HELLO...hello...hello... is there anybody out there...

[Hook]

I'm here too just with marginalized motivation. I do have a tune im working on right now and hope to finish sometime. I have been extremely busy lately trying to book my summer. I have regular schools I visit during the school year as well as concerts but in the summer I just do concerts and I have to book about 90. Pretty much there so I hope to be able to free up some time for writing and recording and listening soon.
Rock on my friends!

[Mike_S]

I am still here too and will be for a long time hopefully. It's difficult to find time to produce stuff these days but my desire to do stuff is strong. I am hoping some day to have more time but I am self employed and in a bit of a tangle and will be for quite a while I think. But when ever I have spare time the first thing i think of is music. It's just that I normally need at least 2 days to get a tune done. One just to unwind and strum a bit and hopefully stumble on a tune and then the second to get it recorded.

But apart from that I like to log in and see what everyone is up to. I tihnk the site is reasonably healthy, but every now and again it takes a bit of a wobble when not much happens but normally it gets back to normal.

In the words of a certain Mr. Hook..... "Rock On" everyone!!!

Mike

[IanR]

Hi Folks,

I haven't been around much lately but do look in from time to time.

I am still very keen to record but I have less time these days. I'm getting into Winter here so that means more time indoors, so productivity will hopefully increase. However, I am bringing a lot more work home these days and down-time is really essential and I tend to spend as much as possible with family.

I have been working on a song for about 4 months and that is about 4 times longer than I like to spend on any song, so you can see from that how little time I have.

I am still attracted to gear and software and have not stopped accumulating stuff but it doesn't get used as much as it should.

Anyway, best wishes to everyone. I hope we can find a spark to get everyone going again.

Ian

[AndyR]

Not sure whether I'm here, but I am watching 

I left a lot of websites I was involved with a while back - I got very fed up with the internet and various aspects of how everyone behaves on it and how they treat each other...

There's a few places I still watch, and even fewer places I stay logged in on. This is one of those few places I still watch.

Basically, I've kind of stopped interacting online - and I really don't miss it that much. It's almost a "it was good when I needed it but, you know, life's too short to do everything". I don't have a smartphone, so disengaging like this wasn't as big of a change/challenge as I imagine it might be for some folks.


Musically I'm both "good" and "bad", but I really don't see me posting anything for a while at least.

Musically Bad because, well, a few things.

My "muse" died in January 2016. I had't realised how important she was to my creative process/desire until she was gone. I wrote a couple of songs about her after she died but that was it, nothing else. I tried to record one of them. But she's not around to hear it, so it didn't (still doesn't) seem to matter enough to put all the effort in that a recording entails for me.

Then, I'd given up smoking too. Smoking and working on recordings went hand in hand for me. I was pretty much chain-smoking while recording and producing.

I haven't managed to beat either of those two yet. Even now, three years on, if I turn on the recording machine in the broom cupboard and start twiddling, it feels so utterly sad and lonely, barren and pointless. So I go by my edict of "if your hobby don't make you happy, stop doing it" and I turn it off again and find something else to do. Often the something else involves playing guitar - so I'm still digging the music, just not creating anything for anyone else... and, well, I really don't mind that.

There were also some health issues to contend with. People joke that when you give up smoking, that's when it all goes wrong... and it's true!! I've visited nearly every flipping department in our local hospital now. I can even approach a phlebotomist with a smile on my face and without nearly fainting - not something I could've said three years ago. I've had major surgery, including a fleeting "might not see you again" moment with my wife at the door to the operating suite that the friends/relatives aren't allowed through. That's all kinda sorted now, I'm carrying around a lot less colon than I used to! But then a bunch of my joints started causing probems... skin too... apparently I'm getting old!! There's a bunch of arthritis - some of which is painful osteo degeneration (feet mainly), some of which may or may not be psoriatic arthritis which makes guitar playing somewhat harder/painful (apparently Alex Lifeson is suffering from that).


But I'm also GOOD musically because I'm still playing and buying guitars. My playing is recovering from the aches and pains and I'm learning some new stuff. We're going to gigs, finding new (old!) music and, finally, listening to music again. We've hundreds of CDs, but I'd drifted into kind of collecting but not "listening" anymore, not like I used to when I was younger: soaking up all the vibes and techniques, just loving the records for what they are etc...etc...

