Most of the night was spent drumming. I don’t do it often enough, actually sitting at a drum kit and bashing away. I have never had a kit lesson, only a tuned percussion one. Still, being self has positives and negatives. No one expects you to be brilliant for example and then they are pleasantly […]
Well, the lovely Val from Grange Moor tweaked my arrangement of Heroes this week. And while I was initially sceptical about her changes, it made the piece more playable for the group. It actually sounds like the song now. I would never have begun the project if it hadn’t been a specific request from an […]
Today was another good day at work. I’m slowly ramping up the difficulty of the tasks I’m setting and so far the majority of the class are sticking with me. I had to pull a few people along today though! All will be well. I think the summer holiday hasn’t helped – the majority of […]
Having now sat through all 33 Eurovision entrants for this year’s Swedish based contest by watching both semi-finals on BBC Three, I can safely say that fans of averagely bad music will not be disappointed. Having said that the songs from yesterday night’s semi-final (I was at band, so catching up on it today) were […]
Tonight was a lovely, wonderful sounding rehearsal with Morley & District Concert Band. We played a decent range of music and I feel there were a few things we could polish up enough for the summer concerts we have arranged. This period of time is good to try out lots of different material to assess […]
Tonight was the first Grange Moor Brass Band rehearsal this year. And with the last four weeks before Christmas all based around carols, and many times since stopping rehearsals out playing carols, it was nice to be out of the house playing once again. Being a percussionist in a brass band is not the greatest of […]
Following on from The Shape Of Song comes this visualisation of JS Bach‘s Toccata and Fugue in D minor (BWV 565). The Toccata and Fugue in D minor is a piece of organ music believed to have been composed by Johann Sebastian Bach sometime between1703 and 1707. It is one of the most famous works in the organ repertoire, and […]
Later this month, my favourite group of all time, The Divine Comedy – well, Neil Hannon – releases a new album, Bang Goes The Knighthood. The first single will be The Indie Disco. And it’s a cracker! You can watch the video here (and here, in HD) I actually cannot wait for the album…
Oh my word, this is superb. Take 20 musical YouTube videos, start them at any time, mix them using the volume sliders and you’ve made your own song. In Bb 2.0 is a collaborative music and spoken word project conceived by Darren Solomon from Science for Girls, and developed with contributions from users. It’s just […]
The music of Brad Skistimas has been a part of my life for a good long while now – I can’t actually remember how I stumbled upon him. Whatever, he’s a wholly independent artist who releases his own albums from the money in his pocket. Over the next month (until August 16th) he is partnering […]