yr4wk5

yr4wk5 rhodes improvisation from longcat on Vimeo.

recorded last saturday night, just as the pub was getting going,

the last bit of recording i did with the rhodes before TC broke it on monday... x

books & notes

but 1stly, just a quick note to say, although those 4 songs do indeed capture some of my emotions... it is not only through their lyrics, it's largely through their music & sound, and where the lyrics are reflecting how i feel it is not that the lyrics reflect how i feel about dinah, necessarily...

i know... quite odd to start with that, but me & dinah are in a note writing phase, and i don't have access to her kitchen work surface to leave my notes on...

she's not sleeping here at all now, it all happened quite quickly, one minute she was here, the next minute she was gone and the only way we communicate is through notes she leaves me when she pops in to pack when i'm not here...

odd... but you've got to do what you've got to do...

anyway books...

i popped into my friendly, neighbourhood bookshop yesterday to buy the next book by mark leyner... this is after a morning spent crying intermittently, something i've been wanting to do for weeks and that i've got a lot more of in the post...

the lovely S, on asking him which book to get next, told me they didn't have it in stock and couldn't get hold of it... so he went home to pick up his copy of this book to lend to me...

he went out of his way to not sell me a book...

this morning i noticed the book tokens that mum & dad had given me for my birthday poking out from my john sinclair book... and i knew the universe was looking out for me...

x

peter green

"i can't about help the shape i'm in,
i can't sing, i ain't pretty and my legs are thin,
but don't ask me what i think of you,
i might not give the answer that you want me to..."

so it's difficult, this whole breaking up with dinah thing...

funny that...

anyway, all kinds of different emotions are floating around and popping up to the surface these days...

and a surprising number of them are reflected in 4 songs by peter green from the late 60's...

so of course i'm listening to these songs a fair bit...

oh well,
albatross,
man of the world,
the green manalishi with the two pronged crown,

now, peter green was away from the music scene for long time but as i understand he's back...

and how much would i dearly love to do a weekly improvisation with peter green?

x

yr4wk4 mopho & revelation

yr4wk4 mopho & revelation from longcat on Vimeo.

i announce it in this video i made in the early hours of my birthday, so i announce it here & now...

me & dinah are no more... not as a couple... friends still... always will be i hope, and still living together - at least until august...

it's difficult, for both of us... a sad time...

x

36

i was reading in bed yesterday afternoon, dinah had brought me tea, toast, berocca & cake in bed and life was good...

i'm currently reading et tu, babe by mark leyner, and it pleased me no end when i read that he was 36 was he wrote it...

the night before i'd done my improvisation @ 2:34 am and i'd opened the card my brother sent me, telling me that 36 was a square number, a triangle number & a 13-gonal number...

sunday night i was in a pub with felinity & dinah & i arranged 36 mini-cheddars into 1st a triangle, then a square, but failed to arrange them in a 13-gonal shape...

this afternoon i took 36 pennies arranged them into a triangle, a square and a 13-gonal shape, although the 13-gonal is a bit rubbish...

yr4wk3 juno 6

yr4wk3 juno 6 from longcat on Vimeo.

just my voice and the juno...

while it was uploading i did this week's improvisation, just hours into my birthday, G out there in the world drinking to her drummers birthday x

yr4wk2

yr4wk2 moog, hammond, voice from longcat on Vimeo.

tuesday night...

i'm gaining...

x

Mark Leyner

so i was in my favourite bookshop and lovely S recommended a book to me - even while saying he knew it was dangerous recommending books to me...

the book was - my cousin - my gastroenterologist,

i started reading it late on wednesday night and i finished it late on thursday night...

it was out there, laugh out loud funny (and please note that it wasn't lol funny - it was laugh out loud funny), well written...

a bit of a rollercoaster of a book...

x

yr4wk1 hammond

yr4wk1 hammond organ from longcat on Vimeo.

the 1st one of the 4th year... just hammond x

yr3wk52 rhodes & cymbal

yr3wk52 rhodes & cymbal from longcat on Vimeo.

again getting to the wednesday before i've done the improvisation chores... slack...

this working lark really does take it out of one...

x

yr3wk51 moog & juno

yr3wk51 moog & juno from longcat on Vimeo.

i really love the canal video that's in this improvisation... it was a lovely sunny day coming home along the regents canal last thursday... my camera sat just on the waters edge, rush hour on the canal, in the 15 minutes i left it filming there were many, many people, walking or cycling past...

x

john berger sleeplessness

yesterday (tuesday) was such a long day on so little sleep that today (wednesday) i was very glad to sleep in and do very little...

i watched the 2nd half of the miniseries battlestar galactica... it had a tiny bit of not very good television in it, but largely it was very good...

the 1st series is arriving fairly soon...

i have high hopes of it...

but before i watched the thing i watched today, i made it over to jai shri krishna for the lunch time special, 12 - 2, i arrived @ 1:58...

whilst there i finished the book i've been reading from A to X by john berger - which was beautiful...

around about 2 they put the radio on in jai shri krishna, i think it's to get rid of the customers so they can close...

