appearing rooms

this is from last wednesday (10 days ago), when me & felinity didn't go to the cinema, i've put it with the improvisation i did @ tin pan alley studio and i've messed with the video speed...

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longcat weekly 54 (yr2 wk2)

miss moneypenny writes

quite a day...

from this (above) this morning to getting the tube to south wimbledon and doing the flute thing...

which was so scary i managed to do my back in in some odd way...

to having a great random conversation on the tube sparked by a joke about the smoking ban... the stranger was on both the northern line and then the victoria line, and it turned out that he used to play the trombone just as i did, we touched on the oppressed peoples increased level of community as well as the johnny briggs theme tune...

all very marvellous and my tube travel made even better by beginning the waves by viginia woolf, which i am reading in tandem with my beautiful, gorgeous, talented, deeply sexy, highly intelligent and caring girlfriend who is typing this for me under dictation and not adding any of her own words...

because i am laid up in bed with the aforementioned bad back...

i don't know what else to say, i mean that's all really...

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finding a way

just met with Z, the flautist...

final rehearsal before tomorrow, and i'm having to lower my sights...

because she's being examined and not me it's alright for me to drop to just one hand for some of it, and although i'm a little disapointed in myself for not getting all the way to both hands all of it, it is a weight of my mind that i can do the gig...

so i'm meeting her again @ the place @ 10:30, dawn project @ 8:30, it'll be tight but i'll get there, and then there'll either be a spare piano or not to practice with, exam @ 11:20, off to hammersmith directly after...

off to see R straight after that...

then a repeat of last friday's PRU experience...

it doesn't stop...

going over to T's to pick up my shades & a cd of my strings now x

2 steps forward 1 step back

but at least it's better than 1 forward and 2 back...

so i'm playing the piano a fair bit these days...

no

i'm playing the piano a hell of a lot today...

a moment came this evening when i was at work still using their piano and i started gaining on the pieces...

yesterday they had just been beating me, today i'm coming close up to them, they can feel my breath on their necks but they're running like anything to get away from me...

i was jubilant once i felt close to them and i went out and got myself some chocolate, only to return and find they'd gained a couple of lengths on me again...

just played the hardest one to dinah, harder playing to someone than playing on your own, and these music exams can be fairly terrifying... and i played it through, making loads of mistakes, losing the tempo many times, but this is the way,

tomorrow i'll be playing them all to her at intervals until i can do them perfectly, and then down to londonbridgework to meet the flautist and then onto T's to pick up my shades and the string recording from sunday...

i intend to get an improvisation in there as well tomorrow,

i both love and hate this process, love how it comes together, hate how hard it is...

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piano monday

i don't yet have it, because i walked the violinists home, and didn't hang around to get a DVD of my brand new strings recording.. but it exists...

it went very well, much longer than anticipated but that's often the case with recording sessions... i was in my element, being able to read music and communicate with the string players, by the time we got around to my one they were pretty tired and it wasn't the most perfect string quartet rendition of my arrangement but it was still sex on a stick and i didn't have the heart to get them to do it again, (i may regret that later)...

so i slept like a log last night after the session, got up today and lazily set to work learning up the tunes for thursday's flute exam, the first rehearsal was this evening and it was good, i couldn't play any of the 3 pieces properly but there's still time, we're rehearsing again on wednesday and i just have to be perfect on that day...

so i'll be getting up early tomorrow and playing my arse off all day, stopping only to do some paperwork for londonbridgework then going into said work to talk about paperwork, playing piano in the breaks...

the hardest piece is damn hard... the other 2 should be alright with enough practise, the hard one will just take more practise...

ok, once more around the 2nd hardest then i'm going to bed...

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strings sunday

so, on friday T told me that the string session had to be tonight, sadly i'll be missing part of W(floopy)shaman's birthday bash for it but needs must...

so today, as well as doing my customary sunday thing with dinah, learning up another part of the handel piece that's hard, i'm putting together my string arrangement for anti-stardust...

i've been working on T's strings for a few sessions and i'm taking the opportunity of the session to record my own stuff as well, just this one tune...

it still could fall off the end of the session but i don't think it will...

so here i am, not a whole heap of sleep after a great night for me, dinah & Gordy @ dr K's... running MIDI strings through cubase, that will then convert into printed notes, that will then sit in front of real string players that will then become part of anti-stardust...

