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Listening to myself

Posted by on in ListeningLeave a comment

I’ve mentioned before that I’m currently going through a process of moving all my old cassettes to digital. It will take a long, long, long, time. I assure you.

But part of the process is listening to music I haven’t heard in years. Mostly things I’ve recorded myself, some great, some terrible, some embarrassing, and all enjoyable in one way or another.

It is a good reminder of why I love music, why I love the creative process. A reminder that software and hardware are just tools for doing something creative and should be looked at as that.

I think it can be really easy to get lost in tools you’re using to the point where you focus so much on what the tool can do and can’t do that you forget what it is you’re trying to achieve. That’s the danger and listening to my old stuff made with simple hardware and usually no software at all made me realise that perhaps I need to think long and hard about where my music is going, or more importantly the fact that it isn’t going anywhere at the moment.

A signed copy of Steve Jansen’s ‘Slope’

I already have this album, I got it when it first came out, but when I heard that Steve Jansen was selling off the last remaining stock and signing them I thought I ought to buy it again. It’s always lovely to have a signed copy of things and this album especially so. I hope…

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Listening to the West Norwood Cassette Library

With a band name like that I could do nothing else but listen to them. I remember the days of using cassette libraries and borrowing tapes. All too often the tapes would be somewhat damaged and wobbly, but that was in many ways the nature of cassettes themselves. Of course cassette libraries are all but…

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The Poetry Library

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I spent a very pleasant hour recently in the Poetry Library at the Southbank centre. I’ve been a member of the Poetry Library almost since it first opened, and it is truly a national treasure.

It is such a peaceful place, such a great place to sit and read poetry (of course) and discover new writing.

When I worked full time in London I used to make a lot more use of it, but now I only get to pop in every now and then. Even so, it is a joy to visit it every now and then. I hope to get to use it more.

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If you want to find the National Poetry Library

Here’s a map to show you where it is. I’d certainly recommend it as a great place to visit

Listening to Laurie

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I found this tape the other day when I was clearing out old cassettes (a job that’s going to take me a while I think).

I’d forgotten I even had this, so it is great to listen to Laurie Anderson as I’ve been a fan for many years now, and interesting to hear her talk about her work in the present tense from so long ago.

Seeing Laurie Anderson’s film “Heart of a Dog”

I’ve been wanting to see this film for ages now so when it came up at the Tate Modern I was really pleased. But when I got there the added bonus was she was there too. Which was amazing. She gave a little talk at the beginning and then answered questions at the end. It…

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When tapes go wrong

Posted by on in Stuff, Uncategorized1 Comment

I’ve been clearing out old tapes, and when I say old I mean old. Some of the tapes are of my own music so I’ve been converting a few tracks to digital and finding songs that I’d completely forgotten about.

Sadly, one tape seems to have decided to give up and of course it had to be one which had lots of long forgotten treasure (for me anyway).

There’s only one thing for it. I’m going to have to open it up and see if I can splice the tape together, and I haven’t done that for years!

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Palm Apps from the past …

Posted by on in Mobile ApplicationsLeave a comment

If you’ve been reading my PalmSounds blog for a long time you’ll know that in the past I’ve dabbled with making my own Palm OS apps with a little bit of success. The apps I made were never going to be totally amazing music production apps, but they were free toys and a little bit of fun to play around with.

Anyway, I’ve moved them all here now and you can get them in the ‘PDA Obsessions‘ page.

I do plan to do some more apps using old Palm OS and some other mobile OS stuff too, most notably Android, but more of that in another post.

For now I hope you like the old Palm stuff. Give me some feedback if you do.

Here are a few other PDA related posts

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Tall Tales from Beyond the Border

Posted by on in Festivals2 Comments

I was at the Beyond the Border International Storytelling Festival recently, which was great as it I had seriously thought it would never run again. The festival has had a few years off due to funding woes and for most festivals that normally means that they won’t be seen again. Not so for Beyond the Border. This year they were back just like there had been no break at all and I was very happy to be there.

It was a superb festival with lots of amazing music and stories from all over the world. Whenever I get to events like this I’m amazed at how riveting storytelling can be. How just listening to one person telling a story can captivate your imagination.

I’m so impressed at the immense cultural heritage that’s gathered in one place. It also reminds me of how easy it is to forget our own cultural heritage, and how in large cities we can forget our stories.

Stories are important, they help us to understand where we are in the world and make sense of things. Living in cities can disconnect us from our stories, and being at an event like Beyond the Border helps reestablish that connection, helps us remember our own stories and reminds us to continue to tell them.

It feels good that Beyond the Border is back. It should be on again in 2012, and I hope I’ll be there.

Walkway to the stories
The walk down to Beyond the Border Storytelling Festival

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while

Posted by on in Admin, Creative ProcessLeave a comment

Having written a blog that’s just about mobile music for just over 4 years I thought maybe I’d start to write something about me and what I’m up to. A more personal journal if you like. This blog won’t be about the world of mobile music. Although I’m sure that there will be lots of creative stuff that I want to talk about and some of that will inevitably be mobile related in some way. But that’s not essentially what my own blog is about. Having said that, I’m not entirely sure what it is about, but I can tell you what it won’t be about, which is at least a start.

It isn’t about:

  • Boring rants and complaints about the state of this, that or the other in the world / neighborhood
  • It isn’t about what I’m having for lunch
  • It won’t contain excessively dull family details about holidays and days out
  • It won’t just be a another Palm Sounds, although there’ll be a little bit of an overlap

What it will be about will evolve over time, and as it does it’ll be interesting for me to see where it goes.So don’t feel bad if you decide not to read this blog and just stick with Palm Sounds. That’s fine with me.If you do stay with this, the please let me know what you think. As always, I’m interested in comments.