"My Love" live at Ian's Wedding!!

Shelley and Ian - November 21st, 2009

As many of you know, I married my best friend (don't worry, she's a chick!) this past Saturday. We had a fantastic day, and we hope to have some wedding picts to post soon. The problem is, neither one of us (it was really MY job!) thought to give our camera to anyone so that they could take pictures for us... so we got home on Sunday without a single picture of our day together!!

That said... we hope some of our Facebook friends and those who attended the wedding will send us some of their pictures and movie files. It will be weeks before our wedding photographer and videographer finish their final versions of our pictures and movies, so we'll have to be patient!

At least... in all the hubbub of getting married, I remembered to give my Camcorder to Tony, so that some video could be taken at the reception and dance.

What is posted here is a clip from the nearly 2 hours of footage he shot.

Thanks to Tony, and anyone else who grabbed my camera and took these movies for us.

Enjoy!

Ian and Shelley

This clip below is from when The Piano Men played a short set. My buddy Darren Walters sat in on drums for the night and did a fantastic job. Jim Witter played bass on this song. This is My Love by Paul McCartney. It was a great time, and the guys all played great, and with or without booze, had a great time!!

Recording With Rik Gratton

Recording With Rik Gratton at Phase 1 in Toronto

I had the pleasure of meeting and working with Rik Gratton yesterday. I've been working on another album for the "GodRocks", a video/CD/TV/Concert act that I've been associated with for a number of years. On previous albums, I've done all of the instrumentation myself and specifically with drum programming rather than live drumming. There has never been much need to have a real player on this stuff, especially when you consider the demographic that applies to the GodRocks.

The new songs Bruce Stacey wrote for this album are quite a bit more modern/rock sounding than ever before, and the prospect of programming drums on these songs seemed like a wasted effort. So we decided to actually hire a real drummer.

None of us associated with the Godrocks universe had ever worked with Rik before, but he came highly recommended. I was particularly sold on him once I found out that he is a very close friend of Terry Bozzio, hands-down my favorite drummer of all time.

We had one day at Phase 1 Studios in Toronto to get 10 songs done with Rik. The plan was to finish all the drums, get new bass recorded by me, and then after all of this, have me play grand piano on a few songs too. That's a lot to fit into one studio day!! I've done many a session, where the players work their asses off during a very long day, and come away with less than 3-4 songs completed.

Rik was beyond comprehension!

Although these are songs geared at kids, they are by no means simplistic, cookie-cutter songs. A number of these tunes have very strange arrangements, including 6/4 bars, more than one bridge and other little tidbits that help build what I call "the candies" of the production. I wrote really quick rhythmic charts for Rik, but otherwise, he was kind of on his own.

One song in particular was very elaborate. He listened to it twice before he played it. When he went in to give it a run through, he nailed it in the single take. He did this all bloody day! He'd go in and just "wank something out" and it would be virtually perfect! We did the occasional punch in, but for the most part, he was a 1-take drummer. Unbelievable!

Right at the end of the session, it occurred to me that I had not gotten any video footage from the day, so I quickly threw up my Photobooth software and started filming something. It didn't take long for Bruce and Darryl (the executive producer and engineer) to notice they were being filmed!!

Enjoy the video clip. Wish I had more footage.

This was a studio day where I really sat back and thought "man, it's days like this I'm really glad I do this for a living!" It was almost 12 hours of nearly constant work, with barely time off to eat a few slices of pizza, and there were many trips to the Americano machine, but it was a joy from start to finish!

Thanks to Rik for being such a great guy and such an unbelievable musician.

Ian - October 15/09

Vlog 04

Farewell From Phoenix

This is my final Vlog from Phoenix. We head home tomorrow morning and then it's back to the regular grind so to speak.

Thanks for reading, and thanks to all the great people in and around the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra. Class acts all around.

Cheers

Ian

Ian's Vlog 03

Vlog Update - for Saturday, October 10/09

Had a tremendous day. A trip to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch, some mild shopping (or a chance to walk off the lunch!), a terrific show with the Phoenix Symphony, followed by a life-changing (no exaggeration!) steak dinner compliments of one of the symphony sponsors.

If you're in the Phoenix area and want LITERALLY, the best steak of your life, go to Donovan's Steakhouse. Seriously... phenomenal, and not just because it was free!

Enjoy the video.

Final show this afternoon!

Ian

Ian's Vlog Episode 2

Phoenix Vlog 02

Friday was our big, long day. We had soundcheck, a lunch meeting with the conductor Lawrence Golan, our first and only rehearsal with the orchestra, and then finally, our first performance of the weekend.

Rehearsal was a tad stressful for me, but it had its moments. My stress may have largely been caused from my position on the stage, as it was hard to hear the orchestra in its proper context. There were subtle arrangemental ideas that were not getting to my ears, which made me wonder if my volume directions were incorrect, the symphony just weren't trying hard enough, or whether it was just an audio issue. Unless somebody records the show from the audience perspective (which thanks to BS Union restrictions is bloody unlikely!), I may never know whether my work was well enough constructed to translate properly in a very reverberant concert hall.

The first show went quite a bit better than rehearsal did. The audience enjoyed the show, and a few of the orchestral musicians were kind enough to approach me with words of congratulations on the scoring. That means a lot, because these people see everything from crappy pop shows to high-end classics.

Anyway... enjoy the Vlog, and I"ll give you another update tomorrow.

Cheers from Arizona!

Ian

Phoenix Vlog 01

By The Time I Get To Phoenix, I'll Be Scoring...

Hello Friends!

I'm here in Phoenix, and other than being a tad fatigued, I'm feeling pretty groovy!

The above Vlog (assuming it transcodes and transmodulates correctly!) is the first of a few video diaries (or Dairy's if you will!) that I will do whilst here in 80 degree Phoenix with Jim Witter and the Piano Men band.

The Piano Men II is our sequel to the original show, which features Billy and Elton songs from both the 70's, and the less than stellar 80's!! It's actually a great show, and getting a chance to arrange it and orchestrate it was a treat. It was an outrageous amount of work, but well worth it. The more I do this sort of work, the easier it will get.

So stay tuned here for more updates from the road.

Ian