Monday, March 09, 2009
yr3wk38 upright piano
yr3wk38 upright piano from longcat on Vimeo.
this is from tuesday afternoon, it's the 1st time i've used a mirror video effect in an improvisation, and it's also the 1st time the audio has gone through the computer in the studio, a couple of UAD effects on it...
it's also been ages since i did one on a real piano - (actually that's not true - me & gareth did one using a real piano only a couple of weeks ago)
now - yesterday i was in the suit all day...
after it was all over i was walking along tufnell park road, my smart shoes making a loud sound with every step... i overtook another man, also wearing loud, smart shoes...
i was really tired and a bit frazzled and it was very pleasing to hear the sound of my steps and his steps ringing out, slightly different speeds, but very close, mine slightly faster than his... 2 rhythms gradually going in and out of phase...
eased my troubled mind...
x
Thursday, March 05, 2009
rain and no rain neve joy
last night around midnight, cycling by the thames, the houses of parliament on the other side of the river... lowtide, mad, mad rain pouring on me... joni mithcell's hegira in my ears... as though the river was so low because all the water was falling from the sky...
tonight, around the same time, (a little later), no rain, clear, crisp sky, a bite in the air... carl craig in my ears...
last night, coming in and having to take every single item of clothing off, not even my T-shirt escaped the wet... a hot shower, careful arranging of things on radiators...
similar shaped days today and yesterday... well, yesterday and the day before yesterday if you're reading this on thursday... me being in the early hours thereof...
saw spski yesterday, he of job interview fame, lovely to hang out with him, popped in for a tea around 2...
today i was supposed to meet one of the actors from the show i'm doing, to go through his big number... he didn't show, wasted 90 minutes of my life, time i could have spent fetching the proust which has arrived at the bookshop...
then, yesterday and today, i spent a couple of hours being a session piano player for the students @ CM, yesterday with MM running the class and today with yimkin in that position, yesterday i recorded my weekly improvisation after, today i recorded some current compositional ideas...
had a bleak moment or 6 around 6 o'clock and i was very glad of that piano to play... came up with some melancholy drenched thing... worked on the "dreamt i was bach" piece, just learning how to play it on the piano...
yesteday i went and got spski again, dragged him out of the flat to get a curry, today i met yimkin, (who had in the mean time been @ ginger B's studio) and we got a curry -
yesterday on my own but meeting T (and M) there, today with yimkin in tow... i went to the studio... down in kennington... new home of my rhodes...
yimkin & me got something working in the system, UAD plugin's which i thought we had but which weren't showing up... the PULTEC of which i'd heard tell and several NEVE plugins's - channel strips or EQ's... so very sexy...
i'm going to put this weeks improvisation through some of it... in fact that all worked really nicely, recording @ CM and then opening exactly the same file in the studio...
good times ahead...
much work to do on the studio but it's going to be so, so sexy...
of course it's quite alot of time away from my dinah which is sad... this week she's a studio widow... last night dripping wet me found her asleep on the sofa...
tonight she'd gone to bed by the time i got in...
and that's where i'm headed now, hammersmith work tomorrow and i'd like to cycle in, i wonder how the distance compares with the studio schlep? hmm... and weather..?
i'm rehearsing with the spanner jazz punks tomorrow night so if i cycle i'll have to get back here and then strap the keyboard on and hit the tube...
anyway, must sleep, i want to get that proust in the morning, and in fact that would be beautiful, the whole tube journey to hammersmith (barons court), to try and start this proust, then head down to the studio, do my thing with the improvisation, then skip over to the rehearsal...?
which to choose? bike or tube?
x
tonight, around the same time, (a little later), no rain, clear, crisp sky, a bite in the air... carl craig in my ears...
last night, coming in and having to take every single item of clothing off, not even my T-shirt escaped the wet... a hot shower, careful arranging of things on radiators...
similar shaped days today and yesterday... well, yesterday and the day before yesterday if you're reading this on thursday... me being in the early hours thereof...
saw spski yesterday, he of job interview fame, lovely to hang out with him, popped in for a tea around 2...
today i was supposed to meet one of the actors from the show i'm doing, to go through his big number... he didn't show, wasted 90 minutes of my life, time i could have spent fetching the proust which has arrived at the bookshop...
then, yesterday and today, i spent a couple of hours being a session piano player for the students @ CM, yesterday with MM running the class and today with yimkin in that position, yesterday i recorded my weekly improvisation after, today i recorded some current compositional ideas...
had a bleak moment or 6 around 6 o'clock and i was very glad of that piano to play... came up with some melancholy drenched thing... worked on the "dreamt i was bach" piece, just learning how to play it on the piano...
yesteday i went and got spski again, dragged him out of the flat to get a curry, today i met yimkin, (who had in the mean time been @ ginger B's studio) and we got a curry -
yesterday on my own but meeting T (and M) there, today with yimkin in tow... i went to the studio... down in kennington... new home of my rhodes...
yimkin & me got something working in the system, UAD plugin's which i thought we had but which weren't showing up... the PULTEC of which i'd heard tell and several NEVE plugins's - channel strips or EQ's... so very sexy...
i'm going to put this weeks improvisation through some of it... in fact that all worked really nicely, recording @ CM and then opening exactly the same file in the studio...
good times ahead...
much work to do on the studio but it's going to be so, so sexy...
of course it's quite alot of time away from my dinah which is sad... this week she's a studio widow... last night dripping wet me found her asleep on the sofa...
tonight she'd gone to bed by the time i got in...
