Recording Monkey

I think that this is the right way to do this.

Those were my last words a few months ago. About six weeks later, I packed a guitar and a change of clothes and set off to start recording what will become Test Pieces.

So far, I’ve recorded on the beach where my children played with the tide coming in; in a pub back room with others listening; and under John Allen’s classic Not To Be Taken Away line up at Stanage as the sun came up with cows lowing down the in valley below. I’ve slept in a car and at a friend’s house. I’ve changed strings on a train. I’ve done more miles in the last four days than I have been in the last two years - quite literally to the very bottom of the country and back. I’ve got all the way to the end of a piece and ballsed up the last section, which is the equivalent of falling off on the crux move of a climbing route. It doesn’t matter how good it was all going. If you peel off, it doesn’t count. You have to send the whole route, not just the bits of it you can do. And because this is all about connecting emotionally and single takes with no stoppee, no startee … well, that’s meant starting again, with the added pressure of only three takes per composition allowed.

It’s been incredibly challenging, as I still can’t walk for more than a few minutes without needing to stop and catch my breath - and everything that comes with that: palpitations, dizziness, elevated heart rate, decreased blood oxygen SATS …

… and my hands? My hands are agony. My joints feel like they have white hot needles stabbing them and I’ve barely played since Northumbria was released two years ago. I basically listen to what I recorded as a demo when I wrote the piece, think about it, think about the people and places that inspired it, try and connect with where I am, and try and play it.

I feel like a marathon runner being asked to run a marathon after two years in bed. I’ve got all the musical feel of a toddler getting their first recorder. Which begs the question why I’m trying to record an album of guitar pieces when I haven’t played for so long …

But there we go.

And this might all seem a bit arbitary - which it is - but then all art is a series of arbitary decisions, just like life.

A sonnet might be a recognised classical form but the form itself is based on a set of arbitary but agreed rules: this many lines, this many beats per line; this section of the poem is set-up, this section of the poem is pay-off, the rhyme scheme, the agreed subject matter

So I think that it’s the right decision to record Test Pieces this way.

Firstly, it directly connects the places and people I was thinking about when Covid meant that I couldn’t see them which inspired this music to the actual people and places involved.

Secondly, without context, decisions and intent this is not living, vital music. It’s just notes and exercises in fingerwork.

I’ve been dipping into a lot of guitar-based podcasts and Youtube channels over the last eighteen months, frequently fairly passively as I continue to recover from illness.

And there are a lot of amazing guitar players out there.

When I hear Dan or Mick from That Pedal Show demonstrate a piece of gear or a new signal chain they’ve just come up with by playing some absolutely gorgeous piece, a piece that’s enhanced by the fact that these guys know how to shape and sculpt the sound to fit the music it blows my mind. They can both seriously play. Chris Buck has a genuinely awesome touch. Rick Beato has solidified the music theory I know and expanded the realm of what I don’t exponentially - and that’s before we get to people like Tom Bukovac who remains a first-choice session call in the only place in the world where being a first-choice session call is still a thing (Nashville - because it’s where people still buy CD’s) because of his ability to perfectly nail a sound, a vibe, a part and a take on the first bounce.

I want to make it clear that these guys can play in a way that I can’t; and I want to make it equally clear that I’m not averse to the going down of rabbit holes that they all do when it comes to kit and caboodle.

I’ve done it.

I still do it.

I will do it in the future.

But …

But …

In the case of the latter point, I believe at some point you have to take what you have to hand and make music with it.

And when I listen to some of these amazing pieces that they’re just jamming into being out of thin air …

… I can’t help feeling that this great playing is being lost simply because it is being jammed into being out of thin air on a Youtube channel to demonstrate a piece of gear, a guitar, a signal chain, a sound.

It might have intent, and there may be decision-making going on, but it lacks context.

It’s something being played to show off a piece of gear or a new guitar.

Northumbria has had 10,000 downloads so far.

Those numbers are a drop in the ocean of the channel numbers for the people above I’ve just mentioned.

But the music on Northumbria exists now and forever more as an album; in songs; and while in the grand scheme of things the download numbers aren’t many, it means that 10,000 people have downloaded it, listened to it, made it part of their day, their week, their month and their year - and that music has become part of their lives in a way that the gorgeous pieces that are being played on some of the guitar channels will never be.

Which I think is a crying shame, to be honest, because if you put them in the context of an album, in the context of an artist’s journey, in the context of the culture of the time, they’d have the same impact.

And that’s why I think I’m doing the right thing in going on this journey to record this music, and taking the time to record what’s happening around me as I do, and why I’ll take the time to sort out the publishing and the copyrights and the licensing and the physical product and the ISRC registration and actually release and promote it.

And so to church, to record Cascade.

©℗ A. I. Jackson

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Origin(al) Stories was first launched to show some of the thoughts, decisions and processes that went into the writing, recording and release of the Northumbria album.

Following the launch of The Landing Stage, which brings together some of the things I do, I’ve continued adding to Origin(al) Stories.

Origin(al) Stories has none of the features beloved of self-help and influencers: how-to guides, lists, essential hacks.

Drawn from my personal diaries and journals, the posts might often seem unconnected, elliptical and fragmentary. Showing, as they do, my explorations of ideas and approaches and processes as I do things, they are best viewed as glimpses of my workings.

They show my mistakes, the false trails I’ve followed, and the blind alleys I’ve gone down - all of which are intrinsic parts of finding a path through to doing something.

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