A couple of months back the cd changer on our "stereo" just gave up. That caused a bit of a panic! But it's what got me back into listening to music...

After looking round, I decided we should go back to hifi separates. I've never really owned "serious" hifi, ever. It's always been the "music centre" or "integrated" kinda thing. So I did a bit of research and I got us a decentish cd player and amplifier, decentish speakers, deployed it all as best we can in our living room and wow... I mean WOW! HOLY WOW!

We've stopped watching the TV all the time... some days it doesn't go on at all. I am LOVING my "record collection" again (and even some of hers too!). She wasn't convinced a "decentish" stereo instead of the "integrated hifi" would make much of a difference, but even she's hooked now. She's the one who decided she prefers the look of the speakers with the covers off!!

Btw, I am not going back to vinyl... someone was asking me that the other day... nah, too much hassle... I do believe I can now hold my head up (just!) in audiophile circles if asked to name my kit... but I still refuse to become an actual audiophile

I'm feeling like I did in my teens/twenties, though. Really digging the sounds and the grooves, wondering how to make them. It feeds into the playing. You never know, I might start wanting to create something I want other people to hear...


Anyways, it's these two things with me: not wanting to get upset/p1ssed-off by the internet anymore, and a complete lack of desire to create anything for sharing... the combination of the two things means I haven't really got a lot to add to the party here at the moment. There's nothing I need to take, there's nothing I want to give. I suspect I'm not really alone in this.

I do miss how this and other forums were a few years ago, and how I interacted with them... but they've changed, and I've changed too. I'm VERY grateful for what I got out of them at the time, and I hope that I put enough back in for the benefits I received.

I'll keep watching for the moment.

Much love and peace to everyone.


PS. WOWOWWW! UFO's Love to Love sounds AMAZING on this stereo

[Redler]

Thanks for sharing your story, Andy. All the best to you!

I have a few song sketches on the memory card. I hope I find time to record them and then I'm seeking vocals on them, beware

[Hook]

Sorry for your loss Andy.
We'll be here when you're ready.
Rock on!

[Hilary]

So sorry to hear your news Andy - you are missed here but as Hook said, we'll still be here when you are ready x

[Kenneth]

Thanks for your post Andy.
Thanks everyone, and hopefully the little community here will continue on when people are ready.

[The Gobi Desert Canoe Club]

Hi all, yep, still here. Although retired I have very little spare time to play or listen. To me it’s important to keep playing for a couple of reasons. Firstly I have to say that I am 70 and I still have a lot of ideas that I need to put down which to me means playing time, secondly I suffer from prolapsed vertebrae which is very painful and anyone that suffers will agree that sitting still and listening to music or watching t.v. Is damn near impossible. Thirdly and probably the most important is the arthritis which really attack’s me now and then, it definitely stops me playing and reporting and even commenting, getting old is a shit.
I came across this site many years ago (it seems to me) and I learnt a lot, listen to my first efforts and listen now. Apart from one notable post which incensed me so much I felt I had to leave the members on here are a splendid collection of musicians which I would have been delighted to know as friends and musical colleagues if they had lived in my locale.
So I must apologise if I don’t comment as much as I did, I do listen but life is a fine balancing act that I haven’t quite got in harmony yet.
May your God bless you all.     Willie

[bruno]

I have been very slow musically for a little while, I don't appear to be in the 'mood', which is odd - nothing to really put my finger on, so no excuses. I'm pretty sure that when I finally sit down, something will come :-) Reading people stories here makes me quite sad, life throws us curved balls all of the time, and Andy - you have my thoughts, I'm sorry for your loss.

We all seem to be suffering from getting older - and sometimes I find myself not understanding much, so older I get, the more knowledge I have, and the less that I appear to know. My general conclusion is that ageing does indeed suck - and oh for the exuberance of youth !!! That said, I'm not pessimistic, I think that these things ebb and flow, we simply need to ride the wave, so to speak. For some the glass is half empty, for others half full; for me, it is "where did I put that flipping glass" :-)

B