What's Going On?

Hello, how are you doing?  I hope that you are well.  I know, I've used a Marvin Gaye title, and I'm not sure but I think I used it before for a blog?  My memory is famous for not being all there.

At present I am about 2 or so hours away from the end of a shift, after which I can look forward to a day off - yippee!  I am so looking forward to that.  I can use that time to try and catch up with the sleep I have missed, as well as all of the other things.

So, what have I been up to then?

Welcome to Wetlands Animal Park

Well, surprisingly I had Monday off this past week as well.  After I woke up at about midday I basically got ready for going out.  I got in from work at about seven that morning, so don't judge me all right.  Then we went to the car and used the gadget known as "crapnav" to lead us to the Wetlands Animal Park that is between Lound and Sutton near Retford.  The "crapnav" basically took us up the A1 far past where I think we should have got off, and then it had the gall to make the following suggestion - "at fifty yards perform a u-turn back onto the A1."  Yeah right, like I am going to do that!  Stupid machine.  There was an exit about another 50 yards further on, which I took and then carried on where the machine told me to go, as I didn't have much choice really considering that I didn't know where I was anyway.

Prairie Dog picture taken on Blackberry

Once we got there we had a great time, and it was such a lovely place.  I posted a photograph that I took while I was there onto both Twitter and Facebook using my Blackberry (that Louise nicknames the Raspberry, because it constantly irritates her when it beeps) of a Prairie Dog.  Later on I placed numerous photographs taken by myself and Louise there onto Facebook.

We took absolutely loads of photographs while we were there, and my sweetheart is on about paying to get a whole load of them developed into actual physical photographs and placing them into a special item.  I know, I felt like mentioning to her that it is the 21st century now, and that people just don't those things any more.  It's just so passée.  Oh well, if that's what she wants to do, then who am I to argue, especially with all the things that I have cluttering up the place (four guitar related instruments, two mandolins, ukulele, keyboards, percussion, about two dozen harmonicas, tin whistles, blah, blah, blah).

I have been at work every single night from the Tuesday, which explains why I am looking forward to my day off.  I am also tempted to ask at work if they can sort out me having the first Tuesday in September off in order to go to the First Tuesday Songwriting Group again, because of how much fun it was last time.  The more I go, then eventually I won't have to rely on "crapnav" for that journey!

Ukulele

Speaking of the ukulele, I have been taking it onto a specific site with me at work and playing it.  Most of the times I have ended up writing something, or learning something.  Titles that I have written using it are My Sweet Louise and Dream Time.  Other than that I have learnt to play tunes on it such as Another Day by Paul McCartney, Medicine Jar by Wings (not one written by McCartney, but by guitarist Jimmy McCulloch), Maneater by Nelly Furtado, Children of the Revolution by T Rex, Rock Around The Clock by Billy Haley & His Comets, No More by Elvis Presley (from Blue Hawaii), and a few others.  Let's just say that I have it bad for the ukulele now!

I got sidetracked there, and apologise.  Before I went back to work on the Tuesday night shift, I met up with my friend Paul, who I had not seen in far too long.  He and I were in a band named Shadowplay many moons ago now, and we were catching up.  The band split up, but all of us stayed friends.  Paul was the one who really started me off on the musician route.  I've spoken about Shadowplay and that before, but needless to say that we went through an awful lot.  He helped me through some very difficult times.  When it was the trio of me, Paul, and Andy, we were solid in every way.  Paul always was an incredible musician, who I still admire so much.  For him to say the other day that he was impressed meant so much to me.  Andy was the one who forced us to better ourselves.  He made us learn more and more, pushed us to become tighter.  We met up outside of rehearsals and gigs, where we would discuss set lists for gigs, with each one of those gigs having slight differences in their sets.  Then when rehearsals we rehearsed like crazy.  We would be there for anything up to six hours constantly ploughing through the set list song after song after song, honing every aspect of it.  We were an amazing live band even if I say so myself.  We knew what we were doing.  We never made any mistakes on stage that I can remember.

Between them they take a relative beginner and made me into what I am now in a musical way, and from a friendship point of view they helped me through those times I mentioned and took me through it all.  Friends forever.  Needless to say, me and Paul had a great time.  He came to Newark to see me, and we never stopped talking about everything.  What we were both up to, our memories of the band times, and so much more.

