Rosie C

My previous teacher would not teach pop songs as she said "they are hard to play because they're so badly written" - she was a graduate of the Royal College of Music though, and friends with Alfred Brendel, so that's perhaps understandable. In contrast my current teacher is a professional jazz pianist and he's opened up so much to me - working out what you need to play in a piece, without playing all the notes. Chord substitutions, and missing out the less important notes in a chord etc. Improvising a left hand part and changing that depending on whether there is a bass player. All very useful for playing in a band, but perhaps not recommended for ABRSM exams!

I found a new 'shelf' for my Elf today

It is. I have to admit it's been a bit of a learning curve, but I'm getting there now!

The very last pub gig we did with our Renaissance-rock band was 18 months ago - as well as the usual early stuff we had a few of 20th century covers on the set list - Moonlight Shadow, Lightning Tree, All is Found, Meet Me on the Corner, etc. Once we'd played those the audience were asking for more songs that they knew. So we stopped taking any pub bookings as I'm not doing it as a job and I want to play music I'm interested in. We get fewer bookings, but they've been awesome - historic buildings, medieval fairs, etc.

Oh, yes, I forgot to mention the ritualistic sacrifice at the end of the evening! 😉

Oh, I so need those! Our speaker stands get yellow/black hazard tape stuck on the front-most leg for some gigs.

I tried it today. The first strange thing was my Kaka ukulele bass just doesn't play nice with the AH300. There's a high pitched interference that sounds a bit like RF interference. My other instruments don't do this, so I'm thinking it must be the Kala's pre-amp circuits. Anyway, I switched to my Squier Jazz which is a much better choice anyway. I actually didn't like the 15" on its own much, the sound was too muddy and felt like it was reacting slowly. I loved the sound of the 2x10" cabinet on its own though. That's definitely the one to take.

Celebrating the old ways! Pouring cider over the roots of apple trees and singing songs to bring a good harvest, scaring away woodland spirits by banging saucepans, drinking mulled cider and Morris dancing!

Awesome skills! Can I ask, did you glue the carbon fibre rod into the routed channel?

Playing at a local Wassail this evening. I'm right in front of the camera.

I have tried to stick with old-school 5-pin DIN MIDI, but after some unsuccessful studio sessions with descant recorder, I've just bought an Akai 'electronic wind instrument' (EWI). The budget model only has USB midi - plugging it into my MIDI hub didn't work, so I had to do some learning about USB hosts, and USB clients. The upshot is I changed my U4MIDI WC hub for the H4MIDI WC which includes a USB host. Bingo! Now the EWI works through the Roland XV3080. I'll try to record a video over the weekend. Inside the rack: ... and on the front, a shiny-new 'usb host' port. Annoyingly I didn't think to see if there was a black one. Oh well!

We use generic foam windshields with our Sennheisers - helps with wind noise when we play outdoors, possibly helps a bit with pop filtering. Also, they're colour-coded with matching cables and coloured tape on the amp. That makes it really easy for competent people who aren't familiar with our kit to help set up - red mic, red cable, red mixer channel.

Our local Wassail & Mari Lwyd is next weekend and our Morris band will be playing throughout much of the festivities, including leading (with the choir) a public sing-along in the early evening - Farmer's Boy, Gluouscetershire Wassail, Cwm Rhondda, Calon Lan, Sweet Caroline, Delilah, Sosban Fach, etc. We had our first practice with the choir last night - about 40 of them! With pouring rain and an upstairs rehearsal room, I kept things portable with my bass ukulele and Roland Street Cube EX. It went very well - the choir were well-practiced and it didn't take long to synch together. One more practice then the wassail. There's talk of there being a couple of thousand people there, though the band will mostly be on smaller amps. I'm torn between the practicality of bass uke + TE Elf, versus making the effort [of] taking my double bass and my Trace AH300. The photos and video will still be there after the back pain has subsided!

A splendid plan! On 24th January I'm playing at a Wassail and we're going to lug half of it along. I just need to choose which half!