Jaden | Music

-N-

Thanks to my lovely friend Lenya, the fashion loving stylist, I now know the meaning of the world “cull”- to clear out one’s closet of any old clothes no longer worn (if Eminem’s lyrics are anything to go by, he too is a chronic culler…).  

So anyway, at the time of learning of this strange and mystical ritual I was feeling quite enterprising, and decided to have a crack at culling my own closet. Now I’m really not too sure how you measure the success of any given cull, however it produced 3 fairly large bags of musty old clothes, and god knows how many moments where I thought to myself “I can’t believe I actually wore this”. It was definitely a advantageous move for my room in terms of spacial liberation, but the real winner out of the whole exercise was the Salvos – if you can call a giant pile of 10 year old Nic’s favourite blouses a blessing.

Feeling quite exceptional about my achievements, I couldn’t find a good reason to stop, and decided to find out whether it was possible to cull other things. In particular, it was a little red plastic dragon that caught my eye – for those of you who are familiar with it, I am speaking of my St George happy dragon piggy-bank from back in the day. For as long as I can remember I have been posting all of the 5 cent coins I accumulated into Mr Happy Dragon, and by now he was well and truly full. So much so that I found a new friend and partner for him – Mr Star City Casino Cup, whom I had been filling with 10 and 20 cent coins for almost as long.

After arriving at my local shopping plaza, I found myself ducking and weaving past the Cancer Council people with the big donation buckets- positively salivating at the sight of me and my silver. Barely making it to the St George bank with my coins still in tact, I marched up to the teller and attempted to deposit them. The woman at the counter must have taken one look at my slept-on hair and week-old beard and decided that I needed a challenge in my day, handing me a big handful of plastic coin bags – instructing me to separate the coins into bags of 100, split by denomination. Luckily I didn’t have much else on my schedule on this particular day – spending the 45 minutes that followed spreading out and organizing my coin collection all over the waiting seats – much to the amusement of the other patrons.

Upon successful completion of the day’s challenge, I left the bank with a feeling of accomplishment, and a whopping $63.55 – the equivalent of approximately 1500 coins.

All in a day’s work, eh!

my coin collection

If i were a synth bassist would i have the whole world under my fingertips?
Would I understand the natural progression?
What would i tell people who i meet at parties?
Would i qualify for musical scholarships?
And perhaps most importantly what would i do with all these packets of elixir bass strings?
It may seem like coincidence; It may not seem so different from a synth brassist,

Or maybe its just me…

-D-, -N-

Cliche time;

They say a picture says 1000 words.

Click the link below for thousands of words describing Charmaine’s EP Launch night!

http://charmaine.com.au/blog/date/2009/05/23/

| D |

Well, it has been a frantically busy last couple of months for both Jaden Music and for Charmaine.  Just a week out from Charmaine’s EP launch night and things are really taking shape – the band is ready to rock, promotional activities have kicked into top gear, and the all-important four EP tracks have been mastered and sent off for CD printing.  Now the time has come for me and the boys to take a few moments to reflect, and mentally prepare for what we  hope to be a spectacular night.

The completed EP comprises of Joy, Save Me, Trigger Happy, and Come On Over (the latter 3 produced by Jaden). Short but sweet, Charmaine’s debut release is a unique and colourful journey starting with an upbeat RNB ballad, and moving on to explore the bounds of pop, rock, and some funky soul grooves.  Charmaine and I have spent many hours of hard work together this year, both in the studio and out – jamming with our acoustics, bouncing themes and lyrical ideas off each other, recording, and producing.  While it can be taxing at times, it has undoubtedly been rewarding in so many ways, and working with Charms is always an absolute pleasure – with hilarious outcomes guaranteed.

 It’s been a great learning experience for me (as a songwriter, it is said that you get better with each new track – hopefully this is the case for us), and also one filled with many challenges. As someone who writes primarily using a guitar, I enjoyed the opportunity to really experiment and combine elements of many different styles, using both live and synth sounds – particularly in Trigger Happy. With Charms making the late decision to include T.H on the EP, I also got a good taste of working under pressure (with less than 10 days to completely record and produce the track, amongst a long list of other things).

Standouts for me during the creation of the EP would definitely have to be the hours spent recording layer upon layer of electric/acoustic guitar (incidentally I lost count of the layers of skin I shed from my fingertips in the process), taking my chance to sneak in a couple of guitar solos (and also a little bass solo ), figuring out some obscure vocal harmonies with Charms, and playing around with zany guitar and synth effects with Danny during the production phases.

CDs should be available online/at the launch next week, so make sure you get down for the show on Friday and grab yourself a copy.

Peace

Nic

my world...