09th September 2010
First week at college finished. This course is just simply amazing, and am kind of gutted I didn't do it sooner (like, a couple of years ago, although I probably didn't have the motivation for it back then). My only minor beef is that on the first day they wanted volunteers from the guitarists on the course to play the Bass guitar instead, since we had 5 guitar players and only 2 bass players, so me (being me) said "Sure, I'll do it", which means I'm having to learn how to play a whole new instrument. But hey, it's not too dissimilar to guitar, and am enjoying it so far.
We have some gigs lined up already through the college: on October 14th there's an accoustic Blues evening that we're playing at, then on November 27th we're going to be playing some lounge jazz music (ie Fly me to the Moon, by Frank Sinatra) for diners in a restaurant. There's 5 gigs booked in total throughout the school year, they're just the closest ones.
On the course we had 19 pupils: 4 female singers, 1 male singer, 3 piano / keyboard players, 2 bass players, 3 drummers, and 5 guitarists. Unfortunately one of the piano players (a nice, but rather timid 16 year old girl who has never performed for an audience before) decided after the first day that she didn't feel up to doing the course as she didn't have enough confidence in her abilities (didn't help that one of the other piano players is amazing and doesn't know it), so she's already left :( poor thing, she was sweet too.
I did have an ego boost whilst messing around in one of the practice rooms today during lunch time. There are two amazingly good guitarists on the course, one doing his grade 8 musicianship, the other one a Prog Rock and Jazz nut, both technically a lot better than me. Whilst jamming though, all of the girls on the course that were listening said they prefer listening to me play the guitar than those two, because my sound is "sexier" (the reason for this being that whilst they can both play lots of notes, in the correct order, incredibly fast and accurately, I am far better at making the notes that I can play sound perfect, both in pitch and tone: when pumping out some bluesy rock solos I can make my guitar sound almost x-rated, which is something neither of them have learned to do quite yet. Give it time though and they may catch up). But still... *smug look*
During the week I spend 10 of my 15 study hours in one of the rehearsal rooms playing with my chosen band (or getting lessons on my chosen instrument). And I found out today that, after next week myself (and the other over-19s in the class) don't need to attend group tutorial, so that's freed up an extra hour for us (means we don't start on a thursday until 11am, woohoo). All in all I do believe that I'm going to really enjoy this course, and everyone on it is really nice.
We have some gigs lined up already through the college: on October 14th there's an accoustic Blues evening that we're playing at, then on November 27th we're going to be playing some lounge jazz music (ie Fly me to the Moon, by Frank Sinatra) for diners in a restaurant. There's 5 gigs booked in total throughout the school year, they're just the closest ones.
On the course we had 19 pupils: 4 female singers, 1 male singer, 3 piano / keyboard players, 2 bass players, 3 drummers, and 5 guitarists. Unfortunately one of the piano players (a nice, but rather timid 16 year old girl who has never performed for an audience before) decided after the first day that she didn't feel up to doing the course as she didn't have enough confidence in her abilities (didn't help that one of the other piano players is amazing and doesn't know it), so she's already left :( poor thing, she was sweet too.
I did have an ego boost whilst messing around in one of the practice rooms today during lunch time. There are two amazingly good guitarists on the course, one doing his grade 8 musicianship, the other one a Prog Rock and Jazz nut, both technically a lot better than me. Whilst jamming though, all of the girls on the course that were listening said they prefer listening to me play the guitar than those two, because my sound is "sexier" (the reason for this being that whilst they can both play lots of notes, in the correct order, incredibly fast and accurately, I am far better at making the notes that I can play sound perfect, both in pitch and tone: when pumping out some bluesy rock solos I can make my guitar sound almost x-rated, which is something neither of them have learned to do quite yet. Give it time though and they may catch up). But still... *smug look*
During the week I spend 10 of my 15 study hours in one of the rehearsal rooms playing with my chosen band (or getting lessons on my chosen instrument). And I found out today that, after next week myself (and the other over-19s in the class) don't need to attend group tutorial, so that's freed up an extra hour for us (means we don't start on a thursday until 11am, woohoo). All in all I do believe that I'm going to really enjoy this course, and everyone on it is really nice.