Hello there and thanks for opening up!
This month’s newsletter has a bunch of disparate items - something for everyone, just so long as everyone is the sort of person who might read Andy Roberts’ newsletters. There are galleries of images, video clips and links as well as all the writing, so you may need to click through and browse it online on the web, depending on how your email provider dishes it up for you.
What’s in this newsletter: Table of Contents
Kashmir Fringe Festival - pics and clips
Local Gigs Listings - One further date in Feb
What I’m Reading
What I’m watching
Music Tech - In search of ‘that sound’
Random bits at the end
The Kashmir Fringe Festival was at Quay Arts Newport on Saturday 8th Feb.
I really do need to thank all the people who packed out the acoustic stage for our performance on Saturday. (Sorry to those who weren’t able to get a seat.)
Thankyou to Quay Arts for the frictionless hands-off approach to sound setup, this makes a difference.
But most of all thanks to Katie from yoursoundguide.com for blending the most amazing sounds and vibrations into the music.
We played and improvised a new composition called ‘Radio Tirana’ based on the call sign of an international propaganda station broadcasting to the world from Albania since 1938. Inaugurated by King Zog, the station was then deployed by Enver Hoxha with Chinese help to massively boost the powerful transmitters, interfering with other stations in between programmes with a repetitious and unforgettable call sign.
Katie played the large gong, Tibetan singing bowls and chimes, Andy played electroacoustic guitar and some vocalising.
Audience reactions were very positive, I felt a state of deep relaxation had been achieved by most, even blissed out in some cases, all without any nodding off snoring or disturbances. One phone did go off, but the ringtone was a gentle clock chiming which blended in so well with the ambient sounds that nobody noticed or minded, not even the owner for several rings lol! Time expanded for the first fifteen minutes, but then the next twenty five flew past in the groove zone.
So that was the Kashmir Fringe event, right at the start of the festival season calendar. I wonder if, where and when we might find ourselves doing it all over again.
Local Gigs Listings
The shortest month, February continues for me with a Sunday afternoon gig at a regular favourite venue in Yarmouth, The Wheatsheaf Inn. 23rd February.
Kick off is at 3pm with an Italy France rugby match also on in the other room for those interested.
Gigs listing site
As well as on my own Linktree page, ( linktr.ee/andyroberts) any public gigs I have forthcoming will also be listed on a new local website that emerged at the end of last year, The Isle of Wight Gig Guide: iowgigguide.uk
It’s always difficult to gather all the gigs for the whole island together in one place. Maybe in the dim and distant past this was achieved by a local weekly newspaper, but they would have been dependent on a large number of people all sending in their latest gigs listings as well, so probably not comprehensive. But at least there was only one major place to look. In the modern world, information is fragmented over multiple sites, with new attempts at collation coming and going all the time.
This one stands at least as good a chance as any, with a nice simple layout and a single purpose. No adverts. Let’s just hope they don’t fall prey to the temptation to add lots of extra features as soon as they start to get a little traffic.
What I’m Reading
What am I reading? Increasingly less scrolling of facebook and similar platforms at present. I expect these to continue degenerating until an eventual slow demise.
So where do you find your news? Social media serves us up an increasingly skewed perspective on the world. Some of our traditional media is extremely politically biased. National treasure and social media maven Alice Roberts recommended a news site called “The Conversation”. It’s researched and edited by academics without bias, to the extent that may be even possible.
I gave it a try and must say I’ve been mostly very pleasantly surprised. The language is nice and clear, the emails are reasonably short, and the links are usually good quality articles of interest to me. If you’re not already onto this one, give it a whirl:
“The Conversation - written by expert academics; curated but not politically steered by editors”
https://theconversation.com/uk
I have been watching…
I was gifted a two month subscription to Youtube Premium which means I can watch anything on there without the annoying ads. We started watching “slow tv” type videos of canal journeys, and ended up following some narrowboaters through their history of life afloat.
