• Kalimba Moment
    Other Stuff

    Photo-a-day 2013

    Whilst I continue to plug away at completing and editing the rest of ‘Some Other Scotland‘, I’ve taken on a lighter challenge this month, one which is outside my usual area of interest. Katharina’s wonderful selection of photographs for Obscurities…

  • Obscurities Cover
    Music,  Podcast,  Featured,  Every Photo Tells...,  Solo

    Obscurities

    After some fine-tuning of the music from the ‘10 Weeks : 10 Sounds‘ project, I have compiled it into an album that is now ready to download from Bandcamp. The music is embedded on the right-hand side of this site,…

  • NodeBeat & Clarinet
    Music,  Instruments,  Solo

    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…

  • RührTrommel
    Music,  Instruments,  Solo

    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…

  • Instruments

    Top 10 – My Synths

    Inspired in part by Sonicstate’s top 20 greatest synths and Matrixsynth’s The Most Underrated Synths, here is my alternative. This is my top ten list of synths. Not the greatest by any margin, though there are some classics in there.…

  • The Deserters

    An Ancient and Distinguished Instrument

    I came across a Yahoo group yesterday that I thought might be of interest (Novelty Music), and this morning heard back from founder member Paul Moore. Paul has a one-man-band and plays the ‘Zob Stick’ which, upon further investigation, turns…

  • The Deserters

    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,…

  • The Deserters

    Welcome Mr. Wheezy

    Since the days of the Green Shed Studios and the big Farfisa organ we had there, I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for the sound of the organ. Nothing else sounds like a proper pipe organ being…

  • The Deserters

    Farfisa Frenzy

    For some reason, perhaps Google have recently updated their index, there has been a large jump in visits to the blog here, 90% of which are from a Google Images search on Farfisa. The post from April this year Makkie’s…

  • Instruments

    Moog Envy

    Being a bit of a skinflint, almost all of my musical gear is either second-hand or end-of-line stock, but I’ve got a deep hunger for the new Moog synth. It’s the last project from the legendary Dr Bob, and what…