A few cool updates...

Hello Internet how goes it?

I've been keeping busy of the past few months getting involved in some pretty neat projects and the payoff should be just around the corner, namely some lovely releases!

First off, our good old friends the Seahawks are on the brink of publishing and album featuring yours truly after some severe low-fi messing. Think decades of reverb and mind bending delays and you're still nowhere near how awesomely sonically massive these tracks are. The guitar/vocoder/sop sax mashing in 2 tracks has paid off particularly well.

Secondly, Bristol based guitarist extraordinaire Graham Rutherford has either put together a fat EP or skinny LP depending on your moral bent and in our debut as the Badcore Horns (mercenary brass section for hire) myself and the rather capable Simon 'Peacekid' Dobson stepped up to the plate and jazzed all over the place. After selling his prize guitar to fund the project, it'll be pressed into the black stuff in a month or so and hopefully we'll hear how the hard work paid off!

Details on the releases will be posted as soon as confirmation is recieved!

Other things to keep your ears peeled for are further appearances from The Badcore Horns once we've locked down 5 players we're happy to take to the studio for demo recording and a possible new sax vs DJ residency up in Exeter to keep the students entertained of a week night!

That's all for now though. More soon.

Peace and tooting.

D

Yacht rock, remixing some filth and the death of a legend.

Just a quick weekend update of the DHC world.

The Seahawks Logo

On Friday I found myself at the Cornish basecamp of Lo Recordings working with Jon Tye and his go-to chord monster Alik PD on some pretty far out stuff for their Seahawks project. It's been put into the rather interesting catagory of 'yacht rock' for it's chilled summery vibes which I rather like and it's certainly different to the norm with it's mix of lo-fi delays and reverbs and left field approach to vocals and instrumentation.

This all resulted in a rather tasty recording session, routing my beloved soprano sax, (weapon of choice for many previous recordings with the Lo crew,) through a harmoniser unit controlled by Alik on guitar. We got some pretty good sounds out of it, from a straight up sax with an intelligent chorus behind to some weird breath controlled guitar chords using the sax to trigger them. I'll keep details vague for now as we work some more with it, here's hoping to see that setup used live in the coming months!

On a more personal note, I'm sallying forth on another of my dubstep remixes, this time in response to a challenge from Hoo Ha over at Hoo Ha Fashions who digs the tune Papa's Got a Brand New Pigbag. It's one of those tracks that makes the sax famous and there's plenty of scope for getting grimy so bear with me and check it out when I post it!

Finally, as you all probably know by now Gil Scott Heron has passed on to the great gig in the sky. As an instigator of rap in the jazz/funk genre he's greatly influenced much of the music I've grown to love, big love. He will be missed.

Dan.

So music education doesn't matter anymore?

It appears music in the UK is having a bit of trouble. As a musician in the South West looking for a bit of work via public sector I have found out how much of a PITA it is.

So, a few weeks ago I decided to really try and push the teaching side of my business a bit more. I saw how well some of my colleagues were doing out of private lessons and it's not as if I don't have enough spare time.

I thought that working through an agency or county music service would be a good place to start and definitely look good on the old CV so after doing some research and finding a number of prospective places, I boldy got in touch with a bunch of them via phone and email...

...only to receive; some no replies, a few straight up 'no's and a rather large amount of places telling me that they'd happily put me on their books, but wouldn't be able to take me on in any professional capacity due to funding problems.

At first I thought it was a reasonable start to 'be on their books' until I really thought about what that meant, namely, having my digits scribbled on the back of a bit of paper or in a notepad document to placate me and having them filed away somewhere and ignored. That's great, but of no immediate use to a starving musician with knowledge to push into peoples heads.

After failing with that route I tried going straight to the schools and from that was recommended to contact a chap with a .gov.uk email address that dealt with music in the South West. I briskly sent him an email telling him my woes, and he briskly replied with his own to add to mine. Now this, dear reader, is where my problem lies... He told me that:

1.  Plymouth City Council have placed a moratorium on recruitment.  We are not permitted to take on staff irrespective of any requirement for tutors.

 

2.  All Music Services currently face an uncertain future as the Government decides the way forward with music in schools.

 

Now I don't know if it's just me being silly because of my recent investigations, but doesn't that sound bloody ridiculous? I have no problem with the fellow I spoke to, but he seemed like a great guy working for a stupid system.

 

Firstly, they're not allowed to recruit anyone even if they need them? Great strategy there for sure. Alan Sugar would be proud. I mean, I can understand not needing a few peripatetic music teachers, especially ones encouraging the blowing of noisy tubes, but it sounds like they mean anyone, irrespective of their trade. Secondly, I don't really understand what options there are regarding the 'way forward with music in schools'. I thought that when you were in school you were allowed to pick an instrument and then get to make noises with it for a certain amount of time. If you wished to have lessons you could, if you didn't you still had to spend 45 minutes a week in class being told about other people who made noises with instruments. Your choice. It's not like they're going to remove it from the national curriculum.....or are they?

So what mostly boggles me is where did the money that was being spent on music go? It was doing alright 10-15 years ago when I was a wee lad so what happened? I know, I know, economic downturn....blahblahsnore, but if them folks at city hall have enough cash to get up to no good with expenses scandals, why not do some good too? It's not just music that's suffering either, a whole smorgasboard of other services are getting it in the neck as well. Perhaps downsizing a few things here and there is ok, but when did music become so unimportant? More people than ever will be going to music festivals this summer and the number of tracks being downloaded is still huge so someone out there still thinks music is worthwhile!

