Rigsby Smith

2010-03-23T01:57:00.000-07:00

New Website

2007-05-02T01:12:00.000-07:00

rigsbysmith.com

..so i guess i'll be using the new site to post my news etc on from now on. This blog will act as an archive for everything i've previously written - and there's a lot of it here.

So head over to the new site and check out the music, film, art etc that i'll be posting over the next few days.

I can still be contacted via myspace of course.

Enjoy!

Rigs.

New Creot Radio Show!

2007-04-28T00:52:00.000-07:00

It's that time again, lots of great new music on volume 62 of the fantastic Creot Radio show, presented this week by yours truly.

Featuring such awesome artists as The Screaming Cherry Blossoms, Roh Delikat, The Naciente Quartet, Shirley Rolls and many more.

Check it out at http://www.creotradio.net

Sea Shapes - 6 day download

2007-03-17T00:46:00.000-07:00

This is the last track from a four track EP i've been working on. The EP as a whole is kind of organic meets electronic, and this is the most organic thing on there.

http://download.yousendit.com/BBE0513B21F30902

It's yousendit, so the link is only good for a week.

Enjoy!

New Creot Radio Show

2006-12-22T23:15:00.000-08:00

Now up at

http://seasonthree.creotradio.net/

..or just download from here..

Loads of great music as ever, this week hosted by yours truly.

Creot Radio - All the fun your mother didn't want you to have.

Score To a Photo 2

2006-07-17T22:26:00.000-07:00

This was a contest organised by Concord Designs and All Media Studios in June 2006. Entrants were given three photos to inspire a piece, the three pictures should create a story for each composer which is reflected in their piece. The track i came up with was entitled 'The Accordianist's Tale', this is currently still available as a download courtesy of Concord Designs..

Listen

PHOTO ONE: 00.00 - 02.08

... The accordianist plays for money in the streets (represented musically by chords and melody on electric fan organ). His thoughts drift between his music and the sounds around him (the present) to thoughts of the past. His hands are shakey and the old accordian doesn't respond in his hands as it used to. Sounds of the streets (recorded to Minidisc in Amsterdam, April 2005) come and go as his thoughts of the past gradually take presidence.

PHOTO TWO: 02.08 - 02.28

... The accordianist recalls his wife's death and funeral, he can hear his accordian reflected in the church organ as it doubles his melody, he can hear the minister at the service (recorded to MD at the Old Church in Amsterdam, April 2005). He has accepted her death, but is still brings him great sadness.

PHOTO THREE: 02.28 - END

(Enter acoustic bass guitar, cymbal, tom and acoustic guitar)
... The accordianist recalls the last time he was alone and happy. He is alone again now, but can't imagine feeling that exhalted joy and freedom again as he did that day on the shore. It brings him sadness, but emotions are like a dull sensation to him now at this age, few great highs, few great lows. His thoughts gradually return to the street, to his old fingers, to the way things are now.

Mixing kills me..

2006-07-16T10:23:00.000-07:00

..when it's my own stuff i'm mixing at least. I'd been too close to these tunes til very recently to be able to sit back and really hear what should be going on. Still, at least there are three of the eight mixed now, so we're getting there.

There's a Bjork quote that's stayed in my head about leaving something left to do for the mixing stages, so it breaths new life into the tune. That's been in my mind a fair bit lately. Going over these tunes with slightly fresher ears has made me take stock a little more of what's going on in this stuff and make some changes. I think i've probably removed more than i've added actually, which i see as a good thing, the tunes are stronger for it and it's good to have a bit of space in music.

I never thought it would take so long to make a record. Previously i've been speedy to bust out some music, it's been a fairly quick process, but this has just gone and on and on. I think the record would be just as suitably titled 'Writer's Block' or 'Option Fatigue' as 'Free Will' or anything else.

I guess i'd been pretty eager to try something different instrumentally, i'd backed right off from the guitar, and wanted a broader pallet. I also wanted to get more involved in 'reprocessing' material, and sculpting with sounds rather than actually writing as such, but i didn't want to do it in a 'noise record' or 'ambient' kind of way (though there is some of that). I wanted it to have motifs and structure and musicality, but a lot of the sounds to have come from naive playing, found sounds etc etc; i guess i wanted music out of noise.

Reprocessing is the creation of one piece of music from another. Sometimes this means a new piece that bears no resemblence to the original, sometimes it sounds like an alternative version or remix. Reprocessing differs from remixing as there are no new parts added, everything is made up of the tracks of the original, for instance 'Acht' on the 'EPs and Others' CD is entirely made up of the guitar/bass/violin/drums/piano/moog/guiro tracks from 'Funf' on the same disc. The twinkling pattern in the end section, for example, is made up of a heavily edited and effected section of Funf's bassline; the violin was duplicated and similarly edited and effected to create the string section etc etc.

