Hi everybody!

Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on a number of things.

I’ve been working on a track for my album, which at the moment has the working title of Morph. The song is one I wrote fairly recently, but it has become a personal favourite out of the songs I’ve written so far.

It is an upbeat electropop song about a person who is trying to be something they’re not. The demo is coming along quite nicely, though it’s not quite ready yet.
I have really high hopes for the song, I’m very proud of the lyrics and music and I can’t wait for you to hear it.

I also recently wrote two new songs, one of those songs is called I hope I’m doing something right and the other is called Sense Of Morality.
I hope I’m doing something right is a down tempo electropop song about personal insecurities. This song is still in the very early stages and I’m not sure what to do with it yet.

Sense Of Morality is a bit more developed, but I’m not sure what direction to go in with this song yet. I’m very proud of the lyrics as they are much more political than anything I’ve ever written before. The basic theme of the song is the effects any kind of discrimination can have on a person emotionally.

I really hope that this song can appear on EP 1, the concept of that record has changed from Optimism to Morality. I can imagine that I shall change the concept of EP 2 soon, I’ll let you know if I do that.
I’ll also let you know when I work on those songs a bit more.

Thank you so much for reading this blog, please be sur eto check out the other “My Music” blogs and my songs if you haven’t already done so!

Thanks,

Josh :)

Hi everybody!

Sorry about the few week gap between blogs, a bunch of stuff has happened recently which has left me very little time to do things with my music.

Unfortunately, I don’t really have much to say about what I’ve been working on apart from I’ve started working on two new tracks.

One of the songs I’ve been working on has the working title of “Stars”. It is based on a riff I mentioned in an earlier blog that I wrote a while back.
The song is an electropop piece that has a dark edge to it. I really like it.
The song also has a time signature change, this is the first time I’ve ever done that in a song, it switches from 4/4 to 3/4 and then back to 4/4.
I’m not sure what to do with the song yet, so I’ll let you know about that in the future.

The other track I’ve been working on is a song that has two working titles at the moment. One of the titles is “Rope” and the other is “Tie The Knot”  (I can’t decide between the two).
This song is still in the very early stages, but I’m very excited about it!
I think it has a very eerie feeling to it, and the plans I have for lyrics are very different to what I usually write about.
I can’t wait to develop this song!

This will be my last blog in 2011, as I plan to start writing them less frequently.
I realised that most of my blogs just consist of a few sentences that don’t really give much information and they probably aren’t particularly interesting.

So I’m going to leave more time between blogs, in order to give me more time to work on music. I think that by doing this I should have a lot more interesting things to say in the blogs and they will be more enjoyable to read.

So instead of doing a weekly blog, I’m going to write a blog every two to four weeks.
During the time between blog, I’m going to try and post more stuff on here, such as pictures of my studio, lyric ideas, etc.

Also, I’m going to start experimenting more with my music and my style of writing.
I don’t want to limit myself to doing just electropop, as I enjoy lots of other things and I want to try writing in many other ways.
My influences vary from electropop to indie/alternative to baroque pop to avant-garde music and I want to incorporate those elements more into my music.

Eventually I plan to start doing video blogs. I know I’ve been saying that for a while.
I don’t feel that my studio is really presentable to video yet, so I’m going to decorate it and make it nice so It’ll look good on camera.

Finally I’m going to talk about my plans for 2012.

• Release at least one EP
• Finish album songs
• Release more free download songs
• Decorate studio
• Post more stuff on this blog
• Record more cover song videos for YouTube

That’s all I’ve got to say this week, thank you so much for reading this blog.

Thank for so much to everyone who has supported me this year.
It’s been a great year and I’m so thankful for the warm reception my music has received.
Please be sure to recommend my music to your friends, download all of my songs, like me on facebook, follow me on here and on twitter.
Share my music with everybody you know!

Thank you so much!

Have a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a Wonderful New Year!!!

Thanks,

Josh :)

Hi Everyone!

This week I wrote a new song, and something that could potentially become a new song.

The song I wrote currently has the working title of “Terrified”. It’s still in the very early stages right now as all I have is piano chords, lyrics and vocals.
I really like it, but I’m not too sure what to do with it.
The song doesn’t really sound like something I want to sing, it just doesn’t seem to fit in with everything else I’ve done.
As I said before, it’s still in early stages, so maybe it’s best if I let the song develop before I decide on what to do with it.

I also wrote a new riff this week, which I really love.
It’s very simple and it revolves around two chords, but I never seem to get tired of hearing it.
I haven’t had much time to develop it this week, due to illness and college work, but the Christmas holidays are coming up very soon so I’m going to start working on it then.

I’d really love to play my first gig next year, but I don’t know how to go about doing that as I don’t have my own PA system and I don’t really have the money to buy one.
I’m not sure if I’ll get a reply to this, but if you’re in a band or solo artist then please get in touch and tell me how you started getting booked for gigs, as I’, really not sure how to do it.