So, the upshot is, I'll be looking in the private sector instead and bypassing music services simply beacuse they're only looking to keep themselves afloat in these uncertain times and have no spare time to put into expanding. 

Look out for me in a shop window near you!

Dan.

New track: Motion

It's been a while, but you know how it is when you're trying to keep your head above water in the world. Certain things fall by the wayside and unfortunately an online diary of events in my musical world is the least of my priorities. I have recently moved to a new location and finally managed to squirrel away some space for a dedicated studio at home thus avoiding a trip to Band HQ ever time there are some horns to toot.


So yeah, I dusted off my old trumpet and once again set forth to learn it. 'It's not like I play enough wind instruments already' I said to my Self and my Self just grumbled and requested a tea. I could already get a sound from it and pick a few different harmonics on each position, it's just figuring out what note is where. Anyway, a quick skip to the end and instead of sitting down and learning properly, I ended up recording some stuff instead. It turns out that a cheap trumpet, an SM58 and some standard reverb sound quite good with no EQ needed. A complete and rather irritating opposite of my beloved top-of-the-range saxophone.


I then built a track around some of the licks I'd recorded and after a few days tinkering came up with a nearly finished product. I always make a point to learn something or use something new in each work and this is no different. On listening to Flite by The Cinematic Orchestra late one night, I started to home in on the pedalled vibraphone sample and wondered how they had gone about making it sound like it did. I tried to replicate it by recording a series of sax phrases at the same speed of the track but on a faster tempo setting, then slicing the desired parts and putting them into a granular loop player to give a disjointed an uneven yet tempo matched sound. The outcome wasn't what I had intended, but I like the effect and for that reason chose to keep it in. All other instruments are pretty standard, got the usual Rhodes, piano and synthetic/real bass combo with a layered brass secion, some textures behind and samples taken from a CERES TV news broadcast about the 2011 New Zealand Earthquake. All the instruments were played by me.


Here's the linky:
http://soundcloud.com/dan-hillman/motion


I'll be bringing back the loop work soon after relocating to my new studio and will try to keep improving where I can.


FINÉ.

New YouTube videos!

Good day one and all...

So here it is, my first post with an actual bit of musical content, huzzah! I've just uploaded 3 videos to my YouTube channel for the eyes and ears of the viewing public.

They are examples of my work on live looping that I've been working on for a little while. Using Ambiloop:

Ambiloop with my custom skin.

It's a free piece of kit you can download online if you search for it, supporting 8 individually controllable tracks that can be overlayed, multiplied, divided and edited on the fly to an almost infinite degree and a fully customisable interface, this means you can map every control to a keystroke or MIDI action. Pretty good for homebrew gear only a few megs in size!

The nice effects are courtesy of the pedalboard I put together for live performances. While there are still some teething troubles with the live side of things, controlled environments like my studio are a great place to mess around without foldback interference!

I'm running the pedals from an FX send of a smaller floor mounted desk to keep the mic level up and not interfere with the clean signal.

The first incarnation of the board. It's a lot tidier now...and blacker.

 For delay I use a Boss DD-7 with tap tempo pedal sporting variable delay times of up to 60 seconds that can be infinitely overlayed for a cheap loop effect, analogue tape delay, modulation and reverse delay effects too.

Envelope filter wah comes from an Electro Harmonix Q-Tron which is a major feedback hazard, but is great when you get the drive and Q settings right.

Lastly, and my personal favourite is the Electro Harmonix POG. It's an octaver that spits out the octave above and below your actual note as well as the note itself. Their volumes are all independantly adjustable, allowing you to pull out your own note from the mix and just give out booming bass or screaming high notes! Hard to find on the high street and quite expensive, but worth every penny.

Once again, check out the videos on my YouTube channel and see what you think. It's still early days and once I get more comfortable with the interface and all the instrument swapping things should be a bit slicker.


Good night.

Dan.

#1

So, first post and all....

DHC is just about up and running and I saw a blog as a the best way to add some dynamic online content to the business and keep track of progress. Dan Hillman Creative is a little idea of mine started this year to help me bring together my design and music into one big lovely chunk of media creativity. It's like Ben and Jerry's ice cream with all the different yummy things making up an even yummier whole, but instead of stuffing mouths I'll be gently prodding the eyes and ears of anyone foolish enough to venture further.


I have several interesting projects underway and I hope to be able to share them soon. On the art front, I have been improving my work on vector graphics due to their versatile nature and clean look that I hope will take my design in some new directions, allowing the use of hand drawing and scanning.  It gives you a far more personal edge when getting creative, but lovers of trees would probably prefer it if I shelled out on a tablet interface instead!


The music side of things sees some new ideas for my album that hopefully won't take too long to flourish into some more of the same chilled-out loveliness already available to hear here. Also I'm tweaking 4 dirty tracks for the funk band to get stuck into and with any luck you may hear them if you're out and about in Plymouth or the surrounding areas in the coming months. As well as trying to set up a few small projects, (unnamed as of yet,) I have been enjoyed playing with myself (tee hee hee) in some live looping sessions at our studio. What began as an excuse to test out and get to grips with my live FX rig I use with the sax at gigs suddenly became a bit of an addiction last week and once I finish synching the audio with the video I can post up the results of the first few tries.


Anyway, I'll leave it there as too much writing without much shiny media will probably bore net junkies and artsy types to tears, but if you can bear to wait, it might just be worthwhile...



Dan H.