I wanted to use reprocessing on this record, but to take it a step further and not have an original piece to work from, rather a series of recorded improvisations, sometimes performed over a theme, sometimes without; which i could sculpt into music. So we'd start with a bunch of improvising on maybe cellos to start, record an hour or so of improvising, then edit that to something i liked and improvise over the top, then edit again ..and repeat ..so you're gradually building a structure, building a tune. One of the things i liked about working in this way is that music begins to develop in front of you and you're more able to remain as a listener because you don't actually know exactly what's going on,it's a joy to be ignorant of that sometimes.

I remember the first time i bought a Spiderman comic, the first thing i did after reading it twice was to go home and draw my own, because i wanted to read another. I think that's indicative of how i am, first and foremost it seems to me, i'm a reader and a listener. I create music because it's something i want to hear, this method of working fits in with that, i can be a listener but also alter the things that i'd want to if i were listening to a record by someone else.

Working as a listener can take a little more time it seems to me. It can take several listens of something before it all clicks in and makes sense. I think this is why lately i've been creating space in these recordings, because i've come to hear them better as music, come to hear more exactly how these pieces sound. With all of the edited improvisations sitting on the tracks, i'd taken the best bits of the improvs, but not necessarily the best bits for the tune as a whole, so removing parts and reducing the tracks to essential parts has been a worthwhile exercise.

I guess mixing doesn't kill me, it just takes a while with this music to get a handle on what needs to be there. When you have a broad pallet of almost literally any sound, it's a tricky business deciding what part of everything you want to use, mixing this record has also become a thinning-down exercise. There were parts that were essential for getting other tracks down that no longer need to be part of the finished tune, and like i say, the music is stronger for it.

Out: 17 Modern Guitarists Salute Derek Bailey

2006-05-19T23:22:00.000-07:00

Another compilation release is heading this way shortly, dedicated to the memory of guitarist Derek Bailey, who died late last year.

My piece, 'Blindfold Dancer' (3.43) is based on an improvisation on acoustic guitar played with a vaquita (the stick usually used to play a berimbau) with overdubs on an electro-acoustic bass guitar, effected glockenspiel, acoustic guitar bowed and scraped with a vaquita and guitar slide through a reverb box and shouting and clapping recorded in a stairwell. It was influenced by the sound of Derek Bailey's 'Music and Dance' collaboration with Min Tanaka.

From the myspace site, which contains a low-res streaming of the compilation..

"Out: 17 Modern Guitarists Salute Derek Bailey" is a compilation of original guitar improvisations by several guitarists who wanted to show respects for Derek Bailey. Bailey was an idiosyncratic genius of a guitarist, mostly unknown but to those interested in avant garde music and experimental guitar. He died Christmas Day 2005. He championed free playing in jazz and beyond. Rather than try to prove a doctorate on the techniques used by Bailey, the participants agreed to record improvisationally and to let their own techniques and technology bring their own signature tip-of-the-hat, though some evoked his sound. Musicians include Bruce Stevens, Chris Shaffer, Christopher Allen, DLed, Dan Stearns, David Beardsley, Ed DeGenaro, Gary Corcoran, Ian Naismith, Jason Fink, Jim Hearn, Jonathan Buchanan, Michael Vick, Newbie Brad, Rigsby Smith, Steve Milberger, and Todd Madson. This project has been parented by Kronosonic.com and produced by 3 Pups Music. Sincere thanks to Unfretted.com and Myspace itself. Also to America, England, Russia, Germany and Norway (for these guitarists!) Look here in one to two weeks for a higher-fidelity cd for sale.

For more info, visit www.myspace.com/out17salutederekbailey

Utrophia Compilation 03

2006-04-19T00:11:00.000-07:00

http://www.utrophia.net/utrophia%20site/site/audio/utrophia%20compilation%2003.html

Featuring 32 artists from the Utrophia network including your truly, well worth checking out.

As we head towards the home straight..

2006-04-01T00:11:00.000-08:00

So the record's nearly finished. This week i've been working on the opener 'Grace and Sophie', a sort of sound collage with live instruments, and bar percussion that's all wrapped up. Aside from this there are just a few drum tracks, little bits of percussion and a cello and a viola part left to record, all of which i'll be getting down to over the next few weeks. Then i have to mix it of course, but that should be a lot of fun.