i finished the book with the radio on and whilst it was great, i felt i had to reread a bit of it... so i did, around 6ish, lying on the sofa with balthazara curled up beside me,

i'm going to lend the book to dinah's mum, i think she'll be interested in some of it, maybe she'll read the whole thing - although she reads an awful lot -

x

yr3wk50 bass clarinet & rhodes with Dan Spanner

yr3wk50 with Dan Spanner from longcat on Vimeo.

it really did take just over a day to render... it finished just before i left the house for my mental day of work yesterday - 9:30 - 9 in 2 different places...

so, wednesday, late for an improv but finally it's here x

1 day

woke up this morning (bom, bom, bom, bom, bom, bom)


and i was half hoping the video would be rendered...

but was not ready for the news that...

it's going to take (current estimate) 1 day...

24 hours...

that's big...

my mum in town... x

brief check in

i've just finished editing my weekly improvisation...

i've set it rendering and i'm going to bed... it'll probably take 10 hours or more to render... then tomorrow i'm going to check it out and re-edit it if necessary...

a little late but not the end of the world...

i'm playing chess online again, as of the 1st of june... it's been a few months without it and i'm enjoying it again...

also i'm watching big brother again... this time all the way from the top... me & dinah watched the 1st eviction today and we were both sad that it was B...

oh well...

also i've started work @ a new place, just 1 & a half days a week but it'll really help my finances...

ok... anyway... just checking in... sleep now x

yr3wk49 rhodes alone

yr3wk49 rhodes alone from longcat on Vimeo.

no words for quite some time...

i guess i'm just not in the habit of it...

x

yr3wk48 tonematrix & moog

yr3wk48 moog & tonematrix from longcat on Vimeo.

if you haven't played on this tonematrix i heartily recommend it, (you need the latest flash)...

enjoy x

yr3wk47 rhodes thru mopho

yr3wk47 rhodes thru mopho from longcat on Vimeo.

the music from a week & a half ago on a wednesday, the sky video from last week... monday...

x

yr3wk46 mopho juno 6

yr3wk46 mopho juno 6 improvisation from longcat on Vimeo.

i was in such a rush to get ready to "broadcast" by sunday that i forgot to do the last bit, putting it here & on my blog & my webspace...

the blue sky/clouds footage was shot on friday the 8th may, and it was when i was cycling home from there that all the phone calls, assumptions, photographing happened as told in the last post...

x

Charlotte Sarah

i spent an idyllic hour or so on the thames... filming footage for last week's improvisation that i'm putting together this weekend...

lowtide getting lower, me on a bank near the side of the thames, with receding water all around...


anyway as i'm getting ready to come home i start thinking about M & D and the impending event...

so i ring their house and they don't answer...


a little later i'm cycling through town and i can't stop myself from ringing D's mobile..

after 2 rings he sends me to the answerphone...


this is significant i say to myself and i start singing to myself about how the 8th of may is going to be my neice/nephew's birthday...

i leave the centre of the city and i can't stop myself from ringing felinity and we speak for 25 minutes or so...


by which time i'm in finsbury park...

i relax as i approach home and a couple of streets away i take these pictures roughly as my brand new baby niece Charlotte Sarah is being born...



x

fando e lis

so awhile ago, old friend J who mainly lives in mexico these days (i think) told us about this director whose name i don't know how to spell - jodorouski -

so we put his films on our lovefilm list...

many months later the 1st DVD arrives and we watched the 2 films on it yesterday, the 1st film was great - the cravat - short, very funny, arresting...

the 2nd film was disturbing... it seemed too long, it had lovely, great moving bits but also abusive, nasty bits too...

this scene i present to you is from about midway into the film, just as you're beginning to realise that all is not well...

x

yr3wk45 (honestly) mopho & drums

yr3wk45 Mopho & Drums from longcat on Vimeo.

last week i presented the LHC 2.1 video as yr3wk45, but it was only a brief lack of thinking...

last week thursday i recorded this here improvisation with lovely D on the drums, it's the 1st of the improvisations to go through the slightly longer allowed time frame, from here on in i'm improvising, then posting last week's improvisation on sunday...

it gives me more time to work on the sound/video for the improv's... it came about because the LHC 2.2 was taking forever and a day to get ready and i realised that sometimes i do need more than a few days to make it happen...

so LHC 2.1 went out the following week (when this one should have gone out by the old system), even though i had recorded this one already...

and in fact on friday i recorded the improvisation that's going out next sunday...

lovely thing with the juno & the mopho...

i hope it makes sense...

enjoy x

Longcat Hadron Collider version 2 chapter 1

Longcat Hadron Collider 2.1 from longcat on Vimeo.

there's an owl that toots at 7:45 am...

it woke me up...

so i came to see if chapter 1 of that large scale improvisation had uploaded...

and here it is x

great tits & apple blossom

apple blossom time

i'm down in blewbury for the weekend, came to see the blewbury opera which was great, noye's fludde by benjamin britten...

it's been a long time since i was here at this time of year, the apple trees in the garden are all in different moments of blossom, a couple of them are bright white with dashes of pink... lovely...

