Charity Webcast – Saturday June 20

Hi all. Hope you’re well?

From June 20-27, Cancer Research UK are running a fund raising event called Busking Cancer where musicians busk ( as the name suggests!) and donate the proceedings to helping cancer research. When I saw it, I decided I definitely wanted to get involved in some way, but soon realised my diary is pretty full between those dates. The only free time was Saturday night and busking in a town centre on a Saturday night is probably a pretty risky venture!!

So instead, I will be busking….from my house. At 8.30pm UK time (International times can be found HERE ), I’ll be doing a 30-45 min live solo bass webcast which you can watch at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/alunvaughan. I’ll also be recording it so don’t worry if you’re not able to see it live, you’ll still be able to watch the recording at the same website (although miss out on heckling me via Ustream’s chatroom thing!)

All I ask is that you make a donation to Busking Cancer at their Justgiving site – http://www.justgiving.com/buskingcancer2009. You can do it any time, you can even donate in advance if you really want to . When you donate, please enter “Alun Vaughan webcast” or similar in the Comments box so that we can identify the donations from this event.

I hope as many of you as possible can tune in for this, and help raise money for a really worthwhile charity.

Thanks in advance,
Alun

New educational blog

Hi all. Hope you’re well.

As some of you may know, last year I set up a website called Bassbook.co.uk, with the intention of publishing downloadable ebooks and other resources for bass guitar.

Well now I also have a new blog, where I’ll be posting short lessons and thoughts that don’t really fit in the scheduled books.

Incidentally, the next book will be a collection of etudes which take common technical exercises such as string crossing/skipping and chromatic passages and make them into musical pieces that are much more fun to play than a bunch of exercises. More news soon!

Take care,
Alun

Imogen Heap Remix

Hi all, hope you’re all going have a good Easter.

Just thought I’d post a quick update about a recording I’ve just uploaded to my Reverbnation page (if you’re reading this on Myspace it’s on the player). It’s a remix of Imogen Heap’s “The Song That Never Was”, recorded as part of the charity project Twestival to raise money for clean drinking water in developing nations (more info can be found here).

There are some fantastic versions on the remix page, and it’s an honour to have taken part. If anything, mine is a bit of a cheat as I left the lead vocal exactly as it was and simply recorded a new backing

The bass track is a live take on my Cort Curbow 6 string, recorded directly into Tracktion 2 on my laptop. I then used a little of Tracktion’s built in reverb and compression and that was it. The only extra recording is the reversed harmonic swell at the beginning ( which was taken from the live take so still only one press of the record button required )

Hope you enjoy it.

Also, in case you’ve missed it, I’ve also added the improvised solo bass tune Sunset from “What I Did On My Holiday” to the player ( the album is still available for free download here).

Take care,
Alun

Panic Room – The Venue, Stocksbridge

Hello.Hope you’re all well. Rather than relying on my frequently befuddled memory ( age, etc….), I thought I’d try and do a quick blog about last night’s Panic Room gig while it’s still reasonably fresh

Yesterday, we travelled up to The Venue in Stocksbridge, which has a Sheffield address, but was actually closer to Rotherham. We all had a slightly surreal feeling driving into Stocksbridge as it is really, really similar to a Welsh valley town – the scenery, the buildings, everything. I guess it comes from Stocksbridge having been based on industry as were the valley towns, albeit they were coal and Stocksbridge was steel. It even has a prominent rugby club – just needed some Welsh road signs to complete the illusion

The venue itself is lovely – a great hall, decent sized stage and nice backstage facilities including comfy sofas and a shower room. I also have to thank the staff for making us really welcome and generally being lovely.

Once soundcheck was done, we had a couple of hours to kill so, thanks to the detective skills of merchandise supremo Steph, we headed off to the local Chinese. With yesterday also being Comic Relief, we were joined in the Chinese by a group of people in pyjamas

Support last night came from Barnsley based Gaia who played a great set of politically charged rock songs.

And then it was our turn. We had a great time but were dogged by monitoring problems all night which made it difficult ( and deafening!) at times. I barely heard a note I played all night although several people complemented me on the bass sound through the PA and how good the sound was in general.

The set list was quite a departure from the struture we’ve generally used but seemed to work pretty well…

Yasuni, Pleading The Fifth, Reborn, Into The Fire, Go, Banks Of The Ohio, Endgame, Hadditfeel*, Lily*, Blood Red Sky, Elektra City, Black Noise, Firefly, Sandstorms, The Great Divide, Apocalypstick, I Wonder, No Quarter

*Anne solo. I have to quickly say how fantastic Lily was…it’s one of my favourite songs of Anne’s and it was a great version.

