Opening gig, radio

I have been a bit lazy on the blog front and this entry will be no different, I must go to sleep. I was on the radio recently, you can check it this week here: (30:29 in) http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00mzt8w/After_Midnight_with_Linley_Hamilton_27_09_2009/

I will rip that to mp3 and put it online soon, so don't despair (as if you were).

My first official quartet gig in my name is tomorrow night!

I will be doing standards and a tune called "Dawn" that I wrote 2 days back. Should be a good evening!

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/michaelbarkleyjazz

Radio: (30:29 in): http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00mzt8w/After_Midnight_with_Linley_Hamilton_27_09_2009/

Mike

Demo tracks!

After some serious practise and a lot of planning to make this happen, I have my first 4 demo tracks done, so before I start writing rubbish about bio-mechanical death monkey-sharks I will post the appropriate links!

Myspace (feel free to add me as a friend!)

http://www.myspace.com/michaelbarkley

And tracks on Box, which will probably be a better quality and can be downloaded (all 320kbp/s MP3s)

Softly, As In a Morning's Sunrise:

http://www.box.net/shared/8zlj064xb1

I Remember You:

http://www.box.net/shared/h3rxlzeyq7

Footprints:

http://www.box.net/shared/u2i2oh9bpg

Killer Joe:

http://www.box.net/shared/8aj9s9n4uh

The musicians on the tracks, again, were:

Michael Barkley - Trumpet and Flugelhorn

Scott Flanigan - Piano

Dan MgGeown - Double Bass

James Anderson - Kit

And the sound engineer was John King.

I want to thank these guys again for the fantastic playing, and for coming to record with me! John I want to thank for doing such a great job on the recording and mastering! Thanks!!

Recording is totally new to me, and so some of this is a little green sounding on my behalf. It has highlighted areas in my playing that need attention and it has been a great learning experience! I can't wait to stop being sick, get back to practising, and start planning the next one! Next time I will really hope for more time for the recording, and perhaps write some original tunes for it.

I don't have too much to say in this entry, so do have a listen to the tracks, and drop me an email if you want:

michael . barkley 07 (at no spam) gmail dot com

Cheers and God bless!

Mike

Sushi, Ambient Music and Trumpet

Another day, another dollar... or in my case no dollars... come on job!

Trumpet

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Since the recording my practise has become a bit slack and I am annoyed at that, I do have excuses, but they don't exactly get your practise back. Must focus, and get my books back from my wee bro and buy him a set! Can you believe an 11 year old Tuba player (EEb) does about 2 hours (sometimes 4) a night on Arbans, Collins, Caruso and all the other goodies I should be working on!? It is no surprise that his ability is sky-rocketing! I should probably rename this section 'Tuba', I have spoken more about Andy than myself! His range is impressive as well, from C# above double pedal C to top C at the starts of most days... puts me to shame! Anyhow, Trumpet can lead to some interesting gigs, see below...

Ambient Music

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My friends Ricky Graham and John King asked me to come and take some pictures and sit in on their session at the Black Box last night, so I was game! Trumpet, harmon, Nikon, clothes (optional!). The music they play is interesting - looped lines, quite ambient, improvised and a heck of a lot of computer wizardry from the both of them! Ricky plays a guitar that I made him a few years back, recently I fitted some cool gizmos to it which facilitates the type of music which he now plays. A multi-phonic piezo system on each of the 7 strings and a sustainer pickup which allows for infinite (ok not infinite, it is battery powered) sustain with the choice of the pitch or the 2nd octave harmonic if I remember correctly. John takes these signals and works some jiggery pokery with it, so the 7 signals all break out into 7 outputs and then add a mono (normal magnetic pickup output) to this and you have a really neat instrument. You can pan all of the strings to anywhere, and as Ricky says, it is like a small orchestra!

Anyway, I was playing on the 2nd section on this, and we jammed it out in the day time. This was really new to me, I was uncomfortable at first because of my background in playing - mainly studying Jazz or trying to read Classical music. I used the harmon just to have a bit of a cut in the mix and not to dominate at the same time. It was a great experience, playing just really long chord tones, or working with small amount of pentatonics or in cases the leading tone. It gave the ears a bit of work, though we were in concert E (F# major for me) and the overall harmony was basically Emajor9, the usual Jazz clichés or lines would not fit! Anyway, I think it went fine, the guys played well, and I am going to Derry to play with them again tonight, see if I can't learn a bit more now! I will try to get those multiphonics working a bit better this time!

Sushi

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On the way home I grabbed some Sushi from late night Tescos. It was amazing! I do love Sushi! On the less classy side of life I bought 17 packs of 9 pence noodles, mainly Chicken flavour. Nice!

Time to go, the coffee is brewed and there is only 3 minutes of the morning left, calls to make, coffee to drink, practise to do!

Mike

I just remembered - I decided to practice my trumpet at the train station on the way home, very few people about, but those who were there thought I was mental. Also practising for an hour in the dark before the gig got a few looks :) I like playing in the dark, it is nice to cut out all the distractions and just relax.