and that's where i'm headed now, hammersmith work tomorrow and i'd like to cycle in, i wonder how the distance compares with the studio schlep? hmm... and weather..?
i'm rehearsing with the spanner jazz punks tomorrow night so if i cycle i'll have to get back here and then strap the keyboard on and hit the tube...
anyway, must sleep, i want to get that proust in the morning, and in fact that would be beautiful, the whole tube journey to hammersmith (barons court), to try and start this proust, then head down to the studio, do my thing with the improvisation, then skip over to the rehearsal...?
which to choose? bike or tube?
x
Sunday, March 01, 2009
yr3wk37 moog, juno, hammond
yr3wk37 moog, juno, hammond from longcat on Vimeo.
this from thursday morning, a couple of weeks ago it was the juno on it's own, now it's joined by the moog and the hammond organ...
i find in certain sections of this my arm looks really odd...
i formally welcome anamoglam to these pages, although he(?)'s been watching for a little while it seems...
x
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
yr3wk36 with Gareth Mitchell
yr3wk36 with Gareth Mitchell from longcat on Vimeo.
such a nutty week last week, with that marking even now hanging over me muddling my plans... yesterday i realised i hadn't finished editing the improvisation i'd done last tuesday with G...
monday and it hadn't even been edited...
bad...
so i got it going, in such a way hat i could still work (mark) it finished rendering last night, i uploaded it...
here it is...
quite out there in places...
i'm still marking... but i intend to be in a prince charles cinema & 3:30 watching hunger... so that's my final deadline...
x
Monday, February 23, 2009
studio
i had my camera with me but i didn't take a single picture or video...
we made an amazing thing...
a little different to our original plan and indeed the slightly different plan i took along...
when we started doing it T said it was a Y-fronts plan... by the end it was a little less pant-like...
drummer K was there and in fact he did most of the drilling and screwing... i did something i'm sure, handing him screws, the drill, moving massive panels...
but i also played the rhodes a fair bit (i knew i would - i have to)
came up with something... it's been wierd actually, since the rhodes went i haven't had a keyboard set up in here, there's the piano, but i haven't found my way back to it yet...
it's really odd not having something to hand... i'm still in marking hell at the moment, meant to be out of it by the weekend but life...
so as a treat between successful stages of this final marking surge i'm going to set up one of them... don't know which...
x
we made an amazing thing...
a little different to our original plan and indeed the slightly different plan i took along...
when we started doing it T said it was a Y-fronts plan... by the end it was a little less pant-like...
drummer K was there and in fact he did most of the drilling and screwing... i did something i'm sure, handing him screws, the drill, moving massive panels...
but i also played the rhodes a fair bit (i knew i would - i have to)
came up with something... it's been wierd actually, since the rhodes went i haven't had a keyboard set up in here, there's the piano, but i haven't found my way back to it yet...
it's really odd not having something to hand... i'm still in marking hell at the moment, meant to be out of it by the weekend but life...
so as a treat between successful stages of this final marking surge i'm going to set up one of them... don't know which...
x
Friday, February 20, 2009
idyllic
i had a good teaching session...
covered the circle of 5ths... 9th chords... composing using the chords of the major scale... good receptive students...
finished @ 1:30... got home just now - 6:10 or so...
so how did i spend that 4:40 hours?
well spski is currently working in that area and last week i found out that his lunch break started @ 3... so i had a notion that it would to still be around 'til 3...
chatted with M, owner of the juno synth... about acoustics... stuff... good talk...
then i popped up to the office to drop off my register and i bumped into HK, one time student there, now around every now and then helping out... had a lovely chat with him about all sorts, synths... music... drugs... moogs... arranged to go and improvise with him in about a month and swap moogs for a few weeks - his rogue for my opus 3...
then i went back down to pack up and i started to play the piano... playing this piece i wrote the other week on the juno 6 - with it's arppegiator - trying to play the arppeggiator bits on the piano...
very interesting... it's basically a 7 pattern against a 4 pattern and because of how the notes work it is quite a large pattern before it repeats itself...
i got caught up in that and lost all sense of time...
once i had done it enough i got on my bike and rang spski, thinking it was 3... but he was just finishing his lunch break... i accompanied him back to work and he helped me with my bike a bit, a puncture that had become a looming bulge that has now just disappeared as a puncture...
it turned out it wasn't 3 at all and in fact it was 4... i must have looked at my phone believing it was 3 and not taking in the real time...
got back on the bike and realised i was hungry... so i decided to visit an old friend around faringdon, the owner of a lebanese cafe...
i cycled over there, only to find to my horror that his cafe had become a posh looking french restaurant... i enquired how long they'd been there and expressed my disappointment that my friend had gone and they told me he was just next door...
where indeed he was, lovely Faisal, only it was no longer a cafe he was running it was a shop, with a falafel stand in it... one of those shops that sells everything you can think of and much more besides...
he made me a falafel and a tea and we talked some... "life goes by so fast" he said, "only yesterday you used to come here and you were 23... now you're 35..."
we talked a bit about love & warmth as against cold money... not a million miles from the conversation i'd had with HK earlier...
and i left there with shuggie otis in my ears... in a part of town i hadn't been in in ages, not sure how to get home from there... pootling about until i hit upon a route i used to take, passed the british library, through camdem, up to holloway, then pushing through, over passed the dawn project place, through crouch end and home...
what a lovely afternoon...
x
covered the circle of 5ths... 9th chords... composing using the chords of the major scale... good receptive students...
finished @ 1:30... got home just now - 6:10 or so...