Or at least that was the intended set list After No Quarter we left the stage and it soon become apparent that we would be doing a second encore This was a wonderful feeling….except we didn’t really have anything to play! We debated a couple of “well, I guess we could…” options before returning to the stage and doing the only sensible thing – ask the audience if there was anything they’d like to hear again

And so it was that we did an extended version of Sandstorms which included a rare bass solo (which again I couldn’t actually hear!) and an even rarer Gavin Griffiths drum solo! If you’ve not heard Gavin with ourselves, Fish or Mostly Autumn then you should…he is a truly incredible drummer and his solo was fantastic.

It was a great, fun gig. The set, despite the risk of opening with two unrecorded new tracks, seemed to work really well and it was nice to play Firefly again as we haven’t played it live for a while.

And now, time to finish writing the next album and get recording More news on our plans for the rest of 2009 coming soon!

Take care,
Alun

New Album Now Available For Free Download

Hi, hope you’re all well.

As some of you may know, I took part in this year’s RPM Challenge where you have to record an album’s worth of material in the month of February.

The resulting collection, entitled “What I Did On My Holiday” after the essays we were made to write in school after returning from school breaks, can now be heard at http://www.alunvaughan.com/free.htm

You can download the entire album (a zip file – approx 25mb) or download individual tracks from the embedded player.

You can also listen to all the tracks, read liner notes and general thoughts on the recording and read the blogs I posted on the RPM website during the process.

I hope you enjoy it, and it you do…please tell people There is no better publicity than word of mouth so please feel free to let people know

Take care,
Alun

RPM Challenge and SWJO Big Band Course

Hello. Just thought I’d post a quick blog about a couple of projects I’m working on that may be of interest…

RPM Challenge
The RPM Challenge is quite a simple idea…record an album’s worth of original material (10 songs or 35 minutes) during February, Why? Why not! I love the idea of working to such a constraint and coming up with new material. I have no idea what I’m going to do, or even if I’ll manage to complete it but I’m going to have fun trying! I’m also not allowing myself to use any material written prior to February 1 2009 – great fun!

Once the project is done, I’ll be making the material available free to anyone who wishes to download it.

Steve Waterman Contemporary Big Band Course
From April 3-5 I will be, for the fourth year running, teaching on Steve’s residential big band course in Llanelli, South Wales. It’s a great weekend focusing on, not surprisingly, big band playing as well as jazz improvisation and there are plenty of opportunities to play. Sax virtuoso Alan Barnes is also appearing as a tutor this way which promises to add a new dimension to the course.

If this sounds appealing, full details can be found at http://www.swjo.co.uk/index.php?page=7.

Take care
Alun

Panic Room – Swansea and Kingston upon Thames

Hello all. Hope you’re not too snowed under wherever you’re reading this.

Last weekend, Panic Room travelled pretty much the length of the M4 to play The Garage in Swansea on Friday 30th and then The Peel in Kingston upon Thames on Saturday 31st.

The Garage is a relatively new venue in the Uplands, just outside Swansea’s city centre and is still finding its feet but it really promising. The stage isn’t a bad size, the load in is easy enough and it’s a decent sized two level room. It was a special night for us too as Liz Prendergast, who played the fantastic violin parts on the Visionary Position album, was joining us on 6 tunes.

Soundcheck was reasonably painless although the venue only had an 8 channel mixer so myself and Paul were relying on the backline to be heard ( my lovely little Markbass rig more than coped!).

Support for the evening was from an interesting duo, Karma Junkie who played a fascinating blend of acoustic guitar, violin, harp, and electronics. The only downside was a series of technical gremlins which seemed to be the theme for the night as we were about to find out.

Just after 10pm, we took to the stage and Jon started the keyboard drone for Elektra City. At this point “Roadhouse Blues” kicked in on the house PA so we stopped and patiently waited for the soundman to stop the music. Wth The Doors silenced, we started again. All was going well until Anne attempted to sing…..nothing. She signalled to the soundman who looked oblivious to the mime show in front of him. We then noticed that the DI box for her vocal effects, which Mr Soundman had left in the middle of the stage and apparently not checked in the changeover, was unplugged. So we plugged it back in. And started again. Third time lucky!

And onto Reborn. Anne asked the soundman to mute the acoustic as it had been unplugged. He didn’t. It went pop. By this time I was quite happy to not be going through the PA!

