Happy New Year!

I’ve got off to a bit of a false start to the New Year. Having first got ill between Christmas and New Year, then recovered, I went down properly with whatever nasty virus it was a couple of days after the obligatory late night party with good friends and board games. (I knew something wasn’t quite right when I needed coffee at 11pm to stay awake to see the new year in & get home safely). Apparently there’s a lot of sickness about at the moment – hopefully you’ve avoided it!

False start aside, next week it’s going to be all systems go, with another Sync Songwriting Challenge – this time only 5 days long. If we are producing full tracks in that time, it will be tougher than last time, when we had 8 days, but very rewarding. I’m really looking forward to getting stuck in.

The last few weeks have been a time to reflect on the ‘wins’ of 2018, and to consider goals for the new year. Obviously, releasing Survival was a major win – even though it feels like much longer than a year ago, it was only last May. I’ve been pleased with how well some of my songs from the album have been received, and with the feedback for Death Blinked First, the new single I put out in October.

The other big musical win for me has been working on my keyboard playing to try to become more proficient, which will give me more options for live performance. (It should also help with recording). I’m not yet at a stage where I would feel confident playing keys in front of an audience, but that is where I want to get to in the next few months – I’ve been using material I pre-prepared so far. I have wanted to be able to play ‘properly’ since I was about 10 years old, and I haven’t ever really cracked it. Earlier attempts have been with a classical approach, learning each hand separately then trying to make them work together, which is where things usually fell apart. This time, I’m approaching it as the guitarist that I am and making it all about the chords, working two-handed from the start to work on songs I already know. The songbooks are the same ones I used when I was learning guitar chords, which show the chord names over the piano part. There has been definite progress! I don’t have any plans to be able to play classical pieces, though. Just to be able to accompany singing with the right chords and improvise around that when the feeling takes me (without hitting any obviously bum notes) would make me very happy. If this approach helps me get to where I can sight-read some easier pieces, even better.

Before the drive to improve on keyboard got started, I took up playing mandolin in about mid October. I’ve had the instrument several years since a friend was cutting back on their collection and I couldn’t resist increasing mine. I had never quite got my head (fingers?) around it or put much time into learning the chords before. This time there’s been more of a purpose. I played this in public for the first couple of times just before Christmas, supporting my church’s service and some carol-singing outside a local supermarket. Sure, I made plenty of mistakes, especially at the open air event – my excuse is that my fingers and brain got a bit frozen. It was good fun, though, in spite of the chill, and we all warmed up afterwards with hot drinks and soup.

My next big musical win for 2018 was all the collaborations. I still have to complete various projects, but the ones that got finished relatively quickly are already out there and available to listen: my Bean Bag Remix of What Good Are the Stars by Manipulant, and synth work/song development on Durdle Door, by Matt Steady. I have a big ongoing project with some remixes for John Clark and several other smaller projects with other indie artists.

Finally, on the personal side, the big win has been the dramatic improvement in Dad’s health since he got out of hospital in February. It’s been great to see him recovering and his determination to get back to normal as far as possible. The icing on the cake was in mid-December, when the GP said he is happy Dad is fit to drive again. We still have some hurdles to jump over, but that milestone really made me feel happy.

So, that’s where things are up to… I’ll maybe post a bit more about some of my goals for 2019 soon, as it feels like there’s more to say, but this post is already a bit long. (It has been a while, after all…)

Crashing Down (part 2)

 It is about time I updated everyone on how things are going. My Dad is still in hospital: it’s been eight weeks already. He has been moved twice now and is back in the original hospital he started in. The move away was because they thought he would need an operation, but it was decided that wouldn’t be necessary, even though he had been as far as having a probable date for it and going nil-by-mouth on the day. So he’s been moved back nearer to home. It’s only a few miles difference, but the rush hour isn’t as horrific, and visiting hours are better for avoiding the worst traffic, so there’s a little less time pressure. I still haven’t met Hugh Laurie or his glamorous team…

We think Dad will be in hospital over Christmas and New Year now; they have identified the cause of his illness and he’s being monitored pretty closely to make sure the antibiotics are winning. We don’t know if he will fully recover, though, and his state can vary a lot between visits.  I’m the optimist and my Mum’s the pessimist. I’m looking at the good days and thinking that he could be nearly back to normal as soon as this infection is beaten, even if it does take a few more months; Mum’s looking at the bad days and talking about the worst-case outcomes.  Of course, either is possible, but Dad is a pretty determined individual, and given enough hope, he will fight this thing.