so how did i spend that 4:40 hours?
well spski is currently working in that area and last week i found out that his lunch break started @ 3... so i had a notion that it would to still be around 'til 3...
chatted with M, owner of the juno synth... about acoustics... stuff... good talk...
then i popped up to the office to drop off my register and i bumped into HK, one time student there, now around every now and then helping out... had a lovely chat with him about all sorts, synths... music... drugs... moogs... arranged to go and improvise with him in about a month and swap moogs for a few weeks - his rogue for my opus 3...
then i went back down to pack up and i started to play the piano... playing this piece i wrote the other week on the juno 6 - with it's arppegiator - trying to play the arppeggiator bits on the piano...
very interesting... it's basically a 7 pattern against a 4 pattern and because of how the notes work it is quite a large pattern before it repeats itself...
i got caught up in that and lost all sense of time...
once i had done it enough i got on my bike and rang spski, thinking it was 3... but he was just finishing his lunch break... i accompanied him back to work and he helped me with my bike a bit, a puncture that had become a looming bulge that has now just disappeared as a puncture...
it turned out it wasn't 3 at all and in fact it was 4... i must have looked at my phone believing it was 3 and not taking in the real time...
got back on the bike and realised i was hungry... so i decided to visit an old friend around faringdon, the owner of a lebanese cafe...
i cycled over there, only to find to my horror that his cafe had become a posh looking french restaurant... i enquired how long they'd been there and expressed my disappointment that my friend had gone and they told me he was just next door...
where indeed he was, lovely Faisal, only it was no longer a cafe he was running it was a shop, with a falafel stand in it... one of those shops that sells everything you can think of and much more besides...
he made me a falafel and a tea and we talked some... "life goes by so fast" he said, "only yesterday you used to come here and you were 23... now you're 35..."
we talked a bit about love & warmth as against cold money... not a million miles from the conversation i'd had with HK earlier...
and i left there with shuggie otis in my ears... in a part of town i hadn't been in in ages, not sure how to get home from there... pootling about until i hit upon a route i used to take, passed the british library, through camdem, up to holloway, then pushing through, over passed the dawn project place, through crouch end and home...
what a lovely afternoon...
x
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
moses jones no sleep
so if you're astute, you'll have seen from the time of that last post that it was from 8 in the morning...
and if you know me... you'll have wondered why i was up that early...
the truth is i had a couple of hours sleep that night, but by 5am it was clear that was all i was going to get right then, so i got up...
smoked a little (a peculiar pleasure at the hour) and got on with my business - recording music from the D8 into my computer... sifting through the stuff i'd already recorded...
at some point i ate some cheese - i remember thinking i was smoking AND eating cheese if i could have slept my dreams would have been marvellous...
around 7 i was thinking i should try and sleep again...
but then before i knew it it was 8 and dinah was up, she made me a tea...
then the day started to impinge on me a bit and i realised i needed floopy's camera, then he agreed to drop it round and pick up my mic...
which meant waiting for him to arrive...
i finally crept into bed with a hot water bottle around 9:45 am... with my alarm set to 11:45 am...
but no sleep was evident... around 10:30 my friend D rang me out of the blue... he agreed to ring back later... this was the final thing... no sleep was going to happen... it was nice though, being in bed with a hot water bottle...
i decided to get up and watch "moses jones" on catchup from the night before (monday night)...
it turned out to be the final episode and it was disappointing...
still enjoyable, but a real let down after the promise of the 1st episode... looking back, the 2nd episode had shown signs of not quite being great...
and it makes me sad,
in american TV there's a tradition of following a fantastic opening series with a flawed 2nd series...
lost, heroes, desperate housewives... to name a few...
in england it's as though the model is that much smaller, we can do a really fantastic opening episode, but can't sustain it...
having said that the devil's whore was great...
i went out to meet G later on, to go through his tunes and talk about approaches to recording, we also improvised... really odd improvisation that i have no idea what it's like...
there are few people i'd want to be around on only 2 hours sleep and G is definitely one of them... lovely guy...
we went over to the queen elizabeth hall in the evening for a night of music & chance which was a little patchy, but had some great moments in it...
particularly the charles ives piece they did...
x
and if you know me... you'll have wondered why i was up that early...
the truth is i had a couple of hours sleep that night, but by 5am it was clear that was all i was going to get right then, so i got up...
smoked a little (a peculiar pleasure at the hour) and got on with my business - recording music from the D8 into my computer... sifting through the stuff i'd already recorded...
at some point i ate some cheese - i remember thinking i was smoking AND eating cheese if i could have slept my dreams would have been marvellous...
around 7 i was thinking i should try and sleep again...
but then before i knew it it was 8 and dinah was up, she made me a tea...
then the day started to impinge on me a bit and i realised i needed floopy's camera, then he agreed to drop it round and pick up my mic...
which meant waiting for him to arrive...
i finally crept into bed with a hot water bottle around 9:45 am... with my alarm set to 11:45 am...
but no sleep was evident... around 10:30 my friend D rang me out of the blue... he agreed to ring back later... this was the final thing... no sleep was going to happen... it was nice though, being in bed with a hot water bottle...
i decided to get up and watch "moses jones" on catchup from the night before (monday night)...
it turned out to be the final episode and it was disappointing...
still enjoyable, but a real let down after the promise of the 1st episode... looking back, the 2nd episode had shown signs of not quite being great...
and it makes me sad,
in american TV there's a tradition of following a fantastic opening series with a flawed 2nd series...
lost, heroes, desperate housewives... to name a few...
