Expensive toys and exploration of noise

Hello everyone,

Today I thought I'd take you through my set up a bit and probably grab the opportunity to talk about my influences and writing as well.

A couple of months ago I purchased my first technical piece of equipment that I intend to use live. I've toyed about with electronic music before, mixing it with a kind of indie style, and actually have some songs of that genre that I'm really proud of. But this was just messing about with an old keyboard and some loops on my computer amongst other things, it was just for fun. My newest piece of gadgetry is the Vox VDL1 Dynamic Looper Pedal:

Behold it, in all its looping glory.

Basically it allows me to play a phrase on my guitar or sing a melody into my mic and the pedal repeats it. So I can play a rhythm guitar part and loop it and then play a melody over the top or build harmonious melodies on top of a beat. It opens up the harmonic and rhythmic possibilities of one person on stage and enables me to switch instruments mid-song. I have plans to include banjo and fiddle in the future as well as some percussion.

I'm still exploring the possibilities with the pedal and honestly I'm a little nervous about using it live. The hard bit is that if you play a bum note or screw up your phrase then that mistake will be repeated and would ruin EVERYTHING! Combining it with with a folk influenced style has been harder than first anticipated as well. I like to try and find new and interesting ways to mix melodies and chords in one guitar part, something that Jimi Hendrix pioneered on electric guitar, so instead of looping those parts I try to find more innovative things to loop through the pedal. The intro to one song on the EP, for example, begins with a surging cacophony of noise which descends into the first chord. It's really exciting when you find a whole other way of thinking about using the pedal and song-writing in general.

From my experience, song-writing, and any other creative process, progresses by making continual realisations that you actually can do more than you thought you could. When you sit down to write a song you think to yourself "wow, I can make any sound I want" or "I can write lyrics about anything" but for me thoughts like that tend to make me feel like a small dot on a huge white expanse of 'freedom' and it feels a little daunting. I find it easier to start with your comfort zone and explore the edges to see where it can be expanded and played with. If you always write songs with only four chords then try writing one with a twenty. That kind of thing. And through the years, and it does take years, your artistic blinkers will slowly widen until you can imagine things that no one's ever thought of before. This is my favourite place.

Obviously everyone is influenced by the music they've grown up around but I think the trick is to take the best bits and mix them with your own ideas. Copying is illegal but recycling is completely natural. You can (or at least I can) definitely hear the Laura Marling in some of my songs or the Gillian Wesch/Jez Hellard authentic folk feel in others.

Alright enough music talk because, seriously, I could go on for pages. For those who don't quite get the loop pedal thing or just want to see it in action I'll be posting a video soon with a little jam on the pedal and maybe play some bits of the EP as well so look out for that.

Once again thanks so much for reading, I hope it wasn't completely incomprehensible but I do tend to go off on one when it comes to music. Until next time, friends.

NJ

The story so far

Hello all,

I'm Nick. I'm a 21 year old student of ancient history (don't ask why) and I live, work and make music in Birmingham. I've played guitar since 8 but my introduction to live music came with Jez Hellard and the Roving Blades. I met Jez in Macedonia (www.jezhellard.com - so worth a click!) and he asked me to fill in for his fiddle player as a lead guitarist a few months later back in England in Peterborough. I was lucky enough to have my first real experience of playing in a group with some amazing musicians and some great venues in an authentic countryside folk setting, which ended up having a major influence on my music later. Jez is still the best harmonica player I have ever seen. Along with Nye Parsons on double bass and Tim Palmer on fiddle amongst others it is still to this day my favourite band I have ever played in.

In the early years of my degree some friends and I started a funk/reggae/rock type band called 'Blue 52'. The number in the name was the flat number where I first met the two earliest members of the band after hearing a trumpet and a harmonica jamming it out and going on a mission to find them, guitar in hand! We played a lot of venues in Birmingham (The Yardbird, The O2 Academy) and Leicester (The Donkey, Natterjacks) and got to know the local scenes really well.

That kinda ran its course and after that (and partly during) I played in a number of smaller projects including a four piece jazz group, lead guitar in a 5 piece indie band, and started work on a duo with the trumpet player from Blue 52, Gareth. We released a 4 track EP which went pretty unnoticed. It evolved (mainly from nudges coming from my direction) into a more folky entity as opposed to jazz. In it's final form this briefly turned into Fountain. The big folk band that never really came to be. We signed to a small record label and recorded the better part of an album. There was talk of extra singers, multi-talented musicians, multiple instrument changes mid show but really this all sounds bigger than it was and the practicality of being in a band that size was a little off-putting.

For reasons far beyond this I decided to leave Fountain, which in actuality had never got off the ground, to go it alone. I've played a lot of gigs in Birmingham over the past year including a lot of charity fundraisers as well as Vale Fest, the UK's biggest student-run charity festival, and in this time have also been writing music. You can't say something like this without sounding like an arse but I was finding my voice. Working out what it really was that I wanted to put out there. I'm certainly guilty of over-thinking my music sometimes but I feel like sometimes the most personal things to me are my songs.

But anyway, what I'm doing NOW is finishing off writing the last song on a 5 track debut solo EP which is due to be recorded within a couple of months.

I currently have a track up on soundcloud which was written and recorded with Fountain called 'They Will Always'. www.soundcloud.com/nickjacksonofficial

And finally I have a video of the song 'Overgrown Track' (which will feature on the EP) on youtube at www.youtube.com/nickjacksonofficial

To those who have got this far, thanks for reading and stay tuned for an EP released date!

NJ