My Super Busy Musical Week

I feel like a real musician this week! I've been lucky enough to have been involved with lots of musical stuff over the past few days. In particular I've been doing loads of drumming, filling in on drums for Alex Freer in Martin Paris's band, and playing drums for my band The DeLoreans, while we search for a drummer. Drumming is so much fun, I really enjoy getting into a mean pocket with the bass player. I also like hitting things in general so the drums are pretty much perfect really.

In Martin's band we opened for The Bayonets (who have a residency) at TABAC yesterday night. Chelsea Jade was the other act on the night, and she was awesome. She did all this amazing looping stuff and like played a Casiotone and a drummed with mallets on a floor tom and totally reminded me of Regina Spektor (and if you know me you know how much I LOVE Regina Spektor) which was just so cool. I wish I had some photos or videos, but I forgot to bring my camera. And my phone is too old to have a camera. Here is a picture of Martin anyway, so you can see how beautiful and masculine he truly is:

And here is a picture of Chelsea, who is just as beautiful, in a more feminine way:

I've also been practicing hard with the Glee Club at uni! It's SO COOL LIKE SERIOUSLY KSFBAKUIFBKJASBDFJUIASEUIFBASJDHBFKJASDBHGFBAESAWEDQ. Here is a trailer for our upcoming show! The choreography isn't quite sorted yet so it looks a bit naff:



Singing in a group is so cool, especially when you are surrounded by other singers who are incredible and amazing and inspiring. Mad love for the Glee Club. Seriously. Respect.

I also played the Kiwi FM Open Mic at Juice Bar on Wednesday, which was really cool. Open mics are great because it's always really low key and really low pressure, which is good for me because playing solo still scares me a little bit. Plus you get to meet loads of cool new people and hear loads of cool new music which is always nice. Here is a video of me singing "I'm Gonna Find Another You," by John Mayer. Please excuse the lyrical (and musical) screwups:



And a video of me singing an original song, "Between You, Me, and the Irony":


Sorry about the lighting. It wasn't my fault. Honest.

Lastly, here is a picture very close to my heart (stolen from Allison Weiss's blog):

Hello!

And welcome to yet another blog which I am creating in the hope that I might actually keep posting on a regular basis! I'm thinking that I might keep this blog a bit more musically focused and talk more about musical projects, gigs, bands, favourite musicians, cool people I have been hanging out with, and other fun things (Not included: posts about boring stuff).

Anyway to kick things off, today I have been working on making some loops for my friend Amitabh Arthanari. He's a mega talented aspiring hip-hop producer and needs some groovy guitar samples for his beats.

Here is the guitar I've been using:
















It's the first electric guitar I ever bought. It's been around the block a few times and is pretty bashed up, but it makes an awesome sound and is great for doing funky stuff like hip-hop. It also doubles as my sticker album. Yeah. I never really grew out of those.

I'm running it through this mean program called Guitar Rig which gives me a bunch of cool amp and effect models which I can use to change the sound up.



Here is one of the finished guitar loops!

I've also done a funky little keyboard loop, using my trusty Casio digital piano (pretty much a Casiotone, but all grown up and wearing a nice suit):



Here's the keyboard loop! I used a Rhodes electric piano sound.

I'll post up the finished beats for you guys to have a listen to when Amitabh gets done with them!

So what do you think? Would you like me to keep posting these updates? Leave a comment and let me know!