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Last thing on Friday I helped young start up and successful contemporary arts organisation Addict Dance Company build a free WordPress site. Building a website using this CMS is not a hard job, anyone can do it.

Thats the point. Oh yes and its free.

Yes you can use the self hosted service from wordpress.org, but at this point Addict Dance are exploring web 2.0 in connection with their business.

What I did was explain the use of web based services and the potential impact on a young vibrant arts based organisation like Addict Dance. This got me in to thinking about the kind of advice that I give students, start ups and established organisations.

Highlighting the need of a digital strategy in a post modern bites based society we looked at key areas of participation and integration. As Addict Dance is a visual based organisation that mainly works with young urban dancers we decided key areas or participation:

Video; Using Tubemogul to aggregate to the main video providers would provide a quick clean and manageable solution for the masses of video Addict produce.

Photos: Flickr will provide hosting and aggregation for images that again the organisation produce regularly.

Audio; Not many people are doing audio and certainly in a visual based company such as Addict this is some thing they had not considered. However as the created and many of the dancers have access to iPhones/iPod touch devices Audioboo would provide another clear channel of participation.

Facebook: They have a buoyant Facebook page and to continue to use this as part or their stratergie at this point certainly makes sense.

The above areas of social media participation don’t replace what Addict Dance are already good at, it adds value and allows interaction on a alternate level that other organisations in their area do not currently operate in.

I love Husker Du and Sugar (Bob Moulds other project). For years my main band was heavily influenced by Bob Mould and Co’s musical output. It was one of our only shared influences and one that still runs deep. @solobasssteve recommended fellow tweeter @clutch and his band (x) is greater than (y)

The album is full of all kinds of awesome and I love it. I’ve been listening to it for a few days and its thats good:)
Here’s the link on band camp. Buy it and support great independent music.

Since we had our first child I have been what I like to call a ‘Sonic Mercenary’, or as my friends call it ‘Musical Whore’ playing for who ever will pay me, artistic integrity has been a distant secondary thought. Its been fun actually.

Gigs I would have turned down or not pursued pre children have lead to new friends and great experiences. I’m writing this following a phone call where I had to turn down lucrative tour in Romania due to previous commitments.

Being busy is good, turning work down feels wrong. Professional integrity is a fine line and often a juggling act. Several projects I have been involved with have run their course and this leaves me in an interesting position. Short term gain or the long game?

Short term gain would be the money that professional gigs bring in. The long game for me however brings artistic credibility and fulfillment. Food for my inner bass player, soul food. Some thing to leave when I’m gone.

I actually miss the days of four guys in a transit slogging round the country. A gang, standing together against the rest of the world. The reality of sleeping on floors and not washing or eating properly, wondering if there is enough fuel in the tank to get home is romanticized through rose tinted glasses and years of jaded corporate gigs.

The next few months looks to be an exciting voyage through my own creativity and music. As you would expect I’m looking forward to producing my own music again.

In the mean time I’m listening to the excellent Emily Baker (@emilybakermusic on twitter) while I write this:)

Well not quiet. Soaked to the skin I opened my Macbook on the train home. Glasses misted up I opened iTunes, by mistake. So what you might ask? Well, its the first time in months, I’ve not used iTunes 9, I don’t use iTunes at all. This shocked me as for so long it has been my go to audio playing device. But then Spotify came along and shook my sonic world. Bandcamp and Spotify along with Digital radio (BBC radio 6 really) are now my main and pretty much only music consumption methods. And it looks like Apple understand this. Many of their new products, for example Apple TV are set up for or only for streaming. This move coupled with web 3.0 theorists has led to a decline on non streaming or cloud based services. Even my word-processing and spreadsheets are based ‘in the cloud’ via google docs.

My Macbook pro is an ageing machine, but aside form recording/mixing I rarely use 10% of its power. May be this is why the cheap affordable light notebooks have caught on and the iPad is actually an exciting device despite its limited power and capacity.

So the death of iTunes is a little extreme, Apple are clever and clearly capable of identifying market trends and emerging markets, however for me right this minute I can’t imagine using much in the future.

Here’s some great music from She Makes War (aka Laura Kidd) that is available from Bandcamp, I hope you enjoy it.

In my previous post I mentioned that earlier this year I had written and recorded an album in 30 days as part of the RPM Challenge. As a freelance bassist I get to play on many recordings, working with excellent and talented musicians, songwriters, producers and engineers. However, since we had children I’ve defiantly done more gigs for the money than the love. I appreciate how lucky I am to be able to make a living derived from music (playing, talking about, teaching) and have a wonderful supportive partner who facilitates my art. But I’ve wanted to record my own tunes just for me, they are not intended for anyone else to hear. The album I recorded provided me with the kind of soul food that made me feel warm inside. And now right when I’m far too busy to take anything else on I want to do it again. So 30 days of new tunes it is then!

