Article published on spotify

I had an article published on Technorati. It's a short piece about the returns from spotify for amatuer musicians when using CDbaby. The title should read "Spotify for the amatuer musician" but somewhere along the way an "is" got added. So it looks positive in nature, whereas I intended it to be unbiased. Please comment, share and retweet and let me know what you think. If I get some response, I'll do this kind of thing more often.

http://technorati.com/entertainment/music/article/spotify-is-for-the-amatuer-musician/

Branching out.....

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

Practice with Fraser

Last night I cooked a pretty decent Lasagne and Fraser and I sat down to try to dicuss getting some focus on writing some music. It;s something which continues to to escape us. Our other commitments both musical and non-musical usually get in the way. Rather than just knocking together some chord structures and lyrics, we are trying to move away from guitar strumming and have some music that exists without the guitar. I'm so used to holding up a singer at an open mike with guitar chords, and it's become mundane.

To cut a long story short - we've come up with yet another reason why we can't just sit down and write. In order to limit the ambition a little in order to get something done, we're going to try to at least meet a little more often instead of just meeting when we have a gig to prepare for.

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.

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. 

 

 

New Blog

I enjoy writing loads about travels and music and all sorts, but it takes up a lot of time and it;s not the best use of that time.

I'm going to start using the blog to chart my progress. The major source of stress and anxiety in my life is a feeling of lack of productivity in my music activities... so to remind myself that I'm getting some stuff done, I'm going to use the blog as a kind of online diary...... let's hope that if I start small I can keep it regular....