in england it's as though the model is that much smaller, we can do a really fantastic opening episode, but can't sustain it...
having said that the devil's whore was great...
i went out to meet G later on, to go through his tunes and talk about approaches to recording, we also improvised... really odd improvisation that i have no idea what it's like...
there are few people i'd want to be around on only 2 hours sleep and G is definitely one of them... lovely guy...
we went over to the queen elizabeth hall in the evening for a night of music & chance which was a little patchy, but had some great moments in it...
particularly the charles ives piece they did...
x
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
studio rhodes
the studio in kennington is moving on...
those massive 8/4 foot acoustic panels are going to be built in a kind of hexagon...
with 2 of them fixed on the top... so it'll be a 6/6 foot room for recording drums, and indeed anything else...
i was there tonight (well, it really is tuesday morning now, so.. ok last night) & i'm going back on sunday (probably)... to do the building...
at the moment 3 of them are standing up but they're all resting on things (wall or massive speaker cab)... so all the drilling, screwing, sawing and so on will be on sunday...
i also plugged in my rhodes which is there... i took down one of the tracks i'm working on in the korg D8 and recorded a few rhodes parts for it...
it was lovely playing it in the room... no sound issues... (touch wood)...
it's going to be absolutely amazing in there...
cold though...
x
those massive 8/4 foot acoustic panels are going to be built in a kind of hexagon...
with 2 of them fixed on the top... so it'll be a 6/6 foot room for recording drums, and indeed anything else...
i was there tonight (well, it really is tuesday morning now, so.. ok last night) & i'm going back on sunday (probably)... to do the building...
at the moment 3 of them are standing up but they're all resting on things (wall or massive speaker cab)... so all the drilling, screwing, sawing and so on will be on sunday...
i also plugged in my rhodes which is there... i took down one of the tracks i'm working on in the korg D8 and recorded a few rhodes parts for it...
it was lovely playing it in the room... no sound issues... (touch wood)...
it's going to be absolutely amazing in there...
cold though...
x
Sunday, February 15, 2009
good telly
oh what a mad day it's been...
played with G down in camden... jazz/funk... a few hours... nice to gig, gave the hammond organ a good environment to shine in...
then up to tufnell park for my regular sunday night rehearsal... now i'm home...
(obviously)
a little lightheaded...
so telly...
3 things, the 1st of which was a rerun last weekend which i caught on catchup...
the devil's whore...
english civil war... very good tv... the main guy from the wire plays oliver cromwell.. a whole heap of great british actors... that ginger haired man who's in green wing is excellent as honest john lilburn...
the main woman is fantastic i think... good story, characters... just all round good...
now take that ginger haired man... place him in a modern day police drama... and you have the 2nd of my 3 great tv things...
moses jones... written by joe penhal... BBC thing, looking at the african community in london... dramatising the plight of refugees... partly set around borough, the same cab office that was filmed for dirty pretty things...
only 2 episodes in but it's good so far... it's british so it could always fall on it's arse but i'm liking it...
and finally american, not made by HBO but still marvellous:
madmen...
one episode into the 2nd season as we are over in england...
fantastic... no other words, just very glad it's there...
so... not much analysis but there you have my 3 great tv things...
x
played with G down in camden... jazz/funk... a few hours... nice to gig, gave the hammond organ a good environment to shine in...
then up to tufnell park for my regular sunday night rehearsal... now i'm home...
(obviously)
a little lightheaded...
so telly...
3 things, the 1st of which was a rerun last weekend which i caught on catchup...
the devil's whore...
english civil war... very good tv... the main guy from the wire plays oliver cromwell.. a whole heap of great british actors... that ginger haired man who's in green wing is excellent as honest john lilburn...
the main woman is fantastic i think... good story, characters... just all round good...
now take that ginger haired man... place him in a modern day police drama... and you have the 2nd of my 3 great tv things...
moses jones... written by joe penhal... BBC thing, looking at the african community in london... dramatising the plight of refugees... partly set around borough, the same cab office that was filmed for dirty pretty things...
only 2 episodes in but it's good so far... it's british so it could always fall on it's arse but i'm liking it...
and finally american, not made by HBO but still marvellous:
madmen...
one episode into the 2nd season as we are over in england...
fantastic... no other words, just very glad it's there...
so... not much analysis but there you have my 3 great tv things...
x
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
yr3wk34 drums, rhodes, piano
yr3wk34 drums, rhodes, piano from longcat on Vimeo.
yesterday dinah brought me a cup of tea in the morning, i was very asleep...
she woke me a little later to tell me it was at the right temperature to drink... i woke up enough to take a sip, then i was holding the mug of tea in my hand and i leant my head back down on the pillow and started to drift off...
now...
you can see where this story is going... but it didn't quite happen like you'd expect...
i started to fall into that halfway point between sleeping and waking, where dreams come and can be very vivid...
and in my dream i knew i was holding a cup of something.. and for some reason i chose to tip it all out...
and so in real life i did indeed tip all the rest of that tea (thankfully i had had a sip of it) onto the floor and partly into one of my booty/slippers...
i immediately woke up properly and laughed because it was so daft, while at the same time i had that sadness of a lost tea... quite apart from the fact that one of my booty/slippers was not at all wearable...
this improvisation at the top of this post is from last thursday, it's been a mental time in between then and now and it's taken me this long to get it together, but there it is, me & DS on the drums...
pretty hot i reckon...
me, T & S did in the end make it down to bristol to pick up the new computer which is right now in a cardboard box in the centre of this room...