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solstice improvisation yr2 wk 1

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solstice dawn project

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work dribbles in

head full of paperwork today, no fun...

but i did get to meet with yimkin and talk about antistardust... the strings plan is pretty groovy it seems, he agrees that it would be great, (did i even tell you about that?)

anyway, met with felinity after, which was delightful as ever, strolled about, taking in an obscure christian short film, the outskirts of the diehard 4.0 première, the fountain installation at the RFH, the bar/balcony while iggi pop played a gig...

and work, yes work,

probably going to budapest in august to teach search & reflect, that came up today, and i got a phone call from someone my ex-apprentice J knows (oh J, i miss you) who needs a piano accompanist for his daughters grade 6 flute exam next thursday...

just been playing through the music and it's tricky, i'm going to have to learn it in a few days... not my scene normally but i so need the work...

so excited about the strings for stardust - anti-stardust rather...

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routes

i cycled 11.5 miles last night to get home from felinity's place in tooting, (and in fact i followed a very similar route to the outward journey, so it was 23 miles in all yesterday), & if i cycle to work on friday (a days work in a PRU in kidbrooke, covering for a friend) then that journey will be 11.6 miles...

a handy comparison, knowing that it took me 80 minutes to get home last night, that the guy whose work i'm doing on friday said it takes him 90 minutes to get there from roughly where i live...

i guess it depends on the weather report...?

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cafepress

i can't quite believe it's happening, but i've just finalised my 1st ever cd for sale on cafepress...

it is a cd of the 1st 6 rhodes improvisations (being week's 5, 6, 12, 17, 19 & 21 of the longcat weekly improvisation) and i began making it in response to a comment on week 6 over on youtube, (the one with a ludicrous amount of views) saying how nice it would be to have that one on cd...

W(floopy)shaman helped me out with the design and it's now ready for buying... $8.99...

i don't know what else to say about it... just... look!

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dawn project videoblog week 14

from yesterday morning x

week 52

oh yes, damn right...

52 weeks,

the longcat weekly improvisation has been on the road for 52 weeks now...

and that's one whole year...

wierd huh?

rhodes, voice, tape delay x

bitten

our sleep cycle is way behind these days, and tomorrow is going to be a little hard because of that... but no more hard than it's been for awhile...

but once again this morning i woke after midday and i'd really intended to be out and cycling by that time...

i made it out the house with a cheese sandwich and a miniroll in me to go see T and work on his string arrangements, the sky was grey so i wore jeans and a black T-shirt, by the time i got down there the sun had come out and it was a glorious day, me in my all black outfit, with my various different bites chafing away at me...

bites... i hate them...

the other night i was hard at work marking when i should have been over @ T & W(floopy)shaman's i heard the tell-tale sound of a mosquito in here so i covered up my skin with all sorts of clothes on that hot night and got back to work... stopping after awhile to trap it in a glass and take it out... but not before it had bitten me a few times...

then i became aware that balthazara was entertaining a few visitors (hence the deflea last night) and every time i touch her i get bitten on my hand (i have 4 flea bites on my fingers so far)...

anyway, that's behind me now i hope, i'm just baring the marks and trying not to itch...

so i settled down to work on T's strings and it was productive, i'm really looking forward to the string session which'll be fairly soon, so much an area i want to grow in, string arranging, brass arranging... all that..

it all took longer than planned but it always does, i came home, still only a few chocolate biscuits in me in addition to when i'd set off...

popped over to W(floopy)shaman's to pick up the camera for the dawn project and chatted awhile with him then returned to find dinah had prepared the most delicious meal - her version of someone else's leak crumble... oh it is truly wonderful...

just about shaking off the ill-humour that i was under when i got in, hunger i guess it was...

and i've just realised something odd about my dawn project, i'm almost half way through the tape that i thought would last me the whole year and i've just found that the early weeks i was only filming for 30 seconds, somehow i slipped into filming whole minutes a month or so back... which is pointless if the early bits are only half that, so it's back to 30 second filming tomorrow morning... sorry, i guess it's a bit boring to talk about this technicality but what goes on inside my brain is what i write about...

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deflea

2nd time this summer,

she's looking at me now with suspicion but she is letting me stroke her...

tomorrow she'll love me again...

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anti stardust

very much in love with my beautiful girl this evening...

handed over a short notice load of marking that i collected on friday today...

began a new tune while teaching T for the last time, this weekend has been largely taken up marking and working out/writing stardust...

a dark lyric that i'm writing... kind of anti stardust...

