Happy August

Well, here we are.  I hadn't realised that it had been so very long since my last missive.  Times flies and all that hey.

July was a month with a lot of things going on.  Firstly, and rather self-promotive, I issued a single as Project Marv entitled Good Morning World, and I have to wait a whole three months to get sales information back.  That will be a very long three months, because I am particularly pleased with the song (and have been for a long time, because the whole album length set that the full version of the song will appear on has been worked on for six years.  I take my time because I don't have the ability I would like to record as good quality recording that this song (and others) represents.

I know there is the whole lo-fi thing going, but in some ways I let myself get carried away, and also there is the fact that I have had to find the money to do it.  Against my better judgement, some of the songs are going to feature vocal recordings that I am not particularly happy with, but that's just the financial side getting in the way.  If I could then I would always record vocals in a proper studio, but I just can't afford it.  I could wait longer, see how much I can get from selling items to afford studio sessions, but I am already up against artists such as Boston in the race for longest period spent on recording material (I believe Third Stage took them 12 years to record from initial sessions to the end of mixing).

The version of Good Morning World that you can get as a single is an edited version of the song, because the full length version of the song is over six and a half minutes long.  After my friend Rob Huskinson suggested shortening the song, I thought I would have a go at it.  I'm not particularly into editing songs, but I ended up enjoying this shortened version of the song.  It doesn't actually damage the song, which in a problem I have found in songs that have been released before where they have edited them.  I know that quite a few of my friends aren't fans of Coldplay, but I think the edited version of the song Talk does take something away from the song, because the full length version from the album has a lot of drama in there musically with the build up, which is lost in the single edit.

When approaching the job of creating an edited version of Good Morning World I had this and other songs like that in mind, with the purpose being to avoid such a thing happening.  You can find this out for yourself by buying the song and checking it out (I'm particularly pleased with the harmony section in the middle by myself and Mark Allsop, along to my own piano playing - yes, me!) - iTunes UK link or Amazon UK link (is also available in the majority of the world, but obviously I don't have those links).

There are two albums available as well by the way on Amazon and iTunes worldwide (both at £7.49 on Amazon UK and £7.99 on iTunes UK) - A New World Order and Colours, both featuring around 30 titles on each - value for money.  Look for them under the Project Marv name.

There were a lot of people who died during July that were a part of my being brought up.  Eric Sykes died on the 4th, and I remember his work on the short films Rhubarb and The Plank, among many other things (he was fantastic in the Nicole Kidman film The Others).  Ernest Brognine died on the 8th, of whom my previous blog was written about.  The film producer Richard D Zanuck died on the 13th, who was producer for films such as Jaws and Road To Perdition.  Keyboard player Jon Lord (Deep Purple/Whitesnake) died on the 16th, as did the great Bob Babbitt (bass player for the session group for Motown Records known as The Funk Brothers).  Not from my own personal history, but the writer Maeve Binchy died on the 30th (Louise and my mum are two of her readers).  Of course the American Playwright/Novelist/Political Commentator Gore Vidal died on the last day of July (31st), which Louise filled me in on, because I had heard of him, but hate to admit that I knew very little about him.

I am soon about to finish a long period of leave from work (two and a half weeks holiday time), most of which was enjoyed during July.  This sort of explains how I have not been blogging for the majority of July.  I try not to be stuck on the laptop for long periods of time while I am with Louise.  Having a Blackberry telephone sort of helps to keep up with the Social Networking side of things, although the frequent ping of people's status changes and that can get irritating at times.

The fact that we are just getting by with the money that I make means that there wasn't really the money there to do very much, but we did get to do things.  We have however enjoyed (for the most part) some DVD's that have come through from my membership of lovefilm, and also watched some things online using Netflix.  It makes a change with the job that I have for us to actually get a decent amount of time together.  If we had money would we have done anything different?  Yes of course we would, but because we haven't got the money to do those things, we have made the best with what we have.  We did some visiting while I was off.  At the last minute we decided to visit my dad (hence why I didn't let my brother know - sorry), and I visited my aunt in Shirebrook.

I helped my friend Matt Blick out in the studio during one of his sessions (I say help, but suggestions I made were probably more irritating).  He wanted some people to come and provide "crowd vocals" for one of his songs, and the recording was in Mansfield.  I so wanted to help out my friend, but also didn't want to just show up for half an hour, because of the time I would spend driving there and back from Newark, so I showed up at about two o'clock instead of five.

Anyway, until I find a way to use Blogger on my Blackberry, I limit my time on the old internet, and that means that my time has come to an end with blogging.  Perhaps if I wrote out my blogs before typing them out, then I could maybe not spend time online making it up while I type out my blog?  I don't know.  Maybe?

I'll get off now then and leave you to enjoy yourselves.  Please take care.

August 2nd 2012 (41 years, 8 months, and 7 days old)