I’ve sold all my studio gear over the years, partly because of having access to some of the finest recording and rehearsal facilities in the region where I work. Partly as children need space and our house is tiny.

As the project is only for 30 days I’ve borrowed some old gear and I’m going to build a make shift set up in a corner of the house. Running Logic 9 on a Macbook pro is about as sophisticated as this recording set up gets. This is proper Guerrilla Recording. I’m really excited to get back to recording my own stuff again. I’ve assembled my gear just in time for my busiest weekend this month (and its only the 1st) where I have several gigs and am attending the excellent Unconvention grass roots music conference in Salford. It will be amazing to get anything done this weekend. But just getting the gear working will be great!

I hope to post some of my works in progress, but I’ll see how I feel about them. The last album is an intensely private landscape that documents a period of time in my life. I’m hoping this one will be the same, we will see.

This weekend see’s me being busier than I had intended. My time is split between several gigs, Unconvention 12 in Salford (I have to miss the first day and I’m gutted) , business stuff and by far most importantly spending time with my lovely children.

Life as a freelance music maker is full of peaks and troughs. I often feel like every thing comes at once, much like busses! Its not unreasonable for me to play three gigs in two cities in one day and then the following weekend to kick my heels at home.

Thankfully I never double book myself (tempting fate saying that) and fully expect for tis to happen at some point. I wouldn’t swap the life I have chosen for any thing, but if possible extending the day by two hours and sliding in an extra week would be great.

This is Emily Barker and the Red Clay Halo with there excellent Nostalgia song that was featured on the opening credits to the UK version of Wallander.

Inspired by reading great blogs by others centred around projects that last 30 days this year I commenced my own 30 days project. The idea is that for me new years resolutions rarely work, so instead I would try something for 30 days and see how it effected me. Thirty days is about the length of time it takes to develop new working practices, habits and loose some of the old ones.

photo by Mykl Roventine

So far this is what the year has looked like:

January: No new bass or tech gear – I managed it just. In fact my GAS (gear acquisition syndrome) has significantly dropped. Win.

February: Veganism – this worked and lasted six months to the day. Made me feel better, stronger. The down side was not finding food at gigs easily. I had to always carry a supply of snacks.

Also after years of recording for other people I wanted to produce my own album, just for me. This coincided with the RPM challenge. A simple set up based around a Boss GT10b and RC20xl looper I used various basses to produce textual sonic landscapes. No pop tunes here. This was an inspiring process and I’m already planning the next one.

March: It came it went, I can’t remember it.

April: Fretless bass month – This worked out great. I love playing fretless, but don’t do it nearly enough. Unfortunately I had to play fretted for some gigs, which kind of breaks the 30 day rules.

June: 30 days of Jogging – Day one was great, so was day two. Day three an old knee injury made a great excuse and I never went back. Fail. I did enjoy it and intend to go back asap.

July: End of year marking, moderation visits and two new bands (nearly 100 songs to learn in total scuppered any other plans I had.

August: Thirty days of being with my family. Due to to the summer holidays (yay for academia time tables) I was able to take a two week vacation with my family including a weeks visit to a holistic retreat and stay in a Yurt. Win.

Which brings me to the current; 30 days of riding my bike to work (well the bit of my commute that doesn’t feature a train). I bumped in to work colleague Robin Junga on the train commute and as a keen cyclist he suggested I should try part of my daily trip to Leicester by bike. It was some thing I had been thinking about, but a dead bike had put me off. That evening I came home to find a friend had brought round an old bike for me. Inspired by this and the conversation earlier that day (also slightly weirded out, neither people know each other) I decided to give it a whirl.

photo by Jens Dahli

There are still loads of projects I would like to do, a month of practice, yoga, alcohol free, blogging and still a few months left of the year to do them.

This 30 day thing is great, inspiring and uplifting experience, I really recommend it.

And this is some lovely music by a friend of mine that has featured heavily on my commute playlist this year.

photo by Feliciano Guimarães used under cc license

During my lessons I have been discussing with many students how, why and when we practice.

What many students appreciate is that practice is how we get better. Very few musicians are savants escaping the need to play, think about and reinterpret music.

In general I find to practice effectively and improve quickly I need to work in a quiet calm space with few of the distractions of modern life. No playing endlessly for hours in front of the TV. In fact when we gave our TV away I became more focused and creative and this led me to practice more. The internet and in particular social media sites like Facebook and Youtube can also be a major distraction from a productive practice session.

I like to make sure that my practice time feeds three key areas:

Auditory – Listening and recognizing sound – I make sure I can hear it before I try and play it.

Visual – Responding to seeing what I am doing – I see how it works.

Muscle Memory – Programing my muscles to do a job quickly and accurately.

Using exercises that respond to these needs enables me to build the skills that I require to become a better, stronger musician.