Being a queen is old hat...

I was the Queen of Glamaphonic. I was labelled so by Shoba Rao, a fantastic journalist, in 2006. Now it seems everyone is jumping on the Queen bandwagon. The Queen of this, the queen of that...it's all so distasteful! Hence, I feel I have no choice but to exalt myself to the rank of Empress of the Glamaphonic Musical Empire!

Anne-Lise
Empress of the Glamaphonic Empire

Sometimes I feel blessed...

I'm going out to see one of my favourite singers tonight

Even the reliable aren't reliable...

I wish I could find a reliable keyboardist or guitarist for a gig or two here or there.

Perhaps a tad ambitious

Looking at what I have to do to get this album out next year is freaking me out.

Maybe a mid-year release was slightly optimistic! So much to do, so little time!

Anne-Lise

Distaff Dylan...me?

Apparently UBL.com think so. They've called me a "Distaff Dylan" in their recent e-newsletter.

Distaff for all those wondering means:

Female branch of family

So, I guess it's just a way of saying I'm a chick Bob Dylan! Thanks UBL. That completely made my week.

Boing boing boing!

I love getting emails from friends and fans and I try to reply to everyone. If you haven't heard from me, it's more than likely that my reply has bounced back from your email address.

It's very frustrating!

Anne-Lise

Destroy All Humans!

Sometimes the human race frustrates and infuriates me so, that the only way to find peace is to become a nasty little alien with a penchant for sarcasm. Then, I can fly in my spaceship over cities, setting fire to buildings with my ray gun and completely destroying the cityscape with my sonic boom. Once landed, I love to take on human form and collect brain stems.

Sigh. If only it wasn't just a playstation game.

Decisions decisions

I've just begun work on getting a song called "Rest of My Days" arranged and recorded for the new album. Only problem is, I have two choices for this song and it's perplexing me no end!

Originally, I wrote this song in 4/4, but I also discovered it works really well in 6/8. It changes the song's feel completely. 4/4 is quite r&b and the 6/8 gives a real bluesy edge to it.

I don't like these dilemmas as I really enjoy both versions of the song. After releasing the song "Seize the Day" as it is on the "I'm Alive" EP, I regret the arrangement I did, and wish I had approached it very differently. "Seize the Day" is such a great song and at times, I don't think I did it justice. I really don't want to do this to "Rest of My Days". Fingers crossed I'll get it together.

I like very much most of the songs I write, but there are a few that I absolutely love. Rest of My Days is one of those. I love the lyrics, the melody, the chords, the melancholy of it all and I absolutely LOVE singing it because it gives me a great vocal workout.

Anne-Lise :)

The lost four track years!

I've been going through all my old four track musical meanderings. My analogue fostex cassette four track was what I used to get down song ideas up until 2005. Since moving into the digital age, I hadn't really listened to any of the stuff I had on four track but over the last few days, I have rediscovered some of the little gems I'd completely forgotten about. There's everything from avante guard jazz to full on 60s soul plus pop and r&b things on there. Amazing. I was quite productive! Maybe a couple of these things will end up on the new album. Hmmmm.

I wonder...

...should I redo my EP and include it on the new album, or should I just leave it as that moment in time? I'd like to have better arrangements of Seize The Day and I Just Wanna Be Rich. Quite happy with the other two, but it would be nice to re-record the vocals with my new much better microphone.

A-L

Retail therapy

I did absolutely no work yesterday. Listening back to your own voice over and over and over again really isn't such a thrill at times, so I decided to take the day off. Instead, I went shoping online to try and find an outfit for the Velvet Revolver concert next month. I'm very excited about seeing Duff and Slash for the first time. I love Slash' guitar style. He's really quite amazing. Duff is extremely hot and I suppose he's not such a bad bass player either! Lol. Alas, after hours of window shopping, I couldn't find a thing. Looks like I'm going to have to hit the real shops this weekend.

Anne-Lise

100% Artiste!

You know, I have no stylists, I have no producer, I have no musicians. It's all me. What you get, what you hear is directly from my mind and my soul.

Good and bad, I am the real deal. 100% artiste.

A-L :)

No more VSTi troubles

I figured out what was going on with my VSTis. I was using a multi layer of the same midi track using different instruments on the tracks. This was all fine and good with my older version of the software I use, but I have just updgraded it and it doesn't seem to want to cope! Hmnmm. A bit annoying, but now I've discovered the problem, I can work around it. The upgrade has lots more features which more than make up for it.

