Editing in the afternoon...

The way to edit music is definitely in the sunroom over a cup of tea.

With a cute guy...

And to admire the shadow paintings made in collaboration by the sun and the trees... 

Prayers for Kelly.

Love to all.

Shell xx

Hello! Studio Video Blog # 2 is in da house!

I've been writing, recording, living, loving and talking all about it to you, by my self in a completely round room made of concrete!  I give you studio vblog #2...



Thank you for allowing me to make this journey...

Shell xx

Raging, focussed, brighter better...

Hello sweeties!

Just writing to say

that my love has come home again

from recent work trip

and the world now is completely

right!

That rays of light

are a brighter bright

against my face,

and my mind-

is the more creative

and smiley for it.

*

Also.

I have been completely smitten with a certain YouTube Channel... {I do that.}

It was insisted, several months ago that I purchase a copy of Imogen Heap's new album Ellipse - by one of my favourite little she bloggers... So anyway, I did - and I have loved and lapped it up from one song to the next.

But her YouTube vBlog of the making of the album - EEEEKKK! Never was I more excited and inspired to follow something!

I must tell you, it's what I needed. I am officially spurred on to finish my demos, and get new songs to recording ready. To make this little beauty of an album {which at the moment exists solely in my own head!} and stop worrying about the things I can't do - and just quieten down my raging spirit, & focus on the making of art! Today! The making of my new album.

And yeah, you're gonna stick around for the journey aren't you?

Video Blog coming soon...

Shell {songsmith} xx

Love you, and leave you...

[a cousin's birthday balloon party on the trampoline on a summer's eve - does it get any better?!]

Tis the summer that really makes me love and feel Australian. And though I don't give a hoot of credibility to the unfounded theory of climate change; this summer has been a hot one...

So it's a shame to see it starting to wind down for another year. I noticed today that the sun is setting just a little earlier, and with it my thoughts are turning to ideas of autumn activities and clothes and colours.

My creative moods are very much inspired by the seasons, and I love the different aspects and inclinations of each one - songs I write in the inferno of an Aussie summer are very different to the ones I will write in the throws of a marino woolen, scarf-clad wintery day. I think about friends I have made who live the other side of our equator who are deep in wintery snow and cold right now, and I think how wonderful it would be if I could take the concord up and across to see them and experience the chill, just for a change, just for a day, or two!

Okay, so this post is lacking a point, and an air of excitement I know! My friend has flown away today to a foreign place to work for two weeks, and I miss him very much already. But a little longing and despair will work wonders in the songwriting realm for me I dare say!

So without much of a point, or an anthemic chorus to end, I will love you and leave you, with an excerpt from one of my favourite and most enjoyable times in my very fortunate professional life... Recording, and all the fun and fury that goes along with it.

...and yes, the man lying on the floor playing the bass guitar is my husband! My friend.

Shell xx

From heart to song...

I took you.

From lounge room to studio.

And soon to you.

Shell xx

To Creative Competitors -

I thought, on this wonderful Australian Spring morning, I would share a clip from a most magical time spent recording at Studios 301 in Sydney. This is where we recorded the album from which this little blog was named...

The song is called Outside Looking In, & though I love it - it never made the final cut on the album - however we did pop it on the Fall Too Hard EP which you can get from iTunes.

And - I have decided to launch my very first competition on this wee blog!

I will send a free signed copy of the EP {anywhere in the world} to the person who leaves a comment telling me the most interesting, descriptive and {possibly} amusing song review!

Give me your honest thoughts on the song and how it makes you feel, and I will get out the stamps and get-a-posting!

With Love,

Shell aka Songsmith xx

It has been...

...a wonderful Queen's Birthday long weekend.  It has been a special, restful few days of family, slow food, hot tea, long breakfasts...

Looking out of the window; and for the first time in a long time - it has been raining, with small bursts of sun - rather than the reverse.

It has been fireworks on a freezing night, outside with the children, celebrating for the Queen with sparklers and laughter.

For me it has also been an inspiring weekend.  I have written one song, and recorded two others.  Always I feel so purposeful when I have been keeping up with my music - not just my washing pile and stack of dishes...  And I find one creative act, always leads to another...  Whether it's a memory, a snippet of a thought, a click of my camera, I am all of a sudden rushing to a piano, or scribbling words in my little brown Moleskin book.  To me, this is me on form, doing what I do.  I have come to a place where I am content to just make my music and not expect worldly acceptance, acknowledgment or even money.  I thirst only for clarity of heart, spirit and mind.  And it clears my head, to create.  

To me this is success, doing the art that I do, feeling purposeful in it, and sharing it with my beloveds.  

Shell xx

Songsmithing...

Coming soon...

Shell xx

Recording...

With a cute sound engineer!

Shell xx

Sharp Frog Studios

Not many musos have their very own studio.  And fewer of them I'm sure, have their own studio converted from a wheat silo!  But I am one of those unlikely few.  Jamie built this (he says for me - sweet) but it is for the whole band, and the whole family.  It was indeed the farm's old wheat silo, and it is now the most gorgeous, completely round music space in the world!

We have named it Sharp Frog because it was the hilarious conclusion that a three year old Jamie came up with when Dad introduced him to his first echidna!  The story is legendary in our family, and now so is the name.  Jamie and Dad worked on the studio for the most part and so it seemed right to name it something strangely wonderful, and so the echidna lives there and greets all who enter by the wooden slab door...

I am delighted that we shall record our next album here.  After the spectacularly perfect Studios 301 in beautiful Sydney where Twelve Short Stories was made, this will be a more reflective album.  One that is written by a more grown up me.  By a writer looking back at a decade in the music industry...  

The songs are taking beautiful shape and I can't wait to finish rehearsing and start recording.  Lots and lots more work to do yet.  In fact I am only just starting to compile the story of the collection of songs.  This is what I was born to do, write albums of songs for sensitive souls to decipher!  And to record them at home, in that beautiful round room, will give the music made there an even more honest tone.

Shell xx