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88 handmade covers specially for the fundit funders finally finished tonight. In the morning they’ll be double checked for flaws or disasters, then editioned and signed and I’ll start putting together the packages to be posted out to funders very soon. There’s a bunch of you who’ve not contacted me with an email address. You’ll be getting an email reminder, and you’ll be getting yours later than everyone else because I can’t post it to you if I don’t have an address to post it to. It would make me sad if the cd didn’t get to its home.

I have a paper cut – of course it was just with the last handful that I managed to get a bad paper cut on my index finger. Damnit. I’m having a glass of wine to celebrate.

I’ve a bunch of shows coming up this summer, but the first two confirmed so far are for two different fringe festivals here in Galway. (apparently we’ve gone from no Fringes to two! Excellent stuff.)

So, July 6th I’ll be playing on the bill with three other male solo performers for an event called “Solitary Men” for the Colours Fringe. I’m very tempted to learn Loudon Wainwright’s “One Man Guy” for that gig, as that would make me chuckle. That will be in the gorgeous upstairs venue in Kelly’s on Bridge St and so far I know that Willow Sea is headlining and Matteo is also performing. I’ve not found out who the last performer is, but I’ll be sure to edit this post when I do. Seems like it’ll be a diverse evening of music, and I’m really looking forward to it. There is a door charge of €3, and it is in a licensed venue, so it’s over 18′s unfortunately.

I’m doing a full solo show for the Galway Fringe on the 22nd at 3pm in Rouge restaurant. They have a grand piano there. I’m pretty darn excited about that fact. It’s also a nice afternoon show that’s open to all ages, and it’s free! They do have pretty delicious wine there too, just saying. It’s the day of the Macnas parade for the Galway Arts Festival, so you should really be in Galway that weekend to experience the height of the summer festival season here.

I’m looking at having some singers with me as well as some string players, and I’m open to people who want to come and play with me on a song or two at that performance. Just get in touch. I’m going to be asking some of my fellow string orchestra members as well as some of the singers I had for the launch. I quite like a crowdsourced bunch of talented folk making the musical experience even richer.

Off Beaten Path producions is the dance company set up by Genevieve Ryan and Katarzyna Voetter, and they’ll be doing three dance shows as part of the Fringe festival too. One of the two pieces they’ll be presenting will be the dance they’ve choreographed to my song Codail Sámh. I’m so excited to see this being performed live, as what I’ve seen of it in workshop form has been so beautiful. We’re looking at incorporating some live music into their show too, but I’ll fill you in on exactly what’s happening closer to the time.

There’s a few other live gigs being organised at the moment too, and as soon as details are confirmed I’ll update on all those plans. As ever, I’m completely open to doing a house concert anywhere there’s a piano or where one can be set up. So, if you’ve ever fancied having an evening of live music in your home for yourself and whoever else you like, then get in touch by email or on twitter, and ask me about it.

The week has been spent folding album covers whenever I’m not at work or away from the house. My desk is slowly becoming a graveyard of empty tubes of glue sticks. It’s quite sad really – perhaps I’ll make them into a little mini graveyard and use it for something or other. Which reminds me, I need to buy some more glue. The full funders’ edition is nearly done. When it is, I’ll be emailing those people who’ve still not sent in a postal address to get the CD sent to. If you’re not sure if you’ve sent me your address, you can always send it a second time just to be sure. But all things going to plan, the first lot will be getting posted quite soon.

I’ve been told the dancers are ready with their piece, which is quite exciting, and we’ve been talking about doing live performances of it somewhere too, but there’ll be more updates on that one when get to scheduling the video shoot. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this turns out, as it’s something completely new for me.

Coming up next for me though is an in-studio session with Flirt FM, and a concert with the string orchestra I play with too. The orchestra concert is free, so if you’re around Galway on Friday evening, drop into St. Mary’s school for a 7pm concert. It’s a very social event and the orchestra members are all bringing food, and doors open at 6pm for people looking for some pre-concert food, coffee, and chat. There’s some fierce baking competition amongst the orchestra members, so I’m confident that the food on offer will be as wonderful as the music. Although it’s something I do purely for leisure, I somehow have ended up with some little solo bits, though I’m a terrible violin player.

I’ll have more details about the in-studio session for Flirt FM after this Tuesday, but it should be available as a podcast or download after it airs, so I’ll update with a link to that as soon as it goes live. It’ll be just myself and piano in the studio, so it’ll be quite stripped down and intimate.