That’s all I’ve got to say this week!
Thanks for reading this blog, please be sure to read the other “my music” blogs and to check out my music if you haven’t already done so!

Thanks,

Josh :)

Sorry about that!

I’ve had heaps of work to do for college this week, so I haven’t really found the time to do anything new with my music.

Please feel free to check out my stuff if you haven’t already done so!

Hi everybody!

This week I wrote a new song, which right now has the working title of “Morph”.
I’m not too sure if I like that title just yet, so it’s possible that I will change the title in the future.

The song can have a number of different meanings, it depends on how you choose to look at it.
Overall, the basic theme of the song is insecurities. The song is about somebody who is trying to be something they’re not.
I’d say that it’s definitely one of my favourite set of lyrics, out of that I’ve written so far.
The lyrics contain lots of metaphors which allow the song to convey a variety of different messages.

I’ve produced a demo of the song, and musically it has a pulsing chord rhythm against a club beat.
It’s quite easy to dance to it, but I wouldn’t necessarily describe it as a dance song.
I really like it, and I can’t wait for you to hear it.

I haven’t really had time to do anything else this week with my music, due to the large amount of coursework I’ve had.
I have two days off from college this week, on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Hopefully I’ll find some time to work on my music then.

Thank you so much for reading this blog, please be sure to check out the other “my music” blogs and my music if you haven’t already done so!

Thanks,

Josh :)

Hi everybody!

I’ve spent the majority of this week working on a song I wrote a while ago called “New Life”.

The song is probably one of my favourite songs out of everything I’ve written so far.
When I originally wrote it, I played a very early demo for my sister and she seemed to really love it.

On Friday I produced a demo of the track on Pro Tools, and I think it’ll sound really great when it’s complete.
The song to me sounds very simple, yet very complex at the same time.
I think the music is really beautiful, I particularly like the drum beat as it has a “marching band” feel to it.

However, I recorded demo vocals for the track today and listening back to it made me realise that I needed to make a few changes to the lyrics.
The song originally was about rebellion, in the case of my point of view I was rebelling against people who believe that they can push other people around.
Like I have done with some of my other songs, I wrote it in an ambiguous style so that the listener to interpret the songs to reflect what they are feeling at that time.
I was aware when I wrote it that the record could easily be seen as being a political song, which was fine by me, I love songs that discuss political views.
The problem that came with “New Life” was that I realised that, if the song were to be looked at in a political sense, then the song seemed to be promoting a political stance that I don’t personally believe in.
So because of this I didn’t not feel it was write to sing some of the lyrics in the song as I believe that it’s important that I always sing about things I believe in.

I have re-written parts of the song, it is now a song that supports activism for peace. I think it sounds much better now, I feel much more comfortable singing it and I cannot wait for you all to hear it!

That’s all I have to say this week, thank you so much for reading this blog!
Please be sure to check out my music and to read the “my music” blogs if you haven’t already done so!

Thanks,

Josh :)

Hi everybody!

You may have seen earlier that I posted a picture showing that I reached 1000 plays on SoundCloud!!!

I know that isn’t many, when you consider how many people there are in the world who could have listened to the songs, but it’s exciting to find out that your songs have had one play…. let alone one thousand!!!

Thank you to all of those who have listened to my music and downloaded it.
It really means a lot to me!

Please continue to listen to my music and download my songs.
(if you haven’t heard my music and would like to listen to it, click on the links below)

Today I finally finished sequencing Human on Pro Tools!
This song actually has another name, but I don’t want to reveal that name yet.

It’s sounding really great!
It’s quite different to a lot of my other stuff.
It’s not really an electropop song. Don’t get me wrong, it is predominantly synth based, but it has quite a quirky happy pop song feel to it.
The song sounds quite light, whereas a lot of my other stuff has a theatrical and heavy feel to it.
I really like it, the song took me a very long time to sequence due the fact that the song features a lot of musical and rhythmic changes.
The song is also one of my longer songs, t’s roughly four minutes and forty-five seconds.

I plan to start sequencing “New Life” and “Silver & Blue” soon.
I don’t think that “New Life” will take very long, but “Silver & Blue” features a lot of chord changes.
The songs are really coming together now, and I have a feeling that they’ll sound incredible on a record.

That’s all I have to say this week, please be sure to check out the other “My Music” blogs and my music if you haven’t already done so!

Thanks,

Josh :)

Hi everybody!

This week I finally completed my new song “Learn To Fly”.
I really love it, hopefully you all will as well!

I mentioned in last week’s blog that I’d finished the music to “Learn To Fly” and was going to record vocals later on that week.
I recorded the vocals on Tuesday night, I wanted the song to have a live feel, so I recorded it in one take instead of recording individual sections like I would with any of my other songs. I tried the song twice and decided to use the second take.
I felt really happy with it, but I felt that there was something missing.

