ambient

I wasn’t ‘taking a dump’ on anyone, absolutely no need to get so worked up. From my personal experience I wouldn’t take an instrument there. I took a very expensive instrument to him for a simple job and he messed it up. Have you actually used him? I also know someone else who went there and wasn’t exactly happy with the result. Unfortunately I found out afterwards.

From my personal experience the only place I’d use would be JD guitars in Birmingham, a little further away maybe, but they do a superb job.

Don’t go there.

I totally agree, I actually tend to use Thomann, I only use Amazon if something is needed in a hurry. Though I do buy books from them; particularly academic texts, simply because they're so expensive from anywhere else. I tend to buy used ones from the Amazon marketplace.

Yes, that kind of thing. This wasn't for my PhD, but it's the kind of thing that is. I just find it fascinating taking a recording of an everyday sound, and turn it into something totally different.

It'll be very interesting to hear what others do with the same source material. I was involved with a project called Cities and Memories last summer, a one-off thing in conjunction with the British Library National Sound Archive called Sounding Nature. You chose a recording and worked a piece based from it. That was interesting; hearing how others had approached the project and composed their pieces.

Not a band, but both Michael Manring and Steve Lawson. Hearing them I realised that bass isn’t just a role, but a fabulous solo instrument in its own right.

Thanks for listening. Most people will think what the....? It’s something I’ve got more and more into, and at the same time further and further away from regular music. I realised nearing the end of my music degree that it was sound that I loved, not playing.

Possibly not of interest to a great many people, also possibly the strangest yet that I've shared on here. I was invited to do this by a small Essex based record label called Courier Sound. They do some absolutely beautiful releases on cassette, CD and vinyl, they're always fantastically well presented, and the music is amazing. They use a machine called a Silhouette Cameo 3 to cut intricately shaped designs into their packaging and sleeves; hence the title of this. It's composed entirely from a stereo recording of the cutting machine in action; I haven't used any other sound material or instrumentation. They asked other people to work using the same sound material, the various versions will be collated together and released by them later in the year.

I used to just use a simple metronome. Lots of stuff you can do with one, have it click at 30bpm, but play at 120bpm for example. The single click can be on any beat, you have to imagine the missing ones.

I’ve given up worrying about buying from bricks and mortar shops. Their customer service generally tends to be rubbish. For music gear stuff I either buy from Thomann or Amazon. Anything else it’s from Amazon.

It’s beautiful. I’m really looking forward to playing it sometime.

I'm studying for my PhD in electroacoustic composition at the University of Birmingham. As part of the project I've started building a website which will form a part of my final portfolio, the idea (actually my supervisors idea) is that it will connect everything I'm doing together; the blogs of my journeys, photos, descriptions of the places that I visit, maps of sound walks, field-recordings, and compositions. It's still very much in its early stages, I've never done a website before, other than a Bandcamp page. Comments would be most welcome, particularly if you've been to or are planning on visiting the places, even more so if you live there. The only sounds up so far are from a very recent visit to Belgium, I've got some from a trip to Amsterdam to upload later. There's a piece of music that I'm working on from Amsterdam that is up there too. I'm reasonably happy with how the site is starting to look. I managed to find an app that works how I want it to for the maps; it kind of does what I want anyway, I need to experiment with it. I've realised that there's going to be a fair amount of duplication across the pages and the content; I don't want people to have to skip to another page to see some photos, or to listen to something, so I'm putting photos and sounds in the sound walks section that will also appear on the photos and sounds sections. Some will also probably be in the blog section. Some people I guess might just want to look at the photos, or listen to the sounds. I'm using the free site at the moment, you can add photos but sound has to be via a link to Soundcloud, so I'll probably upgrade to a paid version in the next day or so. It's pretty versatile. You can have an image rather than blank behind the text for instance, I thought that looked good, but made reading the text awkward at times. I'd really, really like people to comment on it, and hopefully interact by adding comments to the contents, especially people who've either been, are planning on going or live in any of the places that I'm visiting. https://placesandsound.wordpress.com/sound-walks-and-maps/

Could you get some made for it by someone like Kent Armstrong?

The Overwater 7 string was something like 7.5kg. A huge sound.