Category: Musicians Blog

Yesterday was a day off, but today had hell installed.

Right so throughout the year I tidy my room up, but tidy in my deluded eyes is hide it out of sight so it is there for out of mind.

I got everything out and in the open, it isn’t pretty, but at this time every year I have to put things in their right places and or put them in a box into the cupboard.

Overall the main thing I found was old GCSE Music work along with sheet music, the foundations to life, oh yeah and a bunch of my CDs and DVDs.

So you could also say I’m a big fan of Roger Waters also, forgot to mention that one. His messages behind his albums strike me vividly which is a good thing, I have drawn a few things based round lyrics; as I’m cool and probably should have been an art student..

Nothing like sleeping in, I didn’t sleep till late, God knows why, I think my internal clock is broken yet again.

Within preparation for the rest of my family coming over I helped set up the table for my nan whilst she slaved over the food in the kitchen, which was worth the time and the effort that was put into it!

My Nan gave me some money for personal use and a new container for my records as over the period of two years or so I filled my silver one up! I’d like to take a moment to thank her for everything she has done for me over the years, without her I would not be where I am at the moment!

So I decided to go out to town to go and buy a couple of things, I’ve gotten to personally know the owner over a couple of years because of my strange requests that go through my Nan to them.

I tend to see the female half of the duo that runs the shop, I’ve forgotten her name and she had forgotten mine but that wasn’t brought up, so I was lucky. She is aware that I am on a music course now along with my performances and mentioned that she’d happily put up posters for us in both her Christchurch and Bournemouth stores which is great to know.

I stuck to The Beatles because Queen is sold out every where at the moment which is frustrating because I only need a few more to finish my collection upon Vinyl.

We celebrated the rest of the day giving and receiving gift, whilst eating and drinking!

Then another lovely two hour car drive home, but I have a lot of choice when it comes to music on my phone so it was Lennon today..

But you know when I got home I had a lovely Saints Lanyard from the match I could have went to which has little to no purpose!

Right to start off, Saints lost barely so if anyone decides to rip into them when I go back in I’m going to blank you.

I was going to go watch them play with my Dad, but instead I went down my Nans the day before we had our second Christmas Day tomorrow.

But before that we went out for Breakfast at Weatherspoons and I felt extremely accomplished eating six hash browns within a room of judgemental people!

I wasn’t feeling extremely well so I went home with my Dad whilst everyone else mooched around town, which I wasn’t up for in my current state.

So to make my mind off things I tried cooking which isn’t my strongest point I got to say, but I know how to make some dope cookies.

They didn’t last long when everyone got in which was depressing, I had left them to set and got in the bath. Afterwards, when I went downstairs to have one myself nothing was there.

They looked cool and apparently tasted good, will I bother making them again, possibly but I’d like them for myself. I stained my hands also with food colouring which will take a couple of days to come off, I can sense it.

My dreaded parcel finally arrived within this country, if you know me well, you’d know that I despise any form of postal service because they’re all flawed, change my mind..

Anyway, there was a sixteen pound shipping fine which is stupid; essentially the extra item that was put in wasn’t free in the end, but it was very nice of them for considering my well-being I suppose.

You could say I am a fan of Claypools work now.

The rest of my evening was spent sat in the back of the car for an hour whilst we traveled back to my Nans house, I did choose to email Jason to see how he was doing because I don’t have an awfully high amount of friends to text or whatever..

We went out for a meal at Pizza Express which was funny for its own reasons, then it was a walk back home for a evening of card games, scrabble then me laying in bed for hours thinking of things to draw before falling asleep.

This is what failure looks like Ladies and Gents.

Right so today is the day that I usually go out and buy a Calendar because they get extremely cheap the closer you leave it till New Years, I was going to risk it and get stuck with something rubbish like Metallica last year.

So I opted in for an ‘Overwatch’ one it’s a game I’ve played here and there over the past 3 years, you can see where I get my artist influence, style I’d like to say, from if you’ve seen any of my meaningless scribbles.

I also got one of these figure things that everyone in my household has been raving over, I don’t understand there purpose really and I don’t think they’re mean’t to have any.

Also I’ve started to listen to The Beatles again, and it’s refreshing. I was turned away from them by Jack and now I have returned back to my influencers this month.

I like to call them The Holy Trinity

• Queen
• Pink Floyd
• The Beatles

It’s a gingerbread man, the irony am I right?

The big day is here, and by big day I mean, being jumped and yelled at by my siblings to wake up at god knows what time to open up their presents.

I don’t see how but Harvey was awake at the crack of dawn along with my mum even though we got in at about 1am gone. So I eventually was dragged out of bed and thrown down the stairs to then go back to sleep on the sofa which was then ruined so staying awake was the only available option.

