Music
I'm not quite a groupie but my favourite solo bass player ever, Michael Manring is playing a gig more or less walking distance from my house, it'll be a duet gig with Steve Lawson who is one of the UK's best solo bass players (and plays from time to time with one of my workmates who is a drummer and live looped rhythm musician of some note.)
Also, I apparently play guitar in a band now: (http://www.myspace.com/volumebrothers). Now all I need to do is learn the songs, not my thing really, tongue in cheek rock and roll and bluesy folk. And we have gigs and stuff, a couple planned around the end of year. A nice bunch of guys, I tried to talk my way out of it, saying, "I don't have an amp at the moment", (I'm practicing with headphones and a neat little effects box), but that doesn't matter, there are plenty of spare amps. So, "I don't have a car", even better, one guy in the band is local council member and advocate of cycling and less car use, and another is a vocal member of some environmental action group, car pooling is apparently cool. The live drummer is a workmate of mine (not the same drummer mentioned above) and I think I made the cut on the strength of my mp3 collection, he picked over my backup hard disk and stopped to skyped the band leader that I have the complete back catalogue of some favourite singer-songwriter.
Also guitar players looking for a bit of inspiration for practice check out the lessons on http://www.truefire.com/ I'm looking squarely at you certifiedwaif, there are a bunch of lessons on jazz rhythm that seem really genuinely useful and usable.
Anyway, I'm also learning to compose with looping tools, Sony Acid because I'm presently a MSWindows user, and finding it feeds back into a much more musical approach to my practice, thinking very much about playing songs because I'm trying to write stuff rather than just noodling.
Learning a lot fast which is always satisfying.
Also, I apparently play guitar in a band now: (http://www.myspace.com/volumebrothers). Now all I need to do is learn the songs, not my thing really, tongue in cheek rock and roll and bluesy folk. And we have gigs and stuff, a couple planned around the end of year. A nice bunch of guys, I tried to talk my way out of it, saying, "I don't have an amp at the moment", (I'm practicing with headphones and a neat little effects box), but that doesn't matter, there are plenty of spare amps. So, "I don't have a car", even better, one guy in the band is local council member and advocate of cycling and less car use, and another is a vocal member of some environmental action group, car pooling is apparently cool. The live drummer is a workmate of mine (not the same drummer mentioned above) and I think I made the cut on the strength of my mp3 collection, he picked over my backup hard disk and stopped to skyped the band leader that I have the complete back catalogue of some favourite singer-songwriter.
Also guitar players looking for a bit of inspiration for practice check out the lessons on http://www.truefire.com/ I'm looking squarely at you certifiedwaif, there are a bunch of lessons on jazz rhythm that seem really genuinely useful and usable.
Anyway, I'm also learning to compose with looping tools, Sony Acid because I'm presently a MSWindows user, and finding it feeds back into a much more musical approach to my practice, thinking very much about playing songs because I'm trying to write stuff rather than just noodling.
Learning a lot fast which is always satisfying.