Inspiration: Nina Simone

Nina Simone was studying to be a classical pianist, but got sidetracked by her evening job playing jazz to help support her studies in classical piano at Juilliard School of Music. I can relate, on a much smaller, less talented kinda scale. While studying for a degree in music I became as much interested in jazz and other forms of music, as I was in my primary area of study – classical music, and classical piano more specifically.

I remember spazzing out over her version of Love Me or Leave Me with a fellow piano student, and drawing comparisons with Bach’s Inventions. She was one of the first artists I was introduced to musically, who seemed to cover a lot of the same musical interests as myself.

It was one of my best friends in Secondary school who first introduced me to Nina Simone. We would listen to her albums while getting ready in her room to go out to town or somewhere. I have a strong memory of her dancing around her room to I Put A Spell On You.

Over the years, my love of Nina’s music has grown, and one of her own songs that speaks to me a lot lately is Mississippi Goddam (live!). She was passionate, political, intelligent, and very talented.

“Keep on sayin’ ‘go slow’…
to do things gradually would bring more tragedy.
Why don’t you see it? Why don’t you feel it?
I don’t know, I don’t know.
You don’t have to live next to me, just give me my equality!”

Download: Galway Rain – demo.

London

I’ve had the house to myself again today, so after spending a while in town being sociable I came home and spent the evening playing with the cat, cooking dinner, and demoing a song.

This song is one that popped up in the video clips from a gig I did in January, so I’ve been wanting to start recording it in some way. I never really get to hear the songs until I hear a recording of them, as when you’re playing them it’s hard to be an outside listener too.

Regardless, this demo is scrappy: bum notes on the piano; bum notes in the vocals; rough sketch of the middle bit with the layers. Just generally a bit scrappy all round, but it gives a good idea of the whole song.

I’m not 100% sure of about this song yet – it feels too long, and I’m pondering whether I should cut a section, or merge some parts or something. As it stands, the lyrics were mostly written when I lived in the UK in 2005 or so, and the music was written when I was living in Galway a year ago at this stage. It’s a song that has kinda hung around for a while without really becoming anything until it just popped out while I was playing around with a piano idea one day.

Anyways, here’s the demo I put together this evening.

[audio:http://www.misterebby.com/previewtracks/galwayraindemo.mp3]
Galway Rain (demo) (right-click and save to download)

Lyrics Read More

Photos: easter chocolatey goodness

I took photos of my Easter chocolate this year, just for the hell of it. I was home alone on Easter morning, before going off to spend time with my brother and his family for dinner that evening. I wasn’t feeling well, so eating loads of chocolate perhaps wasn’t the best idea to be honest. Nevertheless, nothing could possibly stand in the way of me and a Ben 10 easter egg:

Photo on 2010-04-04 at 13.50

The kids from a show I was playing piano for bought it for me, as a thank you present. It’s possibly the greatest thing I’ve been given ever (well, in the last week anyways). But I have a feeling that the flask will go to my Ben 10 obsessed nephew instead. The chocolate in the egg itself was a bit gross, but who cares! It was a Ben 10 egg!

My sister was home for the weekend, and gave me a beautiful little Lindt chocolate bunny, which I just can’t bring myself to take out of the gold foil. It has a bell! It’s just too damn cute! So it’s still sitting on my desk beside my computer.

Photo on 2010-04-04 at 14.36

Lastly, my folks gave me this big dark chocolate bunny, which was absolutely gorgeous. Just delicious. I started into it at lunchtime yesterday, and finished most of it today. I’m not sure it’ll last much longer. It wasn’t the prettiest bunny to look at, but that doesn’t matter so much because it was just so damn tasty.

Photo on 2010-04-04 at 14.52

The other thing that arrived this past week was my prize from a random Marina & The Diamonds competition on Twitter run by Heineken Music. I rather casually answered the three questions, and didn’t expect much more from it, but it turns out that I won! And a copy of Marina & The Diamond’s wonderful debut album, The Family Jewels winged its way to me along with a lovely tshirt and tote bag. Happy out. :) So here’s a photo of the shirt: (yep, it’s backwards as I took it with photobooth on my iMac, and couldn’t be arsed switching around the image.)

Photo on 2010-04-03 at 23.50 #4

So, if I’m being really honest, I guess the Marina package was the best thing I got in the last week or so.

Rainy days.

rain out my window

It’s been raining so much this week. I’m typing this to avoid actually having to go outside and head to town to meet some friends. But honestly, I’m just gonna let the rain ease off a little.

However, the rain is good for forcing me to stay indoors and work on some music for a while, so today I ended up reworking one of the demos I’d recorded. I moved one of the sections around, and re-recorded piano and vocal parts for it. I’m gonna take a break and listen to it later tonight or tomorrow and see if I like what I’ve done to that particular song. If I do, then I’ll probably upload that rough version here.

Additionally, I did a really rough take of “Galway Rain” too, which I’ve never recorded. There’s a live cut of it, and a live video, but that’s about it. It’s rather apt to be doing a take of that song today.