My parcel from the states have only just arrived within our country as the company chose to send it to Germany then ship it over to our great nation. So I am expecting a fee of some sort when I go to pick it up from the sorting office, but anyway it doesn’t matter as it’s Christmas.

As instead I got thee best gift ever alongside a novelty mug and book. Which summarises how niche I am within reality, as it doesn’t take much to impress my small pea sized brain.

Instead of going to a Carvery like we usual do our parents have opted for us all to goto the Harvester which is conveniently down the road from us so we walked. For some god forsaken reason I chose an 8oz Steak and ribs ages ago as I thought they wouldn’t do something like that at Christmas, but they did.

I did look at it for a solid ten minutes and just question myself to how I got to this point in my life, but I ate it in the end somehow…

T’was about half past eight when we finally left the growing hell hole, I went to the toilet and got left behind by my family which led to me walking back alone until Harvey realised I wasn’t there.

There was a trolley at the end of our road for a week now so Harvey decided to get in it whilst I pushed him down the road, considering I had a couple glasses of what ever was on the table I was already everywhere and ended up steering like a maniac.

So I let Harvey push me in it which didn’t go well as I ended up falling out of it, God knows how. But I did hurt my hands and knees which wasn’t quality, so I ran back down the road whilst I was being chased by a trolley. I feel remorse for the residents of our road, slightly..

Pre-Christmas fun, today we have a trip to the cinema installed instead of going to see Jason perform with ‘The Silver Beatles’ at ‘The Brook’, that was a slight disappointment until I realised, Jason gigs a lot.

I have spent the most of my day laying in bed watching ‘The Office’ because that’s my new found level of “entertainment”, I also use it to work more efficiently. Whilst something plays within the background it blocks out the noice of the house and helps me focus on the task at hand.

I soon found out within my third week of college that working with music on isn’t awfully effective, as I seem to be more focussed upon what is going on in my ears then the work that has to be done. I do it occasionally but instead of having singles playing it has to be full on albums, but when the album stops I stop which isn’t the greatest.

When my mum had gotten home, I was quickly rushed outside to help carry countless bags of presents in which was heavy. But considering I do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu that makes me stronger then most of the people in the house and viable for doing heavy lifting.

I was made to open one of my presents early which was something I was torn upon, but I was grateful either way. I don’t want to make this sound all soppy but after five years I have finally gotten my dream guitar.

I shall go into detail at some point before the new year as it truly deserves its own post.

But anyway the evening soon progressed and Billy came over, as later we are going to see ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ for the second time, this time we will know every upcoming scene and line which will be fun.

Before that though we had a little jam, well attempted because the house is full of children that find noise entertaining for some reason…

Here’s a shoddy picture of us all because we thought it was cool.

I have a new found skill for editing photos, so it essentially makes me cooler than all media students, watch out.

Here are some photos from the rest of our evening also.

This morning I started off my day early by sitting in the corridor and watching The Office as I was there very early. By the time lesson started only ten people or so were in which was a lot less than I was expecting, considering it is the last day no one really bothered to come in.

I helped Chris set up Fifa within the lounge room considering he was going to use my personal controller, so that took a good twenty minutes. After that the remaining HNCs and the second years went into the mac suite to do a quiz, I chose to sit in with Dan in his office and talk about our work amongst other things.

When the quiz finished and they took a break and left some of my year group came littered back in and out of the mac suite to finish some of their work before the new year. Whilst Chris played Fifa with a bunch of students, Dan sat in the studio mixing and bouncing some tracks, Jason sat in the mac suite helping out people in my year with their Stylistic Analysis mainly amongst other pieces like Rehearsal Diaries.

Nearing the end of the day, after the Fifa mess was packed up, me and the rest of the second years set up my switch and played Smash bros and Mario Kart which was entertaining for the hour. I had the sudden realisation that my controller had gone and it was returned to Dan or Chris, so I had to stick about until it was returned back to me.

Chris had to take off because some water leak took place, or something along the lines of that which lead to his kids to stay at home so he had to get home as soon as possible. Dan left soon after Chris as he was very tired and starting to get a cold which isn’t the most pleasant thing at this time of year.

So the only person who was left which was Jason, we all sat and played Mario Kart with each other and Jason watched for a while until he decided to go work on Dean’s Stylistic Analysis. When it was my turn to swap off I went and spoke to Jason about how his Christmas is looking and vice versa which was a pleasant end to the day.

I am looking forward to spending time with my family over Christmas whilst giving and receiving gifts, I am not expecting a lot as I don’t want to be spoiled as I am at the age where I could get a job and buy stuff for myself, but I have been struggling to due to my social skills which I will work on as a new years resolution.

I am also looking forward to going back to college to work hard again on the assignment brief because I know composition is my weakest point which is something I have been looking forward to work on ever since my GCSE in Music. I will be sure to post about my time over the next few weeks!