We also had various other technical mishaps, including Jon’s keyboards deciding to misbehave, but we got through it. Liz was fantastic throughout, perfectly recreating her performances on the CD as well as adding new colours to those songs and also “Banks Of The Ohio”, where she added a fabulous bluegrass fiddle part, and “No Quarter” where she added a beautiful sense of authenticity to the “Kashmir” section.

The setlist for the night was….

Elektra City/Reborn/Sandstorms/Into The Fire/Banks Of The Ohio*/Endgame*/Fifth Amendment/Hadditfeel (Anne solo)/Dominos (Anne solo)/Yasuni/Black Noise/The Great Divide/Go/Moon On The Water*/I Wonder*/
Apocalypstick*/Blood Red Sky/No Quarter*

*Featuring Liz on violin

Regular Panic Room watchers may notice a couple of surprise song titles in there? Yes-two brand new songs! We were a little nervous as we hadn’t rehearsed them much ( and messed one up in the soundcheck) but (even if I do say so myself) they went really well.

First up was a new Edwards/Helder tune Fifth Amendment (which might end up being called “Pleading The Fifth” by the time it gets recorded), a mid tempo anthem with a great heavier section in the middle. I get to have some fun tonewise on this one, using a big swirly synth in the chorus and a Muse-like buzzy distortion in the middle section (where I also get to pay tribute to jazz legend Charlie Parker and Tom Hamilton from Aerosmith in the space of two bars – see if you can spot it!).

The second new one was one of mine/Anne’s – a ballad called “The Great Divide”. I wrote the main track for this and sent to Anne with a few lyrics that summed up the idea of the song, she then turned my random scribbles into a beautiful lyric and came up with a gorgeous vocal melody. I’m really proud of this one so really enjoyed playing it. It also gives Paul a chance to do the big power ballad guitar solo thing and I get a little noodly bit over the outro.

Overall, not a bad gig but a little rough around the edges in places. The vibe in the venue was a little weird, the audience are a fair distance from the stage and there seemed to be an equal mix of people who really wanted to listen and those who just talked incessantly. Oh, and as we were in Swansea there was a fight too!

And then on to Saturday, sans Liz. This was to be the “rematch” between ourselves and co-headliners Jump after our first attempt in early 2008 was ended by a power cut.

I really like The Peel, it’s a nice size venue with good sound and a reasonable stage. It also has a fantastic atmosphere.

The club soon filled up ( great to see so many people from the Panic Room forum – hi everyone!) and Jump took to the stage. I’ve heard them a few times but I think this was the best one yet. I loitered at the back for a while and really enjoyed it.

And, before we knew it, it was out turn to play. I must be honest, it was one of the best gigs we’ve done – great atmosphere and a lot of fun. The Peel has a strict 10.50pm curfew so we had to cut the set down quite a bit but still managed to squeeze in 1hr20 worth….

Elektra City/Reborn/Sandstorms/Banks Of The Ohio/Endgame/Go/Yasuni/Black Noise/Fifth Amendment/Apocalypstick/Blood Red Sky/No Quarter

Thanks to the tireless Andy Smith, bassist for Mostly Autumn, for great lighting too.

It was a great weekend and I can’t wait till the next time ( which will be March 13 at The Venue in Stockbridge, near Sheffield)

Take care,
Alun

Panic Room – Best New Band at CRS Awards

Hi all, hope 2009 has been good so far.

This is just a quick post to announce, rather proudly, that Panic Room won the Best New Band award at the Classic Rock Society Awards a couple of days ago

This is one of those great awards that is voted for by real people, real listening people, so we’re immensely pleased to have won

Speaking of Panic Room, there are a couple of gigs coming up at the end of this month that may interest you:

Jan 30 – Whites, Swansea
This’ll be a fun gig as a, it’ll be the first time we’ve played in our hometown and b, Liz Prendergast ( the wonderful violinist who played on our Visionary Position CD) will be joining us for <cue big reverb> one night only.

Jan 31 – The Peel, Kingston upon Thames
Yes, the following night we’ll be on the other side of the country for a double headliner with Jump. This is the rematch of last year’s gig which was scuppered by a powercut before we even got onstage.

Hope to see you there!
Take care,
Alun

2008 – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Hello. Hope you had a great Christmas and New Year. 2009 is upon us so I guess it’s time to reflect on the madness that was my life in 2008. It was definitely on of the most manic 12 months I’ve known, full of fantastic and occasionally not-so-fantastic moments.

