song | Andy Roberts

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Streets of Paris - Andy Roberts at Romford

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaJkJ0Y_oqA&feature=youtube_gdata
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May 24 2012, 9:47am | Comments »
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Embedding Videos from Facebook

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2012/05/18/embedding-videos-from-facebook

If your video camera operator (thanks to Linda) has turned their apparatus sideways, the resulting portrait styled video works better uploaded to facebook and embedded than it does on youTube. As discovered over on http://andyroberts.me/havering-folk-club/the-rowan-tree-song-at-haverfolk-for-cloudstreet-guest-night

Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogEmbedding Videos from Facebook
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May 18 2012, 1:00am | Comments »
I posted to youtube.com

The Dream Is Over - Andy Roberts Feb 29th - Haverfolk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1GvAzfK5Rs&feature=youtube_gdata
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March 4 2012, 3:51pm | Comments »
I posted to youtube.com

The Dream Is Over - Andy Roberts Feb 29th - Haverfolk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1GvAzfK5Rs&feature=youtube_gdata
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March 4 2012, 2:51pm | Comments »
I posted to distributedresearch.net

The Rowan Tree http www youtube com watch…

http://distributedresearch.net/status/the-rowan-tree-http-www-youtube-com-watch/

The Rowan Tree http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjGwH_Hn3PA The Rowan Tree – Andy Roberts folk song at Haverfolk
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February 27 2012, 7:14am | Comments »
I posted to distributedresearch.net

Evolution Of A Song Songwriters Circle Never was…

http://distributedresearch.net/status/evolution-of-a-song-songwriters-circle-never-was/

Evolution Of A Song – Songwriters Circle – Never was to Be http://songwriterscircle.co.uk/evolution-of-a-song/
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February 4 2012, 5:33pm | Comments »
I posted to youtube.com

Hold On Below - Andy Roberts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWA6x9q4_5s&feature=youtube_gdata
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February 2 2012, 5:53am | Comments »
I posted to distributedresearch.net

Living Here youtube Video song by Andy Roberts…

http://distributedresearch.net/status/living-here-youtube-video-song-by-andy-roberts/

Living Here ( youtube Video song by Andy Roberts ) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY0FcoqmEJI
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November 26 2011, 1:19am | Comments »
I posted to youtube.com

Cajun Cooking Song with Haverfolk Band

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9Vq5jcdWPo&feature=youtube_gdata
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September 29 2011, 7:50am | Comments »
I posted to andyroberts.me

Podcast #48 – Opening Night at Haverfolk

http://andyroberts.me/havering-folk-club/podcast-48-opening-night-at-haverfolk

Andy Roberts Podcast episode #48 features six songs performed live at the opening night of the new renamed “Haverfolk” club at the new venue, the White Horse on London Road, Chadwell Heath. Full address is The White Horse, 118 High Road, Chadwell Heath, Romford, Greater London RM6 6NU I quite like The Stables Function Suite as a room, the acoustics are bright and loud unlike the previous venue The Moby Dick, which deadened everything. It could be a bit on the friendly and intimate (small) side if everybody turned up at once, but that’s better than shrinking the audience through having an unsympathetic atmosphere, which the White Horse doen’t by any means. So Wednesday August 24st signified the first night for the old Havering Folk Club – Now Haverfolk at the White Horse, at which I can arrive promptly by taking the train to Chadwell Heath station and then walking around the corner for about ten minutes. No need to take an additional bus, which makes it less hassle to get from as well of course. Being August, several of the regulars were away including a contingent visiting the Whitby Folk Week, so there was enough time to do two sets, and I was invited to perform an extended 2nd set to end the evening, which is how I come to have enough material to make into a podcast episode, a collection of six songs in total, four of which are self compositions and two are traditional. Here is the download podcast link, file details show notes and set list for podcast number 48: Subscribe to the podcast RSS or get it from iTunes Download MP3 to save – 33.8 Mb in size, playtime 23 minutes 29 seconds :- 48 Andy Roberts Podcast Episode 48.mp3 Andy Roberts Podcast #48 Shownotes Show Notes for Podcast 48

Cormorants - Andy Roberts original Sitting On The Bank - Andy Roberts original The Wreckers’ Prayer - Andy Roberts original Captain Coulston – Traditional folk song Truro Agricultural Show - Traditional folk song Yellow Boat - Andy Roberts original

