ESTRELLA ON A SUNDAY

Hope you’ve had as good a week as we’ve had this week – The Surface Festival, World’s Shortest Street Gig and Thurso Album Launch have all been happening for us! We are a day late with our “Sunday” blog as we’ve been in Caithness all weekend – and have to say a good weekend was had by all! But first of all let’s start off with a trip to Glasgow on Thursday for the . . .

Surface Festival

As many of you will know, Estrella has been taking part in this year’s Surface Festival (www.surfacefestival.com). We played our second stage heat in Glasgow’s Maggie Mays on Thursday night (21.06.12) and BECAUSE OF ALL YOUR TEXT VOTES FOR ESTRELLA (THANK YOU !!!!) WE ARE THROUGH TO THE SEMI FINALS!!!! This is going to be held in Glasgow again towards the end of July – will keep you posted!

Surface has been a good experience for us so far. We’ve met lots of great bands since taking part and have picked up some new fans in the Glasgow area too! Alex Baker from Kerrang Radio unsigned show has also given the festival his thumbs up too "The Surface Festival gives bands a genuine opportunity to get their music in front of people in the industry that can help further their careers. The best bands WILL inevitably rise to the top . . . The prizes offered for the winning band and runners up are just fantastic and the experience all the bands gain from playing larger venues is priceless."

Estrella to play WORLD’s Shortest Street

Well we’ve played it – the WORLD’S SHORTEST STREET - pictures of the gig are already on our facebook page (www.facebook.com/estrellarocks) and look out for it soon (probs Monday night 24.06.12) on STV News and the gig will be coming to You Tube soon as well!

For all of you who don’t know where the shortest street in the world is by now, it is in Wick! - No 1 Bistro, Mackay’s Hotel, Ebenezer Place to be exact! Must say a big thank you to Murray and Ellie Lamont at No 1 Bistro for allowing Estrella to play the street and making sure we were fed afterwards, don’t think too much disruption was caused (well we wouldn’t be a rock band if we didn’t cause at least some fuss!) but at least IT DIDN’T RAIN!!!

Album Launch – Newmarket Bar, Thurso

Our hometown maybe a quiet town in the Far North of Scotland but all credit to the Newmarket Bar, Thurso has a thriving live music scene. We had a fantastic album launch last night at The Newie (as the Newmarket is now called), playing back at home ALWAYS makes us a hyper, Leo thrashed the drums in Rocker Lily, mid set Luke strutted off stage to perform one of his unique guitar solos, the crowd were buzzing and by the end Paul had everyone chanting to Whatever It Is, to end the night we threw in a cover of Sweet Child of Mine – which went down very well! A big thanks to everyone who came along to support us – let’s Do It Til We Drop :P - again sometime! We will get some footage of the gig up on YouTube soon.

Continuing on . . . The Making of Estrella’s Debut Album - “Come Out To Play”

We promised you that we’d feature the final track in the making of our album and here it is today - “Don’t Forget Me” – the only real ballad on the album, it was quite fitting it ended up being the last song to be recorded at Ignition Studios in London. It will be one of those cigarette lighter moments in our live set!

“Don’t Forget Me” was written by Nathan Gunn - it’s a song about real regret - letting that someone special slip from your life – all your left with is memories – and a feeling of total frustration and absolute despair . . .

We needed to reflect the emotion of this song throughout the recording of the track, we made sure the acoustic guitars had just the right feel and if you have a listen to the vocals, Paul’s vocals build and build totally nailing that feeling of utter loss and devastation by the end of the track.

“Don’t, don’t forget me when you’re gone

Won’t you look back, Won’t you look back and see

Don’t, don’t forget me when you’re gone

It’s my fault, it’s plain to see

Don’t forget me”

Click on the video to see the making of “Don’t Forget Me”.

We’d made many good friends in the making of our first album – from our producer John T Sinclair, engineer Ashley Howe to everyone at Ignitions Studios (London) and Lost Boys Studio (Bedfordshire).

Don’t forget us when we’re gone . . . see you for album number 2!

The journey back to Aberdeen was a long one – ONE cassette (!) player, ONE tape, “AC/DC Live” which is ace but played TEN times . . .

Play the Guitar Riff for Rocker Lily

Did you tune your guitars to: Eb: Eb Ab Db Gb Bb Eb ? Click on the video below to see Luke demonstrating the guitar riff for Rocker Lily.

Let us know how you get on and if you record yourself playing Rocker Lily be sure to send us the video so that we can feature it on our website!

“COME OUT TO PLAY” – AVAILABLE TO BUY ON ITUNES – NOW !

ESTRELLA ON A SUNDAY

Hope you’ve had a great week, we’ve all managed a couple of days off this week, weather was miserable but our Nathan still managed to go camping – what can we say! Would be good to hear anything you would like us to feature in future blogs but this is what we’ve got today . . .

How to play Rocker Lily

We’ve been asked by many of our fans how to play the guitar riffs for some of our album tracks, so instead of writing plain guitar tab, Luke thought it would be a good idea to show the riff to you guys instead!

As you will see above Luke has put together a short video demonstrating the main riff that is played through the verses of Rocker Lily but first of all please make sure your guitars are tuned to:

Eb: Eb Ab Db Gb Bb Eb

Let us know how you get on and if you record yourself playing Rocker Lily be sure to send us the video so that we can feature it on our website!