I think I’ll get the “Bad” and “Ugly” bits out of the way as the year ended positively and so should this post. Plus I have faaaar more cool, fun things to talk about than crap ones.

The Bad mainly revolved around some up and downs in my personal life , constant chaos in my day job, and my car’s ongoing attempts to bankrupt and/or kill me Considering I have a 5 year old, low mileage VW you’d think I’d have no trouble at all. Alas, I fear mine was made by a hungover apprentice on a Friday afternoon . That vehicle must have cost me over £1500 in random faults this year and then, just as it was behaving, it got crashed into whilst parked outside my house leading to another few weeks of repairs ( and I still haven’t had my excess back as the other two parties are continuing to bicker of who crashed into who before hitting my car!).

I don’t really want to go into the Ugly bit in detail but this year I have learnt a lot about people. I have encountered a lot of lies, deceit and general unpleasantness in my personal and business lives this year and hope to never encounter them on such scales again. I have also seen the lengths some people will go to to either a, further their own careers by using and discarding the people who helped to get them there or b, ruin the happiness of others ( and sometimes, self destructively ruin their own). Ultimately, I believe in karma and “doing unto others” so will say no more about it. So there

OK, that’s enough darkness and negativity Let’s get onto all the wonderfully wonderful things that happened! In no particular order…..

Panic Room
This year has seen the release of our debut album “Visionary Position”, which has been received better than I ever dreamed, and two mini-tours. I have a reputation as a freelance player and a jazz musician, but I have to say that I absolutely LOVE playing in this band. They are great musicians and great people and I’m very proud of the music we’ve created. And there’s more to come in 2009 I’m really pleased with the new music, both the ones we’ve been playing live, and the “in progress” tunes lurking in my CD player and laptop. I can’t wait to get back in the studio and get this music recorded. I have met a huge number of lovely people through Panic Room and would just like to say hello and thank you to everyone who’s supported us.

Recordings
In the past, I’ve done a few ad-hoc recordings for people over the Internet but this year I recorded tracks for two CDs from the comfort of my house – two tracks for “Waiting Days” by Pip Robinson and a track on “Alone on The Sun” by US guitarist Mike Shouse.

In additon to these, and the Panic Room album, I also appeared on a promotional DVD for singer Jeff Hooper’s big band.

Bassbook
This year also saw the launch of Bassbook.co.uk, my new educational site. It’s still in its early stages but the first release, Christmas Songs for Solo Bass, sold really well and I have also been doing some custom transcription work. All good fun!
The next release is going to be quite involved, as I want it to include MP3s, backing tracks and midifiles so it may take a while, but it will come. Oh yes

Solo Bass
Ok, so my solo recording still isn’t out! Unfortunately, it has to take a back seat this year but I have had great fun playing supports for the likes of Chapman Stick player Jim Lampi and one of my favourite bassists, the great Seth Horan who was nice enough to say the following in his blog:

“The show opened with a set by solo bassist Alun Vaughan, who I’d been looking forward to meeting and hearing play for quite awhile now, and he did not disappoint; it was a short but focused set of intriguing music, played effortlessly and with good taste.”

Thanks to Rob Southall of the wonderful Islwyn Acoustic Guitar Club for both of those gigs! The music world needs more dedicated music lovers like Rob ( and Dave Cottle at Swansea Jazzland) who voluntarily give their time to make gigs happen

Speaking of wonderful volunteer people, I have to thank Kofi of Bassmasterclass.com for inadvertantly giving me some of the biggest exposure to the bass community this year. In March, Kofi organised a two day masterclass with US jazz bassist Todd Johnson which I attended. During that masterclass, Todd asked me to show him an arrangement I was working on so I showed him my work-in-progress arrangement of Blue Bossa. This led to an impromptu jam captured on film by fellow bassist Andy Long. This is now my most viewed clip on YouTube Yay!

Other Fun Stuff
And now for the other fun stuff that doesn’t really fit in the categories above….