Paul, Andy, and me Bowl In Hand 1997

Anyway, since then I have been at work every night.  I did a rough demo of the song I took to the last Songwriting Group, which Louise came up with the title to - Sometimes.  Simple title, although there are so many more songs with exactly the same name (I can think of Max Q and Erasure off the top of my head).  I did my usual record it using the laptop's built in microphone thing, because every time I try to update my vista based machine to 7, it just goes crazy and I have to put Vista back on again, so I can't use my expensive pod hardware/software package that would mean me being able to record a hell of a lot better quality recordings at home.  In fact, it would probably cut down on some recording at the studio.  I say some, because there are still some things that I love about recording in a studio, such as drums, keyboards, percussion, piano, and some other things.  Other than that, I love the rapport with engineers and people who will come up with things that you never would have thought of yourself.

Anyway, I did a rough home demo of Sometimes, which actually consisted of four acoustic guitar tracks, a thrown away ukulele track, a mandolin track, acoustic bass, triangle, lead vocal, and two backing vocals.

So, I think I will actually finish this post now, because I have taken an hour to write it and now only have an hour left, during which time I have things to do.  I have been doing my job at the same time as well of course.

That means that I will now wish you a good day/evening/night/morning, whatever depending on your place in the cosmos.

Inspiration and real life Superhero
Neil Armstrong, rest in peace.

Speaking of the cosmos, I found out on Saturday that the great and more than inspirational Neil Armstrong had died.  He was more than an inspiration, he was so much more.  When I was a child, there were still spaceships going out into space exploring.  Most of us who were kids back then looked on in awe, wanting to be astronauts so that we too could make "one small step for a man (or woman), but one giant leap for mankind".  He, Buzz Aldrin, and the others involved in that mission are true super heroes.  Their actions brought about feelings that unfortunately are now distant memories.  There is no more exploration because the world cannot afford it, but I hope that one day it will carry on.  People may still wonder why it is necessary, but even as a child born in the seventies, they inspired me and others of my generation.  We may not have gone anywhere far in our lives, but they gave us hope.

Please take care, and thank you for reading.

27 August 2012 (41 years, 9 months, and 1 day old).

A week in the life

My present place of work

Here we are, another Sunday.  I'm on a reasonably nice site tonight, albeit one that is infested by an array of creepy crawlies, and it has been incredibly warm all night.  I can't say much more than that really, because I continue with my attempt to not mention places of work, but to instead just say that I work wherever they ask me to work.

As I start writing this blog it is 3.24 in the morning, and I have more than three and a half hours left of the shift, having started at six in the evening (finish at seven).

A small selection from my collection.

This blog finds me in a reasonably good mood.  Okay so there are still bills to catch up on and all of that, but that is just normality's attempt to undermine the joy that I want to feel.

This week I went to take a student model violin that I was given by my dad not too long ago.  When he gave it me it was missing a string anyway, and I knew that it was a student model and that a better bridge would possibly make it sound better than Wagner on a night out with Jedward.  So I took it to a violin repairer, who said that it would cost £120 to get it to a good level, but also said that it wasn't worth anywhere near that, even if the work were done as it was a cheaply made item from some Asian country (other countries probably make them, but this was made in one of those, I can't remember offhand which one).  With that I decided there and then that I would sell the item at the local auction.

Mansfield marketplace (stock photo)

While I was at John's though (the violin repairer), he did say that he had a zither that he wanted to sell, which I was immediately attracted to the idea of.  He showed it to me, and I thought that it was absolutely gorgeous.  It needed tuning obviously, but it was a lovely instrument to look at and to feel.  I asked him to take care of it for me because he was really interested.

This was on Monday.

On Tuesday I went to Mansfield to see if the comics I had ordered (and paid a decent deposit for) had arrived.  Once again this visit was to no avail.  I asked the shop owner if since I had ordered the first three issues, if it might be just as easy to wait for the fourth and final part of the series, to which he agreed.  He will contact me when they would be there to pick up.