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week 51

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dawn project videoblog week 13

made it out into the world this morning to do this but then once home couldn't get to work...

foolish financially but the right thing to do x

improvisation blanket - jade fox are invisible

a student over @ hammersmith was asking about html and it prompted me to start posting the improvisation blanket animated gif as a comment on a few different people's myspaces...

something i should be doing more of because it seems to me that it generates interest...

it always surprises me how few people have been to the improvisation blanket... i know it's of primary interest to me but... even after i'd posted the gif a few places as a link to it it's still had very, very few visits from non me personages...

anyway, above is how it looks currently, only bigger, (actually this is how it looks on my screen resolution but i think you can have more videos per line with more resolution)... it's handy for me to be able to see it now because i'm listening through all of it... currently on week 25 of 50, probably will have done week 51 before i'm through...

it's nice to be able to see @ a glance which instrument each week is...

and jade fox...

i mentioned a little while ago that i'd bumped into the guitarist & the bassist in the street... oh, it appears i didn't mention it... well i did, i was quite drunk and they told me that jade fox was no more and they had a new band... well i've finally taken the trouble to check out the new band - the invisibles - and they are pretty damn great... being produced by matthew herbert as well which is pretty classy...

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improvisations

spent yesterday in tin pan alley studio (denmark street) recording for T... it was a long day and i hadn't slept much the night before but recording music is a beautiful thing and i gave it all i had...

carrying the keyboard home killed me a little and what with the whole lack of sleep thing that i'd been keeping at bay hitting me all at once when i got in i was a bit of a wreck...

but the day was great, meeting S, the engineer and owner of the studio, was really nice, he has a great attitude in the studio, made the whole thing work very well...

also playing with the band, including K who has recently joined as our drummer... very good stuff...

as a band we played 4 tracks, then afterwards i went over three of them overdubbing a piano track, and being as we were there and these lovely mics were already set up on the grand piano i decided to do my weekly improvisation there as well, with T & S's permission...

but by then my camera had run out of batteries and i didn't have any on me, feeling too broke to buy some specially... which maybe now i regret... maybe not...

so i recorded an improvisation anyway, it's just not video'd so isn't week 51...

it's 6 minutes long and it's sitting over there on my pace right now if you want to hear it...

i'm listening to week 11 of my weekly improvisation and although it would take 11 hours 6 minutes to listen to the entirety of my weekly improvisation up to now i am doing it, probably not all in one go...

wole soyinka

a couple of early mornings and long days this week meant that i was very keen to sleep in this morning...

before dinah went off to the synagogue this morning she brought me a tea which i was keen to get at least one sip of, spski poked his head round the door when she delivered it, spski before you're ready for him is a peculiar experience...

they faded away and i woke up a little later for the sip that i wanted... then back down into sleep...

i was down in the kitchen making my second tea several hours later and the word woye soyinka came into my voice as a rhythm... a 5 rhythm with a 3 underneath it (must record it before it goes) and i was reminded that the woye soyinka interview that i took part in would now be available on the net...

so hear i am, sipping that tea, listening to the nobel laureate, the same words i heard on felinity's birthday, with every question hoping the voice will be mine...

once it's done i'm meeting dinah @ penny's for our sunday veggie roast, moved forward by a day because i'm in the studio all day tomorrow with T's band, and after eating i intend to cycle off to brentford... for the one of the last showings of the scott walker film in a cinema i don't know... waterman's...

...

just reached the end of the wole soyinka interview and there is no me... x

longcat rhodes & voice improvisation week 50

here it is, recorded this morning and only just now uploaded, just before midnight...

i mention the G8 climate change meeting next week so why not take a moment to sign the petition if you haven't already...

the improvisation is quite ranty... one of those weeks...

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dawn project nonvideoblog week 12

this time i took the camera but without the batteries... good job the videoblog is only a secondary activity...

it was one of those nights, me & dinah had been over @ T & W's and we'd drank quite a bit and i hadn't risen before midday once so far this week, so my 7:30ish dawn project rise was always going to be a shock...

& my body decided to spread the waking up over many hours...