- In February I did a short run of gigs with New York singer Marlene VerPlanck which was the first time I ever played solely upright on a gig. It was a great experience (although my bowing is still terrible!)
-I got to play with the Root Doctors, a band I used to go and watch when I first started playing
-I managed to get an endorsement deal with Italian bass amp manufacturers Markbass
- I was called for a gig and told that the bass parts were on a sequencer anyway so I just needed to mime. I decided I didn’t fancy that and set about learning 27 songs in one day – just as well I did as it turned out that the gig was the wedding of two musicians and I would have been rumbled instantly had I attempted to mime
- I finished the year off with some manic sight reading, depping with John Oliver’s Live, a great function band with a huge pack of music, nearly all of which is segued (making page turning almost as challenging as reading and playing!) and a fantastic show.
- I got to play bass while one of my biggest bass influences, Laurence Cottle, played trombone including a chorus of just bass and trombone – scary but great fun

The Internet, and in particular the Social Media side of things and Twitter, have played a big part in my musical life this year. As well as the recordings and work mentioned earlier, Twitter very nearly got me a gig with one of my favourite sax players, Andy Sheppard, after, in a “three degrees of seperation” moment, I had a phone call from Steve Lawson asking me to ring Simon Little as Tom Mason was ill and unable to do the gig that night. Unfortunately, by the time we had sorted it out, the manager had already fixed someone. Next time! But, without the Internet I wouldn’t have got that call.

And that’s about it. I played around 100 gigs in 2008 ranging from scruffy rock clubs to the most magnificent ballrooms and country houses you could imagine. Emotionally, the year went from some of the best moments of my life, to dark lows, and back again

Right now, I have no idea what 2009 has in store, but I think it’s going to be fun!

Take care and Happy New Year!!!
Cheers
Alun

Panic Room – The Limelight, Crewe

Hello! Hope you are all having a fantastic Christmas.

Apologies for the incredible lateness of this post – the last few weeks have been a bit hectic to say the least but now, as I munch on turkey and watch The Chronicles of Narnia, I have time to write it. Just hope my memory holds out as the gig was Dec 4 and I’m typing this on the 26th

I’d never done played at the Limelight before although the others had in the Karnataka days so I was really looking forward to it, despite various rumours about the new management and that the sound hadn’t been great for a few bands.

I liked the venue, and we soon set about making the stage a bit more festive with balloons and tinsel. My phone pics are online at http://www.alunvaughan.com/interactive.shtml  and there is a much more professional selection by Stephen Turner here.

At this point I should probably mention that I am now fortunate enough to be endorsed by Italian bass manufacturers Markbass and this was the debut gig for my tiny but deafeningly loud new speaker cab. It looked like a demented Christmas dalek when I’d finished tinselling it and added a fiber-optic Christmas tree!

After hunting out the local chip shop and supermarket we retired to the dressing room as the club began to fill up.

The support band for the night was Jump who played a great set. Vocalist John Dexter Jones’ onstage banter was as entertaining as ever.

And so, around 10pm, we took to the stage. The set was simailr to our standard one but with a couple of little tweaks…

Elektra City / Reborn/Sandstorms / Into The Fire / Banks Of The Ohio / Go / Endgame / Hadditfeel* /O Holy Night* / Yasuni / Black Noise / Apocalypstick / Blood Red Sky / I Wonder What’s Keeping My True Love Tonight / Merry Christmas (War Is Over) / Enter Santa

*Anne solo

Yes, a few Christmas additions – O Holy Night by Anne and then the John Lennon classic as first encore. And then, for final silliness, a re-jigged Enter Sandman renamed Enter Santa with assorted festive references (”we’re off to winter wonderland….”). This particular moment of daftness can be found on Youtube , albeit without Jon’s organ intro. You too can now experience the true glory of my £1 flashing Santa hat (and Anne’s considerably more thought out Santa costume)!

We were besieged by numerous technical hitches throughout the gig (my bass cutting out, Anne’s pedalboard failing, etc) and only about a quarter of the lights at the venure were working ( thanks to Andy, better known as bassist with Mostly Autumn for doing a great job with the lighting), but it was still a really fun gig and seems to be a favourite with fans who’ve followed the tour.

After the gig, we presented Gavin with his belated birthday present -an iPod to replace the MP3 player stolen in Wolverhampton- and headed off in search of the hotel. We finally found it and, before we knew it, we were sitting round at 3.30am eating pizza and kebabs – such a healthy bunch!

Thank you to everyone who came, as always, and I’m looking forward to the next gigs – Jan 30 in The Garage, Swansea and then the re-match with Jump at the Peel , Kingston upon Thames ( a rematch as our first attempt at playing there was foiled by a powercut!)

As it’ the end of a pretty mad year, I will be posting a blog about the happenings of 2008 soon, but for now – take care and enjoy the rest of Christmas!

Alun

Now where have I put those chocolate covered brazil nuts……..