I’m a pretty determined young chap. I’ll have you know I fixed our shower curtain AND loft door recently. This, however, is pretty ambitious, even by my standards. I’m planning on continuing my music studies here in London. No, I AM continuing my music studies here in London. There, I said it. I’m going for the full three year BMUS music degree; the course I’m doing now is a one-year HNC certificate course. This means a few things: I need to really nail this years course, as well as do a conversion course which allows me to jump straight into the second year of the BMUS course. So I’m gonna be busy.
It also means I need to raise a heck of a lot of money. £7500, or thereabouts. How much?!? Who has that kind of money? And can we please be friends? I have some money in New Zealand from some work I did there, and from selling my drum kit, but nothing like this. As it is I’m barely covering my rent, let alone saving for school fees - so in comes the master plan. Instead of playing any old gigs, I’m going to start running my own. I find a venue, I book some willing (and generous) artists, and put it all together. I did something similar in my hometown last year, but this will be a first for me in London - I’m pretty excited.
Doing the rounds in the unsigned music scene in London can become a bit of a drag, playing the same venues and trying to impress promoters etc, all for a pretty small profit. At least this way, I figure I can have a decent go at raising enough money to put myself through uni. I guess in a way it also means I’m my own boss - I play where I want to play, and for as long as I want (both within reason), but of course I have all the risk of a promoter. Control freak? Yeah…
I’ve set up a Facebook page if you want to join up right here, and if you’re in London, I’d love you to come to one of my events, the first one coming up soon in March. Watch this space…
Hello, yes it’s me again. It’s been a while so I thought I’d update you all on musical things. My plan is to write a super-short update and give you some music to keep you happy until next time, but somehow I doubt I can keep this short… Here we go anyway:
Since last post I’ve been busy. I played a concert in my tiny hometown of Kerikeri, NZ (love you!); the night was nothing short of a success, with tickets selling out the day before, my fellow musicians and I making relatively few mistakes, and I think I can say people seemed to really enjoy it! Thanks again everyone who came, we had an amazing time. Here’s a short highlights reel if you couldn’t make it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2i-h0gvC5T8
Shortly after the gig I flew to Japan for a holiday and to catch up with some friends. There’s some photos on facebook if you want to see what I got up to, but perhaps something more interesting would be my foray into famous landmark performances. I played my song “Awkward” whilst crossing the Shibuya pedestrian crossing in central Tokyo, check out the footage below or here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_oTZghu2QE
Aaaand now I’m (back) in London, studying music performance on guitar at LCCM, being really challenged and learning from some amazing tutors (and students!). I’ve played one gig so far, for a friend of mine who runs the music website and live music night Cherry Ekko. They actually recorded it too so please if you have time, go to http://www.cherryecho.com/downloads.asp to download my four-song live EP. So many links, gosh I’m really sorry.
I’m not that sorry.
So now I’m thinking ahead. I’m going to try and focus more on the band-sound more and more, I feel like I can really get my soul/funk/jazz style across a whole lot better that way. So now I need to find band-members, which is what I’m working on in the background.
(Almost) enough from me, I’ll leave you with this: http://bit.ly/aC63at. Yup, another link. This is a song I wrote for my friend’s birthday. If you don’t know her already, perhaps you’ll feel like you know her after hearing it.
Greetings! I’ve finished (for now at least) the song I’ve been writing. It’s still unnamed, but it’s about dealing with uncertainty in life, learning to let go of the things I have no control over. It’s pretty much the story of my life over the last few months - leaving London, waiting for my visa to come through, (it came through!) and I guess now sorting out the minor details of my return to London i.e. where to live etc. Small stuff really. Anyway it feels a little different to my previous music in that it’s got this kinda slow rock chorus, with a groovy or funky verse. If you can’t see the video below, just go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xthOHoo530 to see it on youtube.
