I’ve tinkered for years in making my own demos, using everything from 4 track tape recorders to mini discs and now ive gone all digital.  A couple of years ago I got my hands on a palm top 3 track studio.

Pretty handy in that you can lay down three different tracks and mix them down. Its got an input for guitars and mics but whats really handy is the inbuilt microphone which I use for drums. I can basically record it all on the three track but its got limited memory so I just use it now as an input for getting instruments recorded onto my laptop. Theres quite a few studio programs that you can download trials for and that are reasonably simple to use. I’ve been using Cakewalk and Reaper.

Once you’v e got your recording equipment sorted its just a case of recording the different parts of the song. This is quite tricky as it all has to be seamless to sound any good. I recommend getting the drums down first, that is if the song has drums in it. Its a lot less hassle if it doesn’t. When laying the drums down the important thing to remember is to add guidelines for the parts without drums such as intros,  and practise until you can play the thing in your sleep.  The most important aspect of recording is the engineers ear. Having good equipment is also beneficial but the most expensive studio can return crappy results without the right ear for the song. Thats what I find so much fun about the process of recording my own tracks, as I’m doing it with limited audio knowledge its always hit and miss. But the funs in the doing.  Heres a couple of my previous doings.

Your Scarecrow demos

Another day another music site, this one looks pretty good though .If you’re familiar with digg.com and its system of voting getting stories onto the front page then the sixty one will seem like the next step. Its a site where you listen to new music and “bump” up what you like and its a good way of finding new tunes. And of course we’re now on there so heres our link.

Your Scarecrow on the sixty one

We’ve signed up to a site called sellaband.com. The premise of it is that a band signs up and uploads some music. Then visitors to the site have a listen and if they like what they hear they become a believer.

Once a band has 5000 believers the site gives the band £50, 000 to record and produce an album, a tenner for every believer. So naturally we would quite like £50000 bucks. If you want to hear some new music recorded by us then sign up and become a believer.

http://www.sellaband.com/yourscarecrow/

Honcho records from Stornoway have just released their latest collection of Western Isles new music called “No Bad Yourself”. It features 26 different bands and artists including ourselves over 2 CD’s. It’s the follow up to previous island collections “How much more black can it be” and “Local man ruins everything”.

Theres a lot of good new music coming out of lewis and it’s great that Honcho are going to the effort of promoting it. Our song “tightly” that we recorded last year has been included on it.

January 7th, 2008

It was something that I loved instantly, so much so that I even braved talking to the “too cool for school” barmaid to find out what it was. So anyway, i’ve got this album but I’ve never got around to getting any of his other stuff but I figured i’d hear at least one of the songs I knew. I didn’t, and it was still one of the best concerts i’ve been to. He came in wearing one of those scream masks as it was Halloween. I Assumed he’d take it off after a while but he kept it on for most of the show. It was surreal seeing and hearing this guy in fancy dress playing these beautiful songs.

A couple of the crowd were not impressed and kept shouting for him to “lose the mask” to which he replied, “i’ll lose the mask when you lose the fucking accent” , so not a fan of the Glasgow twang and obviously pissed off about being told what to do on stage. It was good to see someone for a change who didn’t give a shit about pandering to the crowd. A great show, i’ve got to get around to getting more of his stuff and i recommend you do too.

sun kil moon

January 28th, 2008