Week 19

hi there guyz and gals and this my 19th week at noise solution and this week my tutor is away performing with his band in Australia so ive got a temporary tutor who is nice and polite and doesn't stop talking sounds like me but older, what a great hook up my tutor has linked me with. Firstly we discussed what we do an how we got into music and soon after we got along and after that i started to show him how to play chords easily which i enjoyed showing him what i have learnt and to be able to share my knowledge with him. we also discussed the unit that im planning to do where i have to interview someone from the arts and my temp tutor works in the music industry so im planning to interview him i may ask him such questions as :

How did you get into music?

What do you do now?

Also, what advice could you give me as im going to attend a collage course in media is there any musical or technical advice you can give me for that?

What do you have planned for the future?

What instruments can you play and enjoy playing with?

We're hoping to do the interview in next weeks session.

We also looked at EQing today because my temp tutor is alot more clued up with eqing than my current tutor and he explained the whole spectrum of equalizing sound to me which i have found hard to understand the concepts of. We looked at the differences of DBs and Khz which stand for decibels and kilohertz which effect the way sound is produced we also looked at graphic eqs and a parametric eq. even though there is still alot more to learn i now at least understand alot more than i did.   

me, looking at the parametric eq on the desk in the studio.

Week 18

Richard adding Bass

hi there guys and this is my 18th week at noise solution the first thing that needed doing to my Maggie may piece done by Rod Stewart is recording the bass so in order to do that i needed to hook the bass to the desk and to that i jacked the bass through a DI box which changes the level amount of electricity i use for the desk so basically it doesn't blow it up it's like a transformer reducing electricity to the right amount required. And then from there another cable leading from the box to the desk so that the computer can read its there. After everything was set up it was time to practice and record the bass so the studio owner who plays the bass kindly gave his time to show off his skills and practice with the lads. i had to manage and maintain him so that he could go over the music sheet and in order to get the sound of the piece i had to play the original song and then my version soon after an hours worth of practice we nailed the first part the song but there is still work to be done with the piece. so far the days gone really well and I've enjoyed helping and playing along side the studio owner.  We also brushed over my version of the song adding effects such as sound compressors and EQs.

Freddys thoughts being developed on his Leadership project

Week 17 Recording Maggie Bass and drums and discussing unit 2

Hi there folks and this is my - -  week at the noise solution. Today I've been fairly busy recording a live take version of "maggie may" the song written by rod stewart.  i struggled with the first couple of takes because i got tense and because i was stood up for some time playing the piece my arms and legs started to ache and i gradually went out of time it was ether that or id play the wrong notes. this has happened to me in the past and it happens alot more when im recording certainly if your with a band and everyones relying on you. However i didn't give up and i took a short break i also drank some water rejuvenating myself  and then i came back loosed up and then after all of this i managed to successfully perform the piece we were all hoping for it, was all in time sounded great and i felt like id differently overcome a barrier. id like to say a big thanks to simon my tutor for putting up with me in the session but we got there in the end.  

Igor plays the Organ

A ghostly apparition

Freddy s track - Maggie May - organ and drums only



Here is Freddy and Simon discussing the second Unit and what project Freddy might choose to do

Week 16

hi there Guyz and this my 16th week at noise pollution making some noise i have gone away and done a bit practice to come back this week and play to my perfection i thought i had lost most of my talent the week before but after a bit of practice i soon bounced back.  Today so far i came in this morning and practiced the intro and I'm currently working on the solo half way through the song. i hadn't done this at home but I'm soon picking it up in the studio. we also discussed different styles of recording songs i.e. slow, fast, jazz  i also had experimented with some of these styles on both piano and briefly on the organ. i think its important to try different methods of performing songs to find which playing style sounds best but also remembering that you also experiment into deep detail with songs adding instruments and effects later on.

Chillin at the desk!

