An EP project

Over the next month (14 Dec 2024 to 14 Jan 2025) I set myself the project of recording four five songs. My criteria is:

• I will write them during this time (so no covers, no older songs of mine)
• I will write without AI – Suno
• They do not need to be highly polished ie studio perfect
• I must be happy enough with them to have other people listen to them.

I had a good brainstorm session yesterday and landed on telling a story across five parts, like the traditional hero’s journey. This is where I decided on five songs rather than my original four.

I also decided on a story to tell – an experience I had when I was thirteen. I was white water rafting and fell off the raft into the rapids. I went through them by myself and thankfully the river deposited me on a shallow, calm part of the riverbed.

I’m still considering the theme of the EP.

And I have one song drafted already. It’s currently called “And I Fall”.

Four more to go.

Synthwave Studies

I’ve been playing around a lot with songwriting and recording lately. Most of what’s come out has been very early 2000s – think grunge, hard rock, and a little delve into pop RnB. It’s not amazing music, but it is a lot of fun to put together!

Most of the music I’ve been listening to in the past six months has been synthwave. This is a completely new genre to explore, and it’s pretty fascinating. It’s a very electronic sound, based on the sounds used in 80s music production, and it’s meant to evoke that “futuristic” image of dark cityscapes and neon signs.

I’ve been using GarageBand and my laptop keyboard to write the music, which is a bit of a frustrating experience. I’ve bought a MIDI keyboard and when it arrives, I’ll move on to Reason 10. Reason will give me an insane amount of options to find the exact sounds I want, and not just for synthwave sounds. Very exciting. It does also mean a lot of learning about what everything is, and how to better produce and mix music. All good.

There are specific things I want to study – breaking down the synthwave songs I listen to by “instrument” and listening for trends, typical sounds, how they’re used and what makes them fit into the song. I’m also very tempted to try and recreate my favourite synthwave songs.

Here’s one of the tracks that came out of my writing/recording session last night. My aim was to make a song that sounds like it would fit into the genre. I’m not 100% convinced right now, but it’s okay.

 

 

A new book!

I haven’t bound a book in quite a while, but for some reason today seemed like a good day to change that!

I wanted a B5 size notebook – I quite like the size and shape. I have also been looking at bullet journals… While I think a lot more more effort than they’re worth (isn’t organising supposed to be efficient?), they are also very pretty and I want one.

This is a day project, which is a good challenge because bookbinding usually takes me about a week.

On to the photos!

Items collected and ready to start!

Making the hardcover. I prefer binding hardcover books – I just like the look of them better than ones with the spine exposed. This also means you don’t have to worry too much about making the stitching look pretty – functional works!

I’ve glued the card to the bookcloth using PVA, and to avoid it warping, I placed a few heavy items on top to keep it flat.

Best to start with the cover, as it involves a lot of glue drying time. I cut the card slightly larger than B5, and cut the bookcloth with space for a spine. This time I decided not to reinforce the spine and just see how it goes. After gluing, I piled on magazines and a ream of paper to prevent the card from warping.

This is always a hard task, and I never get it perfect, but that’s okay. I trimmed down some A4 printer paper to B5 size – folded in half, these will become my B5 pages!

The paper has been separated into 8 sheets and folded into signatures. A bone folder comes in very handy for this – it can be quite hard to get a precise fold otherwise.

Holes have been punched in the signatures using an awl. They are now ready for stitching.

The signatures have been stitched together. From experience it’s important to sew them tightly or the book will not be sturdy. I decided not to use embroidery thread as the spine will not be visible anyway, and opted for bookbinding thread instead.

The pages are always the most fiddly part. First the measuring and trimming down the to the right size, then dividing into signatures. After that, folding them. A bone folder helps immensely with this – you get a nice crisp crease. After the folding, it’s punching the holes with an awl, and then stitching. I ended up using bookbinding thread for this project. It’s much more reliable than embroidery thread, and since this book will have a spine, the thread will mainly be hidden anyway.

Putting it together takes a few goes too.  This time I used a few strips of fabric glued to the spine of the signatures to attach the inner to the cover. You don’t want to directly attach the signatures to the spine of the cover. You want to have a little bit of flexibility in the book. The last part is gluing the endpapers on, which hides the fabric and probably adds a bit of strength. I actually didn’t have enough nice paper for the endpaper, so I just made it half size to cover the inner cover.

This book turned out surprisingly well! It still needs to finish drying, but it’s pretty much done now!

Monty Python project

I’m starting a project: a medieval – inspired page of the boring prophet from The Life of Brian. I’m quite excited!

This isn’t the final piece… I’m nowhere near happy with my blackletter yet, but it’s a good starting place for layout and testing out illumination.

Starting Copperplate

I’ve started learning Copperplate this past week. Copperplate is what most people will think of when they imagine calligraphy – it’s swooshy and beautiful. What I love most about it is the contrast between the fine hairlines and the shades (the fat lines).

It will take a bit of practise to get beautiful consistent letters, but I’m enjoying the learning process a lot! I’ve written 28 pages of practice so far… I’ve had the new nibs only five days! I guess that speaks for how much I’m enjoying this! I’m rather fortunate at the moment that I have so much time to spare for practising.

I purchased the nibs from Scribblers.co.uk, and unfortunately I’ve already broken one. It was my favourite of the two, so I’ll have to order more than one of each next time. It really is interesting noting the differences between the nibs – I really liked the Gillott 303, which gave super fine hairlines and felt really flexible, compared to the Gillott 404. The 404 is slightly larger but also stiffer, which means the difference between hairline and shade is smaller, so it doesn’t look as striking. I’ll also order a couple of different nibs next time. I’ve heard the Leonardt Principal is a delight to write with, and I’m generally quite excited to try different nibs.

One thing I was very curious about trying was the oblique holder – would it be significantly different to using a straight penholder? The answer? Not really. The pointed nib requires use of pressure for the shades, which actually feels quite natural. Added to that, the writing paper isn’t held straight like I was taught for broadnib, but turned to match the angle you’d naturally hold the penholder in. I find my arm doesn’t tire as easily as with broadnib calligraphy.

I bought some metallic ink along with the nibs and holder, and I’m saving it for when my copperplate is at an acceptable level. The gold is just perfect. My first project will be to write out mine and Tony’s wedding vows! I almost can’t wait – but I know if I just go ahead and start, I’ll notice the imperfections later. At the very least I can think about composition now!

Fraktur

I really love the blackletter look, although I’m in dire need of more black ink! I spent a few hours this weekend on Fraktur, working on my favourite Grandpa Simpson quote, as well as the Night’s Watch oath from A Song of Fire and Ice.

Calligraphic Weekend

I did a small piece on request a few days ago, and it got me very inspired to pick up the pens again.

I use both dip pens and Pilot Parallels. At the moment I prefer the dip pens for their natural look, but the Parallels are very good for their versatility. All of these, except Favourite, were written with a dip pen.