July 2015: Music Theatre Exams, Wombourne School of Music and Why I Shouldn't Sing After Going Swimming

I was struggling to think about what to write for this one, as I couldn’t think of many things that had happened straight away. Turns out quite a bit, actually:

The first thing that happened was I took a Grade 2 Music Theatre exam. I sang two songs for it: If I Only Had a Brain from The Wizard of Oz, and Part of Your World from The Little Mermaid.

Yes, you read that right. Believe it or not I’m quite a big Disney fan, and The Little Mermaid is probably my favourite Disney film. Part of Your World was about the right level for me, and because I’ve got so much investment in the song already, I managed to sing it really well. I had to change some of the lyrics around in order for it to make sense (the song is sung by Ariel in the film, who is most definitely female) but I really enjoyed doing that one.

If I Only Had a Brain was a little different: I hadn’t seen The Wizard of Oz before, and apart from Over The Rainbow and some Family Guy cutaway gags, I’d had very little exposure to it. What that meant was that I could bring something of myself into the three characters: Scarecrow, Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion, without necessarily being influenced by what I’d seen in the film or on the stage. I did watch it in the end and it did help, but not before I’d got the words down and had my own ideas of what I was going to do for the performance. Plus, characterising three voices in one song is not something I’ve had to do a great many times before; it was a good experience!

It all paid off, as I passed the exam with distinction, 93%. I’m very pleased with that, and I’m hoping to take that a long way in the future! Once again thanks to my Vocal Coach Vie Watson for all her support; couldn’t have done it without you.

The second thing that occurred was that I started doing a bit of work for Wombourne School of Music. This is something that I’m hoping to run alongside my work with DPA, doing an evening and a day in the weekend for them. At the moment I’m teaching guitar for them while their regular guy is on holiday, with the possibility of picking up some more permanent work when term starts again. I’m glad I’ve had my experience with DPA as I’m able to bring a lot of that in to what I’m doing for WSOM, and hopefully that will come across in the future.

I’ve been rocking up at open mics and gigs on and off for about five years now, and I’ve always said that no one’s ever the finished product and I’ve always got something to learn. No more was that the case than the last open mic I did of the month, which was on a Wednesday evening at the Saddler’s Arms in Bloxwich. I played my first two songs and found it very difficult to breathe; it was affecting my voice control and I was exhausted by the end of the set. I couldn’t think of a reason for it, until through speaking to some people in the pub I remembered that I’d been swimming earlier that day. Of course, the chlorine in the water had affected my breathing control. I’ve been absolutely caning it at the gym over the last few weeks, but now I need to remember not to go swimming if it looks like I’m going to be singing afterwards!

I had a jam early with a chap called Jon with a view to getting a band together, but to be honest I wasn’t really feeling it, I don’t think he was either and I haven’t heard from him since. It happens, of course, and it might be best to put that one on the back-burner for now. I’d still like to get a band together to play some original material, but it’s a slow process indeed with everybody wrapped up in their own lives now.

Let’s see what August brings…

May 2015: Gigs with the Revisted, Singing Improvements and a Ukulele...

May was a busy – and as it turns out rather affluent – month for me in terms of gigs and music. Here’s how it all went down:

As I mentioned last month, I did a couple of gigs with The Revisited Covers Band while they look for a new permanent bass player. We played shows in the Rock and Fountain in Shrewsbury, and The Western in Leicester. They were good gigs and we were reasonably well-received, however I don’t enjoy playing in covers bands enough to want to commit to The Revisited on a mid-long term basis. It was fine with NQA as we’re all friends anyway, but with the Revisited, I barely know them; it’s a lot of the same covers I played with the previous band, and many more songs that I haven’t got enough investment in to want to commit to learning. I’ll be available as dep bass player if they need me, if not, it was a reasonable way of getting some gigs, so thanks to the band for the opportunity.

I've actually been forgetting to do this a lot just lately,
here's my #viewfromthestage at the Newhampton
Inn earlier in the month.

