As you probably now, in 2010 I released a solo album called “The Kindness Of Strangers” to raise money for the MS Society, to help people affected by Multiple Sclerosis.

Until Feb 1, 2012 the album is available as a Pay What You Want download instead of the usual set amount, so there’s no better time to grab a bargain and help raise funds for a fantastic cause:



Hope you all have a great 2012.

Take care

Alun

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ll know that every year I record a solo bass arrangement of a Christmas song and then transcribe it  for my mailing list. Well, this year is no exception. This year’s victim is “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” in a slightly jazzy arrangement. You can download the track for whatever price you desire (including for free) here:

It’s played on my 4 string Squier Vintage Modified Jazz and ( for those who like to know such things) is one track of bass which is then split into 4 tracks of audio – the basic DI’d track, two tracks with reverb which are high pass filtered and panned hard left and right, and a fourth track with all the high end rolled off which was run through the Ampeg B15 simulation in IK Multimedia’s excellent Ampeg SVX plug in.

The  sheet music, complete with tab, will be sent out to my mailing list just before Christmas so if you fancy a copy and aren’t already on the list, feel free to sign up at http://www.alunvaughan.com/contact.htm

A little while after recording God Rest Ye, I decided to have a go at recording a second, and somewhat sillier, arrangement that I’d been messing about with and here it is:

I had far too much fun doing the artwork in Paint but it doesn’t show on the player, so here it is in all it’s glory:

This one is played on my Cort Curbow 6 string with a capo at the 7th fret and again features a single track which is split up and processed. On this one there are actually 5 tracks – the central DI and two panned reverb/high pass filter tracks as before, plus a fairly quiet track of slapback echo and a high reverb, and final track which is run through a Marshall guitar amp simulation in Amplitube’s Jimi Hendrix plug in.

So, that’s all the new music so what’s the old music I mentioned in the title? Well there are two things, firstly the last couple of year’s Christmas tunes are still available on Bandcamp:

And secondly, my original PDF collection of Christmas tunes arranged for solo bass is still proving popular over at Bassbook.co.uk . Ten Christmas classics arranged for solo bass with tab plus a second PDF of just the melodies and two mini lessons which cover harmonics and two handed tapping to help you play the arrangements for just £3 ! NB There may be a slight delay in emailing them to you when you order as I’m still doing it all manually so have to be home to send it, but they get sent ASAP.

Finally, let me wish you all a very Merry Christmas and thank you for your support.

Take care,

Alun

Every year, Cancer Research UK run an event called “Busking Cancer”, where musicians busk or organise events to raise money for their work in helping people affected by cancer. In the past I have done gigs for the event but this year found myself short of time but wanted to do something so decided to release some music instead.
This album contains music recorded from 2009 to 2011, all polished and remastered ( well re-apprenticed maybe, I can’t really call my process mastering!)

The tracks are…

1. Sunrise – from my currently unavailable 2009 album “What I Did On My Holiday”
2. The Big Calm – from the Cafe Noodle Big Calm project
3. Burning Bandstands – my remix of a track by guitarist Matt Stevens
4. The Featherplucker’s Son – unreleased version from the 2010 Cafe Noodle festival
5. Resolution – from Moo(sic), remixed for this album
6. Lester – an improvised tribute to Les Paul from 2009

The album costs a meager £3 and all proceeds will go to Cancer Research UK. Here it is:

The album will only be available for the nex 10 days so please grab it while you can, enjoy some music, and help a great cause.

Take care,
Alun

Just a quick post to say that I have released a new album today on Bandcamp! It’s called “IF” and it features 9 tracks improvised live as part of a streamed internet concert earlier this year. All tracks are 100% improvised and 100% solo bass guitar – there are no overdubs, just a tiny bit of editing and audio tweaking.

You can download the whole album, or any tracks you fancy, for free or can pay any price you want.

If you like it please tell someone about it and/or use the Share/Embed function to spread the word.
Thanks for listening!
Take care,
Alun

Apologies for neglecting this poor blog recently, but to make up for it here’s a post about not one but two new collaborations on Soundcloud that you can listen to and download for free. I thought I’d give you a little insight into what’s going on in these tracks and also highlight the amount of free software used to create them. People always think that setting up a recording system is expensive, and it can be , but these days there are loads of great free, or very cheap, pieces of software that can give you some great results.

