Hello again!
This week marks the first time back on stage in a long time. I was playing with a band called Sentience Machine and we were rocking the stage at the Fiddler's Elbow in Camden, one of the few venues in London that has managed to survive the pandemic. It was an absolute thrill to get back playing live, especially because it was at such a renowned venue.
The day started busy and got gradually busier, as days tend to. As i'd spent the previous week on annual leave, i had a lot to catch up on upon my return. Arriving back home in London for about 10:30pm on Saturday evening, I knew i only had a short space of time the next morning to prep everything for the day before having to set out and begin getting busy.
Starting at about 7am, I had to prep my lesson notes as i was teaching a student that morning, so that involved revisiting the lesson material we covered from the lesson before annual leave, then packing my rucksack for that. Diary, tablet, charts and bluetooth speaker thrown in the rucksack, it was time to move on to the good stuff, the gig bag and pedal board.
Recently, I have switched over to using an amp modeller and multi-fx unit, the Mooer GE200. This minute piece of kit, no larger than a tablet, houses so many amazing amps and effects, my current favourite being the LoneStar preset. It is a wonder that it manages to stay so damned lightweight. It slips perfectly in the front of my gig bag, the Gator Go-Pro series gig bag. This is a heavy duty gig bag and can stand a lot of punishment, which it looks like it will have to in the coming months as the diary starts to get filled up. Alongside the Mooer amp modeller, I decided to use a Les Paul style guitar, which has a sort of Kramer style neck complete with pointy AF Headstock. I chose it because the set was an Alt-Rock set that evening and EMG pickups work like a charm here. Finally i have my pedal board, which comprised of over half a dozen mooer micro series pedals, my trusty BOSS DD5 delay, BOSS tuner, BOSS compressor and the Dunlop micro wah. These micro pedals are an absolute god-send and worlds apart from the ginormous piece of MDF which i used to carry around with me in previous years. Anyway, I digress.
After packing up the rucksack for teaching and the gig bag and pedal board for the gig, I headed out to teach. After finishing the lesson, I rushed back home to switch out the rucksack for the gig bag and pedal board and headed for round 2 of my covid vaccinations. I asked the nurse attending to place the needle in my left arm, because i knew from the previous injection that I would start to feel slight pain in my arm in a few hours, so better it was in the fretting arm than the picking arm because otherwise I'd have been in trouble.
From the vaccination I headed straight for the Overground on my way up to a Sentience Machine rehearsal at Pirate Studios, Camden. Though i have used the Earlsfield facilities countless times over the last few years, It was my first trip up to the Camden facility and was excited to see how it fared compared to the Earlsfield one. The journey took about an hour, using Overground, the Tube and finally a bus to the destination. Pirate Studios Camden appears much larger than the Earlsfield establishment, but that could very well be due to the building the rehearsal studios are housed in. Great facilities nevertheless aside from one issue - The AC Unit was knackered from the start, so over the course of a 3 hour rehearsal, the room grew into a sweat box, complete with the funky smell that goes along with 5 people heavily perspiring. Yummy...
Onwards to the gig, we loaded in to the Fiddler's Elbow and proceeded to soundcheck. I swear to Darwin, using an amp modeller is so much easier than dealing with amps that I honestly may never go back to an amp on stage again. Practically everything i need is housed inside the Mooer GE200, aside from some of the FX options which i want to control via stompboxes, so who honestly needs to take a bloody great big amp and cabinet with them when this does all of that and more?
9:30pm - Stage time. After triple checking the tuning, we busted out a 30 minute set of absolute beastly rock n roll, ending on the latest single, Microscopic Enemy. This song is available on all major music platforms. Go check it out! Sounds fat as fuck and has a beautiful middle-eastern inspired solo by yours truly.
Overall, a fantabulous return to the stage and fingers crossed it won't be so bloody long until I am back out there again performing. It's like some kind of wonderful drug.
Speak soon!
Here is the link to Microscopic Enemy on Spotify
Also, here is my latest showreel on Soundcloud. Have a listen cause i'd love to get some feedback from you:
留言