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Growing up with both parents and an aunt in the traditional music scene, I’ve been around folk and world music ever since I was a tiny pram-bound little KT. I’ve been to more folk festivals than I can count, and while I drifted out of it as a teenager a bit, now I’m older I realise I really do still love some of it. Other parts, namely the bits that involve excessive amounts of morris dancing, bohdrans or taking yourself too seriously I’m less of a fan of, but there’s a huge amount of trad and world music that I adore.

And with that in mind, the more I think about it, the more insane it is that I never went to Musicport before.

If you don’t know the festival, it’s a weekend long celebration of world and trad music that used to take place in Whitby but this year took over Bridlington Spa. The atmosphere was great, really friendly and up for anything, and some of the music was top notch. Artists from all over the world, with music ranging from straight up traditional, through jazz and dance of all kinds from tribal to tango to techno. I paid my way by running a small workshop on the basics of manga drawing, which was a lot of fun and I’d love to do again some time. (Perhaps with more than an hour to do it in next time, although some of us relocated to the bar afterwards for more doodling.) I had been a little concerned it was a little unusual to run at a music festival, but there was a decent turnout and it was great to see people of all ages having a crack at drawing. I helped out with the artists’ green room as well, and then spent the rest of the time hanging backstage or being out there enjoying the music.

Suffice to say, I’m more than geared up to go again. In the mean time, I’ll leave you with some of the photographs I took while I was there.

So, this weekend I’m going to be at Musicport Festival in sunny Bridlington. Doing this:

So, if you’re going to be around, I’d love to see you there. It’s my first time doing anything like this, so it should be interesting all round. I’ll be joined by my lovely aunt Jo Freya, and the rest of the weekend for me is going to be taken up with some well needed chilling and lots and lots of awesome trad and world music.

Now that you’ve created some brushes, it’s time to put them to use. Depending on what kind of image you want, there are two methods we can use. We’re going to start with the linear kind, where the speedlines all run parallel to each other.

Linear Speedlines

1) The first thing we need is an image. Something inked, black and white or screentoned will work best. For this one I’ve drawn a quick shot of a guy reacting to something off panel. If you’ve not flattened it, put all the layers you’ve used to make the image so far into a group, to make it easier to see what you’re doing.

Note: These techniques work best on images smaller than 2000×2000, though that’s not a hard and fast rule.

If you’re not familiar with the term, ‘speedlines’ are lines added over a comic panel or illustration to give a sense of movement. They emphasise things by directing the readers eye towards them and can also give a sense of the motion blur of a camera movement; standing in for the zooms and pans you find in film and animation.

Speedlines are one of the most simple ways to add energy and drama to a comic panel, but unfortunately they’re also one of the most tedious things to actually draw. However, Photoshop’s powerful and versatile brush settings can be used to create them much more quickly.

This section of the tutorial will talk you through the process of creating a set of speedline brushes. In the second part, I’ll show you how to combine the brushes you’ve created with the path tool to quickly create linear and radial speedlines. It’s worth bearing in mind that this method does not give the exact control and results of painstakingly creating them by hand with a pen and ruler. Also, while there’s nothing hugely advanced in this tutorial, I’m going to assume the reader has at least some familiarity with Photoshop before trying this.

To wake myself up and kick the creeping cabin-fever that’s been setting in, this morning I went to the park. Armed with some Solid Steel mixes and a camera and backed up by blue skies, bright sunlight and a crisp breeze, it was a nice way get back in touch with the world after the long weeks of being chained to my desk.

Here are a few of the things I saw.

So, I will tell you about it in a badly drawn autobiographical comic.

The metal was still there when I got back later in the night, so I took a photo of it for posterity’s sake. Looking at the building, I think it was one of the dark side panels that run up some of the buildings on the estate I live on. That particular block of flats has a 2 tiered roof, the lower part nearest where I was, so I guess the first clang was it falling and hitting the roof, then it bounced and fell 4 stories down to me. I could be over-reacting but I’m pretty sure it could have killed me, or at the least caused some serious damage. Thankfully I’m easily spooked enough I didn’t just carry on walking.

So, right now I’m feeling pretty lucky.

The ever-awesome Caddy has provided some lovely flyer and banner designs.

Come check it out!

Okay, so it occurred to me that for a blog called ‘Tea and White Noise’ there’s a concerning lack of actual TEA going on here. I’m drinking plenty of it but I have not been sharing it with you.

Well, I guess I ought to do something about that.

Starting with… uh, well if you’re going to be a purist about these things, actually not really tea, it’s an ‘infusion’. But shhhh.

This one comes in bags rather than loose leaf, and is a limited edition in their ‘fruit bliss’ range. I am already hoping it’s not too limited because I can see myself drinking a lot of this when I don’t want to fill myself with caffeine, and don’t feel like knocking up a whole pot of loose leaf goodness.

I’ll admit I was already biased with this because I love cherry teas and I also love cinnamon teas. I wasn’t convinced the two should together though, and it was actually my house-mate that picked it up for me when we were stocking back up on another twinings tea. I’m glad he did though, because this stuff is great. The main thing for me on this one is the scent. This stuff smells amazing as it brews, a really strong, deep cherry smell.

