It's not what you know...

As of 20 minutes ago I have set up some more work for myself.
A friend has asked me put together a 45 minute set with her for a gig in Fenbruary, Her singing and me playing acoustic guitar and doing backing vocals. We have arranged a meeting/jam at her place on Wednesday night to discuss songs to work, I am rather excited about this whole operation as I have only played acoustic at jam nights before, not an actual set.
Also, through the connections I have, I am now in touch with someone who is setting up a new record label in his studio in Derby and is looking for available session players. More on this to follow as I am expecting an email through tommorrow.
I also have another job.
The drummer in The Valley has his own band who play strictly original material and they want a new guitarist. They will be recording a new 10 track album next month and they have asked me to come down and record some lead guitar parts on the tracks then potentialy in May join them for live gigs to play the new material.
Oh yes the ball is certainly rolling for me.

Live and Gigging

I have a second band placement.
I am the guitarist for The Valley. A four piece outfit consisting of Drums, Bass, Guitar and Vocals, a new to the scene but quickly cathcing up with the game Femal Vocalist. Based in Ripley, Derbyshire, slowly but surely accquiring gigs left right and centre and making a good name for ourselves.
I am the only guitarist and aswell as play I have been responsible for learning and workingout/transcribing all the songs we do and I have a large creative input ionto how we perform them, Taking covers of songs & making them our own, getting that balance of a bit of the old slotted into the new.
We have performed once this year, it was on the second of January at the Generous Britain in Ripley.
We played two 45 minute sets and started at 6:30pm. It was a busy night with good support and we are sure everyone went home with smiles on their faces, a good time was had by all.

Our two sets were:

Set 1:
Maria-Blondie
Sound of the Underground-Girls Aloud(our punky metal version)
Who Knew-Pink
Johnny B Goode-Chuck Berry
Hard Days Night-Beatles
Rockin' In The Free World-G3
Honky Tonk Woman-Rolling Stones
Bad Moon Rising-Creedance Clearwater Revival
One Way Or another-Blondie
House Of The Rising Sun-Animals

Set 2:
Loose Control-A Nick, Mick nd Stu Instrumental
Teenage Kicks-Undertones
Molly's Chambers-Kings Of Leon
Brown Eyed Girl-Van Morrison
Zombie-Cranberries
Hedonism-Skunk Anansie
Black Velvet-Allanah Myles
Stuck In The Middle-Steelers Wheel(punked up)
Since You've Been Gone-Kelly Clarkson
In Demand-Texas
Stand By You-Pretenders
Don't Stop-Fleetwood Mac
Mustang Sally-Commitments(Valleys personal Jam version)

We are practicing again this weekend and I have been given 5 new tracks to transcribe and learn.
They Are:
Proud Mary-Ike & Tina Turner
I'm Not Dead-Pink
White Wedding-Billy Idol
Wishing Well-Free
Beer-Reel Big Fish

I have transcribed up to Wishing Well and will have them learnt by practice on sunday.
Awesome.

I will attempt to upload videos of the band performing later for you all to sink your teeth into.

So this is Xmas...

A welcome break from university work, a grand holiday with my family and may it continue however there is still work to be done and I am feeling the need to take on some new projects.
The other night I went to an open mic night with a few mates and we jammed a few songs and then I was asked to play again 3 times with different people playing acoustic, blues & rock numbers.It was rather awesome and there was a great response throughout the whole night and with this experience I have been talking to the Landlord of the Pub I work at and I may be participating in the open mic nights there doing a range of things from playing to organising the night itself so there will be allot to write about that in the new year.
My next project at the moment though is Session Composing.
I am going to be collaborating with friend from a Gaming course at university, writing music for the game levels he and his friends have had to design, exhilarating stuff and keeps me up all night working on so many things that push my creative boundaries.
Yeah I am excited and its awesome.

Bringing you up to date......

