Wallis Bird updated fans on her blog at MySpace on Tuesday (January 26), discussing what she’s been up to lately, places she’ll be touring, and getting a nomination for Irish Female Of The Year for the Meteor Music Awards. The Irish singer songwriter tells readers:

How have things been going? I’ve been having long holidays and family visits and plenty of good times over the last few weeks….the new year. God how time flies, It’s almost the end of January. I have another little time off to relax and prepare myself for all that the next couple of months have to offer. I cannot wait for the tour to kick off and spend time with my lovely bandmates and Bird Crew. I’ve missed them terribly.

So there’s a few fresh countries and cities on the tour line up, which is wonderful news, it’s always good to try something different and spread myself out a bit. Germany, Ireland, Switzerland and Austria here I come!

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Wallis Bird updated fans while on her Irish tour on her blog at MySpace on Thursday (October 22). The Irish singer songwriter tells readers:

How are things? In my end we’re in the middle of The Irish tour, gigging away, fighting off constant sore throats and slightly tired heads ‘cos of the change in weather. But we’re really enjoying ourselves and having the craic as always- actually, a little bit more than usual these days, it’s the best on tour group we’ve ever had.

I have my brother Edgar doing guitar tech so that’s been a lovely piece of home with me. He’s doing a great job and we’ve really enjoyed having him with us! Sarah Horgan is joining us from today onwards doing support, so that’s another good friend with us. Aidan has been the brunt of jokes on one of our most wiped out days of the tour. We had serious giggles and changed the setlist to songs with his name: When we Kissed the World fell in Aidan, Measuring Aidan, Blossoms in the Aidan and so on! Fun Fun fun!

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Wallis Bird updated fans on her blog at MySpace on Friday (May 1), talking about the new album and the big move. The Irish singer songwriter tells readers:

In the run up to these off days, I’ve been doing final mixes on the album, doing magazine photoshoots, lots of moving out, lots of moving in, lots of sleeping, jamming, dancing and laughing. Happy times! I had to move all my “Early 20′s” (As Aoife called it) out of my Mannheim Flat. I’d had it for around 3 years and shared it with many’s a cool person. Each one writing a memory, a joke, a small phrase or a picture on the wall. The flat was covered in photos. When I eventually had to get around to cleaning/ moving out of the flat, I took the first photo off the wall, and just broke down into tears.

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Wallis Bird updated fans on her blog at MySpace on Thursday (April 16), talking about the state of pop music and what she thinks about the rise of Auto-Tune. The Irish singer songwriter tells readers:

One thing that I’ve really been honing in on lately is perfection in popular music. Though I have my own standard of perfection, it is a natural perfection (for instance; keeping mistakes and not overdubbing- it’s real, it’s charming.) But over the years, music has been hurting my ears, boring me, making me tired. Not cos I don’t like it, it’s just the new standard of popular music nowadays. It’s aurally tiresome. It’s loud, smashed in mastering, smashed onto an mp3 player so the sound quality is even poorer, all the edges are sanded down and there can be no, i repeat NO dynamics! But on the other hand, real instruments are becoming fashionalble again so it’s great to see people actually playing something!

I think even the untrained ear has heard about ‘Auto tune, Fine Tuning’ or ‘Melodyning’ a vocal. This is where you manipulate an existing recording through a piece of software and pitch shift or ‘tune’. An extreme example of this is the classic vocal effect of Cher, “Do you believe in life after love”. This was the beginning of the new vocoded or pixelated style computer voice that’s being rinsed in R&B music of late. Well, Auto tune is seen as a necessity now and most time to the detriment of the vibe of natural sound. But it was revolutionary for the music business. i.e. if you’ve got some good looking kid, with the whole package except for a voice- Auto Tune will fix that right up for ya!

Marcus- who I’m producing the album with- said something that scared me the other day: Tuning softwares are possibly becoming the new super tool for the R&B music business. Now that the trend is a completely unnatural pixelated voice, essentially the talent of the artist becomes obsolete. Labels don’t actually NEED someone who can sing, they just need a voice.

That’s a handy selling tool. You don’t need talent, you avoid diva like standards and demands from artists with musical integrity, you can churn a new artist out week in, week out and what saddens me is that for the most part- you don’t even need a good song! I say bring back the RHYTHM and BASS back to R&B!

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Wallis Bird updated fans on her blog at MySpace on Saturday (March 28), talking about her record deal with Rubyworks, winning a Meteor Award, and taking part in SXSW in Austin, Texas. The Irish singer songwriter tells readers:

South By South West: Was fuuuuuuuuuuu**in amaaaaaaaazing! Really, this is where I run out of words. It was such a head trip of a festival. 24hrs of constant music, where everyone is singing for dear life, in every single bar lined up consecutively on 3 parallel streets. Mental. M.e.n.t.a.l. I spent some time with my good friend Victoria Smith and the wonderful Lorna Smith and her gorgeous family, the band One Day International, talked to countless amounts of good people, got married to Gavin Glass in a beer garden on my first night and have bruises across my back from mosh-pits and jet-lag to boot! Ha! Thank you so so so much to Matt for driving me and Aidan to the hotel at 8 in the morning before we cught our flight. You Rock man x x x Turns out I had plenty to say about it after all. Mental! Thank you to Bjoern, Ann, Moritz and everyone at Reeperbahn Festival for making it possible, it was fantastic of you, let’s do it again tomorrow! x x x

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