Anne-Lise :)

PS. Listen to a preview of "The Dream" in my myspace music player or on the homepage of my website.

www.myspace.com/glamaphonic
www.anne-liselarsen.com
www.glamaphonic.com

Felt So Good

Was working on my song "Felt So Good" last night. This is one of my favourites and I really want to get it right on the new album. I put down a draft arrangement of it about 8 months ago and have been working on that, trying to find the right groove. It's not exactly where I want it to go at the moment. It's a little bit too laid back - needs more intensity. Not quite sure how to achieve it in the arrangment. I really need a rocking guitar, but maybe I can work out a way to create that driving excitement with a keyboard.

Anyway, shall spend time on it again today.

Anne-Lise

VSTi troubles

It's been a while since last blog! With so much going on, I'm finding my recording time for this album is decreasing. Have to change it around.

I'm working on a little bossanova number. It was untitled for quite some time, but I've now settled on a name for it; "The Dream".

The arrangement is quite ethereal and surprise, surprise...dreamy. I'm using quite a few synthesiser emulating instruments in this one which I absolutely love. It's so much fun trawling the internet for new instruments, discovering them and imagining how to use them to their best effect. Such a VSTi is in "The Dream". It's a fantastic string instrument VSTi. Unfortunately, I've just discovered that it's playing havoc with my multitracking midi software. There's something not quite right in it and I can't figure out what it is. It's sending my other midi files, audio and loops out of whack. I hope I can get it sorted as I really love the pizzicato violin effect. Having been thinking about it, I could probably render that particular sequence as an audio file and place it in the arrangement that way, rather than using vsti's on multiple midi tracks. Will try that later tonight!

So far, the album is coming very slowly, but I figure, there really is no rush. It will come when it comes.

Anne-Lise

My new mic

I love it. I have a new condensor mic. My vocals sound fab & natural! It's made me very happy.

Whether "the weather"

Yay! After weeks of experimenting and not really finding the mark, I hit the perfect arrangement for the chorus of "The Weather". When you write a song, you have some idea of how you want it to sound in your mind as a final product, and when you come to sit down and pad it out with an instrumental arrangement, it can come easily or it can take quite some time to find the right feel or groove.

"The Weather" is a funky-ish number, but the lyrics are laced with melancholy and quite dark. I needed something to reflect that in the chorus. I'd come up with a nice verse riff and the chorus was proving to be very tricky because I had a very strong funked up bass line that I didn't want to lose with over arranging. After weeks of fiddling, I've come up with a simple piano line and a synth ostinato keeping a steady rhythm going. Keeps it really ethereal and quite haunting yet funky at the same time. Just what I wanted!

Anne-Lise :)

Time keeps on slipping...

While I don't exactly live my life by Steve Millerisms, I must say, time does seem to be slipping...slipping...slipping into the future these days. This of course means that I am forever stuck with "Fly Like An Eagle" in my head. Hmmmm.

I've been meaning to blog more frequently but I get so busy with other things. One of the contributing factors to my general busy-ness, is that I've been updating my Sirens of Sydney network myspace page (www.myspace.com/sirensofsydney) which is taking a lot out of me! I know it will be worth the effort one day so I keep on plugging away at it.

Hence, I've been so busy with that, that I have been extremely slack in working on my album this month. Seriously, I need an assistant.

Sigh.

So, sad to report that there's no album progress for the past few weeks.

ALTHOUGH. Last night, when I finally did have a few moments spare to fiddle around with stuff I discovered that my mic setup has decided to stop working. This is my new mic setup, which originated from an old reliable setup which has now become dodgy, so even though it was much better than my last setup for the EP, it was very hit and miss. It was the last straw last night discovering that my mic input didn't work (I know, it's just a simple matter of taking it to an electronics whiz and getting some circuits soldered) but that in itself will cost at least $100 so I've decided to bite the bullet and buy myself a whole new reliable setup - which I've done today and pick it up on Friday. How exciting! It's something I've been looking into for a while and now I've done it.

I think not having a reliable mic setup was a big reason behind my album procrastination.

You never quite know how a new piece of technology will work, whether it will deliver the result you want. I hope my new mic things are what I'm after....