It's been almost a year since i scrapped the first draft of the record and started afresh, and it feels good to be getting to this point at last, so i thought i'd share some pictures and info on the recordings my co-conspirators and i have made.

For the some large part this record is a track-by-track orchestra, featuring a wide variety of instruments and sounds. Part of the amount of time that it's taken has been because i didn't want to use samples, i wanted it to be 'real', and this lead me onto a great love for the quirks and oddities that come out of these instruments, mistakes if you like, human error, 'noise', just really good sound: the sound of a cello mis-bowed, a trombone played by someone who's never played one before, piano strings played with a plectrum, the rumbling sound an oven makes when you play bass into it, playing the keys of a flute through a distortion pedal, it's all here. I also got into bowing everything, cymbals, eggcups, a wok, glockenspiels, biscuit tin lids, mandolin, acoustic bass guitar ..anything with an edge.

I've had a few very dear helpers for this record. Fiona Stewart on her short trips into the country has laid down some wonderful violin parts (i also played one or two myself, though incredibly naively); Tam Bo Grace has put down cello, trombone, trumpet and flute and assisted with engineering on occasion ..sometimes it's great just to have someone around to press record, play and rewind; Ross Parfitt played some saxophone and bowed cymbals. Richard Davis, Attab Haddad and Velella Velella's Andrew all put down some parts (melodica, oud/cahon and vibraphone respectively) for four tunes that didn't make this record (expect an EP or two with these at some point). There will be three others as well, the cellist, viola player and drummer, but more on those sessions after they occur. Needless to say, i'm very grateful for everybody's contributions.

Some of the parts others (and myself) laid down were scored, but for others i directed improvisations while the 'tape' rolled. We'd do take after take until either i felt we had more than enough, the computer started to get glitchy or the player simply begged for mercy (i begged for my own mercy a number of times). After the improvisations were all recorded and the musicians on their train rides home i'd sit for hours editing through the parts and compiling final violin, cello, whatever, tracks. A hell of a lot of work, but with some really great results.

Part of working this way is that as the 'composer' you also still get to be a listener. You don't know every part off by heart, there are still surprises, especially in the deeper parts of the recordings. With scores, by the time it's recorded you know the piece all too well, and i find that a little disconcerting, it's as if it's old to you before you get to hear it.

Since before the first draft i'd been recording found sounds on my MD recorder and this intensified, for a while there i rarely went out without a little stereo mic clipped to my shirt. Some of the things i found to record in London and Amsterdam were truly inspiring, there's nothing that makes you really hear the things around you as when you're recording them. Walking down the long roads alongside the canels i was acutely aware of the wide stereo picture i was getting in my ears (and to 'tape'). Of course, Amsterdam sounds amazing with it's canels and long strips of tall thin buildings, the sound reflects beautifully, you get a great sense of space and depth. The tall buildings also keep out the traffic noise of the surrounding roads, one of the things i'd had problems with in London was isolating found sounds from the background hum of cars and motorbikes. Even in the middle of our local dense park the traffic from the roads around a mile away prevented recording isolated sounds.

Natural reverb also played a big part. The bowed cymbal recordings for instance were recorded out in the stairwell of our flats, a deep concrete and glass construction with a tiled floor that has an amazing sound to it. There was the occasion where a neighbour shouted up 'stop making that noise' at the end of a kazoo part out in the stairwell, but actually that was the only complaint i had about using the space to record. There are a lot of such recordings on the record.

Part of what i set out to do with all of this was to interest myself in the recording process, to keep it fresh and interesting, sometimes this meant taking the long road to achieve sounds, and the natural reverb was part of that. It also helped to put other things in context in the mix, recording parts with natural reverb gives you a backbone for the mix where other parts that were recorded dry can be matched to fit with those recorded wet. Similarly on a few parts i'd mic up the instrument and connect that mic to a guitar amp, and then record the sound of the room, with the clarinet (for example) nearer the mic and the sound from the amp providing background ambience. My kitchen got used a fair bit for that.

It was while recording in the kitchen that i noticed how things rattled and rumbled with bass frequencies in there, and one afternoon set about surrounding an amp with things that would rattle and shake and rumble and playing bass through the amp, creating some great ambient drones, used on both 'Grace and Sophie' and another tune that didn't make the record, 'In the Arms of a Southern Belle'.

Of course, rattle and room sound isn't always something you want, on some of the bass tracks to achieve a dry but not DI'd sound i used a 'duvet tunnel' to restrict the amount of room getting into the mic. This also works nicely with kick drums. The amp or kick goes at one end of the tunnel, with a chair or stool at the other with a piece of wood (i use an old shelf) between them and a duvet or two hanging over the top. I've used an ironing board as the shelf before and that's worked nicely too, and you don't need a stool at the other end.

