Los Tres Amigos at The Oxford Totterdown Bristol

Jacqui and I had planned to take a week off to progress through market towns and small cities in the west of England when my brother in law suggested we also call into Bristol and make an appearance at an open mic night along with his son in law Simon.  Bring a guitar he said!  Our trio (later to be known as Los Tres Amigos) would be me on guitar,  Roy on harmonica and Simon on vocals;  and would do a few blues numbers. Ok I said and I packed my old stage Godin XTSA and the small Vox Valvetronix I had used at a previous gig in Bristol.  Then the news came though that we would probably play through the house PA and an amp wouldn't be needed - I thought I'd leave it in the car anyway!  So now I would need a guitar FX unit.  I opted to pack my 'spare' Boss GP 10 in a haversack.  I had used this on my last Checkmates appearance where carrying stuff on public transport was a prime consideration.   

Jacqui and I had an enjoyable few days taking in Worcester and Tewksbury before driving the 50 miles to Bristol, partly through the scenic Malvern hills.  We arrived at Roy and Ann's house and enjoyed a jolly good feed and aperitif before setting off in the luxury of a taxi the 5 miles or so to Totterdown.  Here we met up with Simon and our nieces Jo and Sian and enjoyed a beer or two watching a variety of other 'turns'. Mostly singer/acoustic guitarists,  but one was a mobile phone percussion player!   Our spot came up at 10:15pm and I plugged into the house pa,  did a quick tune up,  set the sound on the GP10 and gave the OK to Simon.  At the last minute Simon had elected to start with "Brown Eyed Girl" and Roy thought that wouldn't need harp,  so it was just the two of us.  I started the opening riff but Simon missed the cue and asked me to go round again which I did with mixed fingers (not having played it for a while).  This time he came in OK and we romped though the first couple of verses in good order,  when it suddenly dawned on me I was expected to join in on the 'sha la la 's in the chorus.  Not having sung for a while I plunged in with a falsetto over Simon's line which seemed to work - good job 'cos it was the best I could do on the night.  Then the next problem loomed -  the bass solo!!  At the last second I elected to play the chords rhythmically  rather than pick out the bass notes.  It worked well and I was able to finely cue Simon into the last verse.  We finished to good applause and Roy came up with his harp.  I switched the guitar sound to a bit of crunch and we did "Hoochie Coochie Man and Folsom Brison Blues"  Took a bit of getting used to without drums and bass but both were well received.  A rough phone vid of a little of each of these was taken and are presented here for Blogateer and Blogette consumption:

Hoochie Coochie

Folsom


After we finished I was delighted to find out performers had a free beer so it was approaching midnight as we left to get the bus home -  but a taxi came by and we were able to hail that.  Another beer back at base ended a jolly fine night.

Comparing Sonar Backing Tracks with Merish

Hello Blogateers.  Sorry for the long absence I have been busy with a new music project (more on that later)

I have about finished the project to set up backing tracks for cover band duties and thought I'd like to compare the results of the two players  Cakewalk Sonar and the Merish 3 player.  We have two short videos here which illustrate the outcome:

Beautiful Woman Sonar


Beautiful Woman Merish


They are very similar but I think Sonar just edges it.  I'd be happy to gig with either but the Merish is easier to handle in a live situation.  It's also more flexible in that if you have a bassist or a drummer available you can switch that track out to let the live person play that part! 

I'll use either to keep my hand in doing home practice so now its time to move onto the next challenge!

Many decades ago I set about producing my own popera,  with a story,  music and film in mind as the end game.  Very ambitious and unlikely to be ever realised! But I thought I'd have a go at the music while my fingers still work.  I have rescued from an old reel to reel recording a very poor digital rendition of songs that were originally recorded in the early 1970s by me,  Dan Woodman and another flatmate or two who's names escape me for now.  With a very poor signal to noise ratio and a very contracted bandwidth the original recordings are not at all listenable but I can hear the songs just enough to work out the words and arrangements.   So my initial aim is simply to produce some demos capturing the original flavour of the songs.  I can then maybe then go on to review,  rearrange and produce the songs to the best of my ability in a more contemporary style.

Although I have been very busy with family duties this Summer I found enough time on a couple of wet days to pilot the project with a new recording of one of the songs called "Cracking Fingers".  I laid down a Takamine 12 string guitar track as the basis,  then added a bass line using Dan's Fender Jazz.  I did try using drum patterns but ended up laying down a live and loose drum track on my Roland TDK kit.  A couple of vocal lines,  some bells and special cracking effects later,  I had a loose but listenable demo that does indeed capture the flavour of the original.  

I have set up a SoundCloud account under the name Mr Mog to drop the finished products into and, risking some credibility, I offer a link to the SoundCloud recording here - enjoy?

Soundcloud: Cracking Fingers