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.
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