post 30                

Questions and Answers

Mark Moore
Submitted on 2009/01/27 at 1:39pm

Hi William, The Adelson illusion is brilliant and explains so much, so simply. I went to see a tonal music recital last night, ‘The Sacred Power of Harmonics’, with voices, Tibetan singing bowls and gongs. The guy was making a low ‘om’ tone with his mouth and a hi-pitched tone with his lips (which sounded uncannily like a vocoder or auto-tune with phasing!). I’ve heard this sound before in movies and documentaries but always assumed the additional sound was an instrument rather than a lone human voice. The combination of the two notes sometimes gave the illusion of a third. As for the bowls and gongs… it was pure BBC Radiophonic Workshop. If you didn’t know you would swear they were using synths.

WO
Hi Mark

That must have been fascinating. Phantom voice mantras and Radiophonic Workshop bowls! Didn’t they use tape recordings of lampshades at different speeds to create their soundscapes? And the monks probably need a lifetime to develop that sound. We do have it easy these days with out laptop synths and deejay downloading decks!

I should mention. Ladies and gentleman, this is THE Mark Moore here, the man who created the legendary S-Express and kickstarted the whole 90′s dance movement!

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‘guitar-sitar’
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alex
Submitted on 2009/01/27 at 4:04pm

Hello William!!! Really enjoy your productions!!
I currently use Reason 4 for my own productions!!

Whats your opinion of it if youve ever tried it out? Because i read you started out using Pro Tools!
Also what program would you recommend for laying down vocal tracks that is failry easy to use!!!

Thanx for your time!! Hope you get to read this!!

WO
I started out using two old tape recorders and a lot of cellotape. But when I eventually discovered ProTools two decades later I took to it like a duck to water. It’s a fantastic production environment.

As  for vocal tracks, you don’t want to be re-booting your operating system just when the singer is getting warmed up. For reliability I suggest ProTools LE on an Intel Mac. But that’s as far as I can go with that. I don’t want to get into computer talk at this time of morning. But I wish you the best of luck with the vocals!

Oh, and Reason. I used it on a couple of tracks on my new album. It was a couple of years ago and  the timing of the drums and percussion was so tight compared with the looseness of midi. But it was a devil to program. I don’t use it now.

Timur I. Alhimenkov
Submitted on 2009/01/28 at 2:20am

Good work! Thank you very much!

I always wanted to write in my blog something like that. Can I take part of your post to my blog?Of course, I will add backlink

WO

I don’t see why not Timur. Go ahead.

mintball
Submitted on 2009/01/28 at 2:40apm

hello william,
hope all is peachy with you.

i do hope that you will be able to tour, as i saw you at the Phoenix festival, some years ago and it was quite an experience!

It led me to contacting you and you replied with a nice postcard, i still have it somewhere.

i have done some tunes now and you have been my main influence, along with Yann Tiersen, if you havn`t heard his music, do. He is fantastic!

take care and keep in orbit

sean

WO
Hello Sean. Phoenix Festival must have been the Summer of 1996. For my closing number I had everybody in my road crew, their friends, my friends, all of the kids and a few bystanders play guitar. Plus the band. And some of their kids. We had brought along a stack of various raggedy guitars and things to play them with, like coat-hangers and drum sticks. It was  to be a free-for-all. With me conducting the general attack.

All went well, until we got to the end of the piece. My tour manager was to my left. I turned in horror to see him hurl his guitar up and into the crowd. He shall remain nameless but he was big man and had had rather too much sun and lager.

I watched as the guitar seemed to arc in slow motion into the dense throng. I leapt down from the huge festival stage and through the security guys and fought my way to where I thought it must have landed. Not everyone in the audience had seen what had happened because I was getting patted on the back and greeted by people who thought that this was part of the show.

I got to a young man who had blood streaming down his face. He was beaming at me and shaking my hand. I don’t think he knew what had happened. And right there in the audience close to all of this was a lady I recognised from my accountants office. I asked her to come with me to the First Aid tent with the injured party.

He was pretty upbeat and all three of us pushed through the crowd. The festival security guys caught up with us and demanded that I tell them if my show was finished. I’d neglected to end it properly and the stage crew were anxious to get the next band on. They run things with the precision of an aircraft carrier flight deck and don’t take kindly to delays.

That’s it really. The guitar-struck young fellow was fine and had only had a surface injury. Blood but no real damage. What a relief. I took all his details and got back to the back-of-stage area. The journey back to London was a little strained to say the least. The moral of this story is, be careful who you give a guitar to on a hot day.

Hey, it just occurred to me, it wasn’t you who got hit by the flying guitar was it?

The Nexus
Submitted on 2009/01/29 at 3:53am

. . . I wanted to ask about the comic strip from the magazine, and also the picture of you sat at a desk with a comic page layout in front of you, I wondered if this is something you have kept on doing? and also wheather you have any works published? or any other plans to do with the visual world of art, such as films? I’m not sure if I’m assuming too much, but from interviews I’ve read, you seem to mention alot of interest in film making from having known others working in that field, I wondered is it something you might ever get involved with in the future?

WO
Hi Nexus. I remember meeting you at the Manchester orchestral concert. Did you find that photo on the website? There are so many there that I have lost track. I’ve just discovered the joys of Photoshop but I had intended to get back into artwork on paper. It’s been a long time – that picture was taken at the schoolhouse squat in about 1981

I am also going to put animations up on the blog in a few weeks time. And some ‘video’ clips to go with tracks from ‘My Oracle Lives Uptown’. I’m not blown away by the clips that people have been posting with my tracks on YouTube so far and I would like to up the game.

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