Who am I?
Ian Kitney.
I started playing drums ‘professionally’ the week I graduated from High School. From then, I have played with, recorded with, toured with and had a lot of fun with some of Australia’s top music artists.
Hailing from Wagga Wagga, Australia, I have spent my whole life (so far) playing music in one form or another.
I have created original music, and done sound design, for Australia’s leading butoh practitioner, Yumi Umiumare, for which I was nominated for a Green Room Award in 2009.
With the great Tim Rogers of You Am I, from 1999 until 2010 I performed on 5 albums, toured around Australia and New Zealand numerous times, and even co-wrote a song. In 2015 I won Best Soundtrack at San Diego’s FilmOut film festival of that year for my soundtrack for Australian independent feature film, Drown.
From playing drums for 11 years with the highly acclaimed Tim Rogers & The Temperance Union, to playing guitar and stomp-box with the legendary Ross McLennan, I have been lucky enough to be at the heart of some of Melbourne’s most diverse, as well as talented, performing artists that Australia’s cultural capital has to offer.
Now, I am releasing my own music; all original, all written, recorded and self-produced in my small, hand-built Lo-Fi DIY Recording Studio in southern Japan. Which brings us to the impetus behind making a Substack.
Here, I want to share the experience of writing and recording popular music (as opposed to experimental, or ambient music) alone, on a Windows 7 platform, using Cubase 6, on a budget of ¥0. I want to show you the gear I have bought, accumulated, been gifted, and even brought to Japan from Australia. It all comes together to form quite a Lo-Fi experience, but one that always presents the challenge to get the most out of what is at hand.
At this moment I can't guarantee the frequency of my posts. I can, however, assure you, dear reader, that the content will be an intimate look into the workings of a small recording studio, and that is guaranteed to be interesting.
Visit my BandCamp page where you can read short anecdotes about how each track was recorded, as well as listen to and even buy my original music, either song by song, or a whole album if you feel generous!
Also visit my YouTube channel and SoundCloud for more sounds and songs!
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Also, paid subscribers will get exclusive material including how I use the various stock Cubase plugins as well as free downloaded plugins such as compression, limiting, maximising and EQing. A lot of the techniques I employ have been used in studios for many years, but there are quite a lot that I have customized to suit my environment, and my working conditions. If you have a home studio set-up, or a small commercial studio, there will definitely be something of interest for you here. You will also get free mp3s of my original songs, straight to your inbox!
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