1st @ around 3 am, accompanied with the knowledge that i'd missed the dawn project and not knowing how to tell the time from my phone which was resolutely saying 3:07, when it was clearly 8ish...

that kind of dream logic that lingers...

then again @ 5am...

then @ 7, even as i closed my eyes again i knew i wouldn't get much after 7...

so i made it out there, armed with umbrella, waterproof trousers, coat... turned out to be lovely, lovely, lovely and i performed my two shots, pootling around on the very muddy disused... rolling up @ T & W's to drop off the camera and the tripod and sip tea and eat toast which has become a tradition over the last month or two...

i came home intending to do my improvisation but i had to do some archiving before i could begin, both in my PC and in my little camera, so it was very close to when i should have left for work when i started playing... dinah had slowly arisen with the mocha i gave her... strange pleasure, waking her up slowly and deliciously...

i did do the improvisation but i had to leave it completely unrendered in any format and go to work... odd... half the job done with that hanging over me all day in a wierd way...

cycling was beautiful, on the way home i was eager to get editing but i couldn't help stopping and taking a few pictures...




beautiful day it turned out to be...

that walk

10.8 miles...

of which 6.8 miles were on foot...

(4 miles on the train)...

i did indeed listen to all that i intended to listen to...

a heady dose of strange era scott...

in the rain...

walking with scott

it is late may...

late may!

and it's cold & wet...

perfect weather for taking out my shuffle with 3 hours of scott walker for a walk,

since yesterday i've been listening to all of his original material from the 60's, i now have the 4 tracks from the 70's walker brother's albums and then the album from each successive decade...

a strange walk it will be x

still

just got back from our sojourn over @ T & W 's and we were pleasantly surprised to find the house completely empty, evidence of the party still all around but empty of party people... won't last long but it's lovely...

bank holiday weekend and no real plans... watched the program on scott walker last night through T&W's catchup TV thing, just made me want to see the film even more but the last showing i can find was earlier this afternoon in clapham...

inspirational man... broken...

lovely to see balthazara on returning x

punctures & gothernberg

Continent : Europe
Country : Sweden
State/Region : Vastra Gotaland
City : Gteborg
Lat/Long : 57.7167, 11.9667


as promised... and gratifyingly pretty it is... Gteborg, or Göteborg, or Gothernburg...

Sweden...

no facts for you, just pleasingly a little like gotham... batman's home...

thankyou oh 6333rd visitor for drawing our attention to this beautiful place...

and now punctures...

3 of them, all on my back wheel which is a real pain...

my front wheel has teflon coating and seems relatively impervious to punctures, but my back wheel is imperial rather than metric so they don't do that kind of tire for it... and it does get punctures... oh yes it does...

so 1stly, a couple of weeks ago, i got a puncture when i still had money, i took it to cycle surgery... they fixed it... marvellous...

the 2nd one came right in my recent no money period and i tried to fix it but messed it up... i had to wait until i had money again to take it in to cycle surgery again, and while they were fixing it they reconnected my gears wrongly...

so on saturday when i picked the bike up the gears were wrong, and the gear lever was very resistant... which meant i pulled too hard on it and sheared the cable...

so i took it into cycle surgery on tuesday and they said - oh look, your cable is sheared, i said yes, but it's sheared because you reconnected my gears wrongly so are you going to pay for it to be fixed? and they said....

no.

so i'm never going there again, cycle surgery on holloway road ladies and gentlemen, bullshit service... (forgive my language)...

there's a bike shop just round the corner from where i work in shoreditch so i decided to go there this morning, drop it off before work and pick it up around now... get them to rectify cycle surgery's mistakes...

i grabbed my bike this morning and lo & behold... my 3rd puncture... back wheel... no time to fix it, public transport into work, no rectifying just yet for my little bike...

gigging tonight @ the metro with T's band...

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dawn project non videoblog

the camera arrived last night from lovely E, i got up this morning, i cycled up there...

it all went fine except that i left my little camera @ home so no videoblog this week...

in it's place will be the little video i made while W(floopy)shaman was gallivanting about tying trees to other trees on sunday...

and while i'm here, i'd like to welcome our 6333rd visitor who will be along at some point today most likely...

a little view of where you live will adorn this blog good reader... all in good time...

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week 49 - tuned

yesterday a very nice man came round and tuned my piano (as well as T's piano)... meanwhile i was @ work assessing my students perform music they'd been writing in the past 3 weeks or so without me...

one thing led to another and before i knew it i'd already had 3 pints and it was being suggested that we move on to the 4th...

i stumbled home after the 5th pint and fell asleep with dinah, mumbling the words, i'll make you a mocha, that'll wake you up...

i remember thinking, wouldn't it be nice if i could just fall asleep like this?, one hand on the floor, my face pressed into the bed...

so today i've been a little broken, and although i claim not to know why in the improvisation - those 5 pints had something to do with it...

rhodes and piano... in perfect harmony...

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