Tag: ukulele

Updates galore.

It’s been a while since I updated the blog, but I’ve been working away at things – firstly moving webhost and all that entails, which always will make me nervy. I get the fear of messing it all up and losing everything and ending up with two hosting plans that are both charging me… But never fear, I managed it much easier than expected.

Little things that are noticable changes – at the moment I’m using some random wordpress template still but that’s grand. I’m hoping to change around the look of the site a lot now that I’ve got more time on my hands again. Secondly, this hosting service lets me use subdomain pointers, which my previous one didn’t, so now http://music.misterebby.com/ will bring you straight to my bandcamp store. It’s the little things like this that make me happy. Next, I’m gonna set about making the site look a lot prettier and add all the content about the album that I’ve had written up for ages and not had anywhere to put yet.

The youth theatre musical I’d been working as the Musical Director of went on stage last week, which saw me hiding away in the theatre for a week with long day sitting in the orchestra pit playing an awful lot of piano. It was wonderful. Besides, the teenagers were doing Guys & Dolls, which is just so much fun to play.

The day after the show wrapped, I was off to the little hamlet of Ballymoe, Co. Galway to meet up with folk from Golden Plec for their Tea And Toast charity drive across the country. I played a version of my song “Wet Feet” on ukulele for them before they whizzed off to catch the next band on their trail. It was a lot of fun though, and completely worth it for the look on the face of the young girl working in the shop in Ballymoe when she found out that something was making a stop in Ballymoe. Pure shocked that I’d be across the road playing a song that would go up online. There’ll be an accompanying radio show on the 2xm show Fourcast, and I’ll post the podcast link for that when it’s available.

I’m playing a small set here in Galway on Thursday in Kelly’s bar as part of the Noisy Plug sessions, so if you’re knocking around Galway this week, do drop in – it’s free, and there’s a great line up of four different acts on the night: here’s the facebook event for it.


Things have been slow getting the limited edition, hand printed versions of the album out to funders, which is something that has been a bit frustrating all round, but unavoidable unfortunately. However, I did get sent this photo earlier today, along with a message that the prints are almost ready. Which is pretty wonderful:

To top it all off, someone did a cover of one of my songs, and is planning on doing another. It really made me smile yesterday when I was linked to it, as I’ve never heard anyone covering one of my songs before. He had quite a different vocal style, and does his own take on the song, but it makes me happy to know that one of my songs made enough of an impact on someone that they wanted to do a cover of it. So, here’s Jack Mason-Goodall’s version of my song “I Wish You Were Here”, which he has posted on his Soundcloud:

And finally, the two dancers who have been working on a piece to one of my songs got in touch to say they’re nearly ready to show it to me before the film it. I can’t express how excited I am by this. To have someone to use some of my music as the canvas for their own creative work and create a piece in response to the music I’ve recorded is thrilling. Hopefully next we’ll be making a video of the dance piece accompanied by my music as the next step in this collaboration.

It’s a slow process

Later today I’m heading in to watch Grace set up the screen to go and print the handmade covers for the CDs finally. We were waiting for a new screen bed to be installed in the studio, which was yet another unexpected delay that you just can’t plan for I guess. Hopefully Sunday will see us folding endless covers and sticking them into envelopes to finally start posting the limited edition ones off to the wonderful funders. There are still quite a few of those funders who’ve not emailed me in their addresses, but I’ll be going through those one by one and emailing them individually to remind them after I’ve sent out the cds to everyone who has already sent in their addresses.

In the interim I’ve been busying myself with meeting people who are interested in helping put together some videos for my songs. This Sunday just past I met up with two wonderful contemporary dancers who want to work on a piece using one of my songs, so I’m really excited to see how that develops. Hopefully we’ll be filming the dance piece and making it available for people to watch online. But even to have other creative artists collaborating with me and wanting to use my music for their own art is reward enough for me to be honest.

There’s another video piece being worked out at the moment too – I’ve had some ideas for videos for some of the songs, and I’ve been looking for people who are interested in getting involved to help make them happen, and it seems that one of those ideas might come to fruition. Meeting someone tomorrow who might be the very person to perform on the video, I just need to make some more contacts with filmmakers here in the west who are interested in getting involved in low/no-budget video projects using my music. But at the moment, there’s four different video ideas being actively worked on, and at various different stages so far.

Aside from all that, I’ve been continuing to teach myself how to play things on the ukulele – which I picked up a few years ago as an instrument that I don’t have to play for work, or play well, but that I can just noodle with idly at home while waiting for something to load on the computer, for example. Ukulele and knitting were my two de-stressers when I had major computer problems last year. I really enjoy the lightness of the texture from the ukulele – in many ways it’s the complete opposite to piano for me. It’s something I don’t play well, and has this light fragile sound sometimes, but that’s possibly just how I play it.

But, last night I recorded a quick one-take cover of a Fiona Apple song on ukulele just for fun. I’ve had the song running around my head for weeks now, so I figured the best way to deal with it was to learn it somehow and try sing it. Her music has really singable melodies, and they’re such a pleasure to sing too between some of the wordplay and the range that she sings in. Her albums are some of my favourites to stick on a sing along to at the top of my voice while baking, for example.

But here’s that cover if you’re interested in hearing it. I posted it last night on twitter, tumblr and facebook, so you’ve possibly already heard it, but I don’t trust myself to write a blogpost when I’m tired anymore, and this thing was recorded at about half ten last night: