A year ago

I just thought 'I wonder what I was doing this time last year' and then I remembered I had a blog where I wrote stuff down.

Turns out I'd just had a massive house party, put a hole in my floor, raved to The Blues Brothers and then got really ill with 'That Bastard Ginger Chris's Disease' and lost a stone in weight. And I was about to go to Ireland.

I was also about to start the free download folder I have, so I was a long way from selling music, which is good because it shows progress! Selling music is not now a scary idea that one day I will hopefully put into practise... It's a thing that I do. It's... Fuck, it's my job!

Overall I'm fairly happy with the last year, but I hope and think that when I look back at now in a years' time there will be more of a difference. I have so many plans right now, I just hope they work out!

Boo!

Set up an Audioboo so I can do this...

Video Tutorials

Hello there! Just writing this to get some feedback on an idea...

At the moment I'm looking at moving south, which will mean my outgoings will be considerably higher than they are right now. This means I need to be making more money. One way in which I intend to do this is by making video tutorials - basically teaching guitar online.

The idea is that people would pay around £1 and get a video, probably about 10 minutes long, and a tab to refer to. I could give them all difficulty ratings and each lesson could include one song (most likely something I've covered on youtube). There are a number of advantages over real life lessons - the ability to pause, rewind and replay the video would mean you could get an hour's worth of lesson/practice time out of each video, you could come back to it in a year when you'd forgotten it, and it would cost 10% of the price of a normal lesson.

And from my point of view, It'd probably take me an hour or so to make the video/tab, so then I'd only need to sell about 10 for it to pay better than a regular teaching job, plus I wouldn't be stuck to a timetable - I could make the videos whenever I had the time.

Any thoughts, problems, improvements etc. please let me know in the comments. And if you play guitar (or want to!) do you think you'd consider paying for lessons online like this?

THANKS!

xxx

London

Hey good news, my hearing seems to have fixed itself!

Moving on, tonight I'll be heading into London and then tomorrow the whole RNLI / Apple thing will be happening. We're gonna meet up outside the Apple Store and deliver the message to the employees. Ben has even made some little paper mache apples to give to some of the people with big job titles that might be able to help.

If you're in London you're more than welcome to come along, we'll be meeting around noon. I'm gonna take my guitar, though I'm not sure how well that will go down with Regent Street shoppers. Or the police. I guess we'll see. I only plan on playing it if there are a lot of people there, if it's just the six of us I'd look like a right plum.

Anyway, looking forward to seeing people again, it's been a while.

xxx

Update

Just thought I'd post a little blog to tell you what's going on... That's the idea, right?

Well I'm staying in Essex for a while at Paul's house. I've brought down the majority of my recording stuff and we're gonna try to be productive over the next few weeks. We're both working on websites, we plan on producing some kind of music/art project, and there are a few other things in the works.

This is all well and good, my only concern right now is that I woke up this morning without being able to hear very well! It hasn't changed much all day, my left ear especially feels weird. Things sound really bassy - like I'm underwater. It's not fun.

Hmm, I thought that would take a lot longer.

Add your dot!

I set up an eventful page, which is designed so people can tell you where they want you to come and play shows. It gives you a cool map, look!


Obviously each red dot is a person asking me to play in that place. You can go and add your own red dot here.

It's currently showing me how much easier it is to play in Britain than anywhere else! There are slightly more dots in the US I think, but they're so spread out it would take four times as many shows to reach them all... The UK is so small it's practically coloured in red! I love our little island.

It'll be a while before I can afford to set up some shows overseas anyway, but when I do I will definitely be using this as a guide, it's so good. So if you want me to come to your town, add your dot and get your friends to add their own dots!

I'm also extremely pleased to have discovered an island that I didn't know existed - São Miguel! Right in the middle of the Atlantic. Whether that was actually a person who lives there or someone taking the piss, I don't know, but I'm tempted to go there either way!

Yes.

Mum (talking to my Dad, but I'm right there): Did you tell Dave you put that stuff in there? (pointing to a drawer)

Dad: Yes.

...

Dad: Well... No.