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Steve's Blog: Solo Bass & Beyond

More Music Video - New Public Beta experiments + Duo with Theo Travis

May 12th, 2009 · 1 Comment

Here are the latest couple of videos I’ve put up. The first is another of the experimental ideas I’m working on for the new album - this time I wanted to try something a little more solidly rhythmic, just to see how the replace functions interact with a percussive track. (the part is played by [...]

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Tags: Music News · Musing on Music · looping

Open Letter To The UK Jazz Community Pt V - Blogging.

May 11th, 2009 · 5 Comments

At the end of Pt IV, I said that band leaders could consider not hiring musicians who don’t blog to help promote the music. A few of you didn’t like that idea, suggesting that it’s all about the music, and why should someone have to be a writer in order to play music?
To which my [...]

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Tags: the future of music · tips for musicians

Two Contrasting New Musical Experiments (Video)

May 9th, 2009 · No Comments

Here’s the two latest bits of ‘public beta test music’ that I’ve put up online.
They contrast a couple of different possible uses of the functions I’ve been exploring on the Looperlative of late - the first being using the replace functions as an ancillary bleepy effect in an otherwise mellow ballad, and the second being [...]

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Tags: Music News · looping

Two More Musical Experiments… And a Podcast.

May 6th, 2009 · 1 Comment

It’s been another very creative day - after the video that I put up this morning, I got working again on some more musical experiments using the looperlative with the new buttons that I’ve programmed.
Each day that I experiment with these glitchy replace functions, it feels like I’m getting closer them being ‘musically transparent’ - [...]

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Tags: Music News · looping

More New Music: Video of a Looperlative Glitchy Bluesy Electronica Experiment

May 6th, 2009 · 2 Comments

Here’s another new ‘public beta’ video - this time, I’m experimenting with some new functions that’ve just been added to the Looperlative LP1. (that’s the looping device I use…)
The new tricks are around the idea of ‘replacing‘ bits of a loop, with other audio, giving it a chopped up, glitchy feel. The main effect I’m [...]

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Tags: Music News · looping

A Foray into Dark Ambient Improv (More New Music)

April 23rd, 2009 · 2 Comments

I spent a lovely few hours today with David Stevens, a wonderful musician working mainly with abstract drones and soundscapes, often using bowed strips of metal to create the most amazing textures.
We met through Tuttle, and have been talking for a while about recording together, and today it finally happened, though not without an hour [...]

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Tags: Uncategorized

More new music - Youtube video of a brand new tune.

April 12th, 2009 · 17 Comments

photo of the bed of the thames, taken from a pothole in a boat near Tower BridgeAfter the new tune I posted on Audioboo a few days ago, I’ve got the bug for uploading new tunes. Hopefully it’ll finally kick me into action to make some decisions about the kind of record (or whatever passes for a ‘record’ these days :) ) I want to make.

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Tags: Gig stuff · Music News · Musing on Music · bass ideas · looping

Three new things to look/listen/learn.

April 10th, 2009 · 2 Comments

Photo of the We20 Tuttle in full swingV .quick post this, just to highlight some fun stuff that’s happened in the last couple of days.

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Tags: Geek · Music News · music reviews

“Art First” - Why the ‘Present of Music’ is the Best it’s Ever Been for Musicians

April 6th, 2009 · 12 Comments

photo of clown art from the Urban Scrawl ExhibitionFrom Thursday to Saturday last week I was following Andrew Dubber’s tweets from a music industry conference in Finland called Is This It?

The premise of the conference is that it’s a ‘music seminar about music‘, though there was a baffling and conspicuous absence of actual musicians speaking at it. The overall tone, it seemed - as drawn from the various tweeted quotes - was that it was a bunch of music industry people desperately trying to come up with a way to continue ‘business as usual’ - marketing strategies, ways to feed more data to collection agencies to get paid, and the usual crop of should’ve-been-left-in-the-70s ideas involving scantily clad women as a marketing draw. So far, so heinous.

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Tags: Geek · the future of music · tips for musicians

“The Ilicco Effect” - A case study in online music discovery.

February 24th, 2009 · 8 Comments

Steve Lawson, Ilicco and Whatleydude at the Nokia Open Lab by Phil CampbellFollowing on from what I was saying in the Tour round-up about playing to people who don’t get into solo bass, I thought I’d write up the story of a friend of mine who listens to a heck of a lot of me…

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Tags: the future of music · tips for musicians