The Beeb are reporting on cutting edge research from my uni: ” The Heriot Watt University study found people rated the change in taste by up to 60% depending on the melody heard.” While this may be true, I think the opposite effect is of more use, at least if last night’s gig at Henry’s Cellar Bar is anything to go by.

It makes for a winning combination: go to venue, soundcheck, go upstairs for Chinese, drink a bottle of wine, go back downstairs just in time to start playing

A big thank you to Ralph for doing a great job on the sound as always. And thank you to everybody who came down. I reckon it must of been our best gig yet - we actually got a compliment out of Louisa afterwards (who is generally of the opinion that Ali K sounded better before I got involved and ruined all his nice songs).

I’ll let Roger aka The Bluesfather sum the gig up: “ What can I say? Fuckin brilliant ce soir at Henry’s!“.

If you’re lucky there might be some recordings from last night :p And if not, well hopefully we’ll be back in a month or so.

AndysLife.org - Games - Hell of Sand

Cute wee flash thing. Good fun for messing around with for a couple of minutes while waiting for your cup of tea…

Ah, finally, some nice weather. Which meant I could start me week off with a nice cycle to campus yesterday morning. Easily beats sitting on a bus…. good exercise, and the canal is pretty nice for the most part. (You just have to watch out for kids with air rifiles sniping from the flats in Wester Hailes). I guess I’m pretty lucky having a nice cylce route to work and back

What’s more, after cycling in, I found a nice email in my inbox informing me that I’ll be giving a talk at the European Conference on Visual Perception. Scary stuff!

So, that was a nice start to the week. And I’ve been celebrating the nice weather by trying to work out some nice, and interesting, ways of playing Summertime on my Warr. And jamming it with Ali. Early days yet, but hopefully i can work out a nice little version to post here. So stay tuned.

In other news, the Al and Al band (Al et al anybody?) are set for a practise on Monday followed by a gig, at Henry’s Cellar Bar, on Wednesday 14th, around 9pm apparently. Probably cost you £4 and will possibly be your last chance to see us for a little while (unless we find somewhere else worthwhile to play, but otherwise next gig will likely be our return to The Ark sometime in July hopefully).

Guess that’s about it. Will hopefully be hitting an open mic or two with Ali over the next few weeks; working on a collaboration with Bard (with a kick ass warr bassline, even if I do say so myself); continuing to plot and plan with Dan; and more practise on the Warr Guitar (am getting callouses all over the place now! Eeeep).

Wooo. Exicting news. Sounds like the next King Crimson line-up is underway. No Trey this time, but Levin is back, so no great loss. Swapping one of the best warr/stick players on the planet for another. And, apparently the drummer from Porcupine Tree is joining in. So that’s quite exciting. Not that they’re likely to touch down in the UK, let along Scotland. But a new Crimson album is always welcome. Who knows what Fripp will come up with next

Wooo. After the nice jazz bar gig, Al and I - with the help of Niki - managed to play a second good gig, this time at The Ark (which is rapidly becoming one of the best small venues to play in town).

So kudos to Dave for organising it, thanks to Niki and Lucy for playing so well, and next up is Fresh, Lothian Road, on the 26th. We have a facebook group and everything. I’m pretty sure the gig will be free too. Although there’s a good chance the resulting performance might reflect the cost as the sound set up isn’t as good and we get paid in beer And it’s on a Saturday night. So expect some woozy bass playing.

in other news:

• Hopefully getting the acoustic EP finished off by summer. (Ha, yeah right). But it would be nice… I have renewed enthusiasm for the old AlKandAlC duo after the jazz bar gig…
• Hopefully figuring out some more stuff to play on my warr… got plenty of ideas. But time is always an issue (ie, there is never enough of it).
• PhD is going well. Which is nice.
• I’ve pre-ordered the new Portishead album
• Weather is still crap.
• Plans are still afoot to do something with Gamble, Gamble and Drever. Possibly involving the remaining 2/3rds or my trio (ie, me and Matt). Not sure yet. It would be fun to hook up and jam. Just not sure how, when or where.

