Firstly, a massive thank you for coming over to my threespeak video channel, my favorite alternative uploading platform as opposed to youtube. It is powered by Hive which has its own blogging platform and very soon I am going put out a couple of tutorial videos on how you can get involved.
So the guy on the right of the cover is a DJ and producer who I first performed with in a nightclub 13 years ago in my home town of Stoke on trent in the UK. He goes by the name of DJ Milky, real name is Nathern and he often plays disco house. Now I had not seen Nathern for a good 5 years until I heard this track come up on one of my social media sites and went to listen to it on soundcloud.
So I went to my kitchen as you can see and played the track through my PA speaker, whilst testing a new radio mic that I purchased recently and created some improvisation and then sent the recording to him. Obviously at the moment it's far from perfect but since this recording, Nathern and I entertained at a wedding and a B version of this song has been created which has involved going down to the studios in the local university as Nathern is in his second year of doing a sound and engineering degree and I'm very tempted to start the same degree next year. Also a small crew production wants to do a film with the new version so i'm very excited about that and it's great to be back in contact with an old friend that I really enjoy working with and entertaining with.
Like I said the recording is far from perfect but this is what I do before mastering the piece that I like, the hard job is actually going back over what I have improvised and then remembering it. So yes the kitchen is where it starts for me partially because it's a massive kitchen and it's at the back of the house. I'm not trying to give a perfect performance and if you're put off by the surroundings I'm not sure about everyone else but I listen to music with my ears not my eyes and you will notice that most of the time in my videos I have my eyes shut when I'm playing for two reasons.
1 It helps me to focus on the music the chords beat instruments, harmonizes the spaces etc
2 You try blowing a saxophone looking in a camera without looking like a bullfrog, it's not happening.
A lot of musicians like myself are perfectionists and although that is a good thing in many ways, the massive drawback is been to self critical can often create delays in putting stuff out and then sometimes what was a good idea then never happens and I'm guilty of that big time but when i'm in the kitchen it's raw it's real, i'm not trying to be famous. If no one is in the kitchen or 10 people are, I'm still going to close my eyes and pour my heart out. The reason why I'm sharing this is because you don't need to be perfect before you get something out there. Get it out there and the more you do, the better you will get anyway just have fun and along the way you will become the best version of yourself if you just keep developing your passion.
I'll be honest, I'm working on taking a day out where I record 4 to 5 music tracks. I slacked so much over the last 10 months because quietly in the background I lost my father unexpectedly and he was a big influence on why I got into music as he was a minister in a gospel church. Back then I was playing the trumpet. I also play a bit of guitar, keyboards and vocals and sung on the set as Atomic kitten, Dina Carrol 911 and a few others, hell yes i'm becoming a fossil now but yeah getting back to what i was saying, it was mentally hard because everytime I played it reminded me of my dad. Everyone grieves in different ways but when September came and my 47th birthday, I was like wow I got 3 months before 2023 kicks in my dad would not want me to be hosting a pity party and mayne if i focus on just doing what i love, if it helps to uplift someone else then it will help me to climb back to where I need to be.
And on that note remember we all climb when we look for others that we can lift up, try and focus on what's good about people rather than what's bad.
I'll see you soon in my next video here at threespeak
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