Andy Roberts Video Podcast Live from Haverfolk Cormorants

Sitting On The Bank

The Wreckers’ Prayer

Captain Coulston

Truro Agricultural Show

Yellow Boat
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August 25 2011, 2:50pm | Comments »
I posted to youtube.com

Mondura Dam - Andy Roberts original song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3C0E3aTLDc&feature=youtube_gdata
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June 13 2011, 6:02am | Comments »
I posted to distributedresearch.net

Write me a hit by teatime: the world of professional songwriters

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/18/write-hit-songwriters

Songwriters work in the shadows, knocking out tunes to order – sometimes in a matter of hours. The songwriters who work for Jay-Z, Adele, Florence and more tell Alexis Petridis how they do it – and why times are getting tough

This article titled “Write me a hit by teatime: the world of professional songwriters” was written by Alexis Petridis, for The Guardian on Tuesday 17th May 2011 20.30 UTC Two years ago, Al “Shux” Shuckburgh found himself catapulted straight into songwriting’s premier league. The Londoner hadn’t expected much from the track he’d produced and co-written at a songwriting session with American tunesmiths Angela Hunte and Jane’t Sewell-Ulepic, about how homesick the pair were for Brooklyn. Later, Hunte sent it to Jay-Z‘s label, Roc Nation, but received a frosty response. Then EMI’s head of publishing overheard it at a barbecue, and decided it would be perfect for Jay-Z. The following night, the rapper wrote his own lyrics, recorded them, and then excitedly told Alicia Keys he had “a song that was going to be the anthem of New York” and asked her to perform on it. Back in London, Shuckburgh wasn’t even allowed to hear the track. “Well,” he says, “I could have heard it if I’d flown out to New York. But they were being so careful about anything leaking. At that point, I didn’t really have a track record, they didn’t really know who I was, so they didn’t know if they could trust me.” In fact, the first time he heard Empire State of Mind was when The Blueprint 3, the Jay-Z album it appeared on, finally leaked online. “It was very weird. I remember listening to it in my studio thinking, ‘Is this for real?’” Shuckburgh sounds more sanguine than might be expected for a man who was actively prevented from hearing a song he co-wrote. Perhaps the subsequent effect of Empire State of Mind on his bank balance and status has eased his pain. The track shifted 4m legal downloads and spent five weeks at No 1 in America, making it Jay-Z’s first US chart-topper. “It’s not like everything’s easy now,” says Shuckburgh. “But everything’s easier.“ Maybe that’s just how professional songwriters tend to be: whatever other attributes the job may require, a giant ego and a sense of preciousness aren’t really among them. This may be why songwriting tends to attract so many former performers, who have either tired of the limelight or watched it fade, and are now making some pragmatic decisions about their futures. Among the more improbable credits on recent hits were the three songs on Beyoncé‘s last album co-written by Ian Dench, formerly the guitarist of 1990s British indie dance band EMF (big hit: Unbelievable); then there’s She-Wolf by Shakira, partly the work of Sam Endicott, moonlighting from his day job as frontman of New York-based the Bravery. The washing machine technique “It’s the kind of job where the best thing you can be is invisible,” says Shuckburgh’s former mentor Eg White. “The very idea of a professional songwriter gets in the way of the singer.” White should know. He began his career as a performer – in boyband Brother Beyond and then in the critically acclaimed Eg and Alice, makers of glossy adult pop. He then went on to become one of Britain’s most successful songwriters for hire. He’s been responsible, or at least partly responsible, for Will Young‘s Leave Right Now, James Morrison‘s You Give Me Something, Adele‘s Chasing Pavements and Florence and the Machine‘s Hurricane Drunk. Tomorrow, as they have been doing for half a century, the Ivor Novello awards will turn a brief spotlight on to the shadowy world of professional songwriters, those people who ply their trade in studios and writing sessions, half-hidden from view, despite being the backbone of the music industry. Up for songwriting awards this year are the composers of such inescapable hits as Tinie Tempah‘s Pass Out, Katy B‘s Katy on a Mission and Plan B‘s She Said. As pop and R&B dominate the charts again (indie bands tend to write their own songs, or if they don’t, they keep quiet about it), the songwriter-for-hire is back in demand. At the top of the UK singles chart sits Bruno Mars, whose songwriting credits include Travie McCoy’s Billionaire and Cee-Lo Green‘s Fuck You. These songwriters do something that seems to go against every romantic notion we have about artistic creativity: they write songs to order (and apparently the current craving among UK labels is for songs that sound like Mumford and Sons, or Florence and the Machine). White, himself the winner of two Ivor Novello awards, is prevailed upon to meet an artist, form a bond, and come up with something chart-topping in the space of a day. “Sometimes less,” he says cheerfully. “Sometimes I get two hours. Someone comes over at three, we have a cup of tea, chew the cud for a bit, go: ‘All right, shall we write a song?’ And by six, they’ve gone home and we’ve fucking done it. Chasing Pavements, that took two or three hours.” Enormously affable, White seems to love every aspect of the process, even being forced to make friends with artists he’s never met before. “You immediately stop observing the niceties of gentle human contact between strangers,” he says, adding that he subscribes to “the washing machine theory” of songwriting. “I tend to play a few records and discuss them: what we need is the beat from that one, the fragility of that one. We try to keep it open, but we talk about the ways it might have precedents in different genres, smash them all together and get something different. If you just put one thing in the washing machine, you’re going to get one thing out; but if you put two or three colours in, who knows what colour’s going to emerge? Pop music is built out of pop music.” This is not an approach adopted by everyone. Jim Duguid, co-author of five songs on the debut album by Paolo Nutini, says: “Some record companies will give you a list of five songs and say, ‘We want something like this.’ But that’s like someone turning up with a BMW, giving you a load of parts and saying, ‘Can you build something like that for me?’ It’ll kind of look like it, but it won’t be right.” Duguid, who was drummer and songwriter with the old band Speedway – of which Nutini was a huge fan, doesn’t care much for knocking out a collaboration in a couple of hours, either. “I try to avoid that like the plague. A lot of industry people think, ‘Yeah, we’ll throw you together and you’ll write a hit in a day.’ But we did that in Speedway and it’s not the way the best music comes out. I like more of a social occasion, maybe three days of chatting and listening to music, then getting a couple of ideas together that reflect that.” The one thing professional songwriters seem to agree on is that times are getting tough. “Having had some success,” says Duguid, “it still shocks me how little money there is in it. I’m lucky in the sense that Paolo is one of the few artists who still sells physical CDs, and there’s money in that. With downloads – at one pence a download between three songwriters – you’ve got to be shifting a heck of a lot of records. The real money’s in getting your song on an advert or on television, but that’s getting harder, because everyone’s trying to do it.” A glorious bloody nose It’s a situation that is changing the nature of recording, says White: “Nobody wants album tracks any more, they just want singles. Before, you weren’t just chasing the money and the radio play – you could do something you really wanted to do, and had thus far been thwarted. Nobody wants the beautiful slow song that ends up as track 11 on an album but that everyone who buys the album will end up loving best of all. It’s down to iPod playing, cherry-picking, downloading. Fifteen years ago, you would hope that albums would outsell singles two to one. Now, I hear stories about Taio Cruz selling 13m downloads and 300,000 albums. And it’s not just him. Katy Perry: massive singles sales, small album sales. For publishing companies, that’s not a disaster – 13m singles is fantastic. But it’s a disaster for record companies and it’s a human disaster. The album is no longer the way people define themselves: there isn’t enough meat in there.” For a moment, White’s ebullience seems to desert him. Then he mentions Adele’s LP 21, which has just spent its 15th week at No 1 in the UK, and suddenly he perks up: he has a song on that. “Oh, that’s a glorious bloody nose to the music industry. Short-termist arses. Start fucking making music with your hearts! The record industry was saying no one was buying records any more, and then someone makes a very stoical, honest, beautiful record and people are buying it in shedloads. Because it’s nutritious.” Anyway, he says, album tracks or not, it’s a great job. “I’ve had Matt Cardle in today. We’ve both been making a fuck of a lot of noise, turning the guitars up really loud.” Matt Cardle off The X-Factor? Loud guitars? Noise? Really? “Yeah,” White chuckles. “Songwriting really is great fun.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogWrite me a hit by teatime: the world of professional songwriters

Related posts:Can you learn how to write lyrics? The Songwriters Circle The demise of professional photographers
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May 18 2011, 4:56am | Comments »
I posted to andyroberts.me

Podcast 42

http://andyroberts.me/podcast/podcast-42

i’ve made this podcast episode 42 out of the remaining recordings from the Sunday afternoon session with more rehearsals of old songs as a trial for April 12th. Here’s the download and play link etc: Subscribe to the podcast RSS or get it from iTunes Download MP3 to save – 42.6. Mb in size, playtime 29 minutes 31 seconds :- 42 Andy Roberts Podcast Episode 42.mp3 Andy Roberts Podcast #42 Shownotes Show Notes for Podcast 42