November has seen a rough patch for me personally and has slowed down work on my project.
However I have quickly got back on track.
over the past two weeks I've put in roughly 24 hours work into the composing of the songs I will be recording for my website.
The first of the three pieces is a nice purely acoustic instrumental which exploits the finger picking technique in the rythm guitar parts whilst a soft but strong melody line is taken up by the lead acoustic using the Phrygian mode to add a spanish flavour to the piece.
The second piece is a more straight forward rock orientated peice, nice and up tempo with a good groove to tap your feet to and I've added in some cheeky little guitar fills in places you wouldnt expect them. I am most excited about this piece.
The third piece which I have begun but not yet completed is a funk inspired piece with allot of focus on the bass guitar parts to hold the groove with the guitar complimenting it, an intriguing piece to me as I have not structured it, I'm just letting it flow and see how it ends up.
On Saturday I am going to start the recording process for all the completed pieces so far after a recent purchase of some new technology to make my musical life ever more easy to express, this purchase is an M-box & pro tools software at a bargain price. Home recording all the way & means that the christmas break will be a severly busy one.

My latest action taken for my project was a photo shoot I had last night.
A good friend of a photography course was kind enough to do the shoot for me.
The photos will be part of my website and consist of shots from me playing to standing to the equipment and a very professional look to them.
Next week will see the full construction of my website also begins, I am keeping it underwraps for now from everyone and trying to make a decent launch of it.

So that is where I am up to now, I will update this again before the week is out and probably everyother day over christmas.

Sleep is calling me.

My first job

As of now I have my first session placement in a band thanks to Ross Labiak from my university course.
The band is called Deceive The Fallen, and it is a project set up by Ross for use in his professional practice module.
I am playing lead guitar and have a total of 4 songs to learn so far which are each challenging in a different way. However, overall they are keeping me very interested as they have complex rythms and time signatures to master and it is also the first Metal band I have been a part of so its a new genre to perform.
Last night was the first full practice and I thourougly enjoyed it. Aswell as myself on guitar and Ross doing guitar and vocals there is Dan Wright on drums and Nate Kerr on bass.
We completed the first song, Profit for the Prophet in a fairly short amount of time and then proceeded to go over it to perfect it.
There is another practice on Tuesday night where I have to finish learning the second song, Blunt Agression, and tidy up my playing on Profit.
I am also waiting for the music to the rest of the songs in the DTF arsenal so I can begin learning them asap and I do like the pressure that is coming with this project - it keeps me on my toes.
Also thanks to  Ross' girlfriend there will be pictures of these sessions and short video clips for evidence that I am allowed to use.

In relation to my website I am setting up, to put  examples of music in different styles i can play, I have discovered soundcloud.com and as of tonight I will be looking into setting my own up.
Another small project for this is within the next few weeks I will be setting up a photo shoot for myself as I have found someone to help me do so.
Watch this space.

The first song...

It is official. I have written my first song for the webiste.
This one is a metal track with the working title '999'. 
It is inspired by bands such as Iron Maiden with a touch of Paul Gilbert style harmonies & techniques.
I am intending to get into the studio over the next two weeks tohave this recorded as well as another track I am going to start to work on today.
Things are feeling good and the creativity is flowing.
BOOSH!

The Proposal that Sarted It All

Professional Practice Proposal

Duncan,

For my Professional Practice Project I am going to set-up my own music website advertising myself as a Session Musician and through doing so I aim to perform at a variety of venues and to various members of the public.
The main focus of the website will be the music that people can listen to.  I will compose several pieces in different styles of music to show to people how diverse I can be with my playing in the hope of acquiring session work.
I will then set-up recording sessions to have copies of these pieces to up load and distribute accordingly. I may also wish to hand out copies to members of the public should any gigs arise from my website, and therefore using a different type of advertising for my-self and my music.
Along with writing and recording the music on the site, my project will also entail the setting up of the website itself. This will involve finding a website to set up on, I am intending to use the very accessible Myspace.com site for this as they have a very large music community and are very user friendly for up and coming musicians. This also has the added bonus of being easy to view by the general public as-well as other musicians and scouts for session musicians.
 There will also be a level of promotional work I will need to arrange and carry out.
I am going to organise my own Photo shoot, taking pictures of me and the equipment I use and also live shots from gigs. I will also have some live footage from shows or recording sessions for people to view as-well.

Nick