Another fun night in Petersfield – almost didn’t get there on time, thanks to traffic nightmare on M25 and around Guildford, but was able to finish setting up while people were coming in for the clinic/masterclass/Q & A thingie.

This was very enjoyable for me. I tend not to plan too much when I’m doing a session like this, because it really needs to be tailored to the range of people in the room, and how many there are. On the way up I was half expecting to be doing a proper bass demo, playing some solo tunes and explaining them, but somehow the conversation got started off about music education, so I just talked about process and motivation for learning music, about the building blocks, about focussed goals, practice methods, prioritising learning what you need to know, keeping yourself intersested etc.

It was one of those sessions where you give people what they really need, rather that what you think they might think they want. I’m not great at second guessing what people ‘want’ in any setting, but when it comes to music education, it’s a fairly easy guess to spot what’s missing from most people’s thought process, so easy enough to give them what they need. The tricky bit is convincing them they need it, and getting them to talk about it. I think this was largely successful, the small size of the group meant that we could all gather round a table while I showed my simplified way of viewing diatonic harmony, which went down well.

The gig itself was fun as always, though the smaller audience suggests I’ve saturated Petersfield as a market for a while. It’s always fun to go and play down there, and great to see some regulars and some new faces, especially meeting people that I know of from various online communities (Loopers Delight and The Dude Pit were both represented at the gig last night.)

Played a mix of tunes, similar stuff to the night before, though I also did an improv, which I prefaced by describing what ambient good was all about, and then played something very un-ambient. As an encore I was asked to play ‘Channel Surfing’ which I haven’t played for ages – almost a year, I’d have thought – but managed to pull it off!

If you were there, thanks very much for coming, it was very nice to see you!

Soundtrack – Patty Larkin, ‘Stranger’s World’.