Doughty's Oil Mill in Lincoln will feature in the video for Run, by Manipulant, feat Stoneygate.

Sneak preview of the video for Run by Manipulant feat Stoneygate. Extra atmosphere provided by Doughty’s Oil Mill, a Grade II listed building in central Lincoln, UK.

I’ve been really tired myself, and am missing my creative work.  I have taken a few days respite, though, and have been working on a video for Manipulant’s track Run, which I contributed vocals to a few months back. I can’t share it with you yet, as it’s not quite finished, but will do once it’s up on YouTube.  It’s a bit different to the other videos I’ve made so far, because it’s a ‘straight video’ rather than an animation or being made from stills.

Just in case I don’t manage to post again in the next few days, please do have a lovely Christmas and New Year! I’m quite intrigued to find out what Christmas will be like in the hospital. All the wards seem to be making a big effort with decorations.  We are having a family get-together as normal, it will just be a bit different.

January So Far

It’s been a while since I posted a proper update, so I thought it was about time. January has been busy so far, mainly with publicising the Sleepwalker album. Plus there was a gig in Loughborough on 8th, where I provided the headline act to an open mic session, Cafe Live. I didn’t feel like parts of the gig went all that well, but I am always my own worst critic. It goes with the whole musician territory. People who were in the audience have told me they enjoyed my set, which was about 40-45mins long this time, longer than I am so far used to. I need to get more used to doing longer sets so I chill out more when I’m performing. It’s a strange feeling having so many pairs of eyes looking at you for so long!

I started off with some acoustic numbers with the guitar, including some Suzanne Vega covers – Gypsy and Knight Moves – and then moved on to the electronic tracks, singing and playing percussion or guitar over the backing that I pre-sequenced. There was a mix of album tracks and some I haven’t released, like Beautiful Deadly. Unfortunately we couldn’t project my videos this time, so I have yet to try these out with a live audience, but I’m thinking I’ll share some of the work I did to prepare video snippets for this gig on my youtube channel.

I’ve been continuing to research radio stations, podcasts and programmes that might be interested in my music, as well as blogs and other news outlets. This is quite time-consuming, but is starting to work. My hometown’s newspaper ran an article on me, and I had my first podcast play on Nottingham show the Sunday Alternative this weekend, with the title track to the Sleepwalker album. Do take a listen to the show if you haven’t already, I really enjoyed it. It’s mainly local Notts rock bands, but they slipped in my triphop/chillout track at the end, which was super-nice of them.

Out with 2016!

This year has been a tough year in a lot of ways and I’m sure it’s not just me who will be glad to see the back of this year at midnight tonight.

But what of the future?  I have a few goals for 2017, but haven’t set myself any resolutions at this point. I actually tend not to even think about New Year’s resolutions until the start of the new year, if I make any at all. I would rather think in terms of broader goal-setting and trying to improve habits than setting impossible hurdles up for myself with the inevitable result of feeling bad for not managing to keep jumping over them. That said, I did start out on one of these schemes last year, with a rare NY resolution which required completing a daily task. I started to flag in about mid February and by the end of March it was all over with a big guilt trip. The main reason for not picking it up again, apart from it taking longer each day than I’d been led to believe, was because I would see long lists of dates in the past with unfinished tasks every time I looked at it. Looking back, I feel pleased with myself that I made it beyond the first few weeks.

So, instead of resolutions as such, I think I’ll be thinking for a little while in January about what I want to achieve next year and how I might go about it. Sometimes plotting and scheming isn’t the best way to get started though – it can be easier to just write a list of specific things that need doing and then attack them in an order that makes some sort of sense. You can spend too long thinking and not enough time doing…

I’d be interested to hear how readers of this blog approach New Year: Do you have any strategies you’ve used for making or keeping resolutions? Do you even make them, or do you do something else to mark the passing of the old year and look forward into the new one?