I am aware that I’m shooting myself in the foot a little bit here because it sounds like covers bands aren’t really my thing, which is true. I’m at the point now where I need something else to keep me engaged. As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, I was friends with the lads in NQA anyway, and there was a certain amount of fun and regularity with the gigs that made me want to stay with the band long after we’ve essentially stopped being one. And as I talked about last month, there is a certain creative element in The Fakes where we have to work the songs we play around our own limitations of gear and musicianship in order to play the songs we want to play; jamming those songs is actually really good fun. So, as long as there is something else going on to keep me engaged, I don’t mind being in covers bands – but I wouldn’t want to be in one for its own sake.

I also mentioned last month that I was doing a gig with Ellie Hawthorne. It was in the interlude of a quiz night and it went reasonably well, if a little rushed in terms of setting up. However, it did give me an insight into how well my voice has improved over the last year. We played I See The Light, which if you remember was the song that inspired me to pick up the singing lessons in the first place. And I was hitting all the high notes with little to no strain on my voice. I was up to a high G at one point; I’d never have been able to do that at this time last year. So, thanks to Ellie for inspiring me to take up the lessons, and thanks to Vie for teaching me. It’s working!

I’ve also started to play the Ukulele…

Now, I’m not fond of the Ukulele sound at all. I prefer deep and powerful sounds to high scratchy ones; probably one of the reasons I developed an intense dislike of indie music circa last decade. However, I attended a staff meeting with DPA at the early part of the month, where we were joined by our colleagues from Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton, and there was a representative from Birmingham there as well. During the day, data on the popularity of the instrument was brought to our attention, and I’m pretty sure all the other music services are running Uke groups. When I found out later in the month that a student that I will hopefully be taking on next year wants to play Ukulele, I decided that DPA can ill afford to ignore the demand and bought a Ukulele from Stourbridge. I will teach myself to play it over the summer, and hopefully teach others to play it when I return to work in September.

However, I did find myself thinking that now that I have a Ukulele, what if I did like it? What would that sound like? So that’s something I’m going to develop over the next few months.

See you all again in July!

March 2015: New Open Mics, Song Selections, Symphony Hall and an untimely death.

March was a busy month for me in terms of playing live at open mics. I decided to take a few weeks off from the roleplaying group I’m involved with on Thursdays which meant I was able to get to a few of them that I  wasn’t able to do before. That included The Plough in Trysull, which didn’t last very long, and The Crown in Codsall which I’ve been aware of but rarely get the chance to play. Both times I’ve been up there recently have been very poignant, because of recent deaths that occurred amongst our friends, so playing at the Crown and also watching Sam play there has sometimes been a very emotional experience for me.

The Yard. Great night!

The other one was The Yard in Stafford. Funny story about that: After driving around looking for the place I had to ring the promoter, Steve, who had to come out of the venue to find me. He managed it, but because of the way the road network in Stafford was designed, we had to drive for about another mile and a half before we could find somewhere to park, then walk for ten minutes to get to the venue. When it was finished and it was time to leave, I realised to my horror that I couldn’t remember where I’d parked my car. So there I was at Stafford in the middle of the night, walking around not having a clue where I was or where I was going, thinking “Where’s my car? I’m sure the college was on the right when I passed it. How far did we go? Have I ACTUALLY turned into Ashton Kutcher?”

I found it in the end.

In all seriousness, that night I made a very good song selection. By then I was actively trying to have some more confidence in my own material, and since the audience consisted mainly of other musicians and students, I planned my set accordingly and I think I was very well received.

Complete bait and switch for a couple of weeks later when I found myself playing at The Stile once again. That night, I played mostly covers, but – and I really can put it no plainer than this – that is how the night felt. It was a Friday Night, Wolverhampton Wanderers had just won at home (you can see The Stadium from The Stile) and people were on a night out. They wanted a party, so I thought I’d give them one! I really enjoyed that seconds into my set, I had a lot of people singing along to A Little Respect. I tried to keep it cheery, and I did play Bitterness at some point which was well-received – by the other musicians. Everybody else was happy to hear Oasis, Don Henley, The Offspring… the usual favourites.

