Simon Little

Hello folks,

Today is the official release of the Oldie Composers EP. With over 250 submissions, the four finalists had their songs recorded at Maida Vale studios in April (you can check out my photoblog from the sessions) and today sees the release of all four songs on iTunes and the Charity Goods website. I’ve just got home from the launch with Sir Terry Wogan at the BBC and we’re all very excited about the project…

The EP features performances by Anthony Head, FTW, Clare Teal and Andrea Ryder; with a stellar band including Marcus Bonfanti, Nick Mason, Ian ‘Squeezy’ Watson, Steve Rushton, Grant Windsor and Bond. And me on bass obviously…

You can buy a CD of the EP if you prefer from the Charity Goods website (there are a limited number available), but the best way to support the charity is to download from either iTunes or their site. The songwriter with the most downloads will win the Oldie Composers competition so you’ll be voting with your downloading! Although this is a charity EP, so if I were you I’d just download the entire thing…

You can have a listen to the tracks on iTunes (just click this link) and grab a copy of your favourites. At the moment it looks as if FTW’s version of Loves Forever is in the lead, but I’d also highly recommend checking out Anthony Head’s version of Cry by Marina Florence and Clare Teal’s Peace For The Child by Maggie Duffy. Not that I want to influence the outcome of the competition, obviously…

Big congratulations go out to all the finalists. The songs all sound great thanks to the sterling work of our producer AD Chivers. And as always big thanks are due to Hellen Bach (@HellenBach) and Norman Macintosh (@BigNormski1) for all their hard work in making this happen. Between them they have raised millions for children’s charities. You should follow them both on Twitter immediately to keep up to date with their various projects and see how you can help.

So please do share this post, tweet about the EP and tell your friends on Facebook. All proceeds from the downloads will go to Barnardos and we need your help to spread the word. Hopefully Radio 2 will be playing some of the tracks over the coming week so you may well hear us on air at some point too. It was an absolute pleasure to be involved with this project and I hope we can build on it for the future to make this a regular fund-raising event for this great charity.

Enjoy 🙂

Hey guys

Well, you asked for it so here it is. This post does once again come with an Amber Geek-Alert. You have been warned…

Since I released my latest album [un]plugged a few weeks ago I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the artwork. This is the third release for which I’ve put together my own cover art. So for those of you that wondered; here’s the process I used this time.

Those of you that know me well or follow me on Instagram (@simonlittlebass) will be very much aware of my little obsession with iPhoneography; that is, the art and technology of iPhone-based photography and photo-editing. So it will not surprise you that the [un]plugged cover was almost entirely put together on my iPhone. Only the text was added separately using Gimp for Mac (a free and rather excellent image editing program), and that’s only because I haven’t found the right iPhone app(lication) yet…

1. I started out with an image of what is left of Gotham City Hall in Six Flags New Orleans. Hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the site is set for demolition. I edited this image with the fantastic iPhone app(lication) Snapseed to give it a more gothic feel and darken the sky. I always start with the crop and auto-correct functions, then play about with the Tune Image settings and Drama filters. I think I may have also used the Tilt-Shift to add focus to the centre of the image. The first stage looked like this…

2. I then put this image through Tiny Planets. This is a fun little app(lication) that twists an image one of two ways into a circular pattern. I mess about with this a lot. The results are pretty haphazard at best and you have no real control over the final image but occasionally it comes up trumps. The resulting image looks like this:

3. It was at this stage that I transfered to my laptop and added the text to the bottom right corner. Gimp also allows use to match the colour of text with a colour from the image itself. I went with one of the grungy grays from the building.

4. I then immediately went back to the iPhone (!) and put this image through ScratchCam. This is an excellent app(lication) if you have time to fiddle with it and download all the extra filters (which are all free but not included in the initial download). I tend to use the random button to generate a few different options as a starting point and then edit in more detail from there. This is how I got the folded and torn look…

5. Now, as you can see here, the image became rather washed out in ScratchCam so I went back to Snapseed and essentially repeated the steps in mentioned earlier; mainly using the Tune Image and Drama functions to bring the colours out once more. The resulting image is the final cover art which we all know and love.

Hope this answers some of your questions regarding the artwork. I love the fact that you can manipulate images to this degree and sophistication on a mobile phone. I’ve been playing around with the applications a great deal over the last year and am only just starting to scratch the surface. As for the musical applications, well that is another post entirely…

Hope you’re all enjoying the album and don’t forget to tell your friends and help spread the word.

Just out of interest, here’s a couple of other images I put through Tiny Planets so you can get some idea of the possibilities. Out of the applications I use regularly, this one is the least consistent but often comes up with the most surprising results (Both these images were heavily edited in either Snapseed or Iris before being run trough Tiny Planets)…

Until next time…

Hello folks

Just a quick post to let you know about an exciting new night we’re starting over at the fabulous Hideaway in Streatham, which launches tomorrow night Thursday May 3rd!

The idea is to showcase new and emerging vocalists and give them a chance to perform their material in a great venue. If you haven’t been to Hideaway yet, frankly you’re missing out. Recently voted Venue of the Year at the Parliamentary Jazz Awards, this relatively new club is fast becoming the capitol’s premier jazz venue. And the food is bloody excellent…

The Voice shows will be on the third Thursday every month, but we’re launching the night tomorrow (3rd May, and we’ll be back again on the 24th). The band will feature Janette Mason on piano/keyboards, me on bass (obviously) and Frank Tontoh on drums. We’ve got some great singers coming down tomorrow including Polly Gibbons, Fran Lewis and Peter Borthwick. A great mix of jazz, soul and blues. It’s gonna be great so you should all come down. And because it’s the launch tomorrow; it’s free entry!!

See you all there.