Branching out.....

I wrote a small piece about the Amsterdam music scene in the winter for an Amsterdam Travel blog.

Bloggy Blog Blog

I´ve had a day of tidying up blogs. It served as a means of collecting together everything that I have(from an internet perspective) and reminding myself what I´ve achieved. Here´s the current roster of blogs, webpages etc:

Online Musical diary blog - This is where I try to regularly post what I´m up to musically to encrouage myself to keep active and chart a little bit of progress in my activity. This is re-aggregated to my homepage as well - so don’t feel any pressure to read or comment twice.

Thursday Tunes Blog - I´m hoping I can get some more people to start to contribute to this and use it to promote our weekly Jam Session a little.

Keep It Creative Inspiration Factory - My non-musical guise where Kenneth and I explore creativity and inspiration.

My Website - The home for everything that´s not a blog or Facebook.

Writing Writing Writing

Karolina's in Greece, and despite my best intentions I haven't managed to use the "alone time" to get on with some writing. No matter how much I achieve, the ability to sit down and put my lyrical, rhythmic and harmonic thoughts into a 3-5 minute unit escapes me. I am very good and I enjoy co-writing, I am able to turn a good song into a great song through giving someone some constructive criticism and suggesting different chords melodies etc. but clearly I over think my own efforts.

To this end, I’m trying to be really methodical about writing. I constantly write down lyric snippets, chords snippets, etc. but I’m now trying to put them together base on themes. Essentially I´m writing 12 songs at the same time… I never make it easy on myself. We’ll see how it goes.

Trying to be creative on a Monday evening :-(

I finished off most of the open Mike mixing... and then tried to put down the makings of a song idea that came out during the Jam Session... lazy-arse-itis got the better of me and before I knew it I;d ran out of time.

I find it unbelievable, but a year ago today. Fraser and I had our first gig together in the Jet Lounge:

It was a pretty mediocre, but it marked my return to the stage after 8 years away from it. So I thought I’d bum myself up a little and look at what I’ve achieved in the past year.

• I’ve played 27 gigs in 8 venues across 2 countries(26 of them were in the Netherlands)
• I host 2 regular events; one weekly, one monthly
• I perform regularly as twiddley electric guitarist, an acoustic rhythm player, and a reluctant vocalist
• I’ve bothered my arse enough to get a website
• I have moved my repertoire beyond covers of 90’s grunge bands.
• I have written at least 2 songs with Sandra.
• I’ve engineered, recorded and mixed several songs to a pretty decent level.

This past year has given me the confidence to call myself a musician again, and not just play to my bedroom walls with little ambition or direction. The difference this makes to my life cannot be underestimated and I question why I’ve waited this long to get back into it.

So. What next?

I’ve got to the stage that my week is so filled with music things that I have to manage my time quite cleverly. The open mike nights and jam sessions keep me active, but they also give me a great excuse not to be creative. This and the lack of a consistent band means that songwriting continues to elude me. It is still the one thing that I want to do which I can’t seem to achieve. 

 

 

Home Alone.......

Karolina is off in Greece, and I feel I should be achieving stuff, but I don't seem to be very creative or productive. I take the opportunity to redesign the living room as a recording studio, but the hour I can snatch after work to try and do something feels like a chore. All hugely frustrating.

Monday Blues

Despite the good weather, I wasn't in a great mood when I got home. Went for a massage to combat the Monday blues, then recorded a few nice chord structures for later perusal... that was about all i was good for this evening.