Category Archives: Cooper365

Day 120 – My Birthday Song

Posted on 1 May, 2012 by Ardie Collins

A year ago today I posted this song for the 365 project I seemed to be doing. I’m hoping that my past-self was feeling particularly facetious that day, otherwise he’s a bit of an idiot. Then again, these may not be mutually exclusive.

I don’t really know why I wanted to post this again. Two years ago I may have just acknowledged a little landmark like this with a quiet nod to no one, but now I seem to shout things about myself at people on the internet.

On my 23rd birthday this was the song I managed to churn out to then become associated with the day, and now I can look back and be all pleased because at that stage I had no idea that I’d actually finish the thing.

Not to be too unnecessarily contemplative, but some of the things I associate with being 23 were pretty good. These were mainly getting my debut novel published and finishing the 365 project. Which has made me think about what I want to do with this whole being 24 business, and I hope there’ll be things I manage to make that I’ll be just as pleased with. I reckon I’ve peaked, though. Yeah. Probably peaked.

Lyrics and poetry and rhythm and subheadings.

Posted on 24 April, 2012 by Ardie Collins

Word-cloud of the complete Cooper365 lyrics.

This has been lingering about in my mind-tank for a while and I wanted to solidify some of it by writing it out. So I thought maybe I could write one of those blog posts I say I sometimes write. This could be considered a kind of advice post, but it really would be in the loosest sense of the word. If you’re interested in my take on putting lyrics together, however, then you’ve come to the right place. There’s even subheadings, guys. Subheadings.

So if you’re the sort of person that can’t stand context or long introductory justifications for why a blog post should be allowed to exist then the following jumpy links might be of interest to you.

Subheading 1: Why does this post you’re showing me even exist?
Subheading 2: Please patronise me by pretending you understand poetry.
Subheading 3: Are you finally going to talk about writing lyrics now?
Subheading 4: Can I go now?

Subheading 1: Why does this post you’re showing me even exist?

So there were a few things that prompted all of this mulch which is about to spew out in the form of a blog post. The first is a series of videos by Jonathan Mann that I was watching back when he was uploading them on a more regular basis where he was offering advice to people about how he writes a song a day. And he’s now been writing a song a day for over 1,200 days, so he’s pretty dedicated and in a good position to be dishing out this advice, I think. The second was a video by Alan Lastufka about how he writes lyrics. He was dealing more with the meaning behind lyrics and the basic use of similies and metaphors and that kind of thing. This post isn’t so much about that, it’s more about the actual process of getting lyrics down on paper. Read the rest of this entry →

Post-EP Release Things And Getting On With Projects.

Posted on 8 April, 2012 by Ardie Collins

I’ve been posting about this all over the place, but I thought I’d summarise stuff into a wee blog post. In short, I released an EP this week. It’s called Out Of Here and it contains tracks from the Cooper365 Project last year and some tracks I’ve written since then. The download includes two bonus tracks that haven’t been posted anywhere in my little corner of the internet before, so if you were the sort to be all dramatic then I guess you could call them SUPER-SPECIAL EXCLUSIVE BONUS TRACKS. I also uploaded a B-Sides EP which is some new tracks I wanted to make available somewhere but which I felt didn’t quite fit with the mood of Out Of Here. Read the rest of this entry →

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Posted in Cooper365, music, YouTube and tagged ardie, ardie collins, ardiecollins.bandcamp.com, b-sides, Bandcamp, blog, blogging, Bonus track, cooper365, ep, ep release, facebook, giveaway, hashtag, outofhereep, Oxford, singer-songwriter, thecooper365project, Tumblr, twitter, Uploading and downloading. Bookmark the permalink.

Cardiff Blogs Panel Discussion – Why Do You Blog?

Posted on 24 February, 2012 by Ardie Collins

Yesterday (22nd Feb) I was on a panel at a Cardiff Blogs meet-up. I was invited along to answer questions about last year’s 365 project. The rest of the panel were great, representing a variety of blogging styles and content, they were Gemma Southgate, Elena Cresci, and Nathan Collins. The others that came along who put questions to us were a nice bunch, too. I answered some questions as best I could, but as is always the case with this kind of thing, there were things I think I could’ve put better, or things I just plain didn’t say that I should’ve, or ways that I could’ve actually tried to relate my experience from last year to actual blogging and that kind of thing, so what better medium to rectify this than a blog post? Read the rest of this entry →

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Posted in Cooper365 and tagged 365 projects, ardie collins, ardiecoll, blogging, Cardiff, cardiff blogs, cdfblogs, cooper365, elena cresci, fat frocks, gemma southgate, hintofsarcasm, Larry David, nathan collins, seamless, thecooper365project, where are my knees. Bookmark the permalink.

Interview on BBC Radio Wales

Posted on 9 January, 2012 by Ardie Collins

Someone at BBC Radio Wales heard about my Cooper365 project and invited me in today to talk about it.

As you can hear it was only mildly awkward, and I would say it went a lot better than I thought it would.

I’ve cut out the chunk of audio that was the interview (and at the end they played Crooked Barstool to close things off). It turns out this counts as national radio airplay (I often have to check Wikipedia to find out if I even live in a country. Apparently Wales is still a country.) And apparently the BBC pay people 48p for every track they play. HELLYEAH.

Also, I mentioned the song I wrote for Geekpop during the interview and realised I haven’t put this here yet which I’m sure is making you weep all over your keyboards. Here it is.

Ok. Lovely.

Ardie Collins