This one's worth preserving, for posterity...  After taking Hamish to the Ely Cathedral animal service, I went looking for an article about it, on the off chance that his picture might be in it.  Instead I found this article from three years ago, which not only has his picture, but it's the feature picture for the article!  It's been just sitting out there all this time without our knowledge.  Here's how it appears when you post the link on Facebook:

Open mic

 I've also started playing open mics.  Well, I've done two so far, at the same place (the local "3@3 Real Ale and Craft Beer Cafe") which is very casual indeed -- just ten or so people in the upstairs loft, taking turns, with no amplification of any sort.

Me being me, I have a spreadsheet of songs that I'm considering, ranked according to how ready I am to play them.  Marjorie wants to join me at some point on vocals, so there's a separate tab for songs we're considering for that.

In forty years of playing guitar, I know my limitations pretty well, and so stay confined to songs that are built around strumming and chords.  The songs I've performed so far are:

• The Price I Pay (Billy Bragg)
• American Without Tears (Elvis Costello)
• Red Shoes (Elvis Costello)
• Strawberry Blonde (Ron Sexsmith)
• Up The Junction (Squeeze)

There's kind of a summer break happening (for some dumb reason, like people are spending their time vacationing with their families) and so when I'm not songwriting I've just been learning new songs.  There's certainly some I've worked on that I think are beyond my ability, but the best ones are always ones that tax my abilities a bit.  I quickly get sick of playing songs that don't, but it's probably best to go into an open mic night with songs that you're just a little bit sick of playing.  It's also worth noting that, unlike a lot of other performers these days, I decided I was going to only play songs from memory -- too often people play their songs just staring at their phones or IPads!

Over the last couple of days I've been excited to learn Nick Lowe's Cruel To Be Kind, which I had tried a few times in the past without success, but now is pretty much ready to go I think.  It's a perfect little pop song I think.  I also have another Nick song, two Kinks songs, an Aztec Camera one, one by Fountains Of Wayne, and a smattering of Elvis Costello songs.  I find it's a good thing to go in with a repertoire so you can try to fit the mood of the night!

Songwriting

 I will talk now about songwriting.

When my engineering tendency to take thing things apart combined with my love of music, it was only natural that I would try to figure out a thing or two about songwriting.  And so from the moment I knew two or three guitar chords, I've been trying to compose melodies over chords, and the to fit some words over them (the usual order of things, but not always).

I wrote some songs with my band back in the early nineties, but I didn't know a lot about the process.  Still I thought I had some melodic ability, but my weak singing voice and clumsy musicianship didn't help matters.

Now, thirty-five (!) years have passed, and I've played pretty much daily since then.  So you'd think I'd be a lot better, but it's been all on my own, and to be honest...  No false immodesty, but I haven't improved all that much.  I know a lot more songs, and a fair few tricks, but I'm basically the same guitarist I was then.

I find myself still fascinated by songwriting, though, and have amassed a collection of three hundred or so snippets -- recorded onto a cassette tape initially, but now onto my phone -- of little melodic bits that occur to me, in various stages of completeness.  Most have me singing nonsense words over chords, but the point is to preserve them so I can develop them later.  Early on it was all about finding some sensible chords, then finding a melody that fits over them.  In recent years, it's far more common to devise a melody first, then figure out the chords that fit under it.

But to what end? I asked myself a few years back.  I knew that nothing would ever come of the half-hearted efforts I had put together thus far.  So I sought out and eventually found a forum that would force me to put more effort into writing complete songs.  I came across a songwriting group that has a monthly theme where everyone submits their songs and has a listening party at the end of the month.  

I won't link their name just now, but they are limited to the UK only and I submitted my first song in June of 2023.  I don't submit every month (due to lack of free time, motivation, or ideas), but still I've managed to submit around fifteen different songs, which kind of amazes me.

The songwriting process follows a predictable pattern.  I start with a flush of excitement, and bounce ideas around, often with the help of Marjorie.  I come up with a theme and a song title, then comb my collection of snippets for one where I can work the title in and which has the right feel for the theme.  I block out a structure for the song -- how the intro, verses, prehooks, choruses, and bridges all fit together, on my guitar.  Then I start it with the recording, usually drums first (note by note using Hydrogen) and then a bass part (usually using TuxGuitar, though we own a bass now so I'm trying to use that instead).  Then I record the guitar and add whatever other bits I want to add (piano, strings, trumpet, etc.) using TuxGuitar.  Lyrics, sadly, I leave until the very last, as it turns out I hate that part.  Often I record the vocals on the day the song is due as I've put it off so long.  It also probably doesn't help that like everyone else, I don't like my voice.

I'm trying to break out of this mould this month by completing the song, lyrics and everything, before I start in with any programming or recording.  I only have a vague idea going so far (the theme is "Don't do that") so I really need to get to work.  I'm thinking of following the advice I just saw John Lennon give George Harrison in the 'Get Back' documentary -- if you sit down to write a song, don't stop until you finish it.  That's marginally easier said than done.

Let's try this again

It feels like the most common subject I blog about over the last few decades has been how little I blog.  But I value all my old blog posts and Marjorie and I fairly often use it as an aide memoire.  And as most of the shine has gone off of Facebook in my eyes, it just seems to make sense that I should write about things here more often, even if it will go unnoticed by most.  So let's see if I can get back into this.

We are still happy with our choice to move to Ely, and plan to stay an indefinite while.  A statement like that obviously means a lot more now than it would twenty years ago, as it's time to consider when, where, and how to retire.  We are glad to have the options we do, especially as everything has gone haywire thanks to our batshit fuckwitted leader.

We lucked into a house we like a lot and are surrounded by great neighbours.  We also have something we've never had before: a pub.  Yes, we've lived near pubs before, but now we're part of a Stammtisch at the Prince Albert where we can just show up randomly and get into great conversations with all the regulars, who have become friends.  We seem to learn so much there about life in the UK, life in Europe, history, etc.

Hamish the dog is still kicking on, and loves to go to the pub.  He's 15, and arthritic, but still has an undeniable zest for life.  We have a harder time leaving him these days as his pace has slowed and he tends to come back from the dog sitter knackered.  But we took him up to Thornham in Norfolk for a quick weekend getaway last weekend and he had great time.

Our jobs are... fine enough for the moment, though here as well obviously we wouldn't mind a bit more security.  Retirement would be great but it makes loads more sense to be stockpiling all we can at the moment.

What else is new...  We got a bass guitar, named it Minty, and I'm going to try to teach Marjorie what I know (at least the parts that overlap with playing a regular guitar, which is a lot, but there's still loads specific to the bass that we'll have to figure out together).  She's had one lesson from me so far and did awesome.

I'm taking an online class on basic astronomy at the Royal Observatory of Greenwich, just because the chance was there.  Two hour classes on Tuesdays for six weeks.  I could probably teach the class tbh but I wanted to get thinking about cosmology again just to have something to ponder that isn't the shitty state of the world.  It's a subject I sometimes wish I had pursued, but what can you do.  (Funnily enough, Marjorie took an astronomy course in college and hated it because they expected her to do math when she just wanted to look at stars, while I was unable to get into my college's astronomy courses because of all the people who signed up for it just wanting to look at stars!)

That will do for a catch-up post.  The plan from here is to get back to posting smaller stuff, if I can sustain this.