The very lovely Grace Mitchell was in Lorg Fine Art Printmakers last Friday finishing off the screenprints for the handmade limited edition covers I’m sending out to the wonderful folk who funded my album. I tagged along, pretended to be helpful, but really just made coffee and shot some video footage and took some photos of the work in progress.

So, if you’ve ever been curious as to what a fine art print studio was like, here’s a little bit of a look inside the studio at Lorg. We were just screenprinting that day, but there was another artist in the studio doing some etching at the same time, which was interesting for me to watch as well, but I didn’t shoot any footage of that.

I’d done a little bit of screenprinting when I was studying art in secondary school myself, but this is on a whole other level by comparison, and was quite interesting to watch. I now have another batch of about 60 covers to assemble – which will take me a little while. But once they’re all made, editioned (numbered), and signed, they’ll be getting sent out. Nearly there at this stage. This is the home stretch of the CD making side of things.

The music I used in the video is bits of the piano instrumental “Bewerunge” that is up on my soundcloud too:

I put together a few tracks that are some of my own favourites, and give a good cross section of the different kinds of music I’ve explored so far. Some songs from my debut album Wires, (check out the web album liner notes version of that album too) and some of the instrumental piano work too.

I’m heading back into the print studio tomorrow with Grace, to finish screen printing the last batch of the funder’s edition of the album covers. Once that batch is printed and assembled, then I’ll be starting to post them out to the folk who helped fund the album recording last summer.

There’s a few more video recording shoots coming up in the next few weeks, all going to plan, and I can’t wait to see how those turn out. For these next two, I’m working closely with Galway based dancer Genevieve Ryan, who has been helping turn my ideas into actual video shoots. She’ll be dancing in one of the videos herself too. The next two songs that I hope to be shooting videos for are Phoenix and Codail Sámh, but I’ve been working on treatments for a few other songs off the record too, and hopefully will get around to shooting those videos this summer too. For one of those in particular, we might be looking to crowdsource some extras for the shoot, so keep an eye on this blog, and my twitter, facebook, or google+ page if you might be interested.

The videos are all being done with pretty much no budget, and just the time, energy and talent of people who want to come together to create something. It’s absolutely humbling that such talented people are giving their talent and time to these little projects of mine. I’m really looking forward to seeing how the next two videos turn out, but I’ll be doing updates about those shoots when they happen later this month.

Speaking of camera work, some bright-eyed fans of Ros Na Rún spotted that I had a tiny little part in an episode of the show last week. I’d almost forgotten about it myself, and missed it airing, but some people saw it, recognised me, and got in touch to tell me so. Sweet – thanks a million.

It’s been a while since I updated the blog, but I’ve been working away at things – firstly moving webhost and all that entails, which always will make me nervy. I get the fear of messing it all up and losing everything and ending up with two hosting plans that are both charging me… But never fear, I managed it much easier than expected.

Little things that are noticable changes – at the moment I’m using some random wordpress template still but that’s grand. I’m hoping to change around the look of the site a lot now that I’ve got more time on my hands again. Secondly, this hosting service lets me use subdomain pointers, which my previous one didn’t, so now http://music.misterebby.com/ will bring you straight to my bandcamp store. It’s the little things like this that make me happy. Next, I’m gonna set about making the site look a lot prettier and add all the content about the album that I’ve had written up for ages and not had anywhere to put yet.

The youth theatre musical I’d been working as the Musical Director of went on stage last week, which saw me hiding away in the theatre for a week with long day sitting in the orchestra pit playing an awful lot of piano. It was wonderful. Besides, the teenagers were doing Guys & Dolls, which is just so much fun to play.

The day after the show wrapped, I was off to the little hamlet of Ballymoe, Co. Galway to meet up with folk from Golden Plec for their Tea And Toast charity drive across the country. I played a version of my song “Wet Feet” on ukulele for them before they whizzed off to catch the next band on their trail. It was a lot of fun though, and completely worth it for the look on the face of the young girl working in the shop in Ballymoe when she found out that something was making a stop in Ballymoe. Pure shocked that I’d be across the road playing a song that would go up online. There’ll be an accompanying radio show on the 2xm show Fourcast, and I’ll post the podcast link for that when it’s available.

