Sunday

Today was a rare day off for me. Much needed after gigging in Newcaste upon Tyne yesterday. I was playing totally acoustically at a wedding at Blackfriars in the city centre. It was a lovely venue and wonderful audience involving busking requests (acoustic YMCA anyone?) along with the usual covers and originals. Lots of fun but a very late drive home and had to be up early to take the hire car back. 

So today has been a mixture of sleep and rest, feeling as though I should be doing more. I did get chance to play the bouzouki for a while though (though still seem to be struggling to move away from the same few chords) and had a mess about with my Alesis SR16 drum machine which I've had for years but never really got to grips with. 

It got me thinking that it's likely that, due to changes in technology and especially the advent of digital recording, I probably have a more sophisticated recording studio set up than was used in either of the two studios I used to record my Still Life album, in terms of flexibility, amount of channels, ease of editing etc. Yet I'm still not recording as much as I'd like to and certainly not anywhere near as much as I did when I was a teenager with just an Atari ST, cheap Yamaha keyboard connected through MIDI, and a Tascam 4 track using compact cassettes.

Back then I used to dream of having a portable studio like I'd seen in some recording magazine which was really little more than a little MIDI keyboard with recording facilities for its own sounds. These days I have that much capability and much more in the form of the iphone I carry everywhere and the ipad I often have with me. Yet still use them far, far less than I would have done back then. 

It's partly down to lack of free time, working several jobs and travelling nationwide (and sometimes internationally) to play gigs. And I suppose partly down to an odd lack of motivation. 

So now I've realised this I feel as though I need to address it. I have some ideas of how to make that happen. Collaborations will hopefully be part of it and also creating a form of pressure as I'm well aware that I work much better to a deadline. 

Watch this space!