But that’s what it’s all about: gauging how the night’s going, understanding your audience and planning your set accordingly. Most of this is done in the half an hour before I’m due to go on stage but it is important to do it.

I don’t write much about what I’m doing with Dudley Performing Arts on this blog because when the kids do well it is every bit as much to do with them as it is to do with me. Plus I’d get Data Protection Acted for it. But there are few times I’ve been so proud to work for them as when with less than three months to turn it around we managed to organise and play three full concerts at the Symphony Hall in Birmingham. In 10 years time the kids will realise just what a big deal this was, but for now I can legitimately say I’ve played Symphony Hall, and I’ve seen what we can do under pressure!

Crashpoint before our first gig. We'll miss you Luke (far right.)

I hate to end on a sad note, but unfortunately it doesn’t get much worse than this: On Tuesday 31^st March, my old friend and former Crashpoint band-mate Luke Clarke passed away. I don’t know everything that happened, but as I understand it, he’d been ill with epilepsy most of his life, and would sometimes have violent and dangerous fits. On that Tuesday morning, he didn’t recover from this one. He didn’t have long on this world, but he was always writing and recording music – he had ambitions to write scores for film and TV – and I can’t think of many people who followed their dreams right up until the end. I’m glad I had a chance to listen to some of his music and tell him I thought it was good before it was too late. We could never have known what was going to happen, but there was no unfinished business, so it’s some comfort to know we parted on good terms.

Rest easy mate.

December: NQA Gigs, Big Band Bass Playing, and Soundcloud

It’s been a busy month for me!

My #viewfromthestage at the Olde White Rose in Bilston.
That was a good night!

I’ve been gigging almost every weekend with No Questions Asked, and I’m actually getting a lot tighter on the bass now. I was always good at it – I think I’ve said it before, but I’ve got a natural affinity with bass that I just don’t have with guitar – but now that I’m practising and playing on a regular basis, I’m feeling the improvement my skill level. That can only be a good thing! I’ve also been working on my slap bass technique. Not for any particular reason, as there’s not much call for it in NQA, but it does seem mandatory to be able to do it and it sounds awesome, so I thought I might as well give it a try. I’ve actually been doing it a lot on the acoustic guitar as well, so a lot of the technique was there – I just needed to do it on the heavier strings and wider frets.

With regard to the band, we’re making progress as a unit, and we’ve got gigs booked to next December. It’s encouraging to see the places re-booking us; it’s always appreciated. We’ve not had any rehearsals this month so there’s no new songs on the list yet, but we’ll see what happens next month. After a tough month of gigging, I think certain members of the band were rather looking forward to a break!

One of the things I was involved with in DPA this Christmas was a rare staff concert. It came about because the roof of Dudley Town Hall had fallen in meaning we had to re-locate the Christmas concerts to two different areas, and was a joint concert between the staff and the choirs of six different schools. Del, Russ, Kelly and I were providing the rhythm section for both; I was on bass guitar.

It was a good experience for me because it reminded me of two things: First, I’m quite good at sight reading, and Chris was very complimentary to me about that. And second, cutting my bass-playing teeth in the Ounsdale High School Jazz Band was a great experience that I appreciated at the time and appreciate even more now. The ‘Staff Concert’ section of the performance was a lot of swing/big band songs, and much of it was in the keys of E flat, B flat and A flat. These keys, as I understand it, are fine for brass and wind instruments, but they’re not very friendly for stringed instruments like guitars because the open strings are no longer fair game. Nonetheless, I’d had a lot of experience playing in those keys in the jazz band, so they don’t frighten me. Nearly 10 years since I last played with them, it all came back to me for this staff concert; I won’t pretend there weren’t mistakes, but I did a good job, I think. Apart from anything else, I was really enjoying playing the big band material; I could get in to that!

