Category: Creative Practice.

  • Lockdown Block.

    I fell for it. You know the spiel. Write that novel! Make that album! Learn that language! Like many people, I expect, I wanted to believe that I was going to make the best of this time. But it’s going stale. Becoming toxic. The idea that all this extra time is an opportunity feels horribly…

  • Don’t Ignore The Day Job.

    This. So much this. See the thread, Steve always has great stuff to say on this sort of thing (read: having a sustainable music career). My take on it is a little long for a tweet, so here it is. I’m in a very privileged position, I know that. Making my music is very much…

  • +1 For Demos.

    +1 For Demos.

    I started writing songs in an era dominated by cassette tapes. My little Sanyo tape recorder had a built in microphone, and my earliest songs were committed to tape (real tape) that way. It looked something like this: That worked perfectly well to get the ideas out of my head; chords, melodies, lyrics. But to…

  • Sorting Through The Noise.

    There’s a lot of online stuff that goes into a career these days. Facebook. Instagram. YouTube. Just making music isn’t close to enough to keep your head above water nowadays. Or so it seems. I’m less convinced. We’re always being told how vital social media is. Most artists I know and like play a huge…

  • Zanshin: Exploring Movement

    There’s much going on, but yesterday I was able to put in some more time with Ayaka Takai on Zanshin, the choreography/MiMu Gloves exploration we’re working on at the moment. Big thanks Arts Council England. It’s really exciting work. It continues to surprise me from all directions. One of the biggest things to get snagged…

  • Review. Reflect.

    Reviewing sessions away from the DAW or even a screen is so useful. I document every meaningful bit of progress, as well as trying to capture my thoughts on how I feel about the work. It’s where the real work happens now; the recording session is the factory floor. That’s not really where the ideas…

  • Recording, Capturing, Moving.

    I’m still making things. Things you listen to. Things you listen to that are made in a computer. It makes less and less sense. Making music with computers can be – for me, at least – incredibly frustrating. I don’t particularly enjoy using electronic devices screens with screens. In fact I find it really annoying…

  • Writing Funding Bids (The Writing bit).

    Today I submitted my second application to Arts Council England’s Developing Your Creative Practice programme. It’s really great opportunity for artists to develop work without a lot of the pressures that traditional project grants involve. Crucially, there is no Match Funding needed, and no Audience. An Arts Council grant requires both of those things: you…

  • Go Be You.

    Alt text: a handwritten note, which I have not yet been able to transcribe. Looking into a way of converting these hand written notes. Irony overload: handwritten blog posts are more accessible for me, not accessible at all for some of my readers… I’m working on a solution xx

  • Go Deep or Go Home.

    It’s kind of a cliche to talk about creativity as an elusive thing. Terms like “Writer’s Block” validate our perception that inspiration can escape the gravity of our ambitions at any time. I’m less and less convinced that this is true. It doesn’t follow that I am therefore inspired all of the time, sadly. Imagine!…