Gernika – Andy Roberts Streets of Paris – Andy Roberts Clean Living Blues – Andy Robert /Linda Hartley Never Was to Be – Andy Roberts / Daryl P Hall Winter in Andalucia – Andy Roberts
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May 7 2011, 4:18pm | Comments »
I posted to andyroberts.me

Podcast 40

http://andyroberts.me/podcast/podcast-40

Podcast 40 is from part 2 of last Sunday’s afternoon session with more rehearsals of old songs as a trial for April 12th and a cover of Bob Dylan’s Hurricane – just because there’s time enough. Here’s the download and play link etc: Subscribe to the podcast RSS or get it from iTunes Download MP3 to save – 32.1 Mb in size, playtime 22 minutes 15 seconds :- 40 Andy Roberts Podcast Episode 40.mp3 Andy Roberts Podcast #40 Shownotes Show Notes for Podcast 40

Hurricane – Bob Dylan Living Here – Andy Roberts Joan of Arc – Andy Roberts Mazet – Andy Roberts Cajun Cooking – Andy Roberts

Orbit Tower
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April 10 2011, 8:24am | Comments »
I posted to youtube.com

Joan of Arc - Andy Roberts original song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SN_42oCq-o&feature=youtube_gdata
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April 9 2011, 12:59am | Comments »
I posted to youtube.com

Winter in Andalusia - Andy Roberts original song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td9ZZrf9gg0&feature=youtube_gdata
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April 9 2011, 12:55am | Comments »
I posted to distributedresearch.net

Spring’s here: skylarks overhead, moles in the garden, moths in the bathroom

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/27/springs-here-skylarks-overhead-moles-in-the-garden-moths-in-the-bathroom

After a long, hard winter, the seasons have turned and at last the days are lengthening. Spring is here with skylarks, moths, moles, chiff chaff, rowan tree buds, wagtails, catkins and lambing.

