Riadsala’s Blog

Tried out a new cake recipe last night: Read the rest of this entry »

Well, we had a jam last night.

The good: Doug. Doug was good. All doubts about Doug have gone away. Obviously he just needed told to go practise a few times.

The better: Adam, the drummer we were jamming out. Best drummer I’ve played in for years. Was a lot of fun.

The bad: we’re not good enough for Adam, so we’ll have to continue our search for a drummer. Matt and I are both very out of practise playing with a drummer and are too used to playing off each other.

Oh well. Never know, maybe the guy will see some potential and jam with us a few times. But its unlikely, esp as he has a guitarist friend along too, and we have no use for a third guitarist.

We will keep on looking.

Now…. time to work on the thesis….

A good little Cantor jam at Banana Row last night. Well, Matt and I have our usual fun and Doug was Doug. I find it hard to work out what’s going in his head. He seems to alternate between coming up with something magical on gutair, and just being a bit useless. A very different guitarist from Matt, and I think the band will benefit from having both of them We also had our new singer (hopefully) along, and that went pretty well. Hoping she thought the same, and then we have an offical 4th member. Then we just need a drummer to finish things off. In the meantime, we always have my DS with the Korg DS10 Oh, and we’re coving some King Crimson tunes, so I’m a happy bunny.

On the downside, I really need to start practising properly. Lots. So, am going to aim for an hour a day and see how i get on with that. I have a LOT to do.

Keep working on warr basics, and get faster at playing repeating notes. This’ll tighten up ToaPP.

Get properly really good at playing the little chord progression I came up with for my warr. As it would make a nice little tune. Unfortunatly I wrote some akward changes into it and have to get more accurate with my pinky! And avoid unintentional string bends when I do a large position shift.

Get back into the swing of things with my fretless bass playing (bass playing full stop really). Since I’ve not played with Ali K for months, my bass playing is pretty rusty. Far too many fluffled notes.

Learn how to use a plectrum

Make funk fingers and learn Sleepless as Matt really wants to play it.

Oh, and I have a PhD thesis to write…..

Hohum.

So, what’s been happening? Hmm. PhD has been progressing: 91 pages done. Going to start re-writing my stochastic search paper so I can resubmit it, it’ll hopefully get sent to more favourable reviewers. And I’ll maybe put some sentences in bold.

Music: Cantor is going in an odd direction. Fun though. Despite still not having a drummer or singer. We have one of each to try out though, so fingers crossed

Hoping Ali finishes his phd soon and decides he’d like to play some more duo stuff as I miss playing around on the fretless with him.

Had an ok birthday. Am 27 now. That’s only just still mid-twenties. Am getting old.

This is very very cool. I’m adding it to my long long long list of things I hope to do one day!

Make: Online : Make a mellotron out of walkmans – Weekend Projects Podcast

This year is zipping along at a fair old speed. The 3rd year of my PhD is up mid June, and there’s no chance that I’ll be done in time. Not that that really matters, as I’m funded until mid December. And I really should at least of handed in a draft by then. Had a rotten few months but I’m hopefull that things are looking up.

So, what’s happened recently? Well, fuck all really. I’ve been kicked out of the Pussycats, a coup probably left by out chronologically challenged drummer. Turns out my “wanting everything to be good and in time” ethos doesn’t gel with the slightly more punk “lets just have fun.” Which is a bit of a shame. But hey, at least I don’t have to be party to a miniature equivalent of Phil Collins ruining Genesis* :p

The main downside is that I haven ‘t seen Ali for ages. Which is a shame. Miss playing with him, as it’s fun, a real pleasure to play his tunes.

On the plus side though, my own band (I guess I’ll get told off for calling it “my” band) is coming together. Talked Ed into having a go on drums with us and we’ve got a jam next week. Thought we’d pick a few covers to get started with… so overly optimistic as always, I’m learning: Three of a Perfect Pair (King Crimson), Shallow (Porcupine Tree) and Schism (Tool). Shallow is pretty easy, although I’m a bit out of pracitse on my bass in general, and rock bass specifically. Been, what, seven-eight years since I last rocked out properly? ToaPP is possibly the oddest most syncopated, yet groovey thing I’ve played. I dunno how Tony Levin came up with that bassline for the verse. Very cool. And Schism is a bitch. Or rather, I’m it’s bitch, until I get my old chops back. On the plus side, actually practising my bass again is fun as I’ve neglected them over the past year in favour of the Warr. Still, a lot of practise needed.

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Multimedia Artist Peter Koraca

Have blogged in a while so i thought I’d share this. I thought it was pretty neat.

Hello. Just a quick note to say that I went to see Copenhagen at the Lyceum lastn night. It was excellent, so you should all make time to go too.  Best play I’ve been to see in quite some time.

In other news, well, there isn’t any. Or at least nothing I wish to discuss here. But go see Copenhagen.