we went on saturday... made it over to gloucester also to see the guy we bought the mixing desk off (he had a few more cables and a couple of spare Z80 chips for the desk to give us)... on the way back we stopped in on mum & dad in blewbury and mum made us all a lovely meal, curry...
really lovely to see them and it was a very valuable pitstop for the 3 of us, we hadn't eaten for many hours and were flagging by then...
the computer is going to be amazing... a mac G5 with 8 Gb of RAM... very exciting, our studio is going to be great...
last night i popped over to a man called C's house to check out some acoustic panels that he's got hold of... probably tomorrow the same 3 of us will be hiring a van, picking up 10 of these panels, the new computer & my suitcase rhodes and taking them down to the kennington studio..
times are afoot x
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
thaw
popped out to go the cafe, then i went over to floopy's, to pick up something, nice to see him, dragged him kicking and screaming into the 21st century by insisting that he get skype...then once i left him, navigating through the thawing snow & ice on the roads on my bicycle, tricky stuff, i put my camera onto my bike handle bars to catch it all...
i've just watched it and it's alright... a little bit too jerky... must find a way...
anyway, i went over to the park, the same as yesterday, to see the difference...
i was videoing mostly so i didn't take that many pictures... in fact only the one at the top of this post on my camera, the other 3 came from my phone camera...
the lake was completely frozen over and i put my camera on the ice to get that kind of shot... like i did once before on the canal... only that time it was my old camera and i just put the camera itself on the ice (which started to sink almost immediately)...this time the new camera was on the gorrila tripod thing that floopy & T gave me for christmas (the large version - as opposed to the small version which dad gave me last christmas and which lasted about 6 months)...
all the while i was continuing the john martyn marathon listen... through "one world" and into "solid air"... beautiful stuff... with a short stop off in this piece i recorded this afternoon called moog ritual... probably will be part of something else later on but i love it in it's current form...oh and i saw moses jones last night on BBC2 and it was really good... (as was this neil young concert from a couple of nights back) - those links will last for a week (slightly less with neil young)...
x
Monday, February 02, 2009
no bristol but snow
i got up this morning because me , T & S, the same team who went to gloucester a few weeks back to get the mixing desk, were going to go to bristol to get the computer...i've got a small mark on my face, not quite a bruise, from last night, i was cycling back from the christian musical rehearsal and it had been lightly snowing since i'd cycled in, cycling in the beginning snow had been lovely...
cycling on the way back was lovely at first, but cycling over a bridge over the railway i decided it was so great looking i had to stop and take a picture... even though i'd told myself at the start of the journey that the key was to try not to break, i broke, and i fell off my bike... noone around to see, but it was fairly miserable still...
as i was cycling up the hill (towards where i used to do the dawn project) someone through a snowball at me, and i'm ashamed to say it drew from me a "f*ck off", my 1st snowball of the season and i didn't see the joy in it...much later, just before bed, dinah called me into the bedroom to see a fox that had found something to eat in our garden and was busying himself with it...
it continued to snow all night and it was beautiful this morning... i was still in bed when dinah got out and i heard her say "oh... it's a winter wonderland"...she went off to work and i was about to go meet T & S when i rang T to check it was still on and he cancelled it, maybe tomorrow, maybe wednesday now, so here i was, all dressed and ready to go out... beautiful snowing day out there...
how could i not walk to the park?
my john martyn listening is coming along, so far i've listened to "bless the weather", "grace and danger", most of "inside out", and most of this listening was this morning in the park... i left @ 9am and got back @ 10:30, very glad of the 2 hot patches that i bought down in brighton...x
Saturday, January 31, 2009
yr3wk33 john martyn gone my week
yr3wk33 moog opus 3 improvisation from longcat on Vimeo.
once again no words all week, just videos... sorry,
this one recorded on friday morning before work, i'd got up earlier than normal to allow enough time to get the tube in with the moog (the harmonic series demonstrated with the moog filter) but then i decided i could do that next week and use the extra time to do my improvisation, being as i didn't know how long i would need in the evening doing my tax return...
so i did it, i like it, turned off the computer and the camera's and cycled into work,
found a Roland Juno 6 in the cupboard @ work and it turns out it belongs to MM, he who helped me fix my rhodes back then, and who promises he's going to help me fix the moog too... we've been making music together over the internet a bit recently and he said i could borrow the Juno... which is great, it's a similar era synth to my moog, a little later, not a moog, but still a great sound...
i'm going to use it next week to demonstrate the harmonic series like i was going to bring my moog in for and then i'm taking it home...
i had a lovely hour or so with it on friday after teaching, just wandering about in it's sound...
in other news i popped down to brighton on monday night to record josiah on the lullabye, also i took grace to school on tuesday morning... lovely to see them, josiah going through it a bit just now...
i've been so busy since then that i haven't unpacked the audio i recorded down there, the lullabye probably near to being done now, just have to get my editing head on and give it a few hours...
directly after brighton i went over to the studio in kennington to meet T and sweep up the place, it's amazing how different it looked after a day of organising things...
i also bought a book on tuesday - a new one by michael ondaatje called devisadeo...
i really love his writing and i'm very glad to be inamongst his words again...
on thursday i went out after teaching to celebrate one of my students 16th birthday, hanging out with the teenagers for a couple of pints...
then friday... oh, we've talked about friday already, except for the tax return which i did that afternoon, surprisingly easy for once...
when i was applying for housing benefit recently i came across the relevant payslips i knew i would need for the tax return so it was kind of all laid out for me already, but it's still a beautiful thing to be done one of those things,
i helped felinity through it a few weeks back and that made it easier when i came to do it for myself...
