Highs and Lows

Things with the band have really started to pick up. We have almost an album's worth of good material which we're in the process of recording and rehearsing. We have momentum building in the rehearsals; we have a sense of self-belief growing; the website is coming together and all around the Internet the whispers on the wind bode well. I'm not saying that we'll be the Next Big Thing, but there is an appetite for what we do and there are more and more people who will want to listen. What seemed like an impossible dream[1] is now perhaps looking achievable.

And then, as if believing in it was the ultimate jinx we're winded by a terrible set back: one of the band has quit. The whole idea of this band was to some extent predicated on being able to get him involved because of what I knew he could bring to the music.

Well we've been at this for about a year and a half now and we have something to show for it. For the first hour or so after getting the news I was in shock and despair. Now I'm disappointed but determined. We will find a replacement and we will continue. We have lost an important member of the band but we have something credible to show now. What was a fantasy a year ago is a very vibrant and real prospect today. We just need someone to walk in, fill the boots and take the vision further.

  "Well, I'm sure I'd feel much worse if I weren't under
 such heavy sedation, but still in all, I mean you've got
 to be realistic about this sort of thing, you know."

Onwards and upwards.

[1] This sort of music is not something that will fit in any sense in the local King's Head and even our first steps need to be at a much more serious level than anything of I've tried before.

Image courtesy of ten minutes' theraputic play with Blender.

Pre Dress Rehearsal

Today was the first full-scale rehearsal for one of my bands. Normally we rehearse at my house but the time's come to get out to a rehearsal studio and try things on a larger scale. We booked six hours. It took us two to set up. In the end we played for three. Next time things will probably be slicker, but it's been a really worthwhile day.

I'd like to spend some time exploring the strange phenomenon that creeps in when you take a set list you know inside out and change something small -- like the venue -- and suddenly it all gets looser and harder to keep on top of. It's something that happens in all styles of music but so much more so in music like this where I'm having to think hard all the way through anyway. We've noticed it in the past when we have a rehearsal without a bassist, for example. Or with a bassist, unexpectedly. Something sounds or feels different and my brain is just too slow to keep up with the novelty and still get through the pieces. Today my biggest problem was that every time I looked up to catch the drummer's eye he was five feet further to my left than I expected, and the moment was gone and the music with it.

Well I'd like to explore it but I'm too tired so that will have to do. The idea of this rehearsal was to shake the dust off. We need to try a couple more places and really get used to playing in different spaces and vaguely different layouts. Then... well then we need to find places to gig that can accommodate our stage size and indeed our style of music.

Anyway... after all of that I have an hour's worth of reconstruction to do in the studio for tomorrow's recording. But maybe it can wait :-)

Music, music and music.

Well it seems that everything I'm doing at the moment is music related. I've got two rehearsals with two different bands in two days. I've spent more time in the studio working initially on keyboard parts for the tracks from Saturday (dare I say, they're all done but the final polish?) but then on the skeletons of two more long, complicated tracks and just to round off the evening I finally recorded a demo version of a jazzy thing I wrote twelve years ago.

I've supposedly spending the bulk of my time on music since the end of August, and yet I'm only just getting around to actually having something to show for it. This, again, is part of the reason for the new blog. The twin benefits of having something to write about, and also making a note of what I've done so I can look back and see that I am actually doing things, and it's just the ratio of todo list to achievements that makes it seem otherwise.

In other news, I've eaten sprouts three days running where as usually I eat one sprout once a year on Christmas Day as a gesture and that's it. How many radical new starts in the space of a week can I stand?