To paraphrase the old saw about bear-eating (and vice versa), sometimes you take a hiatus, and sometimes it takes you. I'm pretty sure that the latter happened to me with this blog. I see that my last post was last summer. Oh dear. Well, I'm back, and I suppose both my absence and return need some explanation*.
I'm prone to going down rabbit holes, but a little over four years ago I went down one so deeply that I've rarely come back up into the light since. After years of just, well, "getting by" on the electric guitar (or, to be clear, electric guitar plus endless pedals), I was gradually coming to some pretty stark realisations about my playing, including:
- I could barely read music, let alone sight read.
- I didn't really have anything I could call a "repertoire".
- I couldn't play anything solo.
Now I was hardly alone in this. For a start there's the old joke "how do you get a guitarist to shut up?" And on the repertoire front, just pop into your local music shop. You'll almost certainly hear a (very possibly accomplished) guitarist wizzing up and down scales and arpeggios, thrashing out chords and riffs and generally not really playing anything resembling actual music. if I'd already started to recognise these things instinctively, the realisation was starkly reinforced by a couple of blog posts by the brilliant American guitar educationalist Jamie Andreas.
It's all your fault, you bugger: my lovely 2016 Juan Hernández Concierto guitar
Over some months, the idea started to form in my head that I could address these issues by taking up classical guitar, and after a lot of research I finally signed up for lessons with the Brighton-based guitar and Alexander Technique teacher Gregg Isaacson. (I frankly lucked out there; Gregg has turned out to be the best teacher I’ve ever had – of anything.)
Anyway, after nearly half a decade of diligent daily practice and study, exams, competitions, workshops, ensembles classes and more, it’s clear to me that this has taken over much of my life. The rabbit hole, you see. At the same time, and in as unexpected manner, my work with Sarah on Angel Academe has all but overtaken every aspect of our work-life (and beyond). So there you go: classical guitar and angel investment. Life throws you googlies, that’s for sure.
So some things have fallen by the wayside. For one thing, I’ve barely touched Logic (a previous rabbit hole) in years, despite having almost two albums’ worth of Boom Logistics material to finish off.** And with Undercurrent in abeyance (this is the jazz duo I play in with pianist Steve Morgan), I felt at a loss as to why to keep this blog up, or, for that matter, its companion reading list.
Well, Undercurrent is back, or at least will be: we planning a show at the Dover Castle in Hanover, Brighton, on May 16th – details to follow soon. And I’ve finally made a commitment, if only to myself, to finish off all that BL material. So it seems like an apt time to raise this blog, if from the dead, then at least from suspended animation. (I’m also, much more reluctantly, returning to twitter, but more of that anon.) That said, I don’t think I’ll be posting very often; I’m going to restrict it to news about Undercurrent, Boom Logistics and whatever other projects come along. I’m going to restrict the “check this out” activity, including vinyl gleanings, to twitter.
So that’s it. DGMFS is back and I’m looking forward to sharing news with you as it comes up. Stay tuned.
Simon
* "An explanation for whom?" wouldn't be an unreasonable question; I have no illusions that I write this blog for anyone other than myself. No, really.
** Actually, once a year Nick Reynolds turns up hear to record some stuff and I have to reacquaint myself with the software all over again, for which I'm grateful. I think we do some pretty good music too...