Towards the end of recording my interest in dub re-emerged. It's more the process of dub that interests me over the sound. I like dub a lot musically, but i'm not really interested in recreating that sound with those rhythms for my own music (not right now anyway). The technique for making dub originally was to have all of your tracks on your mixer and a bunch of effects attached to the auxes. The returning sound from the effects (delay etc) comes back in through two other channels and you can also EQ or effect those. Then you play with the auxes on each channel, 'grabbing' a bit of that vocal by pushing up the fader for a second and allowing it to delay back through the returns, perhaps sweeping with the mids on the delay. This was done by the seat of the pants, recording the resulting mix to stereo tape - that's really interesting to me, the one-off aspect of it, so i used this method with two of the tunes i recorded, 'Grace and Sophie' and another saxophone-heavy track that didn't make the record. I used two delays and a pitchshifter on the auxes in both cases, and we also did a few live dubs with performances in the room going through the same process rather than multi-track recordings.

So how does it all sound then?

Well so far it sounds like a bunch of rough mixes but over the coming weeks with the final overdubs recorded and mixing complete it'll sound somewhat different. This record has been a real struggle in terms of equipment limitations in particular. Up until now all recordings have been made and assembled in a Mac G3 running a very old version of Cubase VST, allowing for a mere 16 tracks running at the same time. This has meant that for the tunes with larger track counts (there are some with around 60 tracks) i've had to do a lot of bouncing of rough mixes to clear space to record more parts. This has not only been very time-consuming, but makes it impossible to mix properly as you're shifting between batches of 16 instruments at once, say 16 tracks of strings, do a mix of those and bring in your two bass tracks and ten percussion ..then realise that the violins in the strings mix are too loud and you go back to remix them. I got pretty tired of that back and forth, back and forth, but a new computer is on it's way with new software and a new recording interface and things are about to get a whole lot simpler.

In terms of sound, the record hopefully conveys a mixture of places to be emotionally and physically. I don't really like the term 'journey' when it comes to records, but for want of a better term, there is some element of that here. It starts with a degree of uncertainty, where things build and move seemingly at random, converging for a moment before heading off in different directions again. Where there is harmony, convergence and togetherness in 'Grace and Sophie' it doesn't last for long or take the simplest direction to get to where it's building to. All that said, it's actually relatively playful.

Things take on a more anxious edge after this, more solid, more together, but definately more anxiety-provoking with 'Starts with Bowed Gong'. 'Bowed Gong' is one of many tunes i've recorded in the last year or so to feature my beloved Roberts Radio, but one of the few that made the record. The Roberts is a weird (and perfect) beast that basically struggles to find any stations with any distinction or clarity, but a lot of interesting tones and frequencies tend to emerge from it. One of the greatest things i found when playing with Utrophia's Glee Club (http://www.utrophia.net) was that the electrics in the building we were playing in were a little iffy to say the least, and so the aerial on the Roberts essentially became live (i'm not technical enough to explain this), allowing you to find a frequency that worked with the music and then use the aerial to tap out rhythms. Connection with the aerial triggered the note. Sadly (it's actually probably for the best) at home the electrics are fine, but the radio nethertheless emits some great sounds.

'Starts with Bowed Gong' is probably the most track-heavy tune on the record, featuring multi-tracked cellos, violins, trumpet, trombones, flutes, percussion, plucked piano strings, clarinet and much more besides. The piano strings were recorded over at my father's house on the family piano in the hall. We took the front of the piano off and i recorded ideas and improvisations to DAT to take home with me and work into the tune. Actually these recordings became the foundation of the piece, and everything else was built up from there. Much of the percussion was recorded out in the stairwell for the reverb out there, especially on the deep hits that punctuate in places.

After the fury of 'Bowed Gong' comes the initial relief of the opening glockenspiels of 'Dance With Me Like You Used To'. It's hard to explain what this piece is about, but i'll try. I very recently turned thirty and am pretty much content. I enjoy my life on the whole, i have a long standing, stable relationship, good friends and i enjoy what i do, the part that brings in the money, and the part that well ..not so much. This piece is about what i thought it was all going to be like, it's not about contentment, it's about aspiring to feel that way. It's about what i considered to be contentment when i was 18 or 19, the way i thought love should be, about how one should attempt to go about achieving that. There's a deep hole in the middle of 'Dance With Me' that once i figured out what i was writing about i was happy to leave there; it's part of the explanation, so part of the tune. The happiness that 'Dance With Me' is trying to convey isn't happiness as such, it's a moment of exalted joy and an attempt to stretch it out and make more of it, make it last longer.

