bopstar radio sessions

More http://www.bopstar.tv freeness for download
(Waiting on pics and video)

Not perfect, sure, after all Thursday was the first time we ever did this live. Hoping for many more times, so we can get it just so! Meanwhile, you guys can have it still!

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Download ZIP (right-click) http://www.bopstar.tv/promo/bopstar-captured-live.zip

How it all went down:

“Hey Zara, so what you sayin, u up for doin the tracks live”
“Ok but how are we gonna do captured”
“Ah we’ll work it out”

Brainwave, few days later

“I got it - we start with a upright bass on its own, then, when it comes to the verse, we do it half speed, and smooth it out, like on the Norma Jean Bell ‘Cause You Belong To Me’ - and only at the end do we do the stacato style! It’ll be sick trust me! Also we need bvs, and I was thinking Baby Sol!”

Need a upright bassist then.

“Hey Kadija, does Akwesi play upright do you know?”
“Not sure but probably, he plays everything!”
“Can you throw me the digits babe?”

“Akwesi, any chance your around July 23rd? Gig with Zara…”
“not available to perform but can offer alternatives, also adding live percussion would be great, let me know if I can offer suggestions of some musicians”

Mans got a point. If I’m rocking “stems” off the CDJs would be good to bring some live and organic energy with percussion, just let me twiddle the knobs and not worry too much bout anything else - might bring the Korg Radias synth too, just fling a couple noises in and arpegiated synth madness.

“Z, I aint heard back from Akwesi bout alternatives, can you pull anyone from up your sleeve”
“I’ll ask Karl Rasheed-Abel”
“Dope I’ll see if I can rustle up a percussionist, Adam Rock, or Mashi or someone must be able to suggest”

On Facebook chat with Richard Spaven:
“Bro, dont suppose you know a percussionist who’d be up for a thing next Thursday . 1am club set, just 3 tunes. Zara and Baby Sol, Karl Abel, and me on CDJs.”
“um, I could do it”

(RATID!!!!)

Monday night, late night sesh with Zara, practice singing Captured all smoothed out and slowed down

Tuesday all-nighter over at Toni Economides ’s bouncing down all manner of grouped stems of all the tracks so I can do whatever arrangements I need at home.

Wednesday day Zara and Baby Sol rehearse. Wednesday night Zara comes here and we work out the Captured arrangement.

Thursday morning I lay down a new version of Chiaroscuro. Then Zara and Karl arrive at 2pm. 20 minute run through. Simple tings tho. Man is a don. From his side its easy. Then me and Zara remind ourselves of the arrangements for Chiaroscuro and Desire. I bounce down PA versions.

Got an hour to think about what I might do with the Radias there. I cant even remember the notes or the patches I used on the tracks. Dammit! Bring it anyway, you never know!

6.30, late, gotta get to Jose’s studio pick up the congas, finally get to venue about 8.45. Holding down nerves pretty well. Haven’t had any time to prepare for DJing. Haven’t compiled the guestlist yet - oops. Richard arrives. Then Baby Sol.

10.00 supposed to be open, still “soundchecking” - but lets be real, this i
a rehearsal No Karl till later, just gonna have to wing it.

10.30ish, a few heads in the place. Araba and Diane thankfully handling the door and taking all my guestlist off me. Play some tunes….

12.30am Ok crowd is decent! Thank the skies!

1.00am Take to stage, for first time ever…

Thanks and bless to everyone who rocked up on the night and showed us love! I’m still buzzed by how well it went, and I can’t wait to do it again somewhere…

Peeez

So Zara’s just finished her Masters at Guildhall School of Music, and we’re all set to do some work over Summer, both recording the next few tunes, and getting back to preparing the live shows. We got the PA to do on 23rd July, at this new night of mine and Jose’s. And with that in mind Zara came over to mine yesterday and we continued to work out how to do the singles live.

PAs are a funny one on the house scene, people are used to seeing singer holding the stage on their own, just to a backing track, and a lot of people are happy to be there, almost just to show support, almost like a book signing, a giving some love back for a great song or 2 or 3 or 10, but I always find it a little bit lacking. Was it Sun Ra who said something about you need at least two people to make music??? Maybe not, maybe I imagined he said that. But anyway, I would like to do more than just Zara singing to backing track, but full band is too ambitious at this stage, and, out of budget. But just something extra. Some touches. I have this idea at the moment for a set up with live bass and bvs, and myself with laptop - with the right two extra people, I actually think that’ll be dope. Although, I won’t actually do very much at all - I may just run PA versions of the tracks out of Traktor DJ software, otherwise I’ll be preparing some stems in Ableton for the night. Maybe rock the Korg Radias, but that’s bein a bit, luxurious, because personally I’m not going to do much if any live keys on the night. I’m just not tight enough to do live.  But then maybe if it’s a bassist comportable with synth bass then that might be a piece of kit they use. We’ll see.

Anyway for now we’re just working out what the arrangements are.

And ‘Captured’ is the tricky one, because both ‘Desire’ and ‘Chiaroscuro’ are actually easy, especially if we got the right person to help out alongside on vocals. But ‘Captured’, that melody was always a hard one to sing, especially the words - the scat wasn’t too bad, even though those intervals jump around a bit , gave our girl some work to do keeping the tuning in her head. It’s just that some of the words I wrote were tricky to get out your mouth that quickly, eg “clawing with frustration”, it just kinda gets stuck like a chewed up cream cracker with not enough water in the mouth. So when we recorded the verse I slowed down the backing for Zara to sing to. Now, we have to find a way to do it live, and, we could do it the way it sounds on record, but I don’t think that’s actually the best way. I have this other idea, and I think we have it cracked - it won’t be exactly like the record, but it should be really nice!

We’ll find out in 3 weeks…

Oh, I’m gutted to say, I had Zara up on the show last week, and she sang live, some beautiful as-yet unreleased stuff, and it was a cool little q&a but the file of the recording is corrupt and unrecoverable

So, next time she’s round here, we’ll record a little q&a and I’ll post that up as a little bonus something.

Peace

Zara and I had a good ol’ natter the other day about going out and doing ‘Captured’, ‘Desire’, Chiaroscuro’ (etc) live, PA style at first, with a view to doing trio style in time (dj/vocalist/instrumentalist). She’s now in the final months of her Postgrad in Jazz, so we’re gonna be looking to do the first show(s) round August time. Meantime we got some rehearsing to fit in, some more checking out of who does this shit well, and a few warm up impromptus along the way

I’ll post more when I know more…