Country House Gent - also plays a little bit of blues guitar and very basic cooking
Holly The Cafe Boat - This couple are incredibly inspiring and watchable with their youthful energy and enthusiasm.
Cruising The Cut - He’s a bit of a nerd but gets to go on some interesting adventures like across The Wash.
Completely sated by narrowboat tubers, I’m now watching Permaculturists with a special interest in Hugelkultur, since as I mentioned last month this is my major garden project for the year.
I can’t watch much of the American style of presentation, far too much talking about what they are going to talk about later, so I sought out the original german instigators of this particular design and also happened upon this very watchable person: https://www.youtube.com/@GrownToCook
My music technology journey
Like most guitarists, I have an ongoing quest to improve my tone. Mine doesn’t involve buying more guitars, but it does involve trying to achieve a more pleasing sound to my ears at least, when playing electroacoustic guitar plugged in through the amplification system. Back in the day when I played pub gigs the first time round, I used a sound hole electromagnetic pickup swapped between my Guild 12 string and the Epiphone six string I wish I still had. That was OK, but the big combo cabinet amp and speaker I had to lug around wasn’t loud or high enough for busy pubs.
When I first started out this second time, I tried playing acoustic guitar in front of a microphone on a stand. The sound quality could be very good, but this arrangement left me at several disavantages, so I got myself another soundhole device, the Seymour Duncan ‘woody’. Finally I caught up with the 1990s and picked up an electroacoustic guitar with the pickup and preamp built in. This has served me well, but sometimes I notice the sound quality is not as nice as i think it should be. I am by no means a perfectionist, and I understand that playing songs people like and playing them well is much more important than sonic quality, but for me the guitar is not just an accompaniment to the songs, it’s a means of expression in itself and a really nice sound can give a certain pleasure which impacts back on the musician in a virtuous circle. The problem is that the piezo-electric pickup is not a true microphone at all. It gives a characteristic plasticky thwack tone which audiences are quite used to at amplified gigs, but some people are able to overcome to a much greater extent. How do they do it? High end (expensive) guitars might go some of the way, but more modest workhorse guitars can sound great also. Clever use of a multiband equaliser - EQ?
So I experimented with my first ‘pedal’ The Behringer Acoustic Amp Modeler.
I liked the new sound, but when I took it out on gigs, after the first hour the level seemed to drop and some distortion crept in. It’s really hard to trouble shoot in front of an audience. I put in another new battery, but it shouldn’t be eating them like this. And I was having to turn up the built in guitar preamp far too high as well.
I gave up for few weeks, to focus my attention on the musical material itself.
On a trip over the water to Southampton I dropped in on Hobgoblin music just to see what they had to offer in any possible Winter sale. I explained my pursuit to the chap behind the counter and he assured me that the only way to get that superior amplified acoustic sound is with an L R BAggs pickup system that includes a tiny real microphone and blends the two or even three guitar sound sources together. I’d certainly heard of this system but hadn’t realised it costs £250 just for the pickup and then you have to install it yourself. That’s more than I paid for my trusty Tanglewood, which already has a working pickup in it.
So it’s only worth doing if you have a prized vintage Martin or similar you don’t mind drilling a hole through. Are there any medium priced guitars I Random might fall in love with, having the L R Baggs system already installed, I wonder?
That could be a long term goal.
Meanwhile back in the home studio I tried connecting my Behringer box of tricks from its XLR output socket into a mic input channel on the mixer.
Loud and clear!
So I just needed to order a shorter XLR cable and away I go.
Random bits at the end
Food Foraging
7 native edibles From Eatweeds.
Have I eaten the goosegrass yet? No.
Blue
Out of the blue came an email from Ryszard Smolowik, an old friend from the Romford and Havering clubs days. He requested the lyrics and chords to my song “Blue” and sent me an interesting compilation CD which I haven’t listened to yet.
Here’s ‘Blue’:
And that’s all for this 2nd edition of the new format newsletter.
Now please just leave a comment, or else the puppy gets it!
Cheers,
Andy
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