I also took some CDs to a cash converter type place in Mansfield (the one in Newark doesn't buy CDs), to see if I could get some money for them towards my studio recording fund.  Alas they said that they could pay me a penny for each disc, netting me £1.18.  I thanked them for their time, put the CDs back in the bags, and took them with me, and thereby rejecting the financial offer they had made.

Cash Converters (another stock image)

After that I went to visit my brother's house in Mansfield, where I was dropping off some things for him.  Neither he or his wife were there, so I stayed a good while chatting to their children (not that they are that any more I can assure you).

When I got back to Newark, I thought that I would try John's, because I so wanted the zither.  He wasn't in, which reminded me to never visit people on a whim, without making sure they know you are coming first.

Wednesday was a day of my much better half's mother visiting.  For me I was up very early (seven in the morning).  Please remember that I am predominantly a night shift worker, so I would normally be getting into bed around that time, not getting out of it.

I had sorted the aforementioned CD albums out into boxes, adding another 2 to make a full amount of 120 split into two boxes of sixty.  I also boxed up 136 CD singles.  All of these were sealed with brown tape.  So, at 8.30 in the morning I took these and the violin to the local auction house, where I filled in paper work to keep me on their system, since it is entirely likely that I will be selling more there.

The two types of zither on floor.

They said they would contact me about the sale that would be taking place on the Thursday (the following day).  After that I went to John's and bought the large 32 string zither from him, along with another form of zither known as a melody harp, since it has 15 strings, all tuned to a single major scale (G), which I also really liked.  This was paid for from my studio recording fund, after a few people said it was a better idea to buy the zither from the funds.  I tend to agree that they were right.

The rest of Thursday was mainly a case of me and my sweetheart trying to have some time together as just the two of us, until I left for work at about a quarter past six for a seven o'clock start - I like to be early for work surprisingly enough.

I'm all a zither.

I received my renewed security licence through the post that day as well, which made me happy in a way, but also irritated me because here I was paying £220 so that I can keep on earning basic minimum hourly rate for the next three years - lovely.

I had a play on the melody harp zither, which was lovely, and Louise too had a go on this magical instrument.  It is fun to play, and most probably the easiest instrument in the world to play, although smarty pants here has started writing something for it that utilises both hands at the same time playing accompaniment and melody.  I've got to practice though because just like the piano, it is similar to patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time - possible, but takes some getting used to.

Travel scrabble anyone?

We also had the chance to get a game of scrabble in using a travel set that Louise's parents had got us from a car boot sale (the copy of the game is dated 1958), which is always a good thing, because we love playing scrabble and all sorts of word games.

On Saturday I received a cheque in the post for the CDs and the violin, which meant that I could add that £39.39 to my studio fund (they had taken off their commission by this time, which I expected anyway), which made me really happy.  I also decided to carry on selling items through the auctions there.

Me with ukulele at work last weekend.

And so now you find me here at work, and finally coming to the end of this incredibly long (and picture-filled) blog at 4.38 in the morning (yes, an hour and 14 minutes to write, mainly because I have had work to do at the same time).

Actually, I will just add that last Sunday evening I took my ukulele to work with me, and had a lovely time with it.  I learnt the chords to When I'm Cleaning Windows, thus having a better answer when people ask if I can play it - the inevitable question when you say that you play the ukulele.  I suppose that means that I should learn Losing My Religion for the mandolin, and now The Harry Lime Theme on the zither.  Great, no pressure then!

Thank you for reading, and please take care.

August 19 2012 (41 years, 8 months, and 24 days old).

Another Quick Blog

So here I am again then, blogging.  Who would have thought it?  Well, a lot of people probably if they knew that I follow the blog world of Mr Drew Baxter, who seems to be back to blogging a lot lately, and then there are others such as my friend (and occasional Project Marv collaborator) Tony Hearn, who himself has started blogging for the first time this week, and his are filled with nuggets that could be incredibly helpful.

My blogs, I either have my music blog series, where I am discussing the post-Beatles careers of John, Paul. George, and Ringo.  A mammoth task that I can tell you.  I haven't done much on there for a while now, but actually do have some of one started on that needs a lot more work, but at least it has been started.  My other blog series (this one) is much more random, and a lot of the time trails off into tangents that don't really make much sense, but the mind works in strange ways doesn't it.