So there's a confusion left at the end of 'Dance With Me Like You Used To' that makes way for the yearning of 'Free Will'. There's not a lot else to say except 'yearning' really, it's about trying to figure out exactly what it is that you need to figure out. This is followed by 'In The Subway Sometimes', a sparce piece on glockenspiels recorded at 44.1kHz and played back at 48 and 96kHz, meaning that the playback becomes considerably slower, causing the pitch to also drop significantly. It reminds me sonically of the room 'A Buffalo Crossing' and 'The Heartfelt Three/Four/Five' used to rehearse in in the arches of a mainline railway station in london. The rooms had great depth and resonance.

The tune that follows, 'The Boy Who Cried Milk', is a reflection on an old friend who died in our teens, around five years after i'd last seen him. I recorded this on my eight-track with a 58 stuck in the top of an old piano in 1997. Intially i was going to re-record it but everybody around me said it was ust right as it is. I'm convinced that they're all right.

The closer 'To The Man Who Visits Her Room at Night' was named after a story that's not really mine to tell, it's one of Fiona Stewart's, who played the violin parts that bring the whole piece beautifully together. It's argueably the most easy to listen to piece on the record, slightly folky, things come together and trail off, and you can gently nod your head to it. It's got some nice parts, personally i enjoy listening to it.

Creot Radio V46

2006-03-31T04:16:00.000-08:00

Lots more good music by independent artists..

http://seasontwo.creotradio.net/

..hosted by yours truly.

If you like this show, check out V3, V9.4 , V10 and V30 which were also hosted by me.

Live at the Bearspace, November 24th 2005

2005-11-27T09:05:00.000-08:00

For my first solo show in 8 years i concocted an idea where i would improvise for 6 minutes, film that, and have it projected onto a screen behind me while i improvised over it. This would also be filmed, and after six minutes it'd be played back for me to improvise over again, and so on. By the end of it they'll be three or four of me on screen and one of me live, all improvising together.

It went pretty well, although we had some technical issues. I started the set playing some bowed cymbal and metal eggcup stuff into a 57 through a delay and wah into my amp for some background ambience, then some increasingly aggressive kazoo with plenty of verb on the amp. That took up most of the first 5 minute improv. It was going great as i saw my other half head off to give Steve the camera to DL to playback behind me. I watched the progress bar (wow, that took a long time) as i switched to bowed berimbau and my roberts radio. Steve and my partner couldn't find the file on the laptop, so there was a big gap i had to fill.

Obviously waiting on stage feels like a lifetime and just when i thought 'uh-oh, i might have to fill this whole 40 mins without the playback', there i was onscreen bowing the cymbals. By this time i'd set some more feedback and droning delay and was improvising in D minor on the clarinet into the PA mic (not the one going into the amp); fairly bluesy stuff with some off-key upper register stuff thrown in on the amp mic that delayed around. Had the change been quicker i would've still been on the berimbau, as i'd wanted, but i had gotten bored with it by then so i'd moved on.

The next change was pretty quick (camera to laptop wise) and soon there were three of me as i went back to the cymbal bowing. I watched some of the clarinet stuff with the kazoo for maybe 30 seconds while i drank some tea and lit my cigarette, then dueted with myself on the clarinet which took me to the end of the set; playing 'Brother Mastiff' i wrote for the first draft of my current record. The last minute i started packing up while the two screen mes finished what they were doing. The applause was pretty thick, i said 'thank you' and headed off. Overall i was pleased, but definitely a few technical things to think about were i to do this sort of performance again.

Live at Bearspace Thursday 24th November

2005-11-17T04:33:00.000-08:00

Live at Bearspace Thursday 24th November:

Rigsby Smith
Rob Smoughton's Introduction To Brazillian Music
Gypsiesdog
DJ tendraw
+ another act tbc

BEARSPACE• 154 Deptford High Street London SE8 9PQ

9pm/ £3

Come and say hello if you can make it, hope to see you there.
Rigs.

Creot Radio Vol 30: Utrophia Special

2005-10-18T13:16:00.000-07:00

A new episode of my radio show just went up, all centred around music from the Utrophia collective (www.utrophia.net), a network of groups, projects and artists, both audio and visual. Check it out..

http://www.creotradio.net

You can feedback on www.forum.creotradio.net and if you like this show, you might like to check out Volumes 3, 9.4 and 10 which i've previously hosted.

