I've been doing a lot of recording this past couple of weeks. I got a new recording microphone and I'm spending hours on end trying to get songs that I like recorded. Things don't always work out the way I want but that's okay because every time I make a mistake I learn from it and hopefully do it better next time around.
The main reason for spending my days with my guitar, laptop and microphone is just to try and be some way creative. I promised myself a long time ago that I wouldn't ever sit at home and feel sorry for myself and there's not enough rugby on the telly to keep me busy all day every day. There are times that I can get so annoyed with the whole process that I'm fit to be tied but that's okay too because if I didn't get annoted once in a while I wouldn't be human.
I can sit all day and get tangled up in a song and never be happy with the way it comes across and erase everything that I've done that day, and sometimes I can get it in one take and it feels like pure gold. There's people spend years trying to get the perfect recording and drive themselves mad doing it but that's not what I'm trying to do, I just try to fill my day's the most creative way possible and this is my current outlet. My favourite way of making music is still playing live, there's something about being in the room when the music bounces off the walls and an audience sparkles when they hear something they like and their eyes light up. Not every night is like that, as any singer will tell you, but you have to leave the not so good nights behind and think about the next one.
I'd love to play live more often but I can't commit too far ahead and even at that I could wake up any day and not be able to use my hands and would have to cancel on the day and I never want to do that. I've been offered a couple of gigs and I'll probably play them as the people know all about my condition. For now I'll keep recording in my front room with the wind outside joining in and the rain against the window keeping time and when the time is right I'll go and play some shows and maybe see some of you guys there.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Just like buses..
Some people wait for years and never meet one. I always knew I would but I never knew when, and then out of the blue last last Monday I met one. I've been wanting to meet one for a long time now but the opportunity never really presented itself. Of course it's never how you imagine but it really wasn't a let down. I kind of drew a picture in my head of what it would be like, and added a little script as to what I might say but it didn't turn out anything like that. Yes folks after all this time, and all the waiting I finally met another person who suffers from the same condition as me.
I arrived in hospital last Monday and was put into a room for two and my room mate for the week was a fellow sufferer. It was fun, we traded stories and had a laugh about life in general and swaped DVD's. It's nice to know you're not alone sometimes. We had the usuall straem of med students in and out all week. They would sit with one of us and go through their usuall questions, every time they would comment on how rare CIDP is and how unlikely they were to come across another one, and then they'd sit with the other one of us and couldn't believe their luck at seeing two of us at the same time. This of course led to the "2 bus" joke over and over again, still they're med students, they don't get out a lot.
It was a good week all the same. I spent a lot of time playing around with a programme called Cakewalk, which is basicaly a way of writing and recording music just using my laptop. It's fun to do but for my money you can't beat playing real music with real instruments and a bunch of friends, but more of that later..
I arrived in hospital last Monday and was put into a room for two and my room mate for the week was a fellow sufferer. It was fun, we traded stories and had a laugh about life in general and swaped DVD's. It's nice to know you're not alone sometimes. We had the usuall straem of med students in and out all week. They would sit with one of us and go through their usuall questions, every time they would comment on how rare CIDP is and how unlikely they were to come across another one, and then they'd sit with the other one of us and couldn't believe their luck at seeing two of us at the same time. This of course led to the "2 bus" joke over and over again, still they're med students, they don't get out a lot.
It was a good week all the same. I spent a lot of time playing around with a programme called Cakewalk, which is basicaly a way of writing and recording music just using my laptop. It's fun to do but for my money you can't beat playing real music with real instruments and a bunch of friends, but more of that later..
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
to tell you the honest truth
I can't fly. What I mean is I am unable to fly, it's not a medical thing, there has been no letter from the hospital to tell me not to fly, it's just that if I run along a runway and flap my arms then as far as I know I will not fly. I'm so sure of this that I'm not even going to try. It's just a fact that if I do jump in the air then the pesky gravity sucks me right back and reminds me of some basic laws of physics that I may have forgotten.
I can almost hear the foreheads being slapped as I type but it's things like this that remind me that nothing is impossible. If Mr.Wright and Mr.Wright had said that and left it at that then we would never know what other countries were like or we would have never found out that clouds aren't made from candy-floss (though I still reckon they are)
I was at the Irish Wheelchair Association center on Monday and it was like somebody gave me the keys of a kingdom. It's a wonderful building on the edge of Mallow town with brilliant facilities for disabled people. I was in the gym in my w/chair and was champing at the bit to get on and use everything in there. Now what has this got to do with flying? Well nothing really other that the thought that I had sort of given up on sport, as a player, but I never really said it out loud, I just sort of carried around the idea that me and any kind of competitive sport were well and truly over and I had more chance of running down a runway and taking off than I had of being able to play a sport again. It got me down a lot because I let it get me down and I couldn't have been more wrong if I tried. There is of course almost as many sports for disabled athletes as there are for able bodied and I really have always watched the paralympics with as much enthusiasm as any other sport I watch, but I really thought that because of my condition and the fact that I'm over forty (I know, scary) that it was all behind me.