I can't really talk much about what I am doing in regards to work at this exact moment, because I am indeed typing out this missive of mine whilst at this place  of work.  I can tell you that it is a place that I have only done twice before, and that I know the bare minimum of what is needed to be known for working on here.  Oh well, different security company, same great on-site training.

I missed the closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympics for the most part tonight.  The fact is that I have been unable to watch any television on my laptop because the signal is bloody awful!  That plus I was unable to get my laptop out for the first umpteen hours of shift time, so I was sit with my ukulele, playing it.  I actually even came up with a new song whilst I was noodling on the little beauty - there is something so satisfying about playing a ukulele.

When I first got the ukulele I was greeted with the same question as I am sure most people who own a ukulele are asked in the UK - "can you play When I'm Cleaning Windows"?  No I can't, or at least I couldn't until tonight.  I had got sick of the question, so I ended up actually learning it tonight, as well the Elvis song No More from his film Blue Hawaii - Louise's favourite song from the film, and apparently Elvis plays ukulele on the song and indeed a lot of the album (apparently ukuleles are played a lot in Hawaii - is that is one of that racial stereotypes?)

I actually like playing different instruments and find them to be incredible at making me looking at music in a different way.  I will find that when I write on a keyboard/piano, that I write completely different to how I write on guitar.  Other instruments are different as well, and I find these different approaches to be both interesting and inspirational.

Sometimes doing something you are used to a different way can stop you from getting bored, stuck in a specific way, or numerous other things.  I'm getting tired, so please excuse me - it's just gone twenty past three in the morning just now as I type this.

I will continue to do this - write in lots of ways.

I do have to say that this is probably the longest I have spent on the ukulele, and I am so glad that I have one, because it sort of makes me happy.

Thank you for reading, please take care.

13 August 2012 (41 years, 8 months, and 18 days old).

PS - The riff from Wherever I May Roam by Metallica works nicely on the uke, as I have found out tonight. :-)
PPS - Next three days off at the moment, so some recording is called for - yay.

Song writing to order

Hello everybody.  I am hopeful that you are all okay.  I actually do have some things to talk about, which makes a change I know.

Just as a bit of background, the company I work for make a week's rota available on a Thursday (for the week following starting from the Monday - four day's notice).  Because of that, it is impossible to actually make any arrangements, which is a common thing for most security companies.

I was off on the Thursday, so when I got to work on the Friday I looked at my rota and was surprised to find that I had the Tuesday off, which surprised me, and that is because I have wanted to take part in something called the First Tuesday Songwriting Group, which is exactly as it sounds.  A friend of mine, Matt Blick who writes the Beatles Songwriting Academy blog, has a monthly meeting where people come in with songs that they have written during the preceding month, perform them, and then everyone discuss the song coming up with positives and negatives.

I wasn't completely sure whether I would be going or not, because there is a tendency in security work for you to be called in on a day off to cover people.  During the shift on Monday night I realised that it seemed very possible that I would not be contacted to work.  When I got home then I was left with the problem that I didn't actually have a song that I had written during that month, so after getting in from work at 7 in the morning, I woke up at about 11 o'clock, had breakfast, and then Louise went to the bedroom to leave me some time to try and write something.

Sometimes it can take a while for something to come to fruition, but here I was lucky in that from I had something virtually completed within 45 minutes.  So on Tuesday evening I went to Matt's in Nottingham.  There only actually ended up just being myself, Matt, and Matt Wood there.  Apparently normally there are more people who go, but I'm guessing that they were probably doing Summertime stuff maybe?

First person to go was Matt Wood with his song Casanova, which I really enjoyed.  I liked the "some were too cool for school, but school was too cool for me" line, which just explained amazingly who the song was talking about, among other things in the song.  Then there was Matt B's great bluesy rock riffed song Fingernails, which again I really enjoyed.  They liked my first verse and the chorus,

After that came my own song.  I was proud of the song, and it went down well.  Suggestions made were great, such as Matt B's "Where you go G to C, you could occasionally do something else but keep the same melody."  This is something that I also worked on for a D minor in the chorus as well, but that is just an extension of that - it wasn't mentioned, but I thought that it was just a natural extension of that.  He also suggested ending with another chorus either in the higher key of A major rather than G major, because it would naturally work after the middle eight in D major, or use that last G/D chord to be the opening G in the end chorus.  I know, that's all very technical and everything, but songs are worked on in this way a lot of the time.