Free Download

2005-09-22T00:12:00.000-07:00

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=408815

'Fear Of Falling Trees' - performed by myself and Tom Shotton (drums), for a limited time only, go have a listen and download it if you like, this isn't on the 'EPs and Others' compilation or my forthcoming record, just something in between, so blink and you just might miss it.

Melodicas, guitar, bass, drums, kazoo, pitched glockenspiel, roberts radio and percussion.

EPs and Others Compilation CD

2005-09-12T17:59:00.000-07:00

August 2005 sees the release of 'EPs and Others' (Kill The Other Guy/Creot Records) an 11 track collection of recordings, released and unreleased, made between 1998 and 2004 including pieces featuring Guitar, Glockenspiel, Bass, Drums, Violin, Trumpet, Flugelhorn, Clarinet, Piano and Moog. Send a myspace message to order your copy - $10 US or £5 UK including shipping - $9/£4 to my myspace friends.

Tracklist:

Value and Cost (Live)/ A Live Shadow/ Nine/ Num Num/ Greedo (Version 2)/ Sam and Eggs/ Funf (Version 4)/ Acht/ Strolling/ One of My Random Injuries/ Little Rug

'A Live Shadow', 'Strolling' and 'Little Rug' can currently be heard at www.myspace.com/rigsbysmith

Instrumental History #1: Cassette Recordings (1989-1994)

2005-09-12T04:58:00.000-07:00

I didn't begin to learn an instrument in earnest until i was 15 in 1991 when i began to strum a few power chords on a beaten up guitar i bought at a car boot sale for £15 and formed some early vocal-orientated punk groups. I'd bought a bass guitar the year before but had taken little interest in learning to play it, had a few clarinet lessons at nine or ten and tinkered around here and there with the piano and acoustic guitar we had in the house growing up, but my first forays into recording instrumental music were largely based on other people's pre-recorded sounds, sound collages really.

Whenever i had the house to myself i would set up a few record and tape decks (one to record, the others to play), gather the instruments together and get started, moving between the record and tape decks: playing recordings back at various speeds, creating loops by picking up the needle of the record players and setting them back to the start point again, playing records backwards with my hands and so forth. One of the keyboards we had in the house had a record function where you could play for a minute or two and it would play it back, it had maybe four-five tracks on it before the most recently played would begin to cut some of the others out (which also brought interesting effects as the tracks fought for supremacy), so that was always a handy device too. I would try to create patterns between sounds of the devices and build droning harmonies and such like. Then, maybe forty minutes later, i would play back the tape of everything i'd just done and record that and more improvisations on top, often with piano or acoustic guitar and household objects for percussion. With each new 'track' the sound of the previous takes would deteriorate, this was also something i enjoyed and learned to make the most of, and i used different rooms in the house to create as much of a sense of depth as possible. Finally i would go through the tapes and decide on which parts i liked most, recording them to another tape as a collage, fading between several recordings.

After i began to learn guitar i focussed on that and didn't return to sound collages until i began four-tracking in 1994. Between 1991 and 1994 i was largely interested in vocal-orientated music, using tape-decks as sketch pads for ideas, but four-tracking brought a new level of possibilities for sound collages.

Instrumental History #2: Four Track Recordings (1994-1997)

2005-09-12T04:51:00.000-07:00

While still performing with vocal-orientated groups between 1994 and 1997 i spent much of my spare time tinkering with sounds and instruments and recording to a series of borrowed cassette four-tracks. This lead me back to an interest in sound for sound's sake rather than what i'd recently considered to be music: things formed of notes, rhythms and harmonies. It was an interesting time, and due to my main pre-occupation still being vocal music and this being merely a sideline at the time, a very freeing one, which has held me in good stead. The combination of sound and traditional music is something that still interests me greatly, and further, that all sound is essentially music, whatever 'music' is.

In 1995 i was asked to do a quadrophonic tape that would be played as part of a festival in a local high street, with each track being sent to one of four speakers spaced out along the road. This lead me to some interesting thoughts on sound and placement, both in the nature and panning of the sounds i used. I sought to incorporate everyday sounds with more traditional music, partly to create some confusion between what was 'real' and actually happening in the street and what was pre-recorded and to be coming from the speakers. Alongside the guitar, piano and sampled sounds i recorded and collected (i had a guitar effects pedal that had a one-second sampler on it), i also included sounds associated with the high street to (hopefully) create a disorientating affect, such as a babies crying, tills, coins rattling, buskers, crowd sounds, conversation and even a mugging (that i had to fake in my recording space). My aim was that once these sounds were established in the listeners' ear as being real and actually happening then and there, some sounds would then be revealed as pre-recorded, with fast panning, drops in pitch, unrealistic repetition etc, while others would remain as natural as possible. The listener's perspective would also be determined by their position in the high street, and the speed or lack of their movement in relation to the speakers positions and the movement of sounds via panning (essentially moving the sounds from track to track). Something years later i'd very much be interested in doing again, a great project to be involved in.