In other news, I’m now on Soundcloud! I put together the account purely for the purposes of being able to upload my Christmas song to it so I could share it on I think Monday 5^th, and having done this I thought I might as well upload some other recordings. I’ve put my entire Bitterness EP on there, which is a little after the fact as those songs were recorded over three years ago. But it’s all I’ve got that remotely resembles a professional recording, so there you go! Here’s the link to my profile, give them all a listen and tell me what you think: https://soundcloud.com/matt486

And incidentally, the photograph that I used was a bit of a funny choice but it’s the only picture I have near that time that doesn’t make me look like I don’t quite know where I am. It was taken at the Varsity in the Summer of 2010 when I was a little thinner than I am now, and I think the image came from a video John Gordon took of me playing Walking On The Sun by Smash Mouth.

 

We’ll see what happens in the New Year. See you then!

October: Gigging with No Questions Asked and Singing Lessons

Well it’s been quite a busy month for me!

I’ve had a good run of gigs with No Questions Asked, the band I was depping with and now a semi-permanent member. We’ve done a few gigs around the area, and I have a feeling it’s going to be one of those bands that is conducive to my development as a musician. It’s certainly the busiest one I’ve been in for a while in terms of gigs; not since Crashpoint have I managed for than three gigs a month with a band! While I still feel there is potential in the band yet to be realised, we’re having fun playing live and making a bit of money off it as well.

One thing I did realise during my first gig with No Questions Asked is not to be a dick about my gear. Specifically, my multi-effects pedal. It’s a Digitech BP50, not amazingly brilliant but does a good job for the money I paid for it (£80, eight years ago.) I tend to use it as a stage tuner, but most of the effects on there are amp simulations and compression/noise gate, and most of them do quite a decent job. There are a few modulation effects there, including a phaser which I wanted to use on the bands rendition of Dancing in the Moonlight by Thin Lizzy.

Unfortunately there wasn’t a lot of room in the Mitre where we were playing that night, and due to the length of the power lead that comes with it, there’s no way I could have plugged it in without getting in everybody’s way. Dave said to me something like “Just manage without it; you can play the Thin Lizzy song without it and it will sound as good,” and that’s when I realised: There’s no need to be a dick about it. The effect would have been nice, but not essential. And remembering some people in my past that would have refused to play without their effects made me think: Don’t be that guy. I used my clip-on tuner, managed without my effects and it didn’t make the slightest bit of difference to the show. So there you go!

As for the money I’m making, well, not much is happening with that at the moment. The actual amount I get depends on the venue and how the money is paid, but I’m savvy enough to know that to rely on a band as a source of income is a dangerous game indeed, as work goes up and down. So I’m doing what I do with all the money I get outside of my job, and saving it. It’s of little use to me for day-to-day spending, but if I save it, the money will add up – and it’s there if I need it.

In other news, I’ve now started having singing lessons with my friend and colleague Vie Watson. After singing for 10-12 years, including studio recordings, live performances with various bands and the many solo performances I’ve done, I’m finally getting someone to teach me how to do it. It’s so far had the effect of increasing the range I can comfortably hit – and how to hit those high notes I sometimes struggle with. But more than increasing my level of skill, I’d love to be able to teach singing as well. That will increase the skills I can bring to my work with Dudley Performing Arts, and also increase the amount of skills I can bring to any future jobs. At this time I’m still looking for work in Swindon, and I’m hoping my chances of finding it will increase if I have more to offer!

I’ve not visited an open mic this month as I was busy on the one night I could attend, but that didn’t stop me doing some acoustic slots for NQA on their gig in Tividale when the support pulled out, and playing at the Jam Night they organise! Some people who haven’t seen me play for a while have noticed an improvement in my playing and delivery, so that’s always good to hear!

Next month will be a bit quieter for me in terms of gigs because of some cancellations and a generally lighter schedule, but I’m hoping to use the time for a little rehearsal with NQA.