More Musical Matters.

OK, now I need to fill in the important stuff.

Wrist recovery
This is continuing to go really well. My slap came back much quicker than I'd hoped: it seems to be pretty much back up to scratch apart from the fastest of the triplet stuff, which is fair enough considering that I still can't use my right hand to lift really heavy stuff at the moment. Fingerstyle is going just fine. The only thing I need to do is make sure my nail beds don't get quite so hammered with my slap style: I fear I need to work on that or I'll end up peeling them back horribly. My index finger is showing the strain today, and I've got another rehearsal tonight!

Recording session!
Had another session with Joost for his college project, doing Stevie Wonder's "MasterBlaster". Good fun, but I really wish I'd had more time to work on it (I squeezed it into a couple of evenings work, which meant I got the feel, and the couple of unison riff areas in the tune down OK). First take! And I was sat in the control room playing along with a MIDI interpretation of the tune Joost did as a placemarker to record against. Totally hysterical vocal lines, and this massive lo-fi choir patch in the second chorus which meant I lost my place in the run-through before the recording!

Still not sure if I got the second unison bit right, though. Oops, just checked. Joost's MIDI was right, I forgot the high section! Blast. Wonder if he wants to re-record it? Thing is, with moving and the oxford funky pop act, I really don't have time to do much of anything at the moment, including "proper" practise. The rehearsals are pretty much all I'm doing at the moment (which is very very bad of me).

Audiences at rehearsals!
I mentioned this in passing before. Jake does seem to know a lot of guys who can do the sorts of things we need to be able to do. His previous agent (he was based in london a while ago from what I gather) used to scout for EMI, and he's going to pay us a visit during rehearsals. The audience we've been getting recently are involved in the club "Bridge" in oxford where Jake is trying to get a residency for the band. I think our guitar players didn't realise how good we'd get after a few rehearsals. The original material is sounding really great, the interpretations the whole band are making of the recorded versions (from Jake's studio) are original and fresh. Sounds like our erstwhile 6 stringers have a fairly successful paying rock act which gets a fair few gigs: I've told Jake I don't have any other acts and I'm concentrating on making this a goer. It's cool, he's actually demanding a level of loyalty which I'm starting to enjoy.

New Gear - the Stack from Hell
Well, I don't have the cabs yet, but at least I've paid for them :) Didn't hear anything from Mad Monks for a couple of days so I rang them - turned out they'd emailed me at home (my ebay account is registered to a home email account) rather than the email address here at Pana where I wanted them to mail me. After treating me like a lost friend, they quickly ironed out payment, and I managed to get 60 quids worth of polycarbonate 4U rack mount (Stagg, I think it is) for the Warwick Pro-Tube IX head to sit in. Which means even my feeble wrist will be able to lift it easily (and comfortably).

Bit of advice: if you buy an amp head which says it's rack-mountable, but it has rubber feet on, don't skimp and leave a rack out of the order: get one to fit, the amp head will be incredibly awkward to lift and carry!

Now all I need are a couple of speakon cables to hook the whole shebang up. And some floor reinforcement. :)

Must stop buying things!