In the end I went for the idea of having that last chorus in A major, but then that took me somewhere else where I excitedly came up with a great way to come from that chorus in A major back to instrumentally finishing on the verse music in the original opening key of A minor via the natural E minor in the A major scale to Bm7, C, and then Dm, Em, and back to the original A minor 7 chord.

Matt W mentioned that some of the rhymes in what is actually the third verse seemed forced, and I explained that I have a tendency to lose it so far through when writing songs (a normal occurrence for a lot of songwriters), and that over recent years I have tended to work through lyrics a lot more - I have initial words for a song, but then over a period of time I go through them to hone them basically.

Anyway, there were other things discussed about each other's songs, but needless to say we all had a great time there.

When I got home I let Louise know that I had such a lovely time, which she said she was glad to hear.  Since moving to Newark, she has said that she has felt bad about me leaving all of that behind - my friends in that music scene, the going out to gigs there, and all of that.  She was happy that I could go and do this and, even though the fuel did cost money to get there and back (24 miles each way), it was worth it to know that I had done something that I had missed - playing music with others.

Hopefully I can do it again soon, and it has started me down the road of writing out a potential set list for gigging.  Shocker!

Post script to this is that when I was sat down with Louise a couple of days later I said "I just can't think of a title for this song."  It was tricky in my eyes because it is a song about a slave basically who is working like crazy, has pain everywhere, cuts, and dreams of a better future in a 'dream sequence' middle eight.  Louise asked me to pass her the lyrics, had a very quick less than two second glance and said "Sometimes".  Why hadn't I thought of that?  Every verse and the middle eight starts with that word?  Of course.  Simple, effective, catchy, perfect.

"Sometimes I feel so old
Eight hours down with four to go
My hands burn from the pain
Of working the land to earn a pittance pay
There ain't no respite to come my way
To bring brightness to my cloudy days"

That was verse one.  Anyway, there we are a blog on one subject, and I am hoping that people find it interesting.  Makes a change for me to stick to one thread.  I don't think I'll post a demo of this song up by the way, so you'll have to wait until it's properly recorded and mixed.

Thank you for reading, please take care.

11 August 2012 (41 years, 8 months, and 16 days old)

Thoughts from the realm of improvisation

So, what shall I write about then?  I have absolutely no idea because I have just thought "hey, what about writing a blog, because other people seem to be doing them now who weren't before, and theirs are bloody great with it (stand up and be counted Mr Tony Hearn).

Of course as many of you must know, I am one who has a tendency to read the blog, to the detriment of my actual reading of literature.  I seem to just get carried away by what some people write about.

There are all sorts of things online that grab my attention.  I am incredibly frequent on the old social networking arena, although I will admit to being more enamoured with the Twitterverse than the Facebook and Myspace sides.  I am especially denigrating of that Myspace world nowadays, because they have absolutely screwed that into the ground with the way it is!  The well and truly have placed that into the category of old and buried.  When I have frequented that site lately, it has been filled with virtual tumble weed.  Even the unfortunate passing of the great Derek B (British hip hop originator) is still alive on there (he died in November of 2009, may he rest in peace).  He was a true genius, but somehow Myspace has someone missed his passing.

Oh well, I hear that Fred Astaire's account is still active on there as well.  This is my way of saying they have not moved with the times.

Facebook has everything going on, but when you just want to be quick it is a tough thing to do, and at work I haven't always got the ability to catch up with all the "friends" profiles every day.  Who has???  Certainly not I.  It is an absolute impossibility to keep up with everyone, unless you have very few friends, in which case you probably could.  I suppose that I could be ruthless and get rid of those who aren't real friends, but there are some of those who I actually like to see information.  There are those who I have never actually much outside of the virtual, but who I am absolutely fascinated by.  Perhaps it is the songwriter in me.

Speaking of songwriting, I am of to a Songwriters group at my friend Matt's (you know, the one I went to the studio for to record some vocalising).  It will be interesting, but sometimes I get sick of the old driving business and actually like the idea of just occasionally being able to drink something that isn't tea, coffee, milk, water...  You get the picture.  I try not to touch even a drop of alcohol when I am expecting to drive, and that even goes for trifle now.

