stevelawson.net

So, we’ve been back in England a few weeks. I’ve even had time to do my busiest week of masterclasses ever! (more on that later, I promise)
For now, it’s time to round up some of the lessons and tips from our house-concert-based, social-media-driven jaunt to the US over christmas/january.
A few salient points to start with:

most [...]

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A week from today, Lo and I will be in New York! How exciting is that? Well, for us, very exciting. For you, probably less so.
But what may be of a little more interest is the series of house concerts that we’re doing. Being house concerts, I’m not putting the addresses up online, [...]

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I’ve just written a piece for MusicThinkTank.com about Sustainable touring, inspired by an interview on BBC 5Live with Geoff Hickman, the manager of Paris-based band, Televox - here’s the interview, and the video discussion that’s happening off the back of it on Phreadz…

The Music Think Tank post will go live in a few days (they [...]

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I posted a new article up on the Creative Choices site. It’s a few lessons learned from last week’s tour… I’ll write more extensively about the tour here once we’ve debriefed it properly as a band, but the tour just provided the impetus for a post about the need to make creative ventures financially viable [...]

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Just a quick one: I’ve just seen that my number of listeners on Last.fm this week jumped up to 33, from 17 last week - see the list of weekly listeners here, and add yourself to it for next week by listening here.
So, in statistical terms, that’s a success, I guess, though this year, I [...]

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Trying to pin down just what it is that Steve Lawson does can be tricky - he’s a solo bassist who spends a lot of his time making very unbasslike noises. He’s an ambient experimenter who likes pop tunes too much to go strictly soundscape, but is way too atmospheric to sit comfortably in the [...]

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It’s the big buzz-concept in the online world - the new currency is attention, recorded music can be duplicated at zero cost, so we should all give it away in order to promote ourselves as a brand, and the caveat often added to this is that we make our money off live shows.
OK, let’s contrast [...]

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So the last four days have been spent touring the south of England giving masterclasses at branches of the The Academy Of Music And Sound - a chain of music schools that stretches the length of the UK, but is focussed around the south west and midlands.
Once a year they do a masterclass week, where [...]

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Here’s another video from the gig in Santa Cruz - this one is of Michael Manring and I. It’s the second half of a REALLY long improv, and goes through about 5 or 6 big changes of direction, all seemlessly transitioned, thanks to the magic of the Looperlative.
Michael and I have been playing together for [...]

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One of the favourite points of discussion amongst touring musicians is the whole twisted world of planes and instruments. From baggage limits to carry-on details, plane-side checking of bags, to buying extra seats for cellos, there are a million different takes on it, thanks to airline policy being so utterly baffling most of the time.
For [...]

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