floopy came round friday night (last night) and he told me john martyn had died on thursday, very sad, i'm going to load up the shuffle with him and nothing but him for a little while...
we had a great night, dinah, floopy and me, at one point i put solid air on the shaky turntable and we offered john martyn our laughter as the record player occasionally skipped up to 45 RPM for a moment, it was magical and poignant and a good way to mark his passing...
very, very sad though, such a wonderful song writer & singer...
anyway... i hope you enjoy the improvisation..
x
Saturday, January 24, 2009
yr3wk32 with john sinclair
yr3wk32 with john sinclair from longcat on Vimeo.
recorded on wednesday, the day after the inauguration of barack obama, the day after the crazy gigs @ cafe oto...
i also recorded his voice for the lullabye project, slightly tricky as it's a very effective lullabye and he'd been gigging for a couple of days,
listening to my lullabye in his ears he found it hard to stay awake... we found a way round it...
EQ, old, old friend who hasn't been in my life for a few years came round to record on the lullabye too yesterday, i want to get josiah on it too, and dinah.. redo my bit...
it'll be in baby spanner's ears in a week or so...
gigging tonight with the spanner jazz punks (different spanner) in crouch end... cut down version of the band...
then EL & maybe JPW coming tomorrow for next week's improvisation, slightly early...
what a nuts week, starting last sunday i was improvising, gigging, improvising, recording, now gigging, improvising once more...
it's a good way to live one's life...
x
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
no drugs
part 2 of the john sinclair extravaganza in dalston...
it was a crazy night... i took down my moog but didn't really do it justice... a little bit of playing but it was mainly piano...
john coming round tomorrow for an improvisation, possibly EL coming on friday for an improv as well (which would be next week's one), along with old, old acquaintance E maybe coming round to record on the lullabye for brand new baby spanner x
in the taxi with john & JPW (bass - twice part of the improvisation) i realised i really wanted to smoke drugs, mainly to do with the adrenalin of the gig, so i got in, knowing i have some, somewhere, but i'm so not addicted to such things that it's been weeks since i last saw the stuff and i couldn't for the life of me find it...
so no drugs for me i'm afraid...
dinah had a little wine for me, that took the edge off...
and no doubt some time when i really need it those smokables will come running to the rescue...
glad to play with these musicians these last couple of days...
and john sinclair is simply marvellous x
it was a crazy night... i took down my moog but didn't really do it justice... a little bit of playing but it was mainly piano...
john coming round tomorrow for an improvisation, possibly EL coming on friday for an improv as well (which would be next week's one), along with old, old acquaintance E maybe coming round to record on the lullabye for brand new baby spanner x
in the taxi with john & JPW (bass - twice part of the improvisation) i realised i really wanted to smoke drugs, mainly to do with the adrenalin of the gig, so i got in, knowing i have some, somewhere, but i'm so not addicted to such things that it's been weeks since i last saw the stuff and i couldn't for the life of me find it...
so no drugs for me i'm afraid...
dinah had a little wine for me, that took the edge off...
and no doubt some time when i really need it those smokables will come running to the rescue...
glad to play with these musicians these last couple of days...
and john sinclair is simply marvellous x
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
yr3wk31 + john sinclair + dog shit
yr3wk31 rhodes & moog improvisation from longcat on Vimeo.
so i played last night with john sinclair and the blues scholars... quite scary, but very good, john is a real sweety...
i looked down at one point, after having been to a place outside to get food and having my piano chair taken for a few tunes by someone else...
i could smell shit...
and i could see shit on my shoe...
this being the 3rd time it's happened in recent weeks, once really early in the morning just going out to put gas on the card... the 1st time in ages and it really irritated me...
then last week down in kennington looking at the desk and the place again i smelt it and looked down and there it was...
and i remember wondering if i was due another one these things coming in 3's as they sometimes do,
and the 3rd came sat at a piano, playing on the edge of free/blues/jazz with an ex-criminal...
i hope this current spat of shit is over with, it seems like it was years before this that it last happened, have the dog owners of this city been careful for a few years and now they don't care?
the gig is repeated tonight, today being the inauguration of that famous man over in americy... do come down if you fancy it,
cafe oto in dalston... £12...
Monday, January 12, 2009
yr3wk30 via vimeo
Sunday, January 11, 2009
mental mixer shuffle
it's been a mental day... driving up to gloucester with S & T, missing our turning, finding our way with the fosse way... arriving, meeting lovely but slightly mental L (he suffered in the gloucester floods), testing all 28 line inputs, all 28 mic inputs... checking out the lovely (odd) EQ, learning a mad amount about mixing in the few hours that we were there talking to him... to agree... to get it in the van... to see L rip up his floor to get to the loom (cables) he was giving us... to almost get out of gloucester and remember he was giving us the bass to put it on...
to meet mad, mad weather, (fog, snow)...to get back and carry the massive thing to the bottom of our stairs... (they're coming back tomorrow and we're taking it to it's new home)...
and then to find dinah, who had my solstihannimous present which was/is an ipod shuffle... bearing the words "With Love From Loobs To Moobs xxx"...
Friday, January 09, 2009
protest about gaza plus mixing desk road trip
i won't be protesting in central london tomorrow because me & T are going on a road trip...
but i would be if i could...