I continued recording to four track until spring 1997 when i bought an early portable digital eight-track.

Instrumental History #3: Eight Track Recordings (1997-2002)

2005-09-12T04:36:00.000-07:00

In 1997 when i purchased an early portable digital eight track, i headed into the world of instrumental music in earnest. Vocal music had been less interesting to me for some time, and at first instrumental music was probably a deviation, but one that completely caught my interest. The first three collections of tunes i recorded on the eight track still contained some vocal element, but to a lesser and lesser degree as i found that vocals tended to overshadow what was essentially going on behind them and i found myself trying to listen around the vocals to hear everything that lay behind.

I also became very interested in multiple bass tracks for quite some time, 'Ping Pong' (unreleased) for instance uses six bass guitars and drums, with the basses played in a variety of ways to achieve different tones. This is possibly an extreme example, but for some time it was common for me to use two or three bass guitar parts in a tune, even as late as 2002 when i was writing material for what i intended to be the King Buffalo King record that lead to the formation of the group 'A Buffalo Crossing'.

The fourth and fifth collection of tunes that i wrote and recorded that year were my first conscious attempt at completely instrumental recordings, more learning experiences thatn anything which lead to my sixth collection that year, 'In These Clothes I Am The Future', recording of which took me into 1998. The mix of this was entirely made on headphones and that's my one regret as without the depth that speakers can provide i mixed the drums too loud on most tracks, meaning that i was ultimately unhappy with the finished mix shortly afterwards. I was very pleased with some of the music though, and that collection included the first version of 'Greedo', a tune i returned to in 2001 with a live group and intend to return to again at some point.

I continued recording to digtial eight-track until 2002 when i aquired a mac for the first time, though i still occasionally use it for it's portability.

Instrumental History #4: Akito Spokes (1997-1998)

2005-09-12T04:15:00.000-07:00

In 1997 i got a call from Matt Cummins (guitarist) asking if i'd like to start playing together again (i'd previously played bass in a short-term group with Matt on guitar/vocals and drummer Ben Winn on a break from University - we'd known each other for some years), so we got together to play at a rehearsal space behind a record shop, just Matt on guitar and myself on drums. After a couple of weeks of playing together, i played Matt some of the instrumental music i'd been recording and we took that as a starting point for our new direction. In the flat upstairs from the rehearsal space, Antony Finch (who had just started to play bass, having previously played guitar) had been listening to us play for a few weeks and came down to play one night, leading to a few weeks as a three piece before adding drummer and old friend Louisa Knight, with me switching to guitar. The group rehearsed every week for a year before taking some of the 40 tunes we had to play in front of people, leading to a surprisingly welcome reception.

My main interest at this point was having the two guitars play very similar or corresponding patterns with different notes, and that appeared in much of the music i wrote for the group, a sort of stereo chord in many ways. The first track ('Value and Cost') on the 'EPs and Others' compilation is one such tune, recorded live in the summer of 1998, much of which is based on parts that would usually be found in classical music and played by strings.

Instrumental History #5: Cobra Kai (1999-2000)

2005-09-12T04:04:00.000-07:00

After a break, three of Akito Spokes: Antony, Matt and myself returned to work together with a new drummer and old friend, Ben Winn, resulting in the group 'Cobra Kai'. At the time Ben and I in particular had a particular interest in variations on time signatures and this was something we very much brought to the group. The sound was also broadened slightly from the two guitar, bass and drums line-up with my doubling on keyboards, and although the three of us who had been in Akito Spokes brought similar influences to the group that we had before, Ben's input and drumming was a component that brought out new things in us as well as the year away. We were still pretty much anti-distortion, but for me, the group had a new type of groove to it, and i was less interested in my previous preoccupation with how the two guitars created harmonies together and things became a little more interwoven and diverse. The group played a handful of live gigs and recorded some tunes both in the rehearsal space and at a studio nearby, including 'Nine' which features on the 'EPs and Others' disc before going it's seperate ways.