Anne-Lise

Gimme the honky tonk blues

Well, it ain't quite the blues, but "A Little Dissonance" is shaping up to be the modern slightly warped take on the saloon show tune I'd hoped it would be.

A little Dissonance is a number inspired by the from the honky tonk tunes of the wild west 1800s, it's still got that feel of show girls and frilly petticoats and lace up grandma boots. In my mind's film clip, instead of the show girls, I imagine a chorus line of (ummm, heterosexual) men in the form of someone like Antonio Sabato Jnr walking around me while I sing this on stage, but alas, I only have ears for music.

My lyrics of this song are filled with sexual angst...of course, a man could never live up to the thrill music gives me. Well, maybe one or two have... ;)

Anne-Lise

Dissonance makes me feel good

Hmmm, yes it does. Something about two clashing notes that send my senses into overload. My earlier life as a cellist gave me the opportunity to play and experience some of the most exciting music that's ever been composed, that of the 20th century composers such as Shostakovich, Martinu and Stravinsky. So, I wrote a song about it. When I used to gig this song around the traps with my acoustic duo, I had a rather obvious question once "huh? but where's the dissonance in the song?" (the question came from a drummer who once did a session for a very internationally famous group and I think likes to cling on to that glory).

However, my question is, do I really have to write dissonance into a song about dissonance? Do I really have to be that obvious? Hmmm, I grant my listeners with a bit more imagination and intelligence. The song is more about the feeling that I get from a little dissonance, how it sends my body a quiver and my ears a tingling and well, you get the drift. I hope that it will not be dubbed as banal as Alanis Morrisette's "Ironic" which had no trace of ironic content in the lyric, although I guess the fact that a song written about ironic moments in life without irony is slightly ironic...but even that's pushing it.

As I write, I am mixing the intro to A Little Dissonance, which may be the very first song on the new album. Haven't decided yet...

A-L

Song list

I've been going through my song list and these are the songs I am looking at for the new CD.

The Weather (a definite)
Felt So Good
Could You Be The One?
Rest Of My Days
Just A Little Sadder
A Little Dissonance
Same Old Thing
Mundane Blues (this is going to have a reworking of existing lyrics & possible title change)
World Keeps Spinning
A Bossa Nova without a name - possibly called "Don't Make It Real"
Gotta Keep Moving
Automobile

"The Weather" is a definite as I've already started getting ideas down in sound. I've felt out this really great little keyboard groove that adds a bit of syncopation against a simple walking bass line. Tonight, I burned the unfinished demo copy of it to a cd to have a listen to it on my stereo and I'm extremely happy with how it's coming together.

The seduction of production

I've never really fallen into the category of being seduced by a crisp, clear production sound. It's probably because I've listened to rock a lot throughout my life, and many debut albums sound really dodgy. To me, that's a really endearing quality that I love and gives the musicians a slightly more tangible quality.

I suppose that why I'm feeling ok about producing another set of songs for myself. It's not that I'm arrogant enough to think that I have all the answers. Far from it, but I'm taking what life is giving me and running with it. With input from others, I'm sure my next offering would be different and possibly better arranged, creative ideas I'd never thought of would arise and so on. It would be lovely, but the more you add to the mix, the more complicated it all becomes. I quite like being in control of my musical destiny now, and I am thoroughly enjoying the little discoveries I make every day.

As I've mentioned before, my EP was a bit learning experience and it's helped me greatly to know how to approach things for a better result. My vocal recordings will be better, which I am extremely happy about. I also have a better idea of how I want it to sound overall, and know that I don't have to put something out in the hope that it might appeal to people. This time it's just about a musical journey and it's good to feel comfortable in that, because I can afford to be more creative.

Work has begun on my first full length track for the album, "The Weather". It might not be the first track in running order, it's just the first one that I've begun (apart form the secret hidden track which is finished...). Already it goes along with a nice little groove that actually has me bobbing my head while I listen to playback. Not going to rush though...it will take as long as it takes.

Anne-Lise

The new work

Well, it's begun. I've made the commitment and there's no turning back. The new album is in underway. I'm going to use my blog as I did before on the trials and tribulations of recording the album, so check back often.

This time, as plans are for it to be a full length release with ten + songs, it's going to take me quite a bit longer to get it all together. It's also going to be something I experiment with. I've learned some lessons with my EP and I'm ready to apply my newly acquired knowledge with aplomb! :)

Anne-Lise