All my multi-track recording these days is done using Reaper, an amazingly powerful audio and MIDI workstation. The small business/personal licence is really cheap compared to other studio packages and, even better, the demo is fully functional and never expires so you can try it for free as long as you like. I found myself using it so much that I bought the licence, but there are no restrictions on trying it out to make sure you like it before you pay anything.

Slow Puncture

The first track is a remix of “Slow Puncture” by Laura Kidd aka She Makes War

This is the third She Makes War track I have remixed, and probably the most commercial one I’ve done so far.

I started off by stripping everything away from the original except the main acoustic guitar and the vocals. Originally I wanted to make a trip hop style track which is where the stuttery editing and pitchshifting (from one of Reaper’s built in effects)on the guitar came from, but as I listened to it more I decided that maybe I would add some strings and it started to take on a different persona. The guitar, incidentally, was run through a free guitar amp simulator, AmpLionFree, to make it a little janglier than the original as I wanted it to be a little more grungy than the original.

For this track, I used quite a few soundfonts rather than samples, and they worked pretty well in my opinion. The xylophone, synth bass and the flutes in the middle section are all soundfonts (and free!) Sadly the drums and strings were not free. For the drums I used EZDrummer and the Vintage Rock expansion pack and the strings are multiple layered sounds from IK Multimedia’s Miroslav Philharmonik software. I doubled the midi string track and fed each track to four different string patches to make a thicker more colourful sound than you would get just using the one sound.

To “glue” the track together I did a couple of things. Firstly, the drums, xylophone and strings were all run through the same reverb ( another freebie – Lexicon’s M30 plug in) in an attempt to make the sound like they were all recorded in the same room. I also found the vocals stuck out a bit so added a bit of dirt with the free mda Degrade plug in, mixed in with the original vocal ( I also used the same effect on the intro guitar).

And that’s basically it Hope you enjoy it, and i you do don’t forget to check out Laura’s site and the original version of the track, it’s fantastic

The Mason Wright

This was a fun project to do – rather than a remix,this one was a case of adding to a pre-existing rhythm track. Tom Emmons (who I knew as @napadude on Twitter) had created a track as a tribute to Pink Floyd and invited musicians to use it as a basis for their own creations.

I have previously recorded a couple of Floyd-ish pastiches ( see below) so thought it would be something I’d enjoy doing… and I was right!

I started by dropping the bassless mix of Tom’s track into Reaper and busking along on my trusty Cort Curbow 6 string bass. I actually intended on using my Squier Jazz for a more 70s tone but the Curbow, palm muted and played with a pick, sounded OK so after a couple of takes I had a usable track. My original plan was to create a dark, slightly gritty, Roger Waters type sound but as I experimented I ended up with something inbetween Roger Glover and John Wetton!

The bass tone was again created with a feast of freebies The key to is Reaper’s 3 band splitter and joiner plug ins. These allow you to split any audio track into three separate frequency bands ( lows, mids and highs set to whatever crossover frequencies you choose) and then process each one seperately. This is a godsend for bass tracks as you can keep the low fundamentals untouched while sprinkling fairy dust on the upper frequencies. so effectively the bass sound is made up of three effects chains:

Lows – squashed through the free Plektron WTComp tube compressor plug in
Mids – Run through the Ampeg B15 simulation from Line 6′s excellent PodFarmFree suite
Highs – Run through PodFarm’s Marshall JCM800 guitar amp simulation

At one point I also added some octave up harmoniser ( from Reaper’s built in ReaPitch)to the high frequencies, which gave a very convincing Kings X style 12 string bass sound,but it was so huge it was eating up the whole mix!

The final step on the bass track was to squash it drastically with Tone Boosters’ Barricade limiter (another fine freebie demo). I don’t normally do a lot of brickwall limiting but it added a nice punch and consistency on this occasion.

For the guitar, I used my trusty Mexican Fender Telecaster and again just plugged in and started playing. I think the track on the recording is the second or third take, with a couple of dropped in phrases here and there.

For the sound, I started with the Fender Twin simulation from the free GuitarSuite set of plugins ( the amusingly titled “Rednef”)and then added a pile of PodFarm effects – their Tubescreamer pedal simulation for some extra overdrive plus a digital delay and spring reverb. Finally I added another WTComp for some valvey compression and final some of Reaper’s presence Eq to add a little high end lost in the delays and reverbs.