Estrella to play WORLD’s Shortest Street

We said last week that Estrella would be performing the BIGGEST acoustic gig on the WORLD’S Shortest Street – it is happening on Friday 22 June 4pm - and the shortest street in the WORLD is actually in Wick! - No 1 Bistro, Mackay’s Hotel, Ebenezer Place to be exact! We know that STV cameras will be there so really hoping our fans in Caithness will come along to support us and see this slightly “different” gig! Going to film the performance ourselves for YouTube and part of a future Sunday blog.

goNorth 2012 - Inverness

As you know, we attended the goNorth Showcase and Festival last week in Inverness, not such a rock n roll thing to do but had to give a thumbs up to the music industry seminars, managed a few beers at night and saw some decent bands in the town’s live music venues.

goNorth run their own radio station throughout the festival and while we were there we went to check it out. One of the bands was late for their radio session so we were delighted when Maria Hall, one of the radio presenters, asked us to do an off-the-cuff acoustic number – click on the following link to have a listen to “Whatever It Is”- http://www.radiogonorth.com/2012/06/live-sessions-2012/

Continuing on . . . The Making of Estrella’s Debut Album - “Come Out To Play”

We have one more track to feature in the making of our album and that is “Don’t Forget Me” but going to leave that for next week’s blog.

“COME OUT TO PLAY” – AVAILABLE TO BUY ON ITUNES – NOW !

ESTRELLA ON A SUNDAY

We’re hoping our “ESTRELLA on a SUNDAY” blog will become a regular feature on our website, just going to talk about anything of interest going on with us or in music in general during the week and we’ll hopefully have a video or two to have a look at as well . . .

Estrella to play WORLD’s Shortest Street

We will be performing the BIGGEST acoustic gig on the WORLD’S Shortest Street very soon! Do you know where the street is located? Facebook or tweet us if you do! We will be giving more details about the gig in our June newsletter later this week.

goNorth 2012 - Inverness

This week we headed up to Inverness to see what was going on at the goNorth Showcase and Festival, sounds quite boring from a rock band’s perspective but we ended up having a great couple of days.

For those that haven’t experienced goNorth before – it’s a platform for artistes from the North of Scotland to showcase to the music industry and media at night but during the day there are seminars on all aspects of the music, screen & broadcast, fashion and publishing industries.

Seminars start at 11am each – so not too early (!) if you’ve had a few “refreshments” the night before. On the music side of things topics ranged from international festivals and the German music market (did you know there are 700 ROCK music clubs in Germany?) - to music production and breaking out in the music industry yourself. Panellists on all the seminars were professional industry experts so you get a real feel for what’s going on. Over the 2 nights it seemed we were in every bar and live music venue in Inverness, saw and met some really great bands - roll on goNorth 2013!!

Continuing on . . . The Making of Estrella’s Debut Album - “Come Out To Play”

Featuring – “What You See”

Continuing on from our previous blogs on the making of our debut album, we are looking at the recording of “What You See” this week. For anyone who has heard the track before you’ll know it is one of our “funkier” songs with some really tasty bass and drum pick up parts at the end. The first thing we did on this track in London was record the drums and bass parts, while we did this Luke worked on the rhythm guitar and if you take a listen to the track you’ll notice he got some really nice over dub guitar effects in there. Paul then recorded the vocals and that was the album nearly complete!

When Paul was recording the vocals it left us time to do some internet research to see what gigs were going on in London. It wasn’t long before we had ‘Edguy’ tickets bought for our Saturday night. Not totally familiar with their material we thought we had better get some You Tube viewing going but this was interrupted as we were called back to do some vocal chants at the end of the song – should be a great part to get the audience included – let’s hear it . . .

“What you see – is what you get” - REPEAT !!

A very productive day was had that day – we were obviously getting the hang of studio life – if the rest of our time had been like this we could have had 2 or 3 albums on the go!!

“COME OUT TO PLAY” – AVAILABLE TO BUY ON ITUNES – NOW !

Continuing on . . . The Making of Estrella’s Debut Album - “Come Out To Play”

Featuring – “Last Mohican” and “Whatever It Is”

‪”I’ve seen the last Mohican - And all his little braves

I never thought I’d weaken - Until I saw their graves”

The “Last Mohican” is one of our more thought provoking songs – all of the lyrics can be found in the music section of our website – it certainly adds a great feel and mood to the album.

Much of the track was recorded in Inverness but we felt we hadn’t quite captured the sound and vibe we were looking for. We decided to re-record the drums in London. John also broke out the keyboard to give it a fuller sound with more depth. Coupled with some war dance screams and shouts – it’s got a bit of movie soundtrack feel - ESTRELLA the movie, anyone? LOL. Since the studio, we’ve elaborated on the Mohican idea and added a dark intro for LIVE gigs only – so please “Come Out To Play” and hear it sometime!

Fun fact for today! We were wondering why the recording studios we used in London were full of fake bookshelves and paintings – but before Ignition owned the studio – it had previously been called Library Studios.

Need to also give N4 Café a shout – by the time we left London – they knew all our names and our orders! Thank you guys!!

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“Whatever It Is” has a real American rock feel to it and that’s maybe reflected in the words to – of the American Dream . . .

“You start off with nothing – but you wanna know it all

The journey’s just begun – but patience will make you fall

Whatever it is, I want it - Whatever it is, I want it bad”

Having recorded most of this track as well at John Ts in Inverness, we got time in London to add a nice acoustic part throughout the song which really makes the track. “Whatever It Is” was one of the easiest tracks on the album to record so we got some time off that day! First thoughts – where can we chill and have a few beers? Second thoughts – we are running out of clean clothes! A trip to the launderette to do the washing was on the cards instead!

With the pillowcase full to breaking with clothes, we headed to the launderette. Luckily enough we made it just in time for the last wash. But with no washing power or 20p’s for the dryer, the attendant was not impressed. See how Paul got on in our Wash Day Video . . .

We’ve also included another video featuring us working in the London studio on “Whatever It Is” . . .

“COME OUT TO PLAY” – AVAILABLE TO BUY ON ITUNES – NOW !