Practicing- Maggie

continuing from today's session. today i have at last finished performing the chord notes for my Maggie may song wrote by rod Stewart it was a rough ride trying to get the timing right and to make the music sound bitter sweet.


now for some 70s recording techniques

i had at a few bits of information that caught my eye but it was all to finicky for me to understand but what took my eye was that this piece in information I'm gonna put on the blog about reverb chambers back then

"When it came to Chambers, if you worked for a really good place like Capitol, your chamber was probably specially manufactured rooms or stairwells. If you were poor, you had a spring reverb. If you were rich, you had an EMT plate. If you were really creative, you could use a tape machine for all sorts of effects, like echoes, delays, phasing/flanging. You could also take a beefy power amplifier, connect that to a sinewave oscillator and voilà! Variable speed generator for your tape recorder". 


Simon suggested that we have ago at making our on reverb chamber in the hallway of the studio which i think is a reasonably good idea however we would need to plan how we would mix the reverb in if we were to use it and most of the instruments would require this also which takes time and preparation.  

Week 15

hi there guyz this is my fifteenth week at noise solution and so far Christmas has taken its toll and my skills have decreased alil while i was enjoying myself as u do and the solution was i hadn't being doing my practice which has annoyed me because before i left for Christmas i was able to perform the entire music piece Maggie may by rod Stewart  by that i mean the chords on the piano.   It looks like Ive got a fair bit of practicing to go before i find my footings again. Because over the course of the holidays i had forgotten most of what i had learnt from my previous sessions i thought it would be good to brush over all the skills i had once learnt on reaper. we had a look at eqing, putting together a track and remembering some of the quick keys for the mac as some PC users think the mac was created by aliens  so going over quick keys didn't hurt also we played around with the midi keyboard by creating different sounds and effects at the time we were messing around and mixing up a modern version of Maggie may if rod Stewart had done this song in the future years. so that's what happened today stay tuned folks for next week i shall be blogging  

here's what we did today - Maggie May if it had been recorded in 2011 rather than 1973

week 14 - Interviewed by BBC Radio Suffolk!

hi there guys and this is my 14th week at noise solution and today i was interviewed live by  BBC radio Suffolk the whole interview went at a reasonable pace and went very well. was i nervous yes but only a little,  as I'm a radio presenter myself i soon picked up alot of confidence and tips during the session.

i also performed on the piano live on BBC radio Suffolk which i thoroughly enjoyed and "I think my tutors jealous".

here's the interview, I play near the end of it.

Photo's of BBC Suffolk coming to Noise Solution and interviewing Freddy

also today i had a little practice with my Maggie may song that I'm currently performing by rod Stewart.  By putting the structure of the song together me and my tutor are able to fully understand the song by writing the versus, solo etc on the chord sheet. i have had a really good day today probably one of which i haven't had in a while maybe that might have something to do with Christmas being round the corner but apart from that I've learnt alot from being interviewed and i hope this will be a couple of skills i will keep with me for future uses take care guys and ill see you next week 

week 13

Freddy Blogging

Freddy said he was fed up of the photo's only being of him and said he should take one of me to see how I felt about it

hello there music addicts and this is my 13 week on my course this week i had some practice learning Maggie may from rod Stewart as this is my 70s music project piece. the reason why i chose this song as my 70 piece is because it was something that i have never heard of and i hadn't played before which i thought would be more of a challenge for me as i didn't know the song. As for the other songs i had performed they were simple to me because they were songs and artists that i had heard off and listened to. today during practice i had learnt many different pattens and ways to play different songs this was something i struggled with because i knew how to play chords as well as root notes but after awhile remembering all this is hard to remember when performing.  what i mean to say is that when you know how to play chords, trying to keep one hand playing a root note while the other is on a chord and then keeping in time with the band your playing with its alot to think about. So the consequence is to hit the wrong chord or root note. so the solution is to have the patients and to keep practicing.



This is the song that I'm doing a cover version of. Maggie may Rod Stewart and the Faces


Here's a clip of Freddy working on the chords with me (Simon)