MATTHEW NORTH MUSIC

VST Sounds Last night I did a bit of recording helping out another band with an idea, one of the things they wanted was a Hammond organ sound. As it so happens I had just downloaded a free vst plug in to do such a things. Anyhow this lot http://www.dskmusic.com/blog/?page_id=3 are brilliant the mini drums gives you all the great 80s drum machines, but the B3x is a great Hammond sound go check it out.

So tonight, I had another first. Thursday 27th August 2009 In 17 years as a professional musician, the one thing that I have never done is walked into a venue on my own with a guitar, got up on stage performed songs then got off stage. Tonight I did it. The Junction is a reasonable sized pub on the end of Mutely Plane in Plymouth. They have it decked out with various album covers, most of which are LPs that I own, the nerves thing is what I’m doing these sort of gigs for because I don’t want to start performing with the band and start crapping myself on stage. Anyhow I felt reasonably confident on stage tonight, there wasn’t a soul in there who knew me or knew who All Living Fear were, in a way that was a good thing. I did Each and Every Way, The Widow’s Blame and Jessica, I didn’t have my loop pedal so there was no looping to do solos, to be honest I was glad. I also did the gig standing up and to be honest I prefer that and it was good to have a mic rather than totally acoustic thoug

Waterman's show 24th August 2009 + Session 26th August 2009 On Monday evening I performed 2 songs at the Waterman’s Pub Folk Club in Richmond Surrey. Both were new songs that I’m still working on, the second of which is one of the ones that I have recorded with Roger doing a Moog solo, stripped down it sounds pretty good too, some of the other musicians in the pub were joining in giving it a different dimension and texture. Last night band practice turned into a bit of a recording session, I dug out a drum beat and keyboard riff that I had on the machine and stretched it out to about 14 minutes, I then plugged in Niall and myself to separate channels, one of the beauties of an 8 in 8 out sound port is being able to assign things, so we weren’t hearing ourselves feeding back. Anyhow, we recorded 3 passes of us jamming, and from it I got the ideas for the whole song. Its all there needs extracting and re recording properly, but will end up a decent tune. In other news, here is a peda

Recording and Announcements. Saturday was a good day, Me and Lee-Anne went to visit Roger while we were there I managed to get him to lay down a Moog solo for one of my new songs, there is something really organic and warm about the sound of a monophonic synthesizer and the Moog Voyager is probably the best in the world right now. This is a great little film about to the Minimoog Anyhow the band has made an official announcement about Andy leaving All Living Fear. You can read it at http://www.alllivingfear.co.uk/news.htm I am also trying to book 2 shows for the end of November, as with all things this is rather tricky as everything seams booked up.

All Living Fear Exeter Picturehouse 13th August 2009 Ok last night, well this was a really strange chain of events. We get there nice and early, they moved the stage area around at the picturehouse and now its in a much better position. Didn’t take long to set up, there were 4 acts, and as always the line up order bare no resemblance to what was on the poster. While we were setting up my pal Roger O’Donnell turned up I played half a bar of a Cure song to see his reaction haha! The sound check was fine, I had also found out that Les Paul had passed away, so thought about playing a bit of The World is waiting for The Sunrise. Anyhow, out of the blue my other half turned up this was the surprise of the evening as she wasn’t due to be coming down, then Simon Hinkler from the Mission rolled in if you had said to me in 1992 when I started the band that I would be having members of the Cure and The Mission turning up at a gig Id never have believed you in a million years. So as for the gig it

Tonight’s The Night Well last night we had our final rehearsal before we play our first show tonight, for those that haven’t caught on, Andrew left All Living Fear a couple of months ago, making Gotham his final gig, which to be fair was a damn fine show to go out on. Nevla and Steve are in the band for tours and gigs, though because they are both so far away they obviously won’t be performing tonight. I have been working with Niall for the last 2 months and been discussing thing’s through a lot longer, we decided on 6 numbers to get ready for this show tonight and stuck with them, we did work on a cover, Badge by Cream but it never really worked, though who is to say that it wont some time later on. Anyway last night went pretty well every time that we have practiced its getting tighter and tighter, since I had my last bit of tuition I can see my vocals have been getting better still a lot more work to do on that score but I’m not in any rush. My guitar sounded better last night too a

Blogger is Back Yes after 3 years I have decided to start using this Blog again mostly for my music related posts.

A sunday afternoon recording session The weekend proved interesting, I received a new composition from my friend Roger O’Donnell to take a listen to. It was a nice piece with some of his trademark string and piano sounds, and a really nice sounding cello. After listening to the track Me and Lee-Anne thought we would ‘Cure it up’ a bit to see what it sounded like. The first thing that I did was work out the tempo and it worked out to be 80 bpm. We then added some drums for the second section to give it a beat, then Lee-Anne wrote a nice bass line in the style of Simon Gallup. I then added some acoustic guitar to give it some more flow and then added some fake Baritone guitar, this was done by re tuning the A string on my strat to a G and then adding some delay and flanger from my Lexicon wile playing the string with the plectrum as close to the bridge as possible you get that sound. To finish off Lee-Anne added a high end bass melody. There job done, I sent it back to Roger whom seamed