The final challenge was to get the tones to blend with the backing track. For this I did something else I rarely do and used Reaper’s expressbus Bus Compressor on the main outputs which added just enough subtle “glue” to make it sound coherent.

Another freebie I should mention, used on both tracks, is ToneBooster’s Isone plug in which creates simulations of various listening environments and is really helpful if you have to, as I do , mix on headphones.

Hopefully that give some insight into what goes into these tracks and, more importantly, demonstrated some of the great free resources that are available these days.

As you’ve managed to read this far, here are some bonus tracks to listen to. These are the Floyd-esque tracks I mentioned earlier. Firstly, here’s my contribution to last year’s “Big Calm” project which starts off with some blatant ripping off…

And secondly, here’s the closing track from the album “Moo(sic)” which again had a very Floydy intro..

Take care and I promise to attempt to not wait another 6 months before the next post….probably!
Alun

So, if you buy an album for £10, I will donate £5 to Comic Relief regardless of what amount I get after the fees.

As you may know, all profits from “The Kindness Of Strangers” go to the MS Society to benefit people affected by multiple sclerosis. This will continue – if you but this album, the MS Society get the amount you choose to pay and I will then donate an amount equal to 50% of the price you paid to Comic Relief. Everyone’s a winner!

So, if you’ve been considering downloading an album or two, there is no better time than over the next few days -you get some music plus the warm feeling of knowing you’ve helped support some worthy causes.

You can visit the Bandcamp page directly, or listen to and/or download the albums from these widgets:

Take care,
Alun

Just a quick post to say I have a new album out right now on Bandcamp:

It’s called “Moo(sic)” and was recorded during February 2011 for the RPM Challenge. It’s quite a diverse collection so I’m not quite sure how to describe it in genre terms. Based on the styles of the tunes I shall call it afro-funk-ambient-avant garde-country-blues-folk-prog rock…..or just “music”!

You can stream the whole thing for free, and then download it ( or any track you fancy) for what ever price you fancy ( even free if you want).

Hope you enjoy it and, if you do, please tell a friend and help spread the Moo(sic)!

Take care
Alun

Thought I’d quickly have a run through the happenings of 2010 and also let you know about a couple of fun things that I’ve got lined up for 2011.

So, 2010…

The first big thing was the release of Panic Room‘s second album “Satellite” ( ok, the special edition was out in 2009, but the official release was 2010). As well as playing on the album, I also co-wrote two tracks – “Black Noise” and “The Great Divide” (on the bonus “Little Satellite” disc with the Special Edition) and wrote my first ever commercially released lyrics on “..Divide” (I wrote the chorus and most of the verses, Anne wrote the middle eight and made a few changes elsewhere).
I’m not always a big fan of listening to myself, but am really proud of the bass playing on his album. I got to play fretted and fretless basses ( the latter on “Sunshine” and “Satellite”), debut my electric upright ( “I Am A Cat” and “The Fall”), make cat noises with my electric upright, a bow and an autowah ( the intro to “..Cat” oddly enough), overplay with loads of distortion pretending to be Geezer Butler ( “Dark Star”) and it even features two bass solos – the outro to “The Great Divide” and the fretless space-solo in “Satellite”.

The album has been really well received, and lead to some fantastic gigs including supporting Hawkwind at St Davids Hall, Cardiff and supporting Wishbone Ash and Mostly Autumn at Shepherds Bush Empire.

However although Panic Room was the most high profile part of my musical life ( and quite possibly what led you to be reading this right now), I continued to do all my freelance gigs, and work a full time day job, and ran out of time to do everything. So, in July, I parted company with the band. Their new bassist Yatim Halimi is a great player and lovely person so I look forward to seeing what they come up with next.

Gig wise, I had all sorts of fun last year – I did a couple of Spring dates with New York singer Marlene Verplanck, played some great festival dates in Swansea, Brecon and Pontypool Jazz Festivals with various artists, and even got to do some solo bass gigs ( which I love but terrify me!). I was also rhythm section tutor on the Steve Waterman Big Band ( more about that in a minute).

As far as recording went, I did a few sessions and released a total of 4 solo albums via Bandcamp – two albums worth of short improvisations ( “Notebook 1″ and “…2″), an unedited live recording from a Ustream webcast ( “The Cafe Noodle Bootleg”) and “The Kindness Of Strangers”, a combination of live and studio recordings released to raise money for people affected by Multiple Sclerosis.