reminds me of the old song that's been floating around my head for a month or so anyway...

this house was built on one half of an orchard, cleared of most of it's trees of course, so i've always been around apples, and i love them...

but i was eating an apple last night and i couldn't remember the last time i'd had an apple...

it's just me & mum & dad, dinah was due to come down but she couldn't in the end...

i've been relaxing, developing sounds in my mopho which i decided to bring in the absence of the piano that used to be in this house but is now in me & dinah's flat...

went up the hill earlier, watched the sunset justlike i used to...

as i was walking up i was listening to this week's improvisation - recorded on thursday but not yet in video form... just me & D (drummer) me on the mopho...

a couple of times i'm playing a repeating line while changing the filter, the sound opening out...

and both times the sun came out from behind a cloud...

so i'm walking, with the sun behind me, and as the music expands outwards the light comes out on everything... the sun close to the horizon... everything i can see is lit up by this lovely bright spring sunshine...

quite something...

today i've been imagining doing a gig on my own, with all my sounds... with sequences from the mopho mixed with piano or organ, maybe singing and playing a harmony line on the organ...

imagination such a rich ground to get music from...

x

Longcat Hadron Collider version 2 chapter 2

Longcat Hadron Collider 2.2 - Yr3wk44 from longcat on Vimeo.

it took me so long to get this together, well, actually, just over a week, recorded last tuesday and brought to you here on this thursday...

it doesn't sound too bad does it...

but it's way late for last week's improvisation...

so today, i did an improvisation with lovely D, the drummer from the last LHC i did, also the man i bought the moog off... but it'll go out next week, this week's improvisation will be the 1st half of the LHC (2.1), so that in the future, i'll be improvising with at least a week to go before it's going out to the world, giving me time to deal with it all...

such a mad time of it i've had...

the other lovely D, omnichord player on both LHC's, helped me mix the one you see above here... both mixing and teaching me about mixing it was...

i recorded D's drums today and i'm quite confident i can mix them myself this time... using the drums we mixed together as a template...

so much time has passed and so much has happened... what to tell?

on the day after we did this improvisation i cycled down to the studio to meet a piano tuner, (who was great), but my bike decided to take that opportunity to completely lose all of it's brakes... leaving me midtown, no brakes...

so i gradually drifted down to the river, leaving it by waterloo bridge (the ladies bridge) - returning for it the next day with P who i'd been teaching, cycling with her along the river, slow enough to be able to stop with my feet... her playing tunes on her phone - including "rock me amadeus" by falco...

left overnight for a brake service in pretty much the only bike shop i trust these days and picked up the next day, good as new...

a consignment of tea arrived, a joint venture between me & spski... dilmah all the way...

floopy & T's cat cleo passed away on tuesday which has hit my beautiful dinah quite hard, cleo being the cat they had when she was a girl... and now that floopy & T are away she would normally be going round to feed cleo... sad times...

cleo is the cat who inspired my song "hunka munka poo bum"

yr3wk43

yr3wk43 moog rogue, mopho, piano from longcat on Vimeo.

recorded last tuesday... the day before the moog rogue went home to HK (and indeed the opus 3 came home to me)...

x

yr3wk42 mopho & rhodes

yr3wk42 rhodes & mopho from longcat on Vimeo.

from last wednesday, not an april fool...

unlike my post on that day, but what can you do? old traditions surely are worth keeping hold of...

anyway, the improv recorded at the studio, the 1st one in ages on the rhodes...

i just hope i can take advantage of the studio to let out all the musical ideas i have all the time x

piano geek

so the musical is going well,

just hitting it's stride with tonight's performance, the 5th, although we've got a long break before the next show...

i'm still making tiny mistakes and it irritates me, so i've set myself quite a grueling practice regime in which i do 2 handed scales just like i get my students to do, but while i get them to do a major, natural minor & harmonic minor scale on each note (gradually, throughout the year),

i'm getting myself to play all the modes of the major scale on each note...

i've been doing it for some time now (tonight) and i'm not quite half way through,

i do it in the order suggested by W A Mathieu in "harmonic experience", where each change of mode adds one more flat, staring with lydian:

lydian,
ionian (major),
mixolydian,
dorian,
aeolian (natural minor),
phrygian,
locrian,

i'm working on a tune at the moment and i've got my gigging keyboard out with the GEM module being the piano, insane, what with the piano right there, but that's the weird place i'm in right now...

i was just playing through the same list of modes, but improvising while holding down notes with my left hand, not to sound the notes but in order to free those (imaginary - digital) strings and let that strange reverb ring out... as in this section of this improvisation...

the tune is currently called hay fever, but that'll probably change, i can't decide if it's right yet, or whether a certain section needs changing, but i love it, i play it whenever i can...

being paid to improvise

so i just found out that a very large music management company really like my improvisations and they've offered to pay me £1000/week for improvising...

so i can give up my day job and concentrate on the improv's...

and indeed anything else i may want to do as improvising only takes up a day - or a day & a half, out of the week...

so i'm not going in to work tomorrow (today) or indeed the next day, i quit, effective immediately...

x