While I was in the gym I got a phonecall, somebody wanting to know if I'd like to play w/chair basketball and rugby, of course I said yes and I'll be starting training on the 23rd. A short time later I got another call and I've been asked if I'd like to try sailing, not just the paddle around the shallows type of sailing but full on sonar racing, needless to say I'll be hoisting up the mainsail on that one very soon. Today a man called to see me and he wants to put together a w/chair archery group to compete in both disabled and open competitions, all I could think was where can I get a bow to start practicing.
All of the above happened inside a couple of days. I woke up on Monday morning feeling rubbish and having barely slept and really feeling sorry for myself. I fell over trying to get dressed, I had to crawl down the stairs and my hands were cramping up all day. I went to Mallow and got a couple of phone calls and I feel like I could take on the world. All the things that I was feeling miserable about were taken away by a couple of strangers phonecalls. Tonight my hands are still cramping up and my legs don't work at all but I feel good and can't wait to get on a court/water/field and do some of the things that I thought I never would. Now where's the nearest runway, I'll give it a go anyway.
I can almost hear the foreheads being slapped as I type but it's things like this that remind me that nothing is impossible. If Mr.Wright and Mr.Wright had said that and left it at that then we would never know what other countries were like or we would have never found out that clouds aren't made from candy-floss (though I still reckon they are)
I was at the Irish Wheelchair Association center on Monday and it was like somebody gave me the keys of a kingdom. It's a wonderful building on the edge of Mallow town with brilliant facilities for disabled people. I was in the gym in my w/chair and was champing at the bit to get on and use everything in there. Now what has this got to do with flying? Well nothing really other that the thought that I had sort of given up on sport, as a player, but I never really said it out loud, I just sort of carried around the idea that me and any kind of competitive sport were well and truly over and I had more chance of running down a runway and taking off than I had of being able to play a sport again. It got me down a lot because I let it get me down and I couldn't have been more wrong if I tried. There is of course almost as many sports for disabled athletes as there are for able bodied and I really have always watched the paralympics with as much enthusiasm as any other sport I watch, but I really thought that because of my condition and the fact that I'm over forty (I know, scary) that it was all behind me.
While I was in the gym I got a phonecall, somebody wanting to know if I'd like to play w/chair basketball and rugby, of course I said yes and I'll be starting training on the 23rd. A short time later I got another call and I've been asked if I'd like to try sailing, not just the paddle around the shallows type of sailing but full on sonar racing, needless to say I'll be hoisting up the mainsail on that one very soon. Today a man called to see me and he wants to put together a w/chair archery group to compete in both disabled and open competitions, all I could think was where can I get a bow to start practicing.
All of the above happened inside a couple of days. I woke up on Monday morning feeling rubbish and having barely slept and really feeling sorry for myself. I fell over trying to get dressed, I had to crawl down the stairs and my hands were cramping up all day. I went to Mallow and got a couple of phone calls and I feel like I could take on the world. All the things that I was feeling miserable about were taken away by a couple of strangers phonecalls. Tonight my hands are still cramping up and my legs don't work at all but I feel good and can't wait to get on a court/water/field and do some of the things that I thought I never would. Now where's the nearest runway, I'll give it a go anyway.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
And I did it all again.
There's a lot of firsts for Me. Well not really firsts, I suppose you could call them agains, but they're firsts since I started feeling unwell. There was My first steps and the first meal that I fed myself, the first time I managed to walk up a stairs, which My daughter got on video, and the first time I could play my guitar.
The other night was another one, I went to Bennis's Pub in Ballyagran and played music all night, well at least until the barmaid said it's time to go. It was a big landmark first for me because I didn't know how long I could keep going for until my hands or fingers give up, or if my lungs could push out enough air to be audible when I sang, and now I know so I plan on doing a lot more of it. The next morning I felt like I'd done ten rounds with Tyson, and that's a lot of golf, but as the day went on I recovered well enough to be able to make coffee and eat buns so that's a result to Me.
I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing that knocking out a bunch of songs with friends and good people around, it's my little escape from the world. A simple three minute song can stay with you for life and bring out emotions and feelings that you might have thought were long gone. I have loads runing around my head most of the day. If somebody hears a track on the radio that was a hit when they were at school more often than not they're snapped back to a school disco for a split second, or maybe a memory of a first dance.
I'm always looking for new songs to sing and play, I'm not too keen on playing the same old sing-alongs that a some musicians rely on time and time again, there's nothing wrong with those songs, in fact they served Me very well when I was a gigging musician, but these days I like a bit more of a challange. I like to reach out to an audience and offer them something that they might not have heard before. Another thing I do is not to use a playlist and this drives other musicians mad. I just shoot from the hip and hope everything works out, and mostly I believe it does.