1st the bombing, and now the invasion of gaza, a strip of land with one & a half million people living on it, largely starved of food, fuel, medicine for many, many months... is a terrible thing...
israel has been in the wrong before, but not for a long time has it been this wrong...
making war in a densely populated area that you have previously blockaded is a form of collective punishment...
anyway, i won't be assembling @ 12:30 @ speakers corner tomorrow and i won't be marching to the israeli embassy...
because i will be driving up to gloucester with T (& S who me & dinah met on T's birthday) to test and perhaps buy a mixing desk for our studio that we're setting up in kennington...
i don't know if i've mentioned it before but i'm merging some of my musical equipment with T's and some new stuff for this studio in a room that is currently full of junk...
it's going to be amazing...
but i would be if i could...
1st the bombing, and now the invasion of gaza, a strip of land with one & a half million people living on it, largely starved of food, fuel, medicine for many, many months... is a terrible thing...
israel has been in the wrong before, but not for a long time has it been this wrong...
making war in a densely populated area that you have previously blockaded is a form of collective punishment...
anyway, i won't be assembling @ 12:30 @ speakers corner tomorrow and i won't be marching to the israeli embassy...
because i will be driving up to gloucester with T (& S who me & dinah met on T's birthday) to test and perhaps buy a mixing desk for our studio that we're setting up in kennington...
i don't know if i've mentioned it before but i'm merging some of my musical equipment with T's and some new stuff for this studio in a room that is currently full of junk...
it's going to be amazing...
yr3wk30
foolishly went over 20 minutes for this week's improvisation (on wednesday) which means dailymotion will take awhile sorting it out... (so slow that maybe they won't ever sort it out)... and i'm forced to go back to googlevideo for an immediate, embeddable video...
no funny business with googlevideo for once...
the conflict in gaza on my mind...
playing the 2 marvellous sound modules i got hold of last year... the hammond organ with the volume pedal that arrived the day before...
x
Sunday, January 04, 2009
yr3wk29 grace
recorded on new years day but it took a few days to arrive here... i just got back from a night away with my lovely goddaughter and her fantastic mum...
me & grace hung out alot, going to the beach this afternoon to give josiah a chance to get something done, picking up pebbles, filming...
i also gave her a little keyboard lesson before i left, she's only 5 so it wasn't huge, just where is C... enough for now...
me and josiah stayed up until 5 last night talking and listening to music from 2003,
1st the concert we gave in july of that year with H on cello, in my ex'landlord's frontroom...
we were really good... she was very pregnant... (with grace)
then the concert from the same place in january, days before she found out she was pregnant... (with grace)...
then a studio CD made by the band i was in back then Kyo... a great band...
altogether very nice to see both of them in their own ways... and lovely to hear my own music from 6 years ago...
x
Friday, December 26, 2008
youtube with uncle colin
once more i'm the last one up, about 3 glasses of sherry in me this time, chatting to uncle colin with his wealth of music memories...
after awhile i picked up the laptop and we started watching youtube video's of the artists he was talking about, and you know how long that can take, one minute you're watching del shannon, then it's the everly brothers, sammy davis juniour, neil diamond, hank williams, gillian welch (that was from me)...
uncle colin being of a generation who don't understand computers and the internet... but with his love of music from a certain period i think the internet would suit him down to the ground...
if he could get used to it...
of course it's quite possible he won't ever get into the internet...
but then maybe by next christmas he'll be commenting on the facebook fan page of my cat balthazara...
maybe...
x
after awhile i picked up the laptop and we started watching youtube video's of the artists he was talking about, and you know how long that can take, one minute you're watching del shannon, then it's the everly brothers, sammy davis juniour, neil diamond, hank williams, gillian welch (that was from me)...
uncle colin being of a generation who don't understand computers and the internet... but with his love of music from a certain period i think the internet would suit him down to the ground...
if he could get used to it...
of course it's quite possible he won't ever get into the internet...
but then maybe by next christmas he'll be commenting on the facebook fan page of my cat balthazara...
maybe...
x
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Yr3wk28 moog, rhodes, voice
so, black christmas has just finished on channel 4 + 1, i haven't been up before 1:30 pm for 4 days and i'm now in the family homestead in blewbury,
everyone else went to bed at least 2 hours ago...
sleep cycle mayhem tomorrow...
i recorded this improvisation before i came down today (well, yesterday now),
i was expecting to edit the video once me & dinah return to london on sunday but it was just too tempting, an itch i had to scratch, so i did a very straightforward edit and left it rendering, with dinah uploading it to dailymotion from my computer later on...
i'm sipping sherry and about to go to bed... enjoy, happy christmas...
x
everyone else went to bed at least 2 hours ago...
sleep cycle mayhem tomorrow...
i recorded this improvisation before i came down today (well, yesterday now),
i was expecting to edit the video once me & dinah return to london on sunday but it was just too tempting, an itch i had to scratch, so i did a very straightforward edit and left it rendering, with dinah uploading it to dailymotion from my computer later on...
i'm sipping sherry and about to go to bed... enjoy, happy christmas...
x
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Yr3wk27 piano, guitar & 2 voices
Thursday, December 18, 2008
the beatles
i was in the post office today, queueing, and a post office employee came up to me to suggest i open a cash ISA...
i declined,
about 3 minutes later the man in front of me, scottish, smelling a little of alcohol & in his 60's, started talking to me about how they all want your money... how he's never trusted banks... how he's glad he's single and hasn't got a mortgage...
this carries on for awhile, until he's almost at the front of the queue, whereupon he says goodbye to me and wishes me a happy christmas...
after a short pause he turns back to me and turns back his coat to reveal a beatles badge on his jacket lapel...
