So for those new to my blog, my name is James Hardiment, I’m a British born, Canadian singer/songwriter based near Cornwall, Ontario, Canada. I’ve been back in the area for many years now. I invested a lot of money this summer on speakers, mixing boards, microphones, and more so I can finally perform my original music to a live audience.

My style, as I have mentioned in previous blog posts, is a combination of pop, rock, alternative, dance, and Italo Disco. I was lucky, and honoured, to perform in front of audiences this past summer, both in Martintown, Ontario, and also a charity event in Cornwall, Ontario, Canada. I have more shows in the works, but I spent the rest of my summer trying to finish mixing my album myself. I had about half of it mixed up in Ottawa, by the super talented sound engineer, Josh Hart, who mixed my first album. It’s not my first time mixing music, however I liked to get a second pair of ears on the project, I was also lacking the equipment to do so for awhile.

I finally bit the bullet, and invested significant amount of personal funds into a new laptop, mixing software, plug-ins, video editing software, and more gear to improve the overall quality of my work. Now that’s finally starting to pay off in a big way. The album is complete, as of last week, and the CDs are made, a process in which I was heavily involved in the creation process. I had an awesome local print shop, based in Summerstown, Ontario, print my CD labels, and cover artwork, onto a nice glossy paper. P&L Printing, and I couldn’t recommend them more! The turnaround time was close to lighting fast, and the end result still gives me tingles! As of writing this I’ve sold over 10 copies in the first few days. Which for an indie artist, that does almost all of his marketing by himself, is a pretty awesome achievement.

Special thanks to Yafa Goawily, and Modern Primitive Cornwall Square, in Cornwall, Ontario, Canada, for allowing me to sell my CDs, and photography at their Open House Event on Saturday November 4th 2023. It was really fun showcasing some of my work to the shoppers that passed by.

I spent the better part of an evening burning my CDs one at a time using a vinyl style of disc last week on a Thursday evening. It took about 6 hours to create 40 CDs with one burner, I set up in a quiet corner of Jack’s Pub in Williamstown. A great little restaurant, and bar, which I hope to write a piece on soon, a lovely spot nestled just outside of Cornwall. Their food is so good, the staff so warm, and friendly, and it doesn’t seem as dramatic as the city bars can be sometimes, which is a nice change of pace.

It feels good to finally complete this album, another accomplishment to be proud of in my life, which I try to make the most of while I still can. So many people I have known over the years are no longer with us anymore, some unfortunately younger than myself. I try to work on my passions, dreams, and help others with theirs along the way.

‘Rescue Me’ album interior of the CD, I went with a retro vinyl style for my discs. ‘Cute 4 Ya Height Records’, was a name inspired by a drunkard fellow I encountered at the bar once who was measuring girls with a tape measure, telling them that they were “pretty cute for their height”, it was rather bizarre and amusing at the same time. The same fellow once gave my friend an Asian pear as she was working, tried to give me a block of caramel straight from his jacket pocket in no packaging. Keep in mind I did not know who he was either. That’s part of the fun of entering the nightlife of your local town!

“Wine” CD is currently selling for $10

“Rescue Me” CD is currently selling for $20

Contact me if you would like a copy, on social media, or email, all the links to my socials are at the top of my website as buttons. Be sure to like, follow, share, and subscribe to my channels.

Thanks again fans, for your continuing support,

James

My name, for those of you who don’t know, is James Hardiment. I am a singer/songwriter, as well as a filmmaker and actor turned vlogger/blogger. What can I say? I try to keep busy!

I’ve been making music, videos, and writing, since high school in Cornwall, Ontario, Canada. My first original song was called “The Nitrogen Cycle”, I created the piece by plugging in my old Casio Keyboard into my old laptop back in 2008. I still remember the machine struggling to keep up with what I wanted to do, and it was a super rough recording compared to what I make now. The vocals were actually recorded with a half decent CAD microphone that my friend, Josh Hart, was using for his own project at the time. The song was for a science class project and that’s pretty much what I spent most of those school years doing, I even have an old album lying around that features 10 of the songs I created back then for various classes.

To create the music videos, I used to use an old Sony Camcorder that used DV tape. The tapes looked like mini VHS tapes that you would have to upload all the footage onto the editing computer using something called a FireWire. (So old school I know, I feel a bit ancient right now!) I originally edited videos with a program called Windows Movie Maker, but would soon upgrade to a more advanced program, Sony Vegas. I found I could do a lot more by upgrading to a more versatile editing suite. Eventually, my friend at the time, Brandon Rainey, would team up with me on certain projects and his camera used SD cards. The switch over from digital tape to SD was such a breakthrough in technology, I’m so glad we don’t use tape anymore it took forever in comparison!

After high school came university, I attended the University of Windsor in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Brandon and I would team up to form “Vince Emerson Media”, it was basically my middle name and his with media at the end of it. It began with a couple of comedy skit videos, with various actors we had befriended in the Bachelor of Fine Arts program, basically a fancy acting school! They were interesting people to work with, and we had a lot of fun, when people actually showed up to shoots.

After first year came to a close, Brandon and I would split on a 1080p HD Sony Nex VG-10 camera, he also built a custom editing computer PC. We would spend the summer after freshman year, creating a feature film called “Windigo” with a huge team in the Cornwall area. It would eventually get over 1 million views on YouTube! A small portion was also shot in Windsor, once the summer came to a close.

After that, we would work on various projects until he would depart the projects in 2013 to pursue other interests. I decided to focus on my music projects again, since that was what I really wanted to do. 2015 rolls around, and I began to team up with my old high school friend, Josh Hart, to work on original music again. As I’ve mentioned in a previous blog post, I worked on a pop album “Wine” with him that I completed in 2017. It was around that time I started to move away from using computers and laptops to create my music and start using my iPhone SE, which came with a program installed called GarageBand.

I was familiar with GarageBand, it was basically Apple’s base music editing program. I had used it in high school before, but I was more of a PC guy at home for the longest time. Upgrading my phone and discovering that I could now build all my music on my iPhone was a huge breakthrough for me. What truly knocked me off my feet was how smoothly the program would run on such a tiny machine. If someone had told me back in 2008 that I’d be building 30 track pop songs on a phone in 2017, I’d have probably laughed them out of the room, but here we are!

Eventually, I would invest in some more equipment, and today, I am able to plug in my keyboards, as well as my professional Shure SM7B studio microphone, used to record pro vocals. You really don’t need a huge studio anymore to create professional sounding music.

Flash forward to 2021, and I teamed up with Chef Derek Mason, in Cornwall, to create a cooking show YouTube channel called “Melted Mayhem”. I would shoot the videos on my phone, with a rode wireless GO lapel microphone hooked into the device for optimal sound. I downloaded a program called Cyberlink Power Director on my phone, and can edit the episodes with that. I’m so blown away by the jump in technology in my lifetime. My smart phone is my portable pocket studio and it still hurts my head thinking about it!

I am constantly creating now at a faster rate than ever before. I love the internet and I love smart phones for that reason.

Can’t wait to make more, until next time!

James

Pictured: James Hardiment creates music in the Garage Band program on his iPad Mini 4. He purchased that to use with his iPhone SE, as it has a bigger screen for playing instruments, but now just mainly uses the phone for convenience!

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