I remember the first time I listened to a Tori Amos album – it changed my idea of what a piano could do. It was Under The Pink, which I listened to all the way through a few times alone in my room. Before listening to Tori, my notions of piano music were limited to classical piano or vamped-chords and simple piano riffs of some of the pop music I knew. I’d finished all the classical piano grades with the RIAM, and was feeling a bit frustrated with the limited scope of the piano material I knew. Hearing Tori by chance on the radio, and checking out the piano books in a shop made me decide to get the albums. – yeah, I honestly looked through the piano books for Under The Pink and Little Earthquakes before ever hearing them.

But the opening notes of Pretty Good Year, the first track on the album, still sticks with me as one of my favourite piano lines, probably because it was the first of her songs I really heard at home, but mostly because it showed me that piano accompaniment can be melodic, fluid, and have a life of its own under the vocal melody line of a song. Every piano part on that album is absolutely gorgeous, musically interesting, and completely makes the songs something else.

When I was doing a few rough takes in my home studio, I knocked out two quick cover versions: the Under The Ivy one I posted about before, and a cover of Tori’s Donut Song from the album “Boys For Pele“. I was mostly messing about with my Roland RD 120, exploring the other instrument sounds on it, and certainly it’s not well recorded, played or sung, but it’s there, so I may as well put it out. I actually used one of the bass instrument voices on the digital piano, and added some of the Rhodes voice from it too, to see how they matched. It was mostly an experiment. I’ve dicked about with the song a small bit too, I’m afraid. But still. Oh, and I think I mentioned that it’s a not-great recording with bad mixing, yeah? I’d fix it up a bit, but at the moment I’m in Dublin, dogsitting. No, really.

Download audio file (doughnutsong.mp3)
Donut Song (Tori Amos cover – demo) (right click and download)

It’s not a patch on the original, which you should go and listen to (see the live video below), but it was an interesting experiment for me. It’s actually not one of the Tori songs that I’d usually play at all, but I think I was just in the mood for it that night. There are a few of her songs that I’ve loved and learned over the years, that always pop into sets or sessions every so often, but this is not really one of them. I guess it’s just a good song for a late night, home alone, dark bedroom with a piano.

I should just get a cheap handset and use that for the summer until I’m able to get an upgrade, but honestly a crappy phone will only frustrate me at this stage, because I’ve gotten so used to a phone doing what I want it to do. There’s little things that smartphones like the iPhone do that just make my life easier, and I’m not sure I’d be able to deal with the lack of those features.

Thing is, I’m so very broke at the moment, and there’s no way I can afford to be thinking about getting a new iPhone to replace the one I lost. It’s frustrating.

It’s also the longest I’ve gone without a phone since I got my first mobile phone back in 1999. It’s made me realise just how much of my social and working life is organised through my phone, and just how unreachable I am without it. I’ve seen only a small handful of my friends in this past week: Anna I arranged to meet up with in town at a specific time and place, while chatting to her on Facebook; Adam got in touch through twitter and skype to arrange to go for a swim. Aside from that, I’ve been in touch with people through the ‘net in various ways, but I’ve not actually had the same ease of contact to arrange to meet with anyone. I guess I didn’t realise just how much my phone has become an integral part of my life, and how much of a hindrance a lack of a mobile is in modern life.

It’s just taken as a given that you can be reached at all times on your phone, or that a voicemail will get to you. I’m trying to talk myself into just getting whatever crappy handset I can afford, and just deal with it as the result of being an idiot and losing my phone. I think it’s the 2nd time I’ve ever lost my phone in over 10 years of owning a mobile phone, and I don’t even have the excuse of having been drunk.

I spent the last two weekends in London for various reasons, but the main reason for the trip last weekend was to see the lovely Gaba Kulka play her first London gig. The Tuesday afterwards, we got coffee and some food and chatted before walking down towards the tube to go our separate ways. I was heading off to meet @Somhairle before catching my flight back to Ireland.

Suddenly we realised that there was a gathering of photographers snapping away in front of us, which was a bit bewildering to be honest, and looking around, I spotted David Cameron walking along behind us. Snapping him walking into his first day as Prime Minister.

I even remember saying that the photographers probably zoomed right past us to get the shot of David Cameron, but apparently they didn’t and we’re splashed over the front page of The Times, as well as making the Daily Mail.

Very random.

Gaba’s gig was absolutely wonderful though. If you’ve not checked out her music before, do! I’ve posted about her in a small way on this blog already, where you can check out three different songs from her.

Being able to just relax into the role of the performer, instead of trying to do two things at once, was a really lovely feeling. I got to chill out and just focus on giving a good performance of the tracks we were going to lay down quickly. Ended up working on three tracks in total – just vocals and piano takes of The Best Of Me and Maria, and re-taking the lead vocals and the piano line on Take Me Away. I was keen to keep all the work that Meadhbh had done on the latter track, as her vocals are just beautiful on it, but I really wasn’t happy with the guide piano and vocals I’d laid down for her to sing off.

