Patchwork Scriabin
The wonderful Composer Quest podcast is celebrating the life of composer Alexander Scriabin (who died 100 years ago this week) by producing a version of his Prelude in A minor, Op. 11 No. 2 that features 68 different forms of…
Sid Smith’s String Quartets
The new year brings a new musical challenge, this time in the form of a string quartet inspired by a series of rainy windows. Music writer Sid Smith has been taking photographs of the patterns rain makes on his office…
Masters of Song Fu – Update #1
Bad planning. Here we are, two days left to the Song Fu deadline, and I’m away all week with work. South of the border with half a song. Over the weekend I worked out the music and lyrics, ably assisted…
Winning the Smile
I’ve just finished off the first of the three songs that have been worked on for the last week or so, ‘The Winning Smile’. I ended up taking out all the midi tracks and keeping everything analogue – vocals, guitar,…
Lick of Paint
In preparation for finally getting this album out, I’ve given The Lunacy Board website a bit of a makeover. It’s not quite as haphazard as it once was, and should be a bit easier to find your way about. No…
Show and Tell
Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, those of you too tight to buy tickets, those too distant to travel, those too drunk to care and everybody else can now see The Lunacy Board’s performance last week from the comfort…
Lunacy Live
It was a night of mixed emotions, stress, compromises and arguments, but above all a night of music in various guises… It’s been a while since I last drove around Glasgow and numerous new one way streets (as well as…
Going Live
This gig forms the grande finale of the theremin shindig I mentioned a while ago. I’ll be part of the ‘UK League of Thereminists’ playing a few structured improvised pieces as part of a ‘theremin orchestra’. There are a number…
Best Batch Yet
Something I’ve never come across before for some reason is Captain Beefheart’s “10 Commandments for Guitarists”. I found this at the ever-informative Music Thing, though it appears on a few sites around the web. The annotations in italics are mine.…
The New Yobstick
At last, I finally got around to finishing the new yobstick. It’s quite a departure from previous efforts – lots of natural wood and more emphasis on playability instead of durability. I’ve only played it for a short time tonight,…