"the beatles forever" he says... tells me he saw them perform in glasgow on the 3rd of december 1965, it was the opening gig of their last world tour, it cost him 50p, (10 bob) and he went with "a bird" called "nancy fairy", and as soon as the curtains started to open, as soon as that big ludwig bass drum came into view all the women started screaming and ran to the front of the crowd...
at this, he was called away to perform whatever task he needed to do in the post office x
i declined,
about 3 minutes later the man in front of me, scottish, smelling a little of alcohol & in his 60's, started talking to me about how they all want your money... how he's never trusted banks... how he's glad he's single and hasn't got a mortgage...
this carries on for awhile, until he's almost at the front of the queue, whereupon he says goodbye to me and wishes me a happy christmas...
after a short pause he turns back to me and turns back his coat to reveal a beatles badge on his jacket lapel...
"the beatles forever" he says... tells me he saw them perform in glasgow on the 3rd of december 1965, it was the opening gig of their last world tour, it cost him 50p, (10 bob) and he went with "a bird" called "nancy fairy", and as soon as the curtains started to open, as soon as that big ludwig bass drum came into view all the women started screaming and ran to the front of the crowd...
at this, he was called away to perform whatever task he needed to do in the post office x
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Yr3wk26 hammond, bass & drums improvisation
nothing but improvisations huh?
no posts other than the weekly video for the last 3 weeks...
what's going on?
AND - i recently timed how long this blog takes to load and it's daft... 45 seconds or so...
i really need a bit of house keeping going on... i wander if it's slower now than before i shifted to blogger new way...?
this improvisation i recorded on wednesday night @ a recording for T's tunes x
Monday, December 08, 2008
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Yr3wk24 longcat with m
just to record waking up today...
dinah up and getting ready to leave @ 8:30am... she brings me a tea and wakes me with kisses at exactly the moment it's ready to drink...
then more kisses a little later just before she leaves...
drifting in and out of sleep now... balthazara wakes me up around 9:50am and we commune for awhile, i find something on the back of her neck, some thing like a tiny scab, just in that place where mum's pick up kittens, the place cats are programmed to accept...
so for awhile i'm stroking her trying to find this small patch of skin there and she's purring really loudly, she settles into the valley of the duvet between my spooning legs and my torso...
pretty much awake now my final alarm goes off @ 10:20am and i clamber out bed...
this being sunday's improvisation, i'm going over to SLP in south london to meet uncle T and plan out tomorrow's recording shortly x
dinah up and getting ready to leave @ 8:30am... she brings me a tea and wakes me with kisses at exactly the moment it's ready to drink...
then more kisses a little later just before she leaves...
drifting in and out of sleep now... balthazara wakes me up around 9:50am and we commune for awhile, i find something on the back of her neck, some thing like a tiny scab, just in that place where mum's pick up kittens, the place cats are programmed to accept...
so for awhile i'm stroking her trying to find this small patch of skin there and she's purring really loudly, she settles into the valley of the duvet between my spooning legs and my torso...
pretty much awake now my final alarm goes off @ 10:20am and i clamber out bed...
this being sunday's improvisation, i'm going over to SLP in south london to meet uncle T and plan out tomorrow's recording shortly x
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
rendering
so at 3 pm i start rendering the improvisation,
this is yesterday and the improvisation was recorded the day before - sunday - with M on the bass...
uncle T is coming round later and i quickly realise that the render is going to take too long...
T due @ 7 and the render claiming to take 6 hours,
i can't run cubase whilst i'm rendering from vegas...
so i decide to set it up and render it on my old computer, a little slower but it can just be chugging along in the background while me & T work...
so i transfer over the 10 Gb reqcuired, then remember that i need to install these 2 things, then remember that the video from my new camera needs a different codec, than remember that the logo isn't in the folder for this week so i have to find it, then i have to get a new version of divx...
anyway, what with all this toing and froing i don't start rendering until 5pm...
i pop out to see floopy & T and then come back for uncle T, we don't use cubase in the end, just talking primarily about our recording on thursday night...
dinah gets home around 9, T goes by 11ish...
dinah is in bed by midnight, i stay up for another couple of hours...
the render over on the other computer is saying it needs 9 & a half hours, which means it's going to finish @ 2:30 am... almost 12 hours since i started it on the other computer...
i go to bed @ 2 having done some work on speak&spell which i'll tell you all about later...
the improvisation is now uploading x
this is yesterday and the improvisation was recorded the day before - sunday - with M on the bass...
uncle T is coming round later and i quickly realise that the render is going to take too long...
T due @ 7 and the render claiming to take 6 hours,
i can't run cubase whilst i'm rendering from vegas...
so i decide to set it up and render it on my old computer, a little slower but it can just be chugging along in the background while me & T work...
so i transfer over the 10 Gb reqcuired, then remember that i need to install these 2 things, then remember that the video from my new camera needs a different codec, than remember that the logo isn't in the folder for this week so i have to find it, then i have to get a new version of divx...
anyway, what with all this toing and froing i don't start rendering until 5pm...
i pop out to see floopy & T and then come back for uncle T, we don't use cubase in the end, just talking primarily about our recording on thursday night...
dinah gets home around 9, T goes by 11ish...
dinah is in bed by midnight, i stay up for another couple of hours...
the render over on the other computer is saying it needs 9 & a half hours, which means it's going to finish @ 2:30 am... almost 12 hours since i started it on the other computer...
i go to bed @ 2 having done some work on speak&spell which i'll tell you all about later...
the improvisation is now uploading x
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