and Alex’s server went ffffffffft (much to his great annoyance let me tell you).  Don’t you just hate it when things don’t work properly?!?  I’m tenuously posting today in the hope that the server problems are all sorted and that it doesn’t all crash again.  If anything it’s made me appreciate that we do have this funky resource here and I’m going to make sure we have some decent stuff to fill it with.

So, thank you to the server geeks in America (In spods we trust!!!!!) for getting their act into gear, and also muchos kudos to El Baldie for sorting everything out as usual.

Euston Station – The great blow up doll mystery

I’ve got another cold at the moment, and when I am ill I tend to retreat back into my fairly eidetic memory; so, struggling at work I drifted off and eventually sat reminscing about some of the great Baldy/Krishnan escapades of yesteryear. And one in particular came to mind, I thought I’d share it with you:

The yarn. Circa – sometime in mid-late 1990’s.

Alex was coming back from visiting his mum in Wales, I agreed to meet him at London’s Euston station to give him a hand getting some stuff back to Croydon (because there was quite a bit he was bringing back).

Anyway, I met Al and he gave me a backpack and together we jumped on the tube to London Victoria; just as we were ready to get off I suddenly realised that I’d left the backpack on the platform by the bench at Euston.

Realising what I’d done we both immediately got off at the next stop, got on a return tube and proceeded back to Euston. Alex as always was cool as a cucumber but as soon as I got off at the platform and there was nobody there (this was around 6pm on a Sunday and it would normally have been packed); my stomach sank, I knew immediately that I’d sparked a major security alert.

Thankfully the tube we got on was not diverted (it can either sit at a safe stage before the alerted station) – good old British rail) and we were ushered up the escalators and into the main waiting area ready to be escorted out the building.

At this point, the station was completely empty; bizarrely all except for a BLOW UP DOLL someone had left inflated and left standing up on one of the telephone kiosk just inside the main doors. I’d have to say that seeing this thing standing there (it was blonde with massive red lips and looked a bit like Paris Hilton) was one of the more obscure experiences of my life. Alex will most certainly vouch.

Anyway, I took a deep breath, turned my attention away from the inflatable love-raft and approached security by the stairs. I owned up, yep, it was me. The security man was both relieved and rather annoyed that I had admitted it had been my error and that the property was in fact ‘mine’ and not an IRA bomb (this was god knows how many years ago). I walked down the relevant platform escorted by 2 security guards and approached the backpack.

The somewhat beefy security guard asked me what was in the bag? Blimey, how did I know It wasn’t mine? Alex was still waiting up at the top of the escalators and now I was about to get shot. I was honest, I didn’t know and told them I’d be happy to open the bag.

Nervously I opened the strap, pulled over the cover and there standing in full view of me was a stuffed fox’s head on a platter. Now to me this was quite a normal thing for Alex to have (he eventually got rid of it because it had worms) but the poor security guard looked like I’d put his nads in a vice and tightened them. Panic over. Phew.

I sealed the bag, walked up the escalator and we walked out, laughing about the incident all the way back to Croydon.

The blow up doll vanished and wasn’t there when we left, where did it go? Who took it?
That will forever remain, a mystery………ooooooooooooooh, dun dun dun!

The end…….!?!