Cambridge musician Liam Taylor to attempt to write and record an EP in eight hours
Cambridge musician Liam Taylor has set himself the daunting task of writing, recording and publishing an EP entirely from scratch from his home studio in eight hours.
The music-making marathon, which will be livestreamed, is not just a personal challenge but a way of helping aspiring musicians learn more about the writing and recording process. Liam will field questions with those watching.
The prolific 32-year-old musician, who has also written music for short films published by the Globe Theatre, once wrote and released a five-track EP over the course of a weekend with the help of a friend. He has also worked as a music technology teacher and goes live twice a week to make music in digital audio workstation, Cubase.
“I’ve been doing livestreams for a couple of years now,” says Liam. “I go live to Twitch and YouTube and I will sit for an hour and a half/two hours and make a piece of music from scratch. Something that some of the viewers have pointed out is that I can write music quite fast.
“So I started thinking, ‘What are some of the ways that I might be able to maximise that?’, and I’ve always been a big fan of restrictions within creativity. If I walk into a job and I’m told, ‘Oh, you can do whatever you want’, it’s almost impossible to actually do anything because it’s too broad.”
Liam, a working musician for more than 15 years who has commercially released music as The Musical Endeavour, Blue Alatar, and The Conversation Hat, added: “Once you know that you’ve got a limited time, it engages a more creative part of your brain so you come up with ideas – or you’re more inclined to trust yourself, trust your instinct.”
Liam intends for the EP to have four or five tracks. “I’m going to see where it takes me... I’ve recently started doing vocal work on mostly comedy releases that I’ve done, so I’m quite happy to use my voice if it comes up. The only thing that Liam has already settled on going into the challenge is the genre – lofi hip hop.
“It’s the big thing at the moment, and what I like about lofi hip hop is it uses a lot of distorted and grainy sounds,” he explains. “It’s really popular with people in the millennial bracket because it tries to replicate cassette distortion so everything sounds a little bit old, a little bit degraded.
“I’m going to use some different techniques and a few different hardware synthesisers; I’m going to use a combination of acoustic and electronic instruments that I’ve got. There’s microphones ready to go and I’m hopefully going to be able to set up cameras so you can actually see those different things coming into play as well.”
Liam adds: “On subject matter, I’m going to see how I feel on the day. If I’m feeling morose, we’re going to have a morose EP, if I’m feeling really happy, it’s going to be a very happy EP.”
Liam will be attempting the challenge on Tuesday, December 21, from 11am to 7pm. The broadcast will be free to watch via Liam’s YouTube page (youtube.com/LiamTaylorGuitar) or via his Twitch page (twitch.tv/LTGuitarist). Once completed, the EP will be available to buy from ko-fi.com/LTGuitarist.
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Cambridge musician Liam Taylor – aka Blue Alatar – releases new EP