I write this blog the same way, I don't plan what I'm going to write and I never edit before posting, sometimes I even forget to spellcheck it, I just type and post and hope it doesn't come across as a pointless ramble. I started this blog to let people know what it's like living with CIDP and because it camn be such an unpredictable condition I don't think I could plan a blog, because in the time it takes to plan something then my condition could have changed and I'd have to start over. In saying all that I've never been one to plan anything really, because when I have then there always something or somebody who I trip over and my well planed plan ends up being a 'what if?' memory, so I just keep going with a vague idea of where I want to end up and hope it all works out. In the words of a great songwriter, Seasick Steve, "I started out with nothing and still got most of it left".
I was talking to the greatest bass player in the world, Pete, this morning and we want to do some recording soon, and the phonecall ended with the idea we'll either record in England or Ireland or Wales at some time in March or April or some other time that sort of suites us both, and there would be some fishing involved if we end up antwhere near a river, lake, stream, or the sea. I have every confidence that the recording will happen and we'll have a ball, so worrying about trivial things like times and dates would only cause a distraction to the end product. I've often gone on stage with Pete and him not know what on earth I'm going to do next but he never gets phased and can rely on a massive amount of experience and talent to get him through the gig, while all I have to rely on is the solid bass player standing beside me and a drummer, also called Pete, who is ice cool and brilliant. If it wasn't for them I'd probably sink like a stove overboard.
So to conclude this little piece, I will more than likely, if everybody concerned can make it, if it's at all possible, maybe be able to try and be more definate in the things I'm sort of planing in a sort of a vague kind of way, play a bit more music more often than I have been as long as my battered body holds out and I have at least one person that wants to hear me.
The other night was another one, I went to Bennis's Pub in Ballyagran and played music all night, well at least until the barmaid said it's time to go. It was a big landmark first for me because I didn't know how long I could keep going for until my hands or fingers give up, or if my lungs could push out enough air to be audible when I sang, and now I know so I plan on doing a lot more of it. The next morning I felt like I'd done ten rounds with Tyson, and that's a lot of golf, but as the day went on I recovered well enough to be able to make coffee and eat buns so that's a result to Me.
I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing that knocking out a bunch of songs with friends and good people around, it's my little escape from the world. A simple three minute song can stay with you for life and bring out emotions and feelings that you might have thought were long gone. I have loads runing around my head most of the day. If somebody hears a track on the radio that was a hit when they were at school more often than not they're snapped back to a school disco for a split second, or maybe a memory of a first dance.
I'm always looking for new songs to sing and play, I'm not too keen on playing the same old sing-alongs that a some musicians rely on time and time again, there's nothing wrong with those songs, in fact they served Me very well when I was a gigging musician, but these days I like a bit more of a challange. I like to reach out to an audience and offer them something that they might not have heard before. Another thing I do is not to use a playlist and this drives other musicians mad. I just shoot from the hip and hope everything works out, and mostly I believe it does.
I write this blog the same way, I don't plan what I'm going to write and I never edit before posting, sometimes I even forget to spellcheck it, I just type and post and hope it doesn't come across as a pointless ramble. I started this blog to let people know what it's like living with CIDP and because it camn be such an unpredictable condition I don't think I could plan a blog, because in the time it takes to plan something then my condition could have changed and I'd have to start over. In saying all that I've never been one to plan anything really, because when I have then there always something or somebody who I trip over and my well planed plan ends up being a 'what if?' memory, so I just keep going with a vague idea of where I want to end up and hope it all works out. In the words of a great songwriter, Seasick Steve, "I started out with nothing and still got most of it left".
I was talking to the greatest bass player in the world, Pete, this morning and we want to do some recording soon, and the phonecall ended with the idea we'll either record in England or Ireland or Wales at some time in March or April or some other time that sort of suites us both, and there would be some fishing involved if we end up antwhere near a river, lake, stream, or the sea. I have every confidence that the recording will happen and we'll have a ball, so worrying about trivial things like times and dates would only cause a distraction to the end product. I've often gone on stage with Pete and him not know what on earth I'm going to do next but he never gets phased and can rely on a massive amount of experience and talent to get him through the gig, while all I have to rely on is the solid bass player standing beside me and a drummer, also called Pete, who is ice cool and brilliant. If it wasn't for them I'd probably sink like a stove overboard.
So to conclude this little piece, I will more than likely, if everybody concerned can make it, if it's at all possible, maybe be able to try and be more definate in the things I'm sort of planing in a sort of a vague kind of way, play a bit more music more often than I have been as long as my battered body holds out and I have at least one person that wants to hear me.
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