I’m still experimenting with my sound and getting loads of inspiration with my new Spotify subscription - why didn’t I do this earlier? I’ve been listening to heaps of Neo-Soul, nu-Jazz and everything in between. Lovely. Discovered John Legend, Erykah Badu, James Taylor Quartet, all very inspiring. If you’re into soul or jazz I’d definitely recommend them.
Also I’ve been reading up a lot on music industry people’s advice for people like me, starting a career in music. One thing I think I need to work on is songwriting - I’m so darn fussy (and lazy) it takes me months to write a song - I need to start churning out a song a week, even if it’s rubbish, to give me heaps more practice. I can always bin them or re-use the good bits, but I think my perfectionist writing style is slowing me down. I give you full permission to hold me accountable to this!
Hope you enjoy the track, the lyrics are on the youtube link.
Hey world - so yeah I’m in New Zealand. You probably know already, but just in case you didn’t. I came back about a month ago to attend some weddings, say hi to the family, hang out with some mates and renew my visa (not necessarily in that order). In September I fly back to London (after ten days in Japan, woohoo!) to start my guitar course and get back into the swing of things music-wise. I have been busy though, in more ways than one - I’ve almost finished a brand new song just for you so hopefully I’ll be able to record that soon. I’ve also been planning a gig here in Kerikeri where I used to live - It’s on the 20th of August if you’re on this side of the planet, details here or on Facebook.
It’s been great being home - flip, New Zealand is stunning! I had the privilege of taking some photos for my mates wedding recently, and although I’ve seen it all before, the scenery here is crazy-pretty. Seriously. You don’t appreciate it till you leave it and come back. Oh and stars! On a clear night they look incredible.
I want to rant a bit about songwriting, I apologise in advance for the following spiel. I guess I’ve been thinking a lot about my music and where it fits - like if you were to give it a genre or put it in a box, what would it be? I like to think I’m kinda jazz-influenced pop, but there’s bits of funk in there, some kinda-R&B grooves, some soul maybe? What is soul? What is pop? Is pop a dirty word? What is a dirty word? Who am I?!? I’ve been thinking, and probably too much.
It has been interesting analysing some different musical styles, and I’ve learnt a bit - for example, I don’t HAVE to change to chord sequence in the chorus! (or the key signature, but I’ll need some serious rehab to work that one out of my system). Some recent revelations: I don’t HAVE to limit the length of vocal phrases to keep it “catchy”, I don’t HAVE to stick to the ABABCB structure (although I probably will) - in fact I don’t HAVE to do anything! Ah, that feels nice to write.
I think I just matured slightly, artistically speaking. Wow, that sounded vain. Oh well. I’m gonna write music that I like, and if I’m lucky, other people might like it too. Screw genres. Where’s my guitar/notepad? I’m gonna work on this chord progression that changes key twice every bar…
It’s been a little while, but I’ve finally finished the next addition to my free acoustic album. It’s called “Awkward” and it’s pretty self explanatory. I played the old version of it at the Proud Galleries in Camden, but have since tidied up the verses to make them fit the vibe of the song better. I’ve been wanting to write about the subject for quite a while - it’s just so universal! Everyone is stuck in those painful situations from time to time - maybe someone unintentionally insults someone else present in a small group setting, or perhaps everyone is made uncomfortable by one person who goes a bit far with some off-coloured joke… you know what I mean. So hopefully this song captures that feeling anyway.
I’m in the process of deciding on which lyrical themes and musical ideas to use for my next song. In the meantime I’ll record an acoustic version of my latest song “Awkward” and add it to my free album for you to download - you should see that by the end of next week.
Cheers
S
PS For fellow music geeks, it’s an A minor 7 +11 +♮13 , played with capo 2 and like this: 5×5530. Although you probably worked that out already.
Just a quick one, I posted another video blog explaining some music developments and playing “You Got Me” - if you can’t see it above you can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoXZh-OqJy8
Take care everyone, and have a super-blessed Easter break :-)
Pretty positive title huh? I hate thinking of titles but this one seems to do the trick.