I also did a “Christmas single”, also available on Bandcamp:

Not only was it enormous fun to record all these, self releasing them meant I was also responsible for the artwork, liner notes, etc which I really enjoyed ( I’m quite a control freak really!)

Throughout 2010, I also got involved in doing remixes for people which has really helped my studio and programming abilities:

Remixes by AlunVaughan

So, quite a busy year musically all in all – I think I counted 112 gigs in total. But it was also a very busy year in dayjob land and in November I was amazed to win Teamleader Of The Year 2010 in the Welsh Contact Centre Association Awards

Amongst all this hectic working, I also found time to relax a bit and actually take some time out. I got to spend some time touristing around Liverpool and London as well as getting the chance to see some of my favourite musicians play – Jeff Beck, Stu Hamm, Billy Sheehan, Laurence Cottle, John Paul Jones, Stuart Clayton, Michael Manring, Victor Bailey and I’m sure many others that escape me right now.

So, 2010 turned out pretty well!! Now, what shall I do in 2011…..

The first thing to mention is that the 8 track “standard” version of “Kindness of Strangers” is now on iTunes, emusic, CDBaby and should hopefully be on a few more online stores (eg Amazon and Myspace Music) soon. The 9 track version with liner notes will remain on Bandcamp. Why? Well, two reasons – firstly, the other sites don’t allow liner notes to be included, and secondly, all profits from the album go to the MS Society so I’d rather tempt people towards Bandcamp where a higher percentage of the sale revenue finds its way back to the artist.

I have had some fantastic feedback about the album which you can read here.

Speaking of albums, I will again be taking part in the RPM Challenge, where you have to record an album during February. This will be my third year – last year led to the Notebook albums, and the previous year I recorded a more diverse composed album “What I Did On My Holiday” which I would love to get onto Bandcamp but cannot find the original files (Bandcamp needs high quality files, not just MP3s). If this year’s album gets onto Bandcamp, I may see if I can bundle a zip file of the “..Holiday” MP3s in with it as I’m quite proud of it.

This year, I plan to rummage through my “ideas” folders and complete some of the music left over from the 2009 and 2010 RPM Challenges, as well as some ideas I originally intended for Panic Room and “Kindness…”, some ideas I’ve written recently and anything else that comes to mind between now and when I master the last song! This may all change, but that’s the plan for now.

In April, I will again be taking up the role of rhythm section tutor alongside saxophonist Alan Barnes and trumpeter Steve Waterman on their Contemporary Big Band Course in Llanelli, South Wales. It’s a great weekend’s playing and tuition and you can find full details here.

Keep an eye on my website, www.alunvaughan.com, for further news and, if you’re into Twitter, you can follow me there too – @alunvaughan.

Have a great 2011 everyone and hope to see you at a gig soon!
Take care,
Alun

Just a quick post to say that I have added a little two track “Christmas single” to Bandcamp. It consists of a new arrangement of “Silent Night” ( NOT the one in the Christmas Songs for Solo Bass ebook) and a brand new improvisation recorded in one take on December 23 called “Homeward Bound”.

Have a fantastic Christmas everyone!

Cheers
Alun

PS If you want a transcription of the “Silent Night” arrangement, I will be sending one to my mailing list shortly. Not on it? Feel free to join here

Hope you’re surviving the snow and getting ready for a great Christmas!

Just thought I’d give you a quick update on a few things that I’m up to at the moment.

Bass Guitar Magazine
I’m very pleased to say that my album, The Kindness Of Strangers, gets a nice mention in this month’s Bass Guitar Magazine:

All proceeds go the MS Society and you can stream/download it here:



Christmas Songs For Bass

My PDF Collection of Christmas tunes for solo bass is still available at Bassbook for only £3. I’ve received great feedback about this collection, and it’s even been used in some colleges, so if you’re looking for something to play when the relatives call round at Christmas and the dreaded words “play us a tune” are uttered, now’s your chance!

Big Band Course

Fast forward to April 2011, and I will be appearing as a featured tutor on the 6th Steve Waterman Contenporary Big Band Course in Llanelli, South Wales alongside Steve and sax legend Alan Barnes. As the name suggests, the focus of the course is big band playing and jazz. There are also private lessons available with all of us if you want some one to one tuition too (doesn’t have to be bass either, last year I gave a lesson on phrasing and solo development for one of the drummers on the course). Info and booking details can be found here

Take care,
Alun