Music
Songwriting, experimental music, etc.
More Challenging
Having managed to get halfway through the “10 Weeks – 10 Sounds” challenge with an interesting collection of new tunes, the time has come to step it up a little. February is home to two musical equivalents of NaNoWriMo that…
BeatPad and Mouth Organ
BeatPad is another iOS drum machine, but one that is quite different from DM1, being perhaps more like a variant of the Akai MPC series (though I’ve never used one of those, so I can’t say for certain). Like DM1,…
Alto Recorder and Whirlie
Of all the ten challenges, this is the one I have been expecting to cause the most difficulty, as it is all about wind sounds, with little opportunity for contrast. This could easily have resulted in just being a wailing…
Kalimba and Celtic Flute
The kalimba is one of the newest instruments in my collection; it’s a traditional African instrument with metal tines attached to a resonator (in this case a coconut with a wooden top) and came from the Christmas market at Wilhelminenberg.…
NodeBeat and Clarinet
The second challenge for ‘10 Weeks : 10 Sounds‘ is a little more complex than the first and resulted in three long pieces in a fairly laid-back smoky jazz-club sort of style. NodeBeat is a graphical sequencer for the iPad…
DM1 and Walnut Flute
Here we go with the first of ten little musical challenges over the next ten weeks, which will help me familiarise myself with some of the more obscure and under-used instruments and musical software in my collection. I picked up…
10 Weeks – 10 Sounds: A Challenge
I have been gathering quirky little instruments and musical odds and ends for quite some time and, whilst many of these have made their way into my songs, there are still some that remain stubbornly under-used. We were discussing this…
Peter Hammill at Porgy & Bess, Vienna
Last night Peter Hammill visited Vienna to play a solo set at the jazz club ‘Porgy and Bess’. I last saw him in Glasgow, at the Oran Mor, which was a fantastic gig and a hard act to follow, since…
Thick as a Brick, in Budapest
I can hardly believe it is 17 years since I last saw Jethro Tull, on the “Roots to Branches” tour (in Glasgow). I recall being a little underwhelmed at the time, having the feeling that the fun had gone out…
The Avengers Song
Well, technically the Avengers and JLA song, but since the Marvel team are flavour of the moment… A couple of years ago I wrote a song for SpinTunes #1 about a superhero getting into a huff because neither the Avengers…