I do have to say, like a lot of fruit teas, in order for it to live up to how nice it smells, the 2-3 minutes Twinings suggest you brew it might not be enough. It’s still good when it’s delicate, but give it a bit longer and you get a lovely intense fruity brew. The cinnamon takes a back seat really, but adds an extra warmth while the the cherry keeps it light and bright tasting.

So yes, I recommend this one. Go grab a box before it vanishes.

I have been to Accordion Hell. It was marvellous.

So, I’m up in Glasgow for a couple of days, to see some gigs at Celtic Connections, what is possibly the biggest celebration of traditional music still going in the UK. It’s around 3 weeks long with hundreds of acts all over the city. Sadly, due to workload and things like inconveniently having to graduate, I’m going to miss seeing my favourite acts playing here (Shooglenifty, Peatbog Faeries, Colin McIntire (or Mull Historical Society to you) and the secret GOD of Scottish song writing Michael Mara) but next year I intend to remedy this. OH do I intend to remedy this.

Anyway, enough about me, back to what I was watching last night. Keeping with the sense of humour all the best trad musicians have about the scene, as an antidote to Sunday’s ‘Harp Heaven’, last night there was a show called ‘Accordion Hell’, celebrating… well, the infamous accordion. The musicians were full into the theme and were all bedecked with little devil horns and plenty of damnation jokes. We were treated to 8 mind-blowingly talented accordion players, accompanied by a rather good drummer and an excellent guitarist (who also was an honorary accordion demon for one tune that he had written.) The range of tunes spanned from the bright and high-energy to the beautiful, delicate and moody, to the downright funky. All of it played with style, humour and skill. I think one reason most people hate the instrument is they’ve never heard it in the hands of someone who really knows how to work it, and haven’t seen what an amazing, rich sound one person with a squeezebox can make happen. When the cords and complex melodies get layered up it’s hard to accept it’s just one instrument doing it, and some of the intricate and blisteringly fast finger work that was going on in the concert was just staggering. (Though that’s something else people who have never much been in the folk scene get to see. Sure, some of it can be lacklustre, but we’ve also got some of the most technically brilliant musicians playing in this scene and the level of skill it takes to pull off some of the things they can do is hugely under-estimated.)

So yes, Accordion Hell was fantastic and renewed my appreciation for those can take an instrument used for so much evil and mediocrity and use it for the forces and good and awesome. Brilliant.

I like music. I like it a lot. so here’s some short reviews of some of the things I’ve been listening to lately.

‘Hey Hey My My Yo Yo’ Junior Senior
Got on the recommendation of a friend and positive memories of that music video for Move Your Feet with all the pixel art. Anyway, the band is Danish the the album is full of pure hippyhoppy pop FLUFF that is far more infectious than it should be. Really, it’s silly and sugary and unashamedly cheesy and the result is a very fun record who’s opening track, ‘Hip Hop a Lula’ I can’t stop playing and I don’t know why. My version also came with the ep ‘Say Hello, Wave Goodbye’ that is also pretty good with a standout opening tune. It’s all very happy and great stuff unless you want to take it too seriously.

‘In Rainbows’ Radiohead
At what should be at the other end of the spectrum, at bloody last the new Radiohead album is in the shops. Ignoring the very interesting hype from before with the pay-what-you-like download fun, I wanted a CD so I waited. Now, as one of those odd people who actually liked Kid A (but that’s because it was the last one I heard so I was ready for it) I don’t mind the weirder directions that Thom Yorke has been taking the band, but… I think In Rainbows has benefited hugely from Thom making his solo album before it. If Hail to the Theif was a little bit of a return to normal after the band had got Kid A/Amnesiac out of their system, In Rainbows is even more so. It’s a bit less tortured as well, but it’s not a complete step backwards either. The results of their experiments shine through all of it, but at the same time there are great tunes going on too. And guitars! Yay! Anyway, I like this one a lot, and absolutely adore the track ‘Jigsaw Falling Into Place.’ Good stuff. Now hopefully they won’t make us wait like 3 years for the next one.

‘Hey Venus!’ Super Furry Animals
I could be lazy here and go ‘It’s SFA, of course it’s good’. Because it is. It’s a little more normal guitar pop than Lovekraft but it still has the usual quirks and charm you’d expect from them. (Especially shown in the opening tracks, the first of which is about itself being a Gateway Song to the rest of the album, and the second opening with the spoken lines ‘This song is based on a true story. Which would be fine, if it wasn’t autobiographical’). I do have to admit that none of the songs have yet beaten my fave SFA tracks from other albums, but they are growing on me and some of them are catchy as hell. It doesn’t really push the envolope or anything but it doesn’t need to because it’s still good and gives you pretty much what you want in a Super Furry Animals album. Which would be slightly odd but catchy songs mixing pop and rock sounds and great harmonies with fun synthy twiddles and interesting production. Lovely.

Anyone else been listening to anything interesting?