I’ve been occasionally alluding to a “new project” on here for a while now, so it’s a great relief to come clean at last… bluesjamtracks.com In an ideal scenario, the site would have gone live last March… that’s when we felt we’d finalised both the concept and design. However, while an e-commerce company (who weren’t [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Guitar'
Burble with Key Changes
January 24th, 2007 · 2 Comments · Guitar, Music
This should have appeared sooner, but an air-conditioning failure at 34sp‘s datacentre put a temporary spanner in the works. Anyway… In the continued absence of Exciting New Musical Concepts (not that I’ve tried particularly hard) I decided to spend more time working on my improvising. Still focusing on ways to reduce the “burble”, I knocked [...]
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Slow Gilmourish Jam
January 16th, 2007 · 1 Comment · Guitar, Music, Technology
Lacking any concrete musical ideas recently, I decided to try and resurrect my atrophied improvisation abilities. A recurrent trait in my playing is that, after periods of less-than-diligent practice, I tend to “burble”. The technique is there, but the mental sharpness disappears, so my fingers seek out the comfortable, well-trodden routes. So, having recorded a [...]
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The notWigan that nearly wasn’t
November 20th, 2006 · 1 Comment · Friends, Guitar, Music
So, last weekend marked the sixth annual uk.music.guitar national get-together. I’ve been to four of the six and find myself developing an almost complacent expectation that the event will be exciting, amusing, interesting and inspiring in equal measure. A number of external glitches conspired to threaten the very existence of this year’s event, but that [...]
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In praise of talented friends
July 25th, 2006 · No Comments · Friends, Guitar, Music
As you know, I always like to support people who Do Their Stuff independently of the corporate mainstream. And when those people are my friends, hey, they even get free advertising here! Jon Boyes is a classical and flamenco guitarist based in south-west England, and his debut album “Haçienda” is now available from his website. [...]
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www.custom-transcription.com
February 3rd, 2006 · No Comments · Guitar, Music
I had been intending for a couple of years to make a more formal statement of my availability as a freelance transcriber. After all, the brief mention on the “Who?” page of this site wasn’t really going to drum up an awful lot of work. So when my friend Steve Cobham (a talented and experienced [...]
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No Sleep ’til notWigan
November 22nd, 2005 · No Comments · Friends, Guitar, Music
I was in Albrighton, Shropshire over the weekend, the occasion being the fifth annual UKMG National. As usual, a lot of people got together to play a lot of guitar, while drinking a lot of beer and generally having a lot of fun. Our traditional venue, the Mabs Cross hotel in Wigan, is no longer [...]
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No Sleep ’til Wigan
November 22nd, 2004 · No Comments · Guitar, Music
Apologies for the lack of content just lately… The main task last week was to prepare for my weekend trip to Wigan, that unassuming little town on the outskirts of Manchester which has become the traditional location for the annual musical summit of the uk.music.guitar newsgroup. The main focus of the weekend is “Guitar Idol”, [...]
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It’s cool to be a control freak
October 21st, 2004 · No Comments · Guitar, Music, Music industry
As you probably know from previous ramblings, I’m very keen on seeing how people find ways to sidestep the mainstream, avoiding the homogenising effects of big business by remaining independent. There’s something so satisfying about seeing someone create a product (whether it’s a guitar, amplifier, CD or piece of software) completely on their own terms. [...]
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“While we are not doing anything”
July 3rd, 2004 · No Comments · Guitar, Music
During March, April and a bit of May, I kind of lost interest in making music. I couldn’t think of any good ideas to record and it became something of a chore even to pick up a guitar once in a while. I found I wasn’t listening to music very often, because it all seemed [...]
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