A couple of developments:
I’ve recorded a couple more tracks for Future Reflections: ”You Got Me” which I finished a few weeks ago, and also “Future Wife” which I just recorded today. You can preview the individual tracks or download the whole album from my music page. Yes it’s free, share it around if you like it! If you’d like to be involved as I continue to add to the album, just follow me on Twitter or Facebook and continue the conversation. I’ll be using these sites to get valuable feedback and input towards finishing the album.
In other news, I’ve met some people recently who are helping me move things forward with my music. I met Tobi, who is kind-of managing me now, at a friends place about a month ago. Him, Josh and my friend Nat (who’s a producer) were practising for a gig, and since I had my guitar I couldn’t help but jam along. I had no idea who they were - after showing them some of my stuff I discovered that Josh is a professional live and session drummer, and Tobi is in artist management and has loads of industry contacts. They are super-excited about my music and making it huge, so suddenly everything has been in fast-forward - recording new demos, more writing, meeting marketing people; it’s been a great incentive to get things moving.
An interesting exercise was putting together a “mood board” - basically a collection of images which represent me and an art style which suits. Above is a tag cloud generated from some descriptive keywords we came up with - is that about right? I can’t wait to get some art concepts together.
Gig-wise it’s been pretty quiet except for the occasional acoustic charity gig - I’m planning something big in May but I’ll let you know once that’s all confirmed. As I’ve probably mentioned, I’ll be playing with a live band more and more now, which is awesome as that’s how I’ve always imagined it.
So… I set myself a target to record my song “Busy Life” by the end of this week. I started and finished it on Monday. Great! But just before I uploaded it, I thought: “I should make these into an album”.
It’s funny, just by calling it an “album”, it instantly increases the official-ness and coolness factor. It’s no longer: “Oh, yeah I’ve got some tracks online”; it’s: “I’m recording a free acoustic album from home, it’s not finished yet but you can download what I’ve got so far”. Told you it sounds cooler. And it has a name too, Future Reflections. I quite like the idea - I write a song, play it live, then record it and start a new one - people can watch the process unfold over the months and really be a part of it. I can even sell half-finished albums (at cost) at any gigs I play… kinda quirky. You can download the part-album for yourself from my music page. I’ve remixed the older tracks at a higher bitrate too, so they sound a little nicer if you’re using headphones.
So speaking of writing an album, I’ve foolishly decided to write a brand new song before my next gig at Proud (which, I might add, will be amazing). So far I have one chord, a likely tempo, and some ideas but that’s about it. Still haven’t committed to a lyrical theme yet, I’m tossing up between “I’m pretty big in Japan”, “Those awkward moments that make us cringe but are actually enjoyed by some weird people like myself”, and “No-one understands me when I speak”. All working titles, of course. I better get writing - I love setting myself deadlines like this, it really works!
So hopefully see you at Proud Galleries in Camden on the 17th of February, and don’t forget to download my “album”!
Good afternoon people, enjoying the beautiful weather? (The sarcasm will probably be lost to my southern-hemisphere subscribers). It’s snowing outside, and it makes me smile every time I notice.
I just posted another video blog, you can watch it by clicking that link or directly in this post if you’re reading this on my site:
I’m working on my new song called “Future wife”, it’s what I’m calling a “hypothetical love-song”. I’ve played part of it for you on that video, check it out if you haven’t already. Disclaimer: the audio sync is all messed up, and I can’t be bothered spending any more time on it. I have to find a better way to do these, I think it’s the built-in webcam on my laptop, it’s just not that flash…
Anyway I hope you like the song, make sure you come down to the Troubadour next Tuesday to hear it in full. Details here, here and here. £6 on the door, 8pm start, closest tube Earls Court.
In other news, I’m thinking of writing an awkward song, you know, about all those painful social situations. Like when you take a joke or something a little too far, and then it’s awkward. I do this quite a bit. Hmm. Think of some examples and reply to this by email or on facebook with some ideas - I’ll probably end up including some in the final version. 100 points for the best example, and 500 points if it’s something you’ve actually done yourself!
