The Kala Sessions. A result of frustration and the need to unwind.

So from Friday 19th March – Sat 20th I was holed up in my bedroom making music. It feels like I haven’t done that in a while. I mean after making my album Perfectly Fine I was pretty tired of recording and mixing. I’ve still been doing it as I’ve been writing a lot of new music lately, and I’m slowly working on another album – but these two days were different. I sat down and wrote, recorded, mixed and mastered two songs in two days. The album has just been bits here and there so far. This time however I was in a total creative zone where for those 48 hours the music just totally took over. I haven’t enjoyed that feeling in a while – just being impulsive and making some music, without really any purpose or taking into account the outcome. I just did it for the there and then, and it really helped take my mind off things.

You see, long story short, I’d had a bad week. For those of you who don’t know, I’m doing a degree in music technology. Last week I got my marks back from a big sound to picture (creating sound effects and a score for film trailers) module and they were a major shock. Apparently I had handed in the video files in the wrong format (ie the audio and video files were sepearate, but that was because there were two different audio mixes.)

Yes, the educational system does not like it when things aren’t submitted correctly. Even when you’ve quite clearly done the work, spent countless hours on it, & the evidence of that is plain to see. Nevertheless, the wrong-formatting led to me being passed on the whole module because it was technically ‘late’ (if you don’t hand things in on time in uni land, you can only get a pass.) Even though in reality it wasn’t late at all.

What good is an educational system that treats people who work extremely hard in this way? Deadlines are there to ensure work is done on time – and if it is but there’s a technical hitch then surely leniency should be allowed? I mean really, does everyone just have to blindly follow the rules even when it’s obvious my kind of mistake was clearly not why they were put there in the first place?

I don’t know, I’ve worked so hard on this course, and this mark could potentially change my whole grade for the year as it’s worth like 15% of our overall mark. Gutted would be an understatement

Aaaaaaaaaanyway, the point is my frustration led me saying to myself fuck it, I’m gonna spend a bit of time enjoying myself being creative, and forget about my uni work while I can.

So after finishing these tracks I wondered what to do with them. Do I hold them back for the next album? I mean these songs were just a bit of spontaneous fun, do I really want to take them further in that respect?

Well the answer was no, so I’ve just decided to put them out as a free download.

They’re available HERE from marcreeves.co.uk & also at Jamendo.com

Enjoy.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i4ZMhNhbXI]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHRmYwUiuAg]

Just a little background info on these recordings for those interested. Waiting for You was recorded totally live with just me and my Kala KA-B Baritone Ukulele. I Want Out was recorded by recording my ukulele first, and then overdubbing my vocals. The organ was also overdubbed as unfortunately i’m lacking in the the ability to play guitar and organ simulatenously Oh and the bass again for the same reason.

For you tech-heads it was recorded with an Audio Technica AT2020 LDC microphone and a Takstar & Red 5 Audio SDC mics, through a Echo Layla 3G audio interface into Pro Tools 9. All the mixing & mastering was done in Pro Tools also.