plodding along

first:
NEXT REHEARSAL
WEDNESDAY, 4.30 MEET AT THE SALUTATION. i'm still not entirely sure what the street's called, HIGHER CHATHAM STREET
if you're late, phone 07742920083 and i'll let you in the studio

then

FRIDAY, 3.00 THE MULTI STOREY CAR PARK IN THE NORTHERN QUARTER, MEET AT SIMPLE AT 3.00 that way you can sit at their tables on the veranda and not have to buy a drink, though they do a good cup of tea.

I'm going to have to structure and take better control of the rehearsals now, so call me captain, or skipper. ok don't, anyway, i've got a clearer idea of how the music will be structured and i've started on a new piece for spring. For now we'll take it step by step -
to begin, one of the first experiments we did was based around simple arpeggios, moving on from 'Sisters! Brothers! small boats' by A Silver Mount Zion, which i recorded onto an imac and played back through different laptops, which sounded dreadful, but here is a summary -
it sounds awful, but listen to it all the way through or as much as your ears can take and you get an idea of somewhere we're going, well the crescendo idea. I found from doing this that, 1 laptops sound very bad, 2, imacs are very bad to record, 3 whistling and harmonica make irritating sounds, but once you get going, things turn out ok, its a great piece of music when its played properly



Anyhoo, Tim came round on Friday and we did some playing around with the arpeggios. I think it came out very well, shame that the clarinet drowns his fiddle out a little because he plays so beautifully and the clarinet does sound a little flat sometimes. Its given me some ideas to work with on Wednesday, its much better working with real musicians than it is on my own, if only i could pay them so they didn't have to leave.



Today and yesterday I used the sound studio to record some of my own attempts; they're alright, but just playing chords really, not using the cyclic techniques we were doing on friday. I wanted to see how the music could go from the arpeggios into a rhythmn and then a simple piece of music, i had to transpose the music so it could be played easily on harmonica, which is something i've not done for a while. I did it specially for the Creative Living Centre today, i also took some previous recordings and we all played along to them, it went really well, it was great to see people getting into the music. I didn't record what happened there but it was lots of fun, i'm glad I'm doing it and it'll be better next week.