A muso's muse

Well the first week of redundancy went really well as it was half term so was doing lots of silly things with the wee ones.

It was really good to just chill and not have to worry about anything for a short time.

Bit of a strange day today - spent most of it sorting out my redundacy package from ELDC and tomorrow will be my last day employed by them.

Mixed feelings - made some fine friends there so will obviously miss them but I have to admit will not miss the place one bit.

Already putting together my plans for much music making - can't wait

Just about to get settled in for an evening of recording and re-mixing some tracks and my damn laptop won't work off the mains adapter - feels like the input socket on the laptop is very loose (hope that's all it is anyway) pretty sure it's not the mains adapter as tried two and they both work on another laptop (daughters) OK.

Instead been working on layouts and arrangements for some other tracks that are in their infancy at the moment. But I can't really try out the sound layering I want as I need my midi sequencer set-up which is on the laptop - really, really bloody annoying.

Venting my frustration on the digital piano with heavy handed scales & excercise's!

Well, this new synth' module (Yamaha MU80) has rejuvinated my desire to write new material. Adding this little beauty to my midi set-up has opened up all sorts of possibilities - I can now do some work on my ideas for more orchestral based compositions as well as the more synth' based 'New Age' type of works.

Just got a new synth' module - yamaha mu80 - hooked it up to my midi set-up straight away and been playing around with it most of the afternoon - bloody gorgeous piece of kit - looking forward to doing some serious work with it over the coming weeks/months.

Been a hectic week as trying to get lots done around the house/garden plus rehearse with my daughter Hannah as we have relatives descending upon us today and she is doing a mini-concert for them.
She has worked really hard and has five songs prepared that she will be performing with a recorded backing track that I've produced for her over the last couple of weeks.
Had a little accident the other week (tripped and smacked my head against the front door frame) and ended up with concussion so my practice time took a bit of a back seat as wasn't exactly 'with-it' for awhile!
Hope you all have a really good Easter break
Cheers
psft

Trying to do the artwork for my CD and getting very frustrated as I can't get the look I want. I can see it in my minds eye very clearly but my artistic talents are not quite good enough to interpret those visions. May have to switch to plan B and get the camera out as I've a few other ideas that may work.

Practice has been a bit lax lately and it shows - did a spot of playing on the piano this evening (mainly Bach 48) and was struggling a little on some pieces that a few weeks ago I was blasting through without problems!

Spent most of the night laying down the basic tracks for a new instrumental piece written in memory of a friend who died very recently - he was a very kind, gentle giant of a man and will be missed by many.

I hope this piece will be a fitting memorial - I'll post here when completed.

My apologies for the lack of writing - been in a bit of a musical wilderness due to many things including stress at work and a terrible bout of depression.

It's taken the sad news of an old friend dying very recently that's got me off my backside and doing music again properly - just finished writing the outline of an instrumental piece and have just started recording it this weekend and have just been looking at re-recording a piece I did about a decade ago - we'll see how things progress.

Hope all out there are OK

I know it's been a little while since I last jotted anything here - life's been so hectic of late thanks to the Lincolnshire Police!!!
No, I haven't been a naughty boy - in my day job, working for East Lindsey District Council, I work in the IT section and one of the pieces of software I look after is Academy which is the application that generates Council Tax (Booo...) Thanks to Lincolnshire Police being absolute twats and trying to extract an increase of 78% in their charges to the good people of ELDC it means we are in the process of having to go though re-billing 70,000 residents - just a little bit of work for me then!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway - Music

Been working on the final mix of a cover version of 'Numb' by Linkin Park with my daughter Hannah (age 9) - she's doing the vocals and I'm doing the rest!!

Utilising Midi to it's full for keyboards/synths/strings/effects etc with real bass & guitar plus maybe some additional Soprano Sax - haven't decided yet. Getting to grips with my Akai DPS12 has been fun but I'm really enjoying it and the potential of this little beast is just awesome.

When it's done I'll post here so you can judge for yourselves as to quality, content etc.

Hannah wants to do a few more tracks, basically as an Xmas pressie CD for friends/family, but she can't decide on which ones to do at the moment - I'm trying to steer her away from Britney's Toxic at the mo! Although I quite fancy having a go at her 'Everything' track - love the piano part to that.

She's also considering 'Rule the World' by Take That - which sadly I have to admit I quite like - now I never in a million years thought I would say that about a Take That track, but it is bloody good.

As for me - practice hasn't been as productive as I would have liked of late (see Lincolnshire Police above) but I have been managing get at least an hour everyday, predominantly on the Piano - as it's a digital one and I can pay late at night with headphones, bit difficult to do with a sax/flute/clarinet etc, etc! Although still doing plenty on guitar and bass too. At least now my fingers aren't red raw and sliced to pieces when playing guitar/bass so I can manage decent lengths of practice time at last.

Hoping in the not too distant future to quit at ELDC and get back into music full time after a 25 year stint away!! But more of that later.

chow