Corey Mwamba

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Entries for Dec 2011

Here's some lovely freeness to listen to from the gig Steve Lawson and I did: enjoy!

I'm doing some background tinkering—yes, I'm bored of the site style again. So another change is due. You know things are bad when the most relaxing thing you can do is CSS.

I'm still driving towards an album for the trio, and trying to enthuse people to meet on Thursday about the arts in Derby. So if it all goes a bit quiet, I apologise! But rest assured, I'm busy...

Most of my activity is around removing my dislike for Flash. What this means is I can now have Bandcamp embedding, which also means that you will be able to download all of my albums, once I've uploaded them. I'm going to keep the price low: you'll help fund the trio album too. Thanks to all who buy!

The other change that might occur is the retirement of my SVG audio widget for the podcast. I'm thinking of replacing it with Soundcloud's excellent HTML5 custom player, which looks much nicer than the HTML5 standard controls and will allow me to share music I find too!

If you want to have a look at the "new look" in progress, head over here.

Change has occurred much faster than I thought!!

Some bits of the site are disabled while I fiddle about with things... but I hope you like the new look!

The new site design will be slightly broken/weird for those with older browsers... but most people will be all right, save a few sizing issues! Get hold of me on the old style contact page for feedback—it still works!

More lovely music... my brother-in-music Dave Kane's Rabbit Project [which I was sad to miss on the day] sounds immense! Great textures... and set with Mat Maneri, Paul Rogers, Fyfe Dangerfield and Joost Hendricx sounds even better on a second hearing.

This is more a joke/response than anything else.

1) I was on a music discussion panel with a music journalist who stated that people didn't care about people who played instruments on records any more; that people couldn't really tell the difference between computer music and live music; that live music was irrelevant; And that owning 5000 tracks of classic soul on his iPod wasn't the ultimate irony.

2) Over the course of my "career" in music I have been told to make music that sounds more like the music other people make. I actually think I do this fairly often; but still...

And so, here is a bebop-influenced smooth jazz-fusion solo on MIDI vibes over synth strings and bass, with a fairly regular [yet quantised] beat. Not that anyone listening would know, of course. Will it make the charts?

The Lick is in there for reference just so you can clock the genre!

Just heard that the Roller Trio has been award the Peter Whittingham prize—good stuff!

Damned cold virus. On the lemon and paracetamol. Hardly ever take anything ever, but feeling quite rough. Hoping I'll be all right for Monday, which I hope people turn out for... all good prep for the recording next year though.

I've made a Soundcloud account and playlist for cognizance; trying to showcase some of the amazing talent across Britain and Ireland. Hope you like!

Cold is shifting... Marmite, lots of Lemsip, oxtail soup. Just had news of some great work for next year, including vocalist Randolph Matthews in April, and Nat Birchall's and Gavin Barras' bands at the beginning of the year. At the moment It's ALL GOOD!

Well, it was a quiet one: a wet Monday in December isn't appealing to everyone I guess. But still, it was not that quiet, and I was blessed with the musical geniuses that are Dave Kane and Joshua Blackmore! A beautiful end to the year...

I'm growing up into a promoter next year! If you live in the East Midlands, please come along and support local and national artists heading to Derby!

the trio is in the running for Marsden Jazz Festival—please vote for us and any other bands you fancy the sound of...

Fascinating document, showing the importance and use of music in our lives.

Here's most of the the gig the trio did for Everybody's Reading in October! Have a wonderful holiday if you're having one.

What a lovely Christmas! A walk; a great meal; lots of gentle drinking and playing games; a tinge of sadness as I got Graham Collier's book the jazz composer—but it is a fab read; and chance to sit still for a few hours. Feeling very peaceful. Hope yours was good!

This is just a reminiscence. No point; just a cheering thought.

I realised [as I was saying hello to new followers on Twitter] that I've been giving away free music, mostly in Ogg Vorbis format, for nearly the full ten years since I've had a site.

Things were quite different then though: to get sound from a web page, you had to embed Windows Media Player, Flash or Real Audio; not many musicians cared about the patenting issues of MP3 at the time.

I did care, and so made the switch pretty early on. My motivations to use an open format and actually think about the tools I use are probably what drove my switch from Windows to a Linux system [after all, how can you preach for freedom and openness if you're using a closed platform to do it?]. Of course, because adoption of Ogg Vorbis among listeners and software or hardware designers was slow, the proliferation of the format was not as widespread as I had thought it would be.

Giving away new music was not fashionable at the time: and the artist actually choosing the format they wanted to use was even rarer. Times have certainly moved on! The number of people who talk about FLAC [I would say primarily because Bandcamp offers it] as if it's a de facto lossless audio format is heartening: and musicians are now more able to present their sound as they wish. I feel [but of course do not know] that open formats have driven this change forward: opening the tools has opened up the people.

Like I said, no real point to this: just thinking out aloud.

Just read about Sam Rivers' passing. Surely one of the masters, as this video shows on his composition, Beatrice.

Dave Kane sent me this to watch as a present, and let me assure you it's a gift that keeps giving. Totally inspiring!