Instrumental History #6: Chilli Chilli (2001)

2005-09-12T03:41:00.000-07:00

After Cobra Kai split in 2000, i returned to recording solo for a few months before writing some material that would best be recorded by a live group, so assembled three old friends to record with me (Alex Lewis - Bass, Tom Shotton - Drums and Adam Mallet - second Guitar). Tom and Alex and I have a long history of short projects together, largely from the days when vocal-orientated msuic was my primary interest, so they seemed a natural choice. Adam i'd been teaching guitar for a few months and this would be his first group outing. I also approached Pete Cooper, a local trumpet and flugelhorn player to join the project and we set about rehearsing the four tunes, 'Num Num', an early version of 'Funf' (later reworked for 'A Buffalo Crossing'), 'Sam and Eggs' and the second of currently three versions of 'Greedo'. In 2001 we recorded the four songs track by track at Tom's house, then at mine and then finally at Pete's studio in London Bridge. Three of the four tunes now appear on the 'EPs and Others' compilation.

Tom, Alex and Adam are now 3/9ths of the rock group 'Do Me Bad Things' (www.domewebthings.com) and Pete currently has his own quintet.

Instrumental History #7: A Buffalo Crossing (2002-2003)

2005-09-12T03:25:00.000-07:00

A Buffalo Crossing Live at the Spitz, London, late 2003

Left to right: Fiona Stewart - Violin and sampler, Rich Davis - Piano, Moog and Percussion, Attab haddad - Oud and Percussion,

Ross Parfitt - Drums and Saxophone, Jay Rice - Bass, Rigsby Smith - Guitar, Percussion and Glockenspiel.

I formed A Buffalo Crossing (originally known as 'King Buffalo King') in late 2002 after advertising for musicians wanted. The intention was originally to play live versions of a collection of tunes i had been recording for the past few months but the group quickly became an entity unto itself. The forming of the group became a sort of dada excerise, in that i took on the first five people i thought had ability or an interesting take on things with less and less concern with how it would work as a whole. The music grew in a number of directions with interests from the members having some crossover, but this variety of interests was largely the reason for the inevitable split a year later. The group recorded 20 CD-Rs of material in rehearsal, some pre-planned, some improvisational as well as a couple of studio takes and an EP 'Die Funf Nummern EP' containing 'Funf' (Smith) and four of the fifteen reworkings of the tune that the group had created.

After the split, Ross Parfitt, Fiona Stewart and I became three quarters of an improvisational group we called 'The Heartfelt Four' before Fiona returned to her native Canada and to a number of groups including 'Reflectiostack' (http://www.reflectiostack.com/). Ross moved further into experimental music and performances and developed a greater interest in acoustics (for which he returned to study to involve himself in further) and I began to work on my solo project amongst other things.

Instrumental History #8: The Heartfelt Four/Five (2003-Present)

2005-09-12T03:17:00.000-07:00

An improvisational group formed by Fiona Stewart, Ross Parfitt and myself after splitting A Buffalo Crossing. Originally we played as a three piece before the inclusion of Deepak (primarily a guitarist) and much later (for just one evening so far) Ade - primary instrument bass guitar. The group essentially has no restrictions and that is part of the joy, whatever comes to hand can be used freely, whether deemed to be traditional instruments or as such something you can play in the regular sense, we allow ourselves to play, listen and enjoy.The improvisations are generally recorded and occasionally performed in front of audiences, but with the group moving further out around the country (and in Fiona's case, the globe), nights of improvisations for us are currently few and far between, but always a pleasure.Track 10 ('One Of My Random Injuries') of the 'EPs and Others' Compilation is an improvisation by the three founder members.

Instrumental History #9: Rigsby Smith and Attab Haddad (2002-Present)

2005-09-12T01:45:00.001-07:00

Alongside the improvisations with The Heartfelt Four after A Buffalo Crossing split, i also continued working with Attab Haddad, ABC's Ouddist and Percussionist. Attab and I met on a sound engineering course in late 2002 and instantly made a connection, leading initially to a recording session of improvised music for Oud and Clarinet and then writing together before he joined 'Buffalo, we have also perfomed live together on occasion. Attab's interests are largely traditional arabic and western classical music, and so the music we write together has generally had some leaning in those directions. Currently Attab is making a name for himself as a live musician both in session work and with performances under his own name, as a solo performer and in small groups. We continue to write, record and improvise together, as well as working on together arrangements for his own compositions.

Instrumental History #10: Rigsby/Rice (2004-Present)

2005-09-12T01:39:00.000-07:00

An occasional project featuring myself and Jay Rice from 'A Buffalo Crossing', so far we have only one performance under our belts, in summer 2004 at the Utrophia CWM festival in Wales, where we performed a short set for glockenspiel and bass guitar with recorded accompliment. Jay and I have also improvised some music for clarinet and flute that may lead to a performance at some point in the near future.