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Category: A Blog… of sorts
Lyrics that are now hard to sing
Here’s an extract from the lyrics to my song Entropy: Oceans will rise, Continents fall, As sure as night follows day She don’t know Why they come And they do not stay Well, oceans have been rising and continents falling – at least sliding beside and underneath each other – since I wrote these words…
Sticky Headphones and a Concert
Well, what’s new under the sun? S’far as I’m concerned it’s hard to blog about exciting stuff after sucking a pair of headphones from the sides of your skull after two straight weeks editing and checking of mixes. On a side note, I took my family to a concert in Edinburgh’s Usher Hall on Friday.…
Coming soon – new songs!
The reason I haven’t been around here much is that my focus has been entirely (day-job apart) on some judicial editing of my songs that I recorded recently. I won’t say how many – it was a job to do before I decommissioned the studio before a house move. (Well, the house stayed where it was and…
Been a bit poorly…
I’m just recovering from a virus (not flu according to my doc) which had me on my back for three weeks. Then just about able to scramble the following couple of weeks to my day job through the winter weather that’s been gripping the UK. The will to do anything more than that has been…
Independent Musicians and Day-Jobs
I don’t want to use this place to mutter and moan about the tedium of doing a day-job that is, well, tedious. Or witter on about how much more I could achieve as a musician were I not apparently shackled to some desk or other. Chiefly because I’m well aware that it’s in my capacity,…
Real Fingernails or Falsies (again)
To regurgitate this oft, well, regurgitated topic amongst fingerstyle guitar players: I prefer natural nails because I use them all the time. Why? Because I don’t use them all the time! Consider: Player one plays (or merely noodles) an hour or two every evening on his couch with his natural nails and listens to the…
Anxiety! Stage-Fright!
Forget about it. I mean if you’re that shit scared, don’t bother! Be kind to yourself and the people who are sitting in rows or at tables in front of you. Inevitably your fear will spread over the room and everybody will be fidgeting and have sweaty palms. Only kidding (partly). But there is a…
Norman Lebrecht
All of my listening time is spent with classical music and one of my favourite bloggers in that arena is Norman Lebrecht. Lebrecht is a passionate, opinionated and often controversial writer and speaker. He describes it as he sees it and he ruffles feathers. I don’t have the depth of knowledge or experience to make…
Songwriting – Where Are Your Songs?
Sometimes I’m asked at gigs and it catches me off guard. It’s always a difficult question to answer succinctly to a stranger, and causes me to stutter and stammer incoherently. “I’ve always done it”, is as lame a reason as it is true. Songwriting, that is to say. But to me it’s all rather obvious…
Visit to Barcelona
Just back from a few days in Barcelona. First time there and what a place! Got some sun on my back and some paella in my belly and a few glasses of wine to wash it all down (see pic). Watched a Catalan independence march which was notable from a musician’s point of view in…