We visited someone, no names mentioned, and they gave us dinner and pudding (somehow I have a tendency to suggest visiting people a little before their meal times for some reason).  For pudding they served a trifle, which included absolutely loads of sherry.  Well, I really had to force myself to stay awake behind the wheel of the car driving for around an hour to get home I can tell you, and I am not exaggerating there.  This blogger here has virtually no contact with alcohol (I might as well not for how often I can get even a sip).  I just think the roads are safer with a completely alcohol free Marv behind the wheel of a car.  By that I mean alcoholic drinks and not the band Alcohol featuring the previously mentioned Tony Hearn.

I forgot to mention in the previous blog that I had started to actually put the extensive photo collection I have into albums (yes, actual physical photographs).  It'll be a big job that is for sure, because there are so many of them.

First of all being the exacting freak that I am I have a strategy for how they should be kept.  I will eventually have albums that are specific.  I already have a "music" related album, a "going out" album, and one full of photographs from brother's wedding.  Believe me when I say that there were a lot of photographs taken at that wedding.  If you want plenty of photographs to choose from at your wedding, invite my family because we are a family that never shirks on our photographing responsibilities.  We like taking photographs, and we don't hide that fact, hence why we have what are called Camera Wars - where you take photo's of each other taking photographs of each other, as well as trying to outdo how many photographs are taken.  Nowadays that is even more of a thing because of digital cameras and memory cards - the sky is the limit there believe me.  At my brother's wedding though, there was no such thing as a digital camera.  I for instance used up 5 films at least, which took 24 photographs on each one!

I suppose if I had known before now, then I would have photographs to put on this blog, but since I have made it up on the spot, then I haven't got said photographs to hand.  Oh well, these things happen when you make stuff up!

I am happy to have my hard drives back from my brother actually, because now I have the ability to work on those songs again, although in a way I had resigned myself to the fact of leaving things as they were and issuing what mixes I have (although adding vocals to some).  I think I will do just that to be honest - it's about time because I am slowly turning into Paddy McAloon (the Prefab Sprout songwriter who has a whole wealth of material recorded that he has done nothing with - there are around 20 albums worth that he has at home, but they have remained unmixed for the most part - a true shame).

Anyway, what is taking my attention lately is the whole Olympics thing, and how great has it been?  I don't care about the whole media furore with "Becky Adlington only getting bronze when she should have got gold" business, and the rest of it (poor Tom Daley, he did his best for crying out loud).  These people have done the best that they can.  Who are we, China when the previous Olympics were in Beijing and they were punishing their athletes for losing?  That is just wrong!!!  Let them be, because they have done what they could.

I was really ecstatic about Andy Murray winning the gold in the men's tennis singles and the silver in the mixed tennis doubles both on the same day.  Roger Federer (in my humble opinion the greatest tennis player around at the moment) was honest in summation of the singles match that he got silver in - "Andy was the better player on the day."  That is true sportsmanship.  Not to take away from Andy, but I thought that Fedex (the nickname for Federer) was having a very off day.  That is from one who watches Tennis sometimes.  I know some of my REAL friends who take the mickey out of tennis and say it isn't a sport, but I watch it sometimes and don't mind admitting it - we all have those weird things that we do, and I more than most obviously.

Anyway, I think I will leave it there, because I have waffled on enough now.

Here's to you having a lovely day ahead.  Take care, and thank you for reading.

7 August 2012 (41 years, 8 months, and 12 days old)

PS - Please feel free to research anything I have mentioned in this blog.

Happy August

Well, here we are.  I hadn't realised that it had been so very long since my last missive.  Times flies and all that hey.

July was a month with a lot of things going on.  Firstly, and rather self-promotive, I issued a single as Project Marv entitled Good Morning World, and I have to wait a whole three months to get sales information back.  That will be a very long three months, because I am particularly pleased with the song (and have been for a long time, because the whole album length set that the full version of the song will appear on has been worked on for six years.  I take my time because I don't have the ability I would like to record as good quality recording that this song (and others) represents.

