Leonard Smalls

Our 2nd time playing together since beginning of Feb, and as The Drummer is shielding we're using my phone instead 😁 And guitar is sounding mean through a Marshall Jubilee bass amp and Markbass 2x10! Hopefully we'll be OK for live streaming for 30 mins on 15th August!

This... Though I've been trying for 30+ years to get the same feel and sound as Bootsy!

We may be doing a punk for the homeless benefit on 15th August, assuming we can work out how to stream it, and we'll be using my programmed drums and sequenced backing as our drummer is still sheilding...

Aye! And it's rare to see anyone getting the amount of joy out of playing that she does...

Not rock or prog, but one of the best keyboardists out there - here with microtonal Dave Fiucyznski on guitar, Hiromi Uehara:

Here's a beautiful bit of 80s... Skipetty skip!

I'm amazed that there's no love for 3 of the most distinctive female voices! And of course Bjork, with honourable mention to Skin!

I have Spotify on all day at work - got a 1200 song playlist with everything on there from Hiromi to Scientist, from Vivaldi to Flock of Seagulls, Coltrane to Kraftwerk... And at home I usually have the radio on with 6 Music; actually putting on an album is rarer now even though I've got 1000+ - I occasionally ask the smartradiothingy to play one while I'm cooking.

She's lives a couple of hundred metres from me - not my type of singing but she's lovely!

Shame - saw them many times... I knew Bic who was one of their guitar players.

Sounds like you've got auto-warp long samples on... Look in preferences (in options drop down), record warp launch and switch it off, though it can be handy if you're importing clips to use at a different speed...

That's jazz, baby! Though not your square non-hep living-in-the-past melodic bourgeois nonsense - this will be ART; and great ART is about suffering - both for the performer and for the audience. Especially for the audience! And any keeping to a rigidly enforced-by-the-man time is either a) purely coincidental or b) to show how free the ART is when not adhering to Society's Norms. And the problem with drummers, not being musicians, is that they just see the black and white of strict (arguably!) time and not the great array of possibility that is Great ART!!! 😁😜🤪

I'm quite looking forward to gigs where drum set=up consists of plugging in the laptop, booting up EZ Drummer, connecting to Focusrite interface/PA and pressing play. More room for us all on stage, no more drummer only soundchecks, no more sulking cos he's forgotten the most important Turkish Ride though he already has 4 others and hi-hat, no more speeding up (it's never slowing down), no more overcomplicated fills that last 3 beats too long, no more splash cymbal making everyone deaf... 😁😎

I think I'm a touch better off not gigging... I no longer have to fill the car with diesel, drive 2 hours to play for 45 minutes to 20 people (it used to be 10 max!) then repack the motor and drive home all to put £50 (max!) In the band's coffers (unless it was a benefit, which they often were). Since The (1st) End of the World we've had quite a lot of radio airplay without having moved from home, and we've started rehearsal without drummer (shielding) using EZ drummer and sequencers. As a result we're in time, there's no interminable fills every 4 bars or cymbals drowning everything out, and will only need 1 car for future gigs!

I made a reasonable one out of some stiff wire and a pair of my Mrs' old tights...

Just love that GoGo beat!

I've done one! I looked at the pic, and it struck me as indistinct, lacking in clarity... Which got me to thinking about how folks search for meaning in stuff, and how that meaning, whether it's religion, politics, art etc becomes their identity - how they hide themselves within it. So as it was all a bit Philosoftickle I felt it should in German, as all great philosophy is (😁), and hence a bit industrial. I apologise for my literal and occasionally meaningless German! And for those who don't speakadalanguage, "Versteckspiel" means Hide and Seek... All recorded/mixed in Ableton using Loopcloud Play synths, Mr EZ on drums, glitch percussion programmed from Abstract kit and bass is an ACG.

Talking of jazzy funky stuff, can't go wrong with Steve Coleman and his 5 Elements (Reggie Washington on bass) Or James Carter and his sax chords with the Philly Funk section of Jamaaladeen Tacuma and Calvin Weston, getting all Harmolodic with Marc Ribot on crazy guitars

Or perhaps a touch of Rock Candy Funk Party:

If you like the jazzier side of funky you won't go far wrong with just about anything by the Nils Landgren Funk Unit. Or just trawl through this thread:

I'm heading towards a sort of technofunk in German!

Some Scousers...

Bit of early 80s New York No Wave - you can't be funky if you haven't got a soul!