Hopefully see you at Fresh on the 26th.

The jazz bar gig last week went great. First decent gig we’ve done in ages. Thanks to the lovely Jenny for joining us on guest vocals. Next up, there’s a band gig on Sunday at the Ark. In the meantime, here are a couple of photos from the Exposed website.

Wow. It looks like I can actually play the darn thing!!!

And here’s one of the three of us:

I saw this a week or so ago, bookmarked it, and then forgot about it. Finally got round to having a play about with it today, and it’s great fun. Figured I should pass on the recommendation!

Phun - 2D physics sandbox

Yes, that’s right. After three years of failing to play the 10 stringed monster* I’m finally planning on inflicting it on the public. Not sure what Ali is thinking but he seems to be ok with me trying to play it for half our set at the jazz bar next Wednesday

Hope you cam come along. We’re on sometime after 9pm. Can’t be more exact, sorry. But it usually a pretty good lineup so you might as well just turn up at 9 and support the local music scene, right?

Then a week and a half later, Sunday the 13th I think, the Al and Al band play their second/third gig at the Ark.

Busy busy busy.

It is now Wednesday. Wednesday afternoon. I have been trying to figure out how to started since Monday. And finally, I’ve done it! I have got somewhere.

Please, click the link. Examine my work in its full glory. Yes. That’s right. It’s a square. A white square. On a black blackground. That is the sum total of my working week. Sigh.

Why am I doing this? Well, I want to use the SDK for the Tobii eyetracker. As (a) then I can do cool stuff with it and (b) the software supplied with it is rubbish. So to start with, I need to figure out how to show images….

Man, trying to use C++ has made me realise how wonderful Matlab is.

So, what’s my next task? Well, i need to make that window fullscreen, display a greyscale image on it, get the program to talk to the eyetracker and track where people are looking. Who thinks I can do it by the end of the week? (Now remember children, Friday is a holiday so I don’t have long).

Sigh. This is almost as hard a struggle as learning warr guitar.

Very bored at uni this week…. I’m trying to finish off all the annoying loose bits and bobs for my paper. Dull and tedious. Playing around listening to lots of music on last.fm has made things slightly more interesting though And at the same time, Ali is pondering what the final song for the set list should be for the band.

I thought I’d come up with my own set list. If I had my own band. To play any covers that I threw at them. Oh yes. Sadly there are a few missing tracks as they don’t seem to be on last.fm. Such as some of Peter Gabriel’s more cheese pop tunes

Anyway, expect the list to slowly  grow as I ever so slowly edge towards finishing my paper…

PS. I think my two fav tunes just now are “Cooksferry Queen” by Richard Thompson and “If You Want Me To Stay” by Sly Stone. Both make me want to start dancing around my lab with a big smile on my face. Which would no doubt piss off the rest of the lab. Oh well, at least I’m smiling… Al, Al, Al, can we cover one pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeese. (Come on Lucy and Niki, back me up here…). I’m thinking maybe Cookseferry Queen would be be better suited (with Roger guesting on harmonica!) but I know I for one would pay good money to hear (and see) Ali K do  Sly Stone impression…

PPS. The Red Hot Chili Peppers cover of “If You Want Me To Stay” is a crime. How can people like that band? They’re bland, dull and soulless. They more or less play the original version but manage to lose everything that makes the song brilliant. It doesn’t make me smile. It’s boring. Listen to the original and tell me that it doesn’t make you smile. And tap your foot. And nod your head. Come on, I dare you.

PPPS. There really isn’t very good Chapman stick or Warr guitar music out there. But I’ll maybe save that for another post. And see if I can start an argument with the tapping community! Watch this space.

PPPPS. Question: Does blogging make you more opinionated?