Month: January 2009

Burnfm…back with a band?

A couple of days ago I finally decided to GET ON WITH IT!

‘It’ being the first Burnfm.com Battle of the Bands. We’ve scheduled it for the 26th March (thursday before term ends.)

I’m currently on a desperate search for the organisers of Vale Fest so that I can negociate a slot on one of their stages for our winner. I also need to find some willing judges who are passionate about finding new and up and coming talent. I feel it is important for people to show their enthusiasm for Birmingham produced music as this is one of the issues raised by organisations such as Gigbeth.

We’re looking for about 5-10 acts. The amount of songs they play will depend on how much interest we recieve. If we have 10 then I’m currently pondering whether to get them to play one ‘crowd pleasing’ cover and one of their own songs (so the judges can really pick up on whether they have that ‘special spark.’

I’m going to have talks with members of Rock Soc, Indie Soc and the newly launched Band Soc to try and see how the event will work and how to get people involved….

Any ideas please comment or email me…

On other Burnfm.com stuff we’ve been back online for nearly a week and finally have some stings and beds in place which is lovely! We’re going to sort out more marketing and start talking…!

The most important thing to get off the ground is the computer system which our Tech guy, Michael Barton has built us an automated playback system. He just has to correct a bug in the program and then we’ll all be able to put music on the system and really get things off the ground.

HURRAH!

Frank x

Fancy editing…

I’ve often watched videos on Youtube which are cut together to show the musician performing each of the instruments in the song. Two notable musicians who are very good at this are Julia Nunes and Jenny Rafferty. 

I think the usual way of making these types of videos is to use editing software and mixing the vocal tracks using the program. I filmed myself with iMovie recording each track with garage band (I wasn’t going to use a mixing desk as I don’t really record covers. they’re just a Youtube thing.) I then matched up the videos with the finished track and cut it together fairly randomly! Sometimes getting everything in sync feels like more trouble than its worth but because I can hear the actual singing in the videos, its fairly easy to match up.

Hope you like. I welcome suggestions for songs which you think I should ‘Get Frank’ up

x

Created in Birmingham wins Best UK Blog

Created in Birmingham has won the 2008 Best Uk Blog in the Weblog awards.

Hurrah!

This has pretty much entirely been down to Chris Unitt who has been entirely dedicated to the site for over a year and is now handing over editorial duties to Kate Spragg. Thanks also must go to fellow nominee Pete Ashton who gracefully told all and sundry to vote for CIB rather than himself. Also to everyone who facebooked, twittered and blogged about voting for us. There’s a list of heroes on this CIB post.

I need to get in contact with Kate and sort out if I am still contributing to CIB, and I definitely want to but having had to start doing heaps of coursework I have been a bit on the quiet side! I still want to do interviews though, specially as now I have a portable camera, filming will be much easier.

If you want to see any of the interviews I’ve done for CIB you can see them by clicking on the following hyperlinks:

Lee Parsons of Ditto Music

Photographer and Birmingham Live! founder Steve Gerrard

Clare Edwards of Gigbeth Festival and Conference

Musician and Birmingham Jazz Manager Mary Wakelam

Ian and Pip of 7″ Cinema

Jenny and Lisa of Capsule

Again, well done to Chris and everyone else involved

Frank xxx

Looking for my Nature Boy

This is an early incarnation of ‘Nature Boy’ which I wrote with my friend Fuzz. I was teaching her some simple chords for uke and she told me about a scenario which she wanted to turn into a song and hey presto!

When Fuzz was still at school she was ‘in love’ with a boy and wrote about him in her diary etc… One day she got him to participate in an art project for her. She took him to a park, put lots of jewellery on him and took a photo. To create her final composition she plastered diary entries over the picture. I haven’t seen it as I think Ikon gallery kept it after it was displayed (I need to check with Fuzz.) But I thought it was truly a lyric worthy tale.

Right now I am experimenting with finding a ‘video editing style’ on Youtube and currently favour a Bob Dylan style quick edit/written notes. My shtick is that my updated version is environmentally friendly as it doesn’t waste paper! I need to find a ‘nature boy’ for the video to do put jewellery on basically! He probably needs to emcompass an ‘indie’ boy style (Think Topman—cardigans and the like.) I could use more than one boy, I’m not sure yet. My audio recording is still shabby and has a maraca, keyboard and ukulele on it. There was something quite joyful about making it, I enjoy it’s raw feel. I’m not a pro so why pressure myself? Currently my recordings are so I can experiment visually. I’m hoping to make a great video for ‘Disappointed in Me‘ and another for ‘Whoops.’

Here is a music video which uses the style. This song has inspired me to start the ‘Fake Project’…but more on that another time.

This song, ‘Fake Joe Lean’ is simply about the idea of saying that someone you may be attracted to looks like someone else. For example if you’re trying to explain what someone looks like in a conversation you may say ‘he/she looks like so and so.’ I like to call these people ‘fake’ not because they are, but because they become a lookalike for someone well known often without even knowing it….

If you know anyone who may fit the bill give me a shout!

Frank x

Get Frank setlist no.1

I have decided to start doing ‘dry runs’ (um…less dodgy than it sounds I hope!) for when I do proper gigs. At the mo my voice is a bit sore so I can’t push it too much but hey…

What I plan to do is divide my songs into four song groups or ‘Get Frank setlists’. I also need to get used to my lovely new guitar!

This setlist involves one of my new songs (numero uno) followed by three ‘ole warhorses’

1. Cautionary Tale (apologies for my awful singing on this one…)

2. Disappointed in Me

3. Untitled

4. Whoops

On reflection….it is fairly obvious to myself that I should not have consumed wine before playing…therefore consume wine before watching!

Frank x

Skins: Courting controversy for the sake of it?

This is the first full trailer for teen focused drama, Skins.

The third series will focus on former lead character Tony’s sister Effie, and her friends. I’m looking forward to a casting change as I felt that the former characters lacked something (um…realism?)

Skins is one of those marmite programmes. I personally find it irritating, completely unrealistic, often poorly scripted, (the line “whoa nice swearing!” haunts my dreams…) and yet still utterly compelling.

The very first trailer for Skins a couple of years ago mixed semi naked revellers, sexual activity and lots of booze. The new trailer, as above, is oddly full of violence and more of the expected ‘aren’t we cool’ posing.

In the original series Effie, who at first appeared to be a dedicated privately educated school girl (but actually spent her evenings out partying) was involved in one of the more interesting plot twists concerning her adventure filled evenings out and her brother’s part in her double life.

This advert is probably nothing to do with the series, bearing in mind that the characters are just sixteen (!) It reminds me somewhat of the scene in Trainspotting when Begbie throws a glass over a balcony just because he feels like fighting. That however is not a scene that takes place with 6 posh teenagers in a Bristonian pub!

The second series took advantage of the fact that most of its cast had turned 18 and were legally allowed to flash more than before…one of the production team even wrote about having to film certain scenes late on in the schedule because they were waiting for a cast member to come of age. If they couldn’t shock with the partying, booze and drugs of the previous series they could fill it with sex and they did, usually with one sex scene per episode- Skins therefore telling teenagers not only how to party but how to ‘do it’ as well…

…what ‘how to’ will series three give us? How to draw blood without displacing elaborate hair?

Frank.

(HAPPY NEW YWAR!)

x