After a few days, I thought about the track and realised that it needed some harmonies during the chorus, but I didn’t think the harmonies sounded right when I sang them. So my sister offered to sing them over the top of the song, she just sings an octave higher than me, and it makes the song sound perfect!

Although my sister is only singing for two very brief moments, it makes such a big difference to the song!
This was also the first time my sister has ever sang on a song recording.
I cannot wait for you all to hear it!

“So-Called Angel” and “Learn To Fly” are now complete, all that I have to record now before I release any new music is “I Caught You Staring At Me”.
I’ve sequenced the song into pro tools, and I’ve developed some sounds that I will use in the song.
All that I need to do now is record the sounds and my vocals.
I finish college for half-term this Wednesday, so I will probably do that when I come home!

After those songs are complete, I’m going to release them for free download then I’m going to focus on finishing both EPs and my album.

• EP 1 is about 90% done, there’s just a few minor touches I need to make.
  I’ve decided that once that is complete, I’m just going to put the whole thing up for free download and send it to whoever asks for it.
  It’s not that I don’t like the songs, it’s just that they seem out of date compared to the stuff I’m working on now and the stuff I’ve already released.
  As I’ve previously mentioned, I wrote the songs when I was 15/16 years old.
  My songwriting, musicianship and production skills have improved drastically since those songs were written. Some of the songs sound a tad basic and have a bit of a “teeny-bopper” sound, which I’m not particularly proud of.
  However, some songs on there such as “Porcelain Doll”, “Time” and “Falls Apart” which I consider to be a few of my best.
  Just because I’m not as happy with it as I was doesn’t mean that people won’t enjoy it, which is why I still plan to release it soon.

• EP 2 is something that I have really high hopes for!
  I’ve finished writing and demoed 3 out of 5 songs.
  One song is 100% complete, one is almost done (I just need to record vocals) and I need to finish of two others and write one more.
  Some of the tracks on there are more experimental than some of my other stuff, but I still hope that you will all enjoy it.

• My album is something I’ve been working on for just under a year, and I plan to spend a lot of time on it. I have written and demoed 11 out of 13 tracks for this record, and I still plan to write two more songs.
  The album has a concept, which I shall go into more detail on later, but the main theme throughout the record is desire.
  Some of my most honest, personal and best songs are on here, which I cannot wait for you to hear!
  Once I’ve completed at least 60% of this record, I’m going to start sending songs off to various record companies so I can hopefully get it released on a proper record label!

That’s all I’ve got to say this week, thank you so much for reading this blog!
Please be sure to read the other “My Music” blogs and to check out my music if you haven’t already done so!

Thanks,

Josh :)

Hi everybody!

I’m really happy to say that “Couple On Show” and “I Can’t Stop Writing Songs About You” are now 100% complete and ready for release!!!
I cannot wait for you to hear them, I’m really proud of the songs and I hope that you all love them!
They shall be released later this week, as soon as they’re out, I’ll post a blog that contains links to the songs.

I’ve already discussed the sound of “Couple On Show”, as I wrote about it in my previous blog.
So I’ll just talk about “I Can’t Stop Writing Songs About You” in this blog.

“I Can’t Stop Writing Songs About You” is a far more personal song than “Couple On Show”. Both songs share a similar tempo and mood. ICSWSAY isn’t as ”produced” as “Couple On Show”, though I do experiment heavily with delays and lightly with pitch-bending. ICSWSAY has a slighly more “raw” sound in the vocals. In the song, I sing some of my lowest and highest notes within my range. I sing a very low backing vocal during the chorus and I use my falsetto range in the background of the final chorus. The song is also my longest free download song (so far) and one of the longest songs I’ve written, the song is 4:56. I write about the subject maatter in more detail in the Inspiration behind my songs blog when the song is released, same goes for “Couple On Show”.

That’s all I’ve got to say this week, thanks for reading this blog!
Please by sure to check out the other “My Music” blogs if you haven’t already done so and please check out my songs!

Thanks,

Josh :)

Hi everybody!

I have some really good news…
I’ve finally finished the recording of all four free download songs!!! 

I spent the day recording “Clear” and I made some changes to “Save Me From My Secrets”.
I’m happy with “Clear” (I think) and I’m definitely much happier with “Save Me From My Secrets”

As I always do, I’m going to listen to them all again at some point later in the week to see if I’m still happy with them or if I think I need to make any changes.
I also need to play the four songs to my parents and to my sister to see what they think and if they can pick up on something that may need changing.

As soon as I’ve done all of that, I’m going to finally release them online so that all of you to listen to them and download them for free!!!

I’ll upload them on here, SoundCloud, my MySpace music profile and my YouTube and Facebook page as soon as I’ve made them.

I’ll post links to all of those sights on here some time this week so you can start following me on them!

Hopefully you’ll all love the music I’ve made, I cannot wait to find out what people think of it!
I’ll post another blog on here as well when I upload the songs.

Thanks so much for reading this blog, please be sure to read the other “My Music” blogs if you haven’t already done so!

Thanks,

Josh :)