We had the day off of college today if we don’t have to retake English and Maths, so instead of going in, I went out with my mum to Whiteley which was my weekly outing to somewhere that isn’t Gosport or Fareham.

I picked up a few things for college next year, a bunch of stationary really which I do enjoy choosing out and buying which is something I am ashamed of..

When I got in I decided to do some work with some of my new additions which was very satisfying. I have been working up a set list for the new term so when we go in on the first day back we have aims and set goals when in comparison to the other bands, as currently I don’t know how competitive everyone is going to be.

I have set my goals to become the best on guitar in our year and show the best of our abilities within our band; I know with hard work and dedication we can come out on top, this time I won’t have any upsets or put backs.

Tomorrow I am going to go in and get the remaining aspects of my work from Dan so I can put together the final touches on my assignment brief before the new year which is my aim for the end of the week realistically.

It would also be nice to see everyone who decides to come in before we break off for Christmas!

Today we had to get our original song done no matter what otherwise that would have been an aspect of the brief we would have all failed on which isn’t the greatest of news. We sat down for about an hour helping Millie write vocals which turned out great for an hours work, I would have preferred massively to get the work done earlier in term but our vocalist was mostly absent so we needed to ideally work on our set and getting it up to the standard we played with in the evening.

I’ve officially reached boiling point with our guitarist he kept digging into our singer for not being able to achieve her GCSE’s which is difficult for people, I would know; I only just about passed all of mine. So I tried spacing my self away from him for the rest of the day as I felt like just sitting him down and yelling, as it isn’t nice to be constantly heckled at as I had to deal with him throughout secondary.

Besides that, the recording well it took us about four/five takes to get it up to a reasonable standard. It could have been a bit better if we gave it a couple more takes but everyone else was fed up so we left it at that. As soon as it has been uploaded I will add it to my Soundcloud!

Then I went back into the Mac suite to sit about helping Millie a bit with her work until lunch which was fun, she had gotten a bit fed up and upset of Jack at this point so she came with me to put my bass away whilst she let some of her frustration out.

After lunch we had a meeting about “UAL coming in”, but in reality it was a meeting about our new bands next term which was honestly hell, I am definite that trying to comprehend what was going on gave me head trauma.

I am not going to go into too much detail, but Chris did arrange some bands for us to all be in next term which didn’t work as everyone is very fussy on my course which is frustrating for not just me but Chris and Jason also.

So instead of what was arranged by Chris it was agreed that we stay in our original bands but instead of having our guitarist he be swapped to play bass like an absolute chump in another band and we have their bass player instead which will be ten times better, plus I get to make a return to my main instrument which my family and myself are now looking forward to.

I have chosen to spend the rest of the day in the mac suite finishing my Grade 1 Theory book which is now full, I believe I am coming in on Thursday not only to DESTROY Chris at Fifa but for a HNC student to go through and check with me or have the man himself look through it whilst the other students play FIFA, etc; so that will be fun.

Before they both left I was speaking to Chris and Jason about my grades and they think with the amount of effort I have put in since day one that I should be able to reach a distinction. Hopefully I have achieved this, we shall have to wait and see, it is one of my targets for this year which was very demanding from myself from day one…

This morning I started my day off within the library which was fun, purely because i was locked out of my account all weekend (including Wednesday through to Friday). So I got that sorted out and then I proceeded to word process my Stylistic Analysis for Jason which I set a task of getting it to him today no matter what, which I am proud. 

Then I got over to music and we started our day off in the mac suite talking about all the work we need to get done within the next 3 days which I am concerned about my peers, as I’m more than definite some of them aren’t doing well work wise, but that isn’t my burden in reality.

I started off my Gig Evaluation today and finished it around half three gone which isn’t too bad considering how much detail I put into it. We were mean’t to have rehearsal at some point during today to write an original but that concept got scrapped very quickly after I had to keep correcting our guitarist on his “chord structure” which didn’t work theoretically in anyway at all so I had to keep correcting him which was comical, I don’t mean to be brutal; I’d rather we do things right the first time instead of going back to fix our mistakes in a second take. 

I spent my lunch with Dean as he was having a rough time this morning which was completely understandable, it was a nice change to sitting round with the others as Dean is a lot more down to earth I wanna say. He has asked me to play bass in his band project thing outside of college which I will take a look at as I do to little practically in my own time. 

I then proceeded to spend the rest of the day in the mac suite, I have a couple pages left in my theory book which has been a blast. Almost everything is perfect that I remembered from when Ben taught me, and I now know how intervals work properly as before I only knew what they were and why’d you use them which I think is an achievement in itself.

Grade 3 Theory will be my on going project over Christmas, along with Grade 6 Guitar and then hopefully Grade 4 Bass if I ask Chris nicely…