I’m playing a small set here in Galway on Thursday in Kelly’s bar as part of the Noisy Plug sessions, so if you’re knocking around Galway this week, do drop in – it’s free, and there’s a great line up of four different acts on the night: here’s the facebook event for it.

Things have been slow getting the limited edition, hand printed versions of the album out to funders, which is something that has been a bit frustrating all round, but unavoidable unfortunately. However, I did get sent this photo earlier today, along with a message that the prints are almost ready. Which is pretty wonderful:

To top it all off, someone did a cover of one of my songs, and is planning on doing another. It really made me smile yesterday when I was linked to it, as I’ve never heard anyone covering one of my songs before. He had quite a different vocal style, and does his own take on the song, but it makes me happy to know that one of my songs made enough of an impact on someone that they wanted to do a cover of it. So, here’s Jack Mason-Goodall’s version of my song “I Wish You Were Here”, which he has posted on his Soundcloud:

And finally, the two dancers who have been working on a piece to one of my songs got in touch to say they’re nearly ready to show it to me before the film it. I can’t express how excited I am by this. To have someone to use some of my music as the canvas for their own creative work and create a piece in response to the music I’ve recorded is thrilling. Hopefully next we’ll be making a video of the dance piece accompanied by my music as the next step in this collaboration.

I’ve been intending to make some videos for the songs on the record now for a while, and this is the first one to be finished, probably because it was the simplest of all the video ideas.

I’m collaborating with some wonderful local creative talent on some other videos, which will be shot in the coming weeks too, and I’m looking to work with more people too – so if you’re interested in making videos and want to work with me on a project, then get in touch.

There’s a nice sort of reciprocal approach happening where everyone is getting something out of the projects – be it a video to represent their music, as in my case, or a vehicle to showcase their art, or dance, or whatever it is they are bringing to the project.

For a solo musician, it’s a joy and an inspiration to work with other people at times.

So, subscribe to my vimeo or youtube accounts, as there’ll be some more videos uploaded in the coming months as they get finished. Some of the ideas for those videos I’m really very excited about, and can’t wait to get working on.

Improv is how I interact with a piano mostly. As much as I’ll go and play music by some wonderful composers, or my own music, very often I’ll just sit at the piano with a coffee and play away whatever comes into my head. I have been known to be playing with one hand while reading twitter with my phone in my other hand, but that’s a bad habit I’m trying to do less of.

I go through phases with what I play when I’m just improvising away at the piano. Lately a lot of my piano improvisations have ended up exploring similar rhythm patterns, and a lot of close playing with overlapping hands. For a while I was really exploring a lot of simple chord progressions and melodies, out of which grew some of the piano instrumental pieces that I still play and have done demo recordings of. There’s one piece that I’ve not recorded at all yet which is sort of a link from that stuff to the kind of exploration I’m doing at the piano these days.

I’ve found myself playing compound chords, odd progressions, lots of repeated chords with accents providing the rhythms, and melodies forming and dispersing out of those chords. There was a quote that stuck in my head from a piano masterclass from Daniel Barenboim I was watching on youtube, where he said something about how you are either playing with all ten fingers as individual fingers, or else with both hands as one unit. It stuck in my head, because it’s so true:

“You don’t play with two units, with two hands: you either play with one unit made of two hands, or you play with ten units.”

Daniel Barenboim – Masterclass on Beethoven – Chicago, USA. July 2005

The kinds of music I explore through improvisation is very much a signifier of what kind of music I write around that time, as very often it’s through improv that I’ll find a melody, or progression, or whatever, that ends up as a song. Certainly I can pinpoint which songs of mine were written around the same time, merely by looking at what kind of piano part it has.

I’m always tempted to record myself every time I improvise, but that’d be a heck of a lot of random hours of playing music, with a lot of repetition as I explore an idea. Instead, if there’s something I really like that I’m playing, I’ll play around with it and really watch what I’m playing. Also, I don’t really like people listening to me improvising, as it’s always riddled with “mistakes”, or messy playing, or half formed ideas, and as interesting as those sketches might be, they’re really just sketches which might become actual works later on. Also, the improv can be a lot closer to the bone, and it’s like a musical brain drain I guess. It’s also my favourite way to practice and exercise my hands, but not perhaps the best way, as it gets too limited in focus sometimes.

One of the simple little piano pieