NatchDan.com

Ahoy there, mateys.

If you look to your right, you’ll see that there is a new page under “Music”: A page one which I have collected my favourite songs that I wrote during February Album Writing Month 2008.

Now, if FAWM is the sprint, I’m now taking part in the marathon - Fifty Songs In Ninety Days, which is being generously hosted by FAWM this year. My artist page can be found here - wish me luck!

Work continues on polishing Evolution, hopefully to be finished soon - however, I wouldn’t expect it to be before March. That’s because FAWM is almost upon us once again! Yes, fourteen songs in twenty-eight days - but wait. This is a leap year! No problem, they say. Do us fourteen and a half.

Genius!

Sadly, some bad news on the internet music front is that Pandora, the internet music recommendation service, has been forced to block UK IPs from the site - meaning that it is now a purely US site and is in danger of going under even there. To help fill the hole Pandora leaves, I humbly recommend SeeqPod - It crawls search engines and streams you the results. Perfect if you have a song you HAVE TO LISTEN TO RIGHT NOW.

Hello, folks. How’ve you been?

It struck me the other day, whilst viewing the excellent Jonathan Coulton’s website, that I can’t possibly hope to keep or build a fanbase if I leave my precious site here dormant. So, sorry about that.

There are a few pieces of news that I should share with you all. Firstly, the Music For A Film EP is no longer for sale - it was a nice experiment, but I think I need to stick to free music for now. A free download will be coming shortly, so if you didn’t get a copy then not to fret.

Second, everything I do in future will be put out under the name The Approximation, the main reason being that if I actually do get a band together sometime then we’ll be already set.

Last, but not least, remember that album I was working on many moons ago? It is about to become The Approximation’s first release. The tracklisting is as follows:

01. March
02. The Walls
03. Rocking
04. SPC
05. 11
06. Ten Lies
07. Do You Know?
08. Five
09. Lay Back
10. Wanted
11. Time

Awesome. Now, if you would like to be a fan of The Approximation on the dreaded Facebook, click here. If you would like to hear a little something I’ve been up to for fun, click here.

PS: If you’d like to see some footage of me in action, click here.

I’ll tell you what it is - It’s a brand new NatchDan album! Yessir! Created as part of the AAD project, Triad was written and recorded from midnight to 10am July 16 2007. And it’s a corker, if I do say so myself. Go listen!

Folks, I want to sit you down and have a talk. I am selling a CD. This does not mean that I have abandoned you, oh no! I will still be providing plenty of free music for you all. This CD is not album #3 - it is an EP. You can see a button to buy it over there on the left, or, if you want more information on the disc, you can go to its page.

On this disc, you will find uncompressed versions of four songs you know (including a slight remix/remaster of Rid Of You) and three new songs you don’t, including that nine-minute thing I was referring to in the last post, not featuring The Rumored End.

Papa needs a new pair of shoes.

Also coming up, a set at the Musician in Leicester where I will be giving Rid Of You and Charlotte their live acoustic debuts. I will let you all know how it goes.

Also also, I have set up a YouTube channel. This means a few acoustic videos from me as well as music videos put together by anyone who wishes to. Want to have a shot? Make a video and give me the YouTube link! Available so far: Rid Of You, Acoustic.

I also want to thank everyone out there who listens to me for your support. It really means a lot to me.

So I received a spam comment today for “lawyer Phoenix”.

…

Yeah, you all know what I’m thinking.

A piece of music that I’ve impressed myself with coming up, folks. It won’t be on the album for a couple of reasons (One being it’s almost ten minutes long), so as soon as I get the extra guitar part from The Rumored End it’ll be on the blog.

Exciting!

I just thought I’d let you guys know a couple of things that I use to make my music, and the places that I get them from.

(Spiritual Awakening, FAWM 2007)

All of the orchestral sounds on this are part of the Squidfont Orchestral soundfont, available here. Also available on that site are some soundfonts from the nigh-legendary Nando Florestan.

Catherine, TBA 2007

(Audio Not Yet Available)

On this track I use the free Mellotron VST called TapeWorm from the frankly wonderful TweakBench. He has a wide range of VST instruments and effects all for free, and a kicking Nintendo naming scheme for some of them.

While this may not seem like a very exhaustive list, these are two very powerful tools and two very useful websites with far more to offer than I’m sure I use them for. Check them out!

Man, have I ever managed a coup in the artists I’ve got collaborating with me. This new album’s going to be something special, guys.

First off, shout-out to Brian. Hi, Brian!

As you may have noticed, I’ve managed to uncover awful things about the music business with startling frequency recently. Well, there’s more. Steve Albini, legendary studiohand behind such acts as Pixies, has this to say about your friends who have just joined a label: This is how fucked they are.

Work is continuing apace on album #3, probably my most together and professional sounding yet. My aim is to have some kind of collaboration on every track. Anyone up for that? It’ll be a freebie, as per, and hopefully it’ll be appearing here in the next couple of months.

It’s Friday night, folks, which means tonight is my show on BKWR. Don’t miss it! See the page for details.

Ahoy there, listeners.

Work on the concept album I mentioned has slowed due to a variety of factors - a lot of it needs to be re-recorded, and some of it I’m just plain not happy with - and so work has begun on my third album proper. A likely addition to this album will be my first SongFight entry. SongFight is a musician’s challenge where you are given a title and you have to write a song to fit that title. This week’s title - Ten Lies - just grabbed me so much I had to jump in.

Also on the internet of note this week is this interview with Dick Dale, who you may not know by name, but he’s the guitarist who played the version of Misirlou on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack and can play like you can breathe. He has some interesting views on the music industry that he imparts for free in the video.