Maria I’d never recorded before, and I’m really pleased to have a nice little demo of it done at this stage, as I can go to the other arrangements I’d sketched out for various instruments, and see if those lines will fit the way I think they will. As it turns out, re-recording The Best Of Me in the key and tempo I now play that song in was really helpful too in terms of further instrumentation, as when I was listening back to the best of the takes, I could hear the other parts I wanted in the track. I have some arrangements for that to sketch out on some manuscript paper, but I think it’s a ‘cello and viola I’ll need. I’m not sure – I’ll need to tease it out a little bit more.

I’ve not listened to those takes again yet after last night, but I’m going to leave them to listen again fresh later this evening after I go and play some Samba drums with some kids from Youth Work Ireland as part of their fundraising day. The LGBT youth group I’ve been volunteering with for the last few years, shOUT!, are under the umbrella of YWI, so helping out the main body helps keep the LGBT youth group going.

Parts of Björk’s Crying rather aptly describes my days lately. It’s been weird. I have to travel to Dublin to spend any time with people it seems. I don’t think I like that. I’m spending way too much time alone I think – so much so that I don’t even realise how much time I’m spending in just my own company. Most days I’ll say maybe three or four sentences to someone who’s not serving me in a shop or café or something. I guess I make up for it when I do go to Dublin and hang out with people there, but it just makes the return to Galway each time more frustrating. But I guess that’s what happens when there’s a big exodus of people from a town.

I do like my own company, and I’m very used to it, and it is making me write so much more. I wrote lyrics for a whole new song today that was sparked off by two short lines I’d noted down in my phone a few days ago. I even have a rough idea of how the melody should go. I’m at a point where I have way too many songs not recorded even in demo form – more than half of them aren’t recorded in any way at all. I need to get more on top of that.

I spent this evening post-Doctor-Who looking at tweaking little tiny things on my website, which just drives home the fact that I need a proper, better design for it, which is something I’m not able to do. Then I was doing re-takes of the demo vocals for “friday night friendships” which I’d sketched out quickly a while back with terribly off guide vocals. I’m getting more used to recording myself, but it’s still not ideal, and I’m finding it a bit of a pain sometimes when a good take is messed up by shitty recording, or whatever.

The thing I wrote today I’ll take a look at again tomorrow and see what I think of it. I’ve another two half-written lyrics sheets in a notebook, and a few more songs kinda half sketched out. I really have been on a big writing spate over the last year or so. I think I’ve written more in the last year than in the last 20! I’m not all of it is any good, but I’m gonna try at least demo everything so that I can listen to them from outside of the performer space, and see what I think.

Anyways, while I was in Dublin recently, I got to enjoy the beautiful tulips that are in the park in Merrion Sq. Dublin City Council were taking submissions to rename that park, which is currently named after Archbishiop Ryan. I don’t think I ever called it that in the first place – it was always just Merrion Sq to me. Or the park with the Oscar Wilde statue and beautiful tulips:

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!”

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.

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.

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.)

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

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.

Water Phoenix

It’s two songs I’ve not even demo’d yet, but that I like playing live, but it’s good to actually hear what it sounds like from a listeners point of view, so I can think about whether I need to change the songs, or listen to how I’m playing them so I can make the performances better. I’m never entirely happy with any performance or recording, but that’s just how it is at the moment. :)

Galway Rain

The other songs I have video and mp3s of are “The Bliss Returns”, “Is This What They Call Romance?” and “Re-Run” which I might post up at some point. I never ever play “Re-Run” well though – and the recording is wonderfully scrappy and awful to my ears. So I might just keep that one to myself until I get it recorded properly sometime. Heh.

I started playing piano quite young, and went through the RIAM classical piano grades. I started to lose interest somewhat at about the age of 15, when I was coming to the end of my grades, and wasn’t really interested in doing a Diploma. But something that reignited my love for playing was the movie “The Piano”, and particularly the beautiful score by Michael Nyman. I saw it on VHS when I was about 13, if I recall correctly, and I remember my parents making a special exception to allow me to watch a movie that was rated 15.

But I was really taken by the soundtrack, and I love the fact that Holly Hunter played the piano parts seen in the movie. Initially, it was the piece “Big My Secret” that I loved and played a lot, but I was won over to all the pieces over time, and they became some of my favourite pieces of music for piano. I spent the rest of my teenage years without going to piano lessons, and discovering pieces of music that I wanted to play, as opposed to just having to learn them for an exam. It’s something that I think was very important in continuing my love for the instrument. That, and discovering artists like Tori Amos and Kate Bush, who used piano in their music in ways that I hadn’t heard before.

The main theme from the piano, “The Heart Asks Pleasure First”, also called “The Sacrifice”, has become one of those standard pieces that piano students all love and learn:

It is a beautiful piece of music, but my favourite is still “Big My Secret”. Some people feel that it’s played too fast in the movie, as the recording by Nyman is much gentler and slower, but I like the flexibility of the piece, and it’s appropriate in the scene, I think:

Holly Hunter in the movie:

(Nyman’s version and some other bits after the cut)

Nyman’s version:

I loved the visuals of the piano on the beach used in the promo shots, and also scenes of the movie itself. Pianos are such beautiful instruments, and they really command your attention in a room. Having one standing proudly on a beach as the waves were coming in was an image that really called to me. You might psychoanalyse it and wonder whether it was about my own waning interest in the instrument at the time, being reignited by a desire to save the piano from the beach and the rising water. Or you might just think that it’s a striking image ;)