Guitars and Life

Anyone who has a long memory will know that I've waxed lyrically about the great Sam Carter on this here blog from time to time in the past. Now ... he has teamed up with Jim Moray to form a new folk rock band called False Lights.   Their first release is Salvor which is just flipping brilliant.  And you can listen to it all now (plugin compatibility allowing etc.) on Soundcloud...  just click and love it!

Very often these days I'll hear something the radio or the TV and when my daughter says "I really like this" I'll say "You should listen to the original" and then dig it out of either my collection, Spotify, YouTube etc. to show her the difference between a performance with the passion of the writer often in it vs one just cleverly produced by the pop music factories that churn these things out constantly these days. However the other day I was listening to a cover of Dear Prudence by folk band Lau.  Now I really like Lau but this one didn't cut the mustard as a cover for me.  However one did in the past so I wondered about my top list of covers, where I feel the cover is better in some way... Here it is... Starting with - Dear Prudence by Siouxsie And the Banshees.  I just love the guitar sound on this her vocal this really works so much better than any other version for me.  Next - Mr Jimi Hendrix.  Ok I struggled and gave up - dear Jimi i...

... that'll be me that will.  Funny whenever I see myself in the mirror there is a slightly different person looking back to the one I was expecting to - do you ever find this?  The one in the mirror is a couple of years older than me, a few pounds heavier than, not as toned as me, has more grey in the beard than me... etc.  Self-image - it isn't that I have a wildly out of step self image but it certainly isn't 100% in tune with reality!!!  Today I can laugh at myself about these things, begin to accept the inevitable process of ageing and just get on with it. I tell you the best thing though - the guy in the mirror is able to look me in the eye these days.  Honestly for years in the back end of the drinking I was so ashamed of myself that I couldn't look myself in the eye, let alone anyone else - only time I did do that with anyone else it was in a drunken aggressive manner. "Comfortable in your own skin" - I remember hearing that phrase (at least the fi...

New song - recorded using my new Behringer C1 Condenser Microphone which was Mrs F's Christmas present to me.  I was really impressed with the quality I've got off it for the guitar and the vocal sounds.  I think this'll be the only mic I use at home in the studio from now on!

You may not have noticed but I've spruced the blog up a little... well on the right hand side where all the boxes and stuff is... Firstly given it is pretty much the anniversary of my winning the Rock-Til-You-Drop 2010 Outstanding Achievement award I thought I ought to take that off the site.  Also I'm liking SoundCloud a lot so have replaced the Reverbnation player box with a couple of SoundCloud - I might think about actually paying for the premium service as I can then have a larger amount of "sets" to put works in which might make sense to then do and vary from time to time what is on here.  Finally I've added a Facebook button to my Facebook music page if you like my music and are on Facebook please click that and then "like" me as a few followers of this blog already have.  I only use that page to put up music related stuff so you'll not get all the family drivel about how my daughter hates my leather jacket etc. That is about it for this...

Ok I had originally "kept back" these three as they were intended for a band project idea I never got off the ground.  I decided I might as well stick them up on SoundCloud... they are a certainly a bit different from the stuff I've recently been posting :-) Demons by Graham Hunt - Medway Looking for a lover by Graham Hunt - Medway Might just be the one by Graham Hunt - Medway

I'm very humbled as Nic Evennett has listened to some of my stuff up on Soundcloud and decided to do a "cover" of Golden Moment... well frankly her cover is way better than my original!  Click on the linky to listen Golden Moment - Graham Hunt cover Here is my original for comparison - I think you'll agree Nic's piano and much better vocal and lowering the tempo to a beat I'd never be able to sustain (I'd speed up I know I would) really captures the original essence of the underlying meaning of the lyrics, a moment of total peace, calm and serenity. Thank you so much Nic I am very humbled. Golden Moment by Graham Hunt - Medway This shows just one annoying thing I've just discovered with Soundcloud - I thought I was being a numpty but the embedded thing I figured out the other day appears to only be available for your tracks when you click on the Share button in SoundClous.  I suppose I can see the reasoning, anyone could embed...

Following on from the last post. I've kicked off a couple of discussions on a couple of forums to see garner people's opinions on these. So if you have any and are  a member of LinkedIn then go here or if you are, or would like to be, a member of Rock-Til-You-Drop then go here . If I get much debate on these I intend to end up summarising in both places and back here at some point in time.

Increasingly I've been finding more and more people are out there on SoundCloud.  So I've joined them, clearly MySpace seems pretty much long dead and Reverbnation whilst good is looking a little old and haggard in the fast paced changing world of music dissemination. Anyways  I've a profile and a bunch of tracks up at  http://soundcloud.com/grahamhunt-1  please pop over and say hello. One thing with Soundcloud is that it very much is a mix of producers and consumers - there are a huge number of people on there simply using it as an on-line music juke box - which has been a restriction with Reverbnation for me the only people who join up are normally other musicians, Soundcloud looks a more direct to consumer method. Having said all of that of course - if I ever get to 100 plays I'll be happy! :-)