Leonard Smalls

I've been busy too... The picture reminded me of going into the local butchers shop a few weeks ago... The butcher was expertly dismembering a pigeon for a customer who was going to do a fancy confit of leg with seared breast in hoojahcapivvy sauce. Hence a rap, in the form of a confessional, detailing with a total lack of empathy how being ignored, mistreated and abused as a child led him to a life of murder... So can I just apologise now? For those who are interested, 2 basses used - Wal and ACG. Keys are Ableton's own piano, plus baby Kontakt funky organ. Guitar is a strat (both) and drums are by Mr EZ, with a few programmed fills. Mixed in Ableton, with the help of Ozone, Neutron and Bassroom.

Not too sure he doesn't believe his own hype... Back in the late 90s I was working at BBC Elstree when Top Of The Pops was filmed there. One week Bon Jovi were due to appear; and it seems they insisted that they had exclusive access to both the canteen and bar over lunchtime. As a result, 500 or so staff had to traipse up to Borehamwood High Street to get any food. This was the only time while I was there that anything like this happened. I remember once going for my lunch wearing my habitual bike leathers and Guzzi logo belt. A big American bloke came over and we started chatting about bikes - he was a Guzzi fan too. Turned out it was Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age... Can't imagine JBG doing that!

He's got it in one! or: soft clipping, soft clipping plus grit, square-wave clipping...

This is similar to the argument we used to have with the old-school sound boys in BBC Studios. In Post Production Sound, where I worked, we were of the opinion that our function was to make the audio sound as good as possible - FX or not. Old Studio Boys thought they were there purely to reproduce what they recorded, with virtually no eq, no reverb, no delay, no compression. This was OK if the recorded artist was absolutely perfect, the room was perfect, the recording was perfect; but there was a time when they decided that ToTP should all be live. Some may remember the horrific sounds some bands produced, simply because they would normally play live with their own sound mixer using any fx he/she felt were needed... And nowadays, if a band with limited budget goes into the studio, it's a lot easier and cheaper to quantise that occasional drum beat or bass note that's out of time or to autotune that errant high note, than it is to re-record the whole lot!

Not sure if Flea quite gets the Harmolodic concept, like Al McDowell or Jamaaladeen Tacuma did (saw Ornette with Al back in the late 80s iirc), but then we didn't see the whole performance... Still, he always gives it a good, and I'm deeply jealous he got to play with Mr Shape Of Jazz! (In my defence I once played with members of Lol Coxhill's 80 band in a free-funk-improv beat combo!)

End of fretboard about belly button height... Like this:

Pleased to have seen Sonny live in '91 (he died in '94) with Melvin Gibbs on bass, Abe Speller and Pheeroan akLaf on drums. What a glorious racket!

I always go easy with the yodel. But a wet Bank Holiday gave me plenty of time to get a bit greasy and modal. With a rap that's like Medici getting anecdotal, not Saint Francis of Assisi taking a photo, more like a pugilisti getting scrotal... Er, er...

After the unexpected success of grimey rap last month, I'm working on more rap... Possibly with a grunge edge, as genres are made to be mixed!

Absolutely not! There's some pretty big shoes to fill... Doug used to do this and found something positive to say about every entry. My positive comment would usually be something like "and then mercifully, it ends".

It's like a cat attempting to scratch a blackboard while another cat pours petrol on it, and as he tries to strike a match both of them start sliding down a steepening scree slope made up of innumerable sharp pieces of slate. Meanwhile, someone else is recording that sound, and playing it back through a 70s Waltham cassette player which is mic-ed up and broadcast through a bank of Kay's catalogue guitar combos with slashed speaker cones. In other words, not good!

Tastes do seem to vary wildly! I find just about anything by The Carpenters to be painfully twee and horrifically square - I'd say cheese, but I like cheese, unless it's that processed stuff, or that bland American kack! However, I do like a good pentatonic widdle-fest, or even a modal and chromatic piddle-fest!

It's funny, cos that sounds like cats scratching on a blackboard to me! But then I've never been a fan of JaMC - probably because I like music where it's the instruments are making rhythm and melody with vocals purely a part of it, as opposed to being a drone with any melody being supplied only by the vox (see also The Ramones!!). So droney fuzz guitar is out for me! But then I also don't like single note only-on-the-quaver bass either...

And I was just about to vote for you and Nicko!

I have an eclectic mix of favourite guitarists, including: Buckethead Eddie Hazel Eduardo Niebla James Blood Ulmer Sonny Sharrock Catfish Collins Vernon Reid

When we recorded voiceovers or ADR (I'm an ex BBC TV sound recordist) we'd use Schoepps or Neumann mics going direct into Neve or SSL mic amps in Neve or SSL desks. Any compression (which was minimal) or eq tended to be from the same companies. If it was for a film dub we'd record onto 16mm mag film with Dolby SR, video would be onto Sony DAT. Later, recordings would be digital only into Lightworks, which had very little in the way of plug ins, then when we'd finally got Avid and ProTools to work together, onto that. As far as I know, the ProTools route is still the way for TV (it still is on my old programme), and it was only by about 1999 that we finally started with heavy compression, simply because production people were getting fed up of how loud trails would be between programmes; we went into more subtle multiband as we wanted at least some semblance of dynamic range!

We did 3 online benefit gigs last year using programmed drums and a sequencer as our drummer was shielding (and subsequently left). We sounded a helluva lot funkier, heavier and most importantly were right on time. Which was nice, and a bit of a change!

In '85 I was buying mainly funk and dub...

Just standard skinflint plan I'm afraid! So I had to delete the original, upload the shiny new mix then delete the link from my post here and re-insert the new address. However, all it would embed was the "track not found" Soundcloud graphic - though telling it to display link instead worked... Aye! And I kept any FX off just to keep you happy - though perhaps the use of a fancy new-fangled magnetic pick-up-lessbass offended Captain Soundcloud, or more likely, the BC software. Either way, as Ms Wilcox would say, it's a mythtery.

Proper groovy funky jazz...

I've done a little one... For some reason this made me think of all the tiny wars going on in our cities - where kids feel the only way they can survive is by carrying a blade... https://soundcloud.com/leonard-smalls/something-goin-on Edited to add remixed version with added clarity and less bass mud (bass is a Lightwave fretless with no FX, only mild compression and some eq)... BTW, anyone know why it won't embed as anything but the old version? On entering the new link it only finds it as "track not found"?

It's out now, the latest Punk 4 The Homeless benefit cd and download in aid of Hope Orphanage in Sierra Leone... It's all female-fronted bands, and we're on it! https://punk4thehomeless.bandcamp.com/album/girls-are-loud-volume-2

Suspect we might get a wide variety of stuff this month! I've been watching the Rap Game on BBC3 and that inspired me to do something a bit street... Will flop it out as soon as it sounds either more or less unlistenable, depending on your perspective!

I've long since come to terms with the fact that What The People Want is very different from What I Like! Still, each to their own, vive la difference, der Teufel scheißt auf einen Haufen etc