Month: January 2021

Prohibition Mission

Alison Chabloz2 Comments

A fourth and final Covid-19 ditty, featuring a live vocal performance to a backing track that was created after much deliberation with lyricist Gerard Menuhin on the choice of music.

Gerard’s first suggestion was to use the Dave Clarke Five’s ‘Glad All Over’, in particular for the bass drum that is part of the hook line: ‘Because I’m BOOM BOOM glad all over’.

In the end, I adapted that idea to a composition of my own, that nevertheless pays tribute to DC5 in the middle eight.

The sound is decent this time round, but the lighting could be better. Composition of some songs – e.g. my previous number ‘Caught Covid From The Cat’ – can be completed within a day, although there may be some minor changes whilst recording, etc.

Prohibition Mission was supposed to be the third number of a Covid EP. I wanted a catchy melody without the restrictions of a repetitive chord structure, as with blues or rock n roll. Here’s the final result.

Caught Covid from the Cat!

Alison Chabloz8 Comments

Original musical satire, courtesy of Chabloz & Menuhin.

For some reason, my audio editing software failed to capture a L/R stereo track with separate channels for vocal and keys.

The audio is therefore mono, meaning less possibilities to edit and remove, for example, plosives and other parasitical noises.

My performance is 100% live, to camera, with the absolute minimum of post-production trickery.

The theme is humorous. No offence is intended towards pet owners or their pets or indeed anyone else. Enjoy!


Vaccination Nation

Alison Chabloz2 Comments

Have you had your jab?


Here’s TMML Productions latest jab – at the jab, and at the obedient masses, living in hope that their jab will enable them to get back to “normal”.

A back-to-the-old-days live demo. Quality is now better than it was few years ago, although my means for such a production are limited to what you see in the video: my Yamaha arranger-keyboard, my 30-year old Shure SM58 (easy to see that my Sony headphones have lasted only a fraction of the time) and the Zoom H4n Pro device, partially seen, in the lower left-hand corner. This piece of kit is ideal for home-studio recording, as well as for capturing audio outside. It can be used as a condenser mic, as a four-track mixer and – my favourite setting – as an audio-interface, once connected to a laptop via USB.

For such a live demo, using the Zoom H4n Pro as my audio interface, it’s only possible to record one stereo track (left/vocals, right/keys). This track then has to be mixed and rendered to two separate mono tracks, and then re-mixed, in order to get a decent balance.

The musical inspiration (excepting the middle eight) – as well as the lyrics – comes once again from Gerard Menuhin, who proposed the famous blues number Work Song. For years, as a classroom music teacher, I used the Monty Alexander Live in Montreux version for music & movement exercises. My students were kept on their toes.

Meanwhile, Gerard and I are on a covid roll. Watch this space.