I know there is the whole lo-fi thing going, but in some ways I let myself get carried away, and also there is the fact that I have had to find the money to do it.  Against my better judgement, some of the songs are going to feature vocal recordings that I am not particularly happy with, but that's just the financial side getting in the way.  If I could then I would always record vocals in a proper studio, but I just can't afford it.  I could wait longer, see how much I can get from selling items to afford studio sessions, but I am already up against artists such as Boston in the race for longest period spent on recording material (I believe Third Stage took them 12 years to record from initial sessions to the end of mixing).

The version of Good Morning World that you can get as a single is an edited version of the song, because the full length version of the song is over six and a half minutes long.  After my friend Rob Huskinson suggested shortening the song, I thought I would have a go at it.  I'm not particularly into editing songs, but I ended up enjoying this shortened version of the song.  It doesn't actually damage the song, which in a problem I have found in songs that have been released before where they have edited them.  I know that quite a few of my friends aren't fans of Coldplay, but I think the edited version of the song Talk does take something away from the song, because the full length version from the album has a lot of drama in there musically with the build up, which is lost in the single edit.

When approaching the job of creating an edited version of Good Morning World I had this and other songs like that in mind, with the purpose being to avoid such a thing happening.  You can find this out for yourself by buying the song and checking it out (I'm particularly pleased with the harmony section in the middle by myself and Mark Allsop, along to my own piano playing - yes, me!) - iTunes UK link or Amazon UK link (is also available in the majority of the world, but obviously I don't have those links).

There are two albums available as well by the way on Amazon and iTunes worldwide (both at £7.49 on Amazon UK and £7.99 on iTunes UK) - A New World Order and Colours, both featuring around 30 titles on each - value for money.  Look for them under the Project Marv name.

There were a lot of people who died during July that were a part of my being brought up.  Eric Sykes died on the 4th, and I remember his work on the short films Rhubarb and The Plank, among many other things (he was fantastic in the Nicole Kidman film The Others).  Ernest Brognine died on the 8th, of whom my previous blog was written about.  The film producer Richard D Zanuck died on the 13th, who was producer for films such as Jaws and Road To Perdition.  Keyboard player Jon Lord (Deep Purple/Whitesnake) died on the 16th, as did the great Bob Babbitt (bass player for the session group for Motown Records known as The Funk Brothers).  Not from my own personal history, but the writer Maeve Binchy died on the 30th (Louise and my mum are two of her readers).  Of course the American Playwright/Novelist/Political Commentator Gore Vidal died on the last day of July (31st), which Louise filled me in on, because I had heard of him, but hate to admit that I knew very little about him.

I am soon about to finish a long period of leave from work (two and a half weeks holiday time), most of which was enjoyed during July.  This sort of explains how I have not been blogging for the majority of July.  I try not to be stuck on the laptop for long periods of time while I am with Louise.  Having a Blackberry telephone sort of helps to keep up with the Social Networking side of things, although the frequent ping of people's status changes and that can get irritating at times.

The fact that we are just getting by with the money that I make means that there wasn't really the money there to do very much, but we did get to do things.  We have however enjoyed (for the most part) some DVD's that have come through from my membership of lovefilm, and also watched some things online using Netflix.  It makes a change with the job that I have for us to actually get a decent amount of time together.  If we had money would we have done anything different?  Yes of course we would, but because we haven't got the money to do those things, we have made the best with what we have.  We did some visiting while I was off.  At the last minute we decided to visit my dad (hence why I didn't let my brother know - sorry), and I visited my aunt in Shirebrook.

I helped my friend Matt Blick out in the studio during one of his sessions (I say help, but suggestions I made were probably more irritating).  He wanted some people to come and provide "crowd vocals" for one of his songs, and the recording was in Mansfield.  I so wanted to help out my friend, but also didn't want to just show up for half an hour, because of the time I would spend driving there and back from Newark, so I showed up at about two o'clock instead of five.

Anyway, until I find a way to use Blogger on my Blackberry, I limit my time on the old internet, and that means that my time has come to an end with blogging.  Perhaps if I wrote out my blogs before typing them out, then I could maybe not spend time online making it up while I type out my blog?  I don't know.  Maybe?

I'll get off now then and leave you to enjoy yourselves.  Please take care.

August 2nd 2012 (41 years, 8 months, and 7 days old)