Song of Ham

about seemingly endless rainy days

Love songs and heroes

I’m selling a few copies of some love songs I recorded on my saxophone. It’s total non-profit, the CDs are in order to raise funds for two friends of mine who are off to Cambodia next month to get involved with the AoF 2013 (Angkor of Faith)The video below is a brief description of what AoF is about. With the funds gained from the CDs, shoes will be bought for these children who rummage theses dump sites on a daily basis. Unfortunately, at this time I have to limit the selling of these songs to those in the London area for now.

www.vimeo.com/34947384

Recording these ten tracks were a lot of fun. I recorded love songs by The. Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Burt Bacharach , George Gershwin and others.

I got to record the songs at studio 10 Mill Hill Studios, North London. I got to hear about these studios from a guy I met at a blues jam I played at in a pub in Edgware. He mentioned this studio, known for its great drumming sound, cheap off peak rates and that Amy Winehouse recorded there.

At that last point I was sold, with Amy being right up there with my contemporary music heroes. As always, I did my research. Found this story of Amy at Mill Hill studios and came up with this - well worth a read.

http://www.amywinehouseforum.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?7983-Mill-Hill-Music-Complex-(Remembering-Amy)

Of course there is a little bit of Amy on my CD - as she recorded a cover of George Gershwin's "Someone to Watch Over Me" - which is both beautiful and makes me miss her.

Media music

A few weeks ago I started an evening class at a London university, entitled Media Music: Composing for Film and TV. One of our assignments is to compose music from scratch to a given (and pretty detailed) brief on this San Miguel beer advert below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjhyKCzeAg8

So far the class has been fascinating getting insights into the many industries that are involved in composing in the media and to what is like to work on projects first-hand by our teacher Nainita Desai – her website is www.soundology.com. Getting to listen to her industry stories on her music is a massive learning experience.

Got until April to attempt the assignment so I’ll post what I come up with sometime after then.

I hope to do it justice, I quite like San Miguel

Enthusiasm. The "ology" of "ologies"

Three of my friends have started blogs that I really enjoy. All three are theology related (my type of thing) and I love reading the thoughts they have in trying to make sense of the God, the world and the world around them in their lives. Dave, Dusty and Rebekah all write in three very different ways but all in a very honest and open way. All three are now on my blog roll for easy viewing.

So what has this got to do with music? Everything and nothing. 

Nothing -  in the sense that it has nothing to do with anything musical.

Everything -  in the sense that without theology and asking the big questions for me there is little point in me making and engaging with music. Without it, it is just a collection of noise, a collection of words. That's not to say that everything I produce has a sacred, Godly or biblical context to it.It just means that I am driven by enthusiasm

God, and the study of all things God (i.e. Theology) is an influence for everything. The more enthusiastic I am, the better the music.

I love the origins of the word enthusiasm. Literally means a state of being "in God". The word was originally used to described a religious fervour of people and then it came to mean what it means today. It's something like that fervour, passion or whatever you want to call it that drove me to London and that drives me on this adventure. I'm not sure what you would call "it", but for me "it" comes from God, so in the old sense of the word my music is driven by my "enthusiasm".

enthusiasm (n.) 

c.1600, from Middle French enthousiasme (16c.) and directly from Late Latin enthusiasmus, from Greek enthousiasmos "divine inspiration," from enthousiazein "be inspired or possessed by a god, be rapt, be in ecstasy," from entheos "divinely inspired, possessed by a god," from en "in" (see en- (2)) + theos "god" (see Thea). Acquired a derogatory sense of "excessive religious emotion" (1650s) under the Puritans; generalized sense of "fervor, zeal" (the main modern sense) is first recorded 1716.

(from etymonline.com)

I recorded a song earlier today called "song of Ham", which if you have ever been a kid stuck indoors because of the weather, you may identify with. I'll get it on the blog just as soon as I get the technology sorted.

February is a big month, so there'll be more on here, the adventure goes on.