This article titled “Spring’s here: skylarks overhead, moles in the garden, moths in the bathroom” was written by Rob Penn, for The Observer on Sunday 27th March 2011 00.05 UTC Winter was very long in the Black Mountains. We’ve been embattled by the weather since snow fell in late November and the temperature hit –15C. I’m not expecting a campaign medal. I can’t remember anticipating spring so eagerly, though. There is no universally accepted event that heralds the new season, but it arrived incontrovertibly for us last week, with a period of high pressure that brought warm sunshine, temperatures in the teens and stirrings of new life in the dead land. For meteorologists, who like to tidy the year into four neat sections, spring begins on 1 March. For astronomers, the vernal equinox (20 March this year) marks the turning of the season. For some, it’s the moment the clocks go forward. For trout fishermen, it’s the first hatch of March browns or even grannom, the drab fly that erupts in clouds over rivers at the beginning of April. Others identify more intimate ambassadors: the first dashing yellow daffodil, the rising dawn chorus of birdsong, the earliest appearance of frogspawn in ponds and ditches, the first cut of grass, a pied wagtail over ploughed land and yellow catkins dangling from hazel branches all symbolise spring’s arrival for someone. . For me, spring is evidenced in many ways. On dewy mornings, when the sun rises over the hill behind our house and illuminates the lawn, lighting the million pearls of moisture suspended from the tip of every blade of grass, I know the waiting is over. When there are moths in the bathroom, moles in the garden and the moor is full of the liquid trill of skylarks, spring has arrived. When I can cycle down the hill to my office in Abergavenny in a T-shirt, with sunshine on my forearms and warm air funnelling over the creases in my face, I feel the wheel of the year has turned. It’s an elementary pleasure, a madeleine moment that validates my existence at this time, year after year. Observing the coming of spring is part of the British condition. I’m told it’s the moment in the year when expats pine for home the most: Oh, to be in England/ Now that April’s here, Robert Browning wrote in Home-thoughts, from Abroad in 1845. There is satisfaction in knowing that its arrival is timeless: a joy identical to me and to someone who inhabited the iron age hill fort a mile from my home, 2,750 years ago. Exactly 275 years ago, we started documenting it. In 1736, Robert Marsham saw the first swallow of the year wheeling and banking over the open fields at Stratton Strawless in Norfolk, eating insects on the wing in celebration of having completed an epic, 6,000-mile journey from southern Africa. Marsham wrote the event down, in effect inventing a new field of study, phenology – the effects of cyclic and seasonal phenomena on plants and animals. Marsham recorded 26 “Indications of Spring”, as he called them, without interruption, for 62 years. He noted the dates different trees first came into leaf, blossom and flowers came out, frogs first croaked and butterflies appeared. In collating his observations, Marsham, a friend of the more famous naturalist Gilbert White, crystallised a British fascination. It’s a fascination that could be as old as the seasons themselves and which is still manifest today, not least in the popularity of the BBC series Springwatch. For farmers in the Black Mountains, spring means lambing: an arduous, 24-hour vigil that lasts for up to eight weeks, leaving many of the protagonists looking as if they’ve just been released from a POW camp. “Most farmers are lambing by the end of March,” said Mark Morgan, a farmer in the Llanthony Valley. “It’s the most important time of year. Everything depends on these few weeks. It’s hard work, but it’s fulfilling and something we take pride in. For me, spring starts with lambing. It’s like waking up from some primeval nightmare.” The winter preparations for this moment are complete and the monochrome landscape looks ordered. The hedges are laid and trimmed or “flail cut”. Gates have been rehung. The fields have been “chain-harrowed”. Though the grass is still pallid, the effect of this raking is visually dramatic from afar: the green, two-tone strips are the first hint there is life in the long-dormant earth. In our garden, growth meets decay when spring arrives. The decay is a reminder that I’ve been idle over the winter. I’ve pruned some of the fruit trees and cut the raspberry canes, but there’s still a mountain of clearing and pyres to be set alight. Last week my wife and I dug over and weeded the vegetable patch – another winter task we didn’t get round to before the earth turned to iron in November. We like to toil over the veg patch together each year, satisfying an immemorial urge to provide food. Lettuce, coriander and rocket seeds have been planted in the greenhouse. In a rare fit of exuberance for gardening, my kids have planted sunflowers, alpine strawberries and a packet of wild flower mix. The first wee shoots of basil are showing on the windowsill in the kitchen. The old spaniel, who was all but written off by the vet a month ago, has a touch of his swagger back. He loves the warmth and passes the afternoons in a suntrap in the lee of the byre. The young spaniel stalks under the copse of birch trees, thrusting his snout into the rabbit holes and intermittently exhaling hot air from his nostrils into the burrows. Inside the house, the mice have thankfully moved off to their summer residence. The coat cupboard has had an interim clearout: arctic boots, salopettes, woollen hats and a diverse selection of single children’s gloves have gone to the attic. It snowed in the Black Mountains in late March last year; the rest of the coats stay out for now. In the wood we manage as a community group, high up on Hatterall Hill, the rush of activity to coppice the stools of hazel is over and the chainsaws are quiet for now. In fact, we stopped all tree felling at the beginning of March, as birds are nesting earlier and earlier. There’s still plenty to do: the trunks and thicker branches of hazel need to be cut into 2ft lengths, ready to be loaded in the burner we’ll use to make barbecue charcoal over the following months. The hazel sticks will be bundled up and left in a pond for a fortnight, until they’re used for making hurdles. The firewood, most of it windblown, will be stacked and left to season. The clocks go forward today. The extra hour of daylight in the evenings is always welcome, but the more significant milestone for me is the passing of the equinox. Daylight hours are now longer than the hours of darkness and increasing by three or four minutes every day. It’s a psychological crossroads: for the first time in the year, I feel I can be profligate with daylight. I can be outside and content doing nothing. I walk the dogs because I want to, not because I have to. There is time to lean against a tree, look up and let the sun burn golden palaces on to my closed eyelids. Of course, spring is the time to be social too. Human interaction redoubles as the sun strengthens, turning even the dourest farmers into extroverts. On the lanes, people stop to chat on the thinnest premise. In town, every face offers a smiling reception. It is no wonder spring is pregnant with pagan mating rituals. It’s the season of possibility, for us as much as nature. For that alone, we should celebrate its arrival. Rob Penn is the author of It’s All About the Bike: the Pursuit of Happiness on Two Wheels (Particular Books).

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogSpring’s here: skylarks overhead, moles in the garden, moths in the bathroom

Related posts:Big Garden Bird Watch results are out Plantwatch: Welcome warmth brings spring blossom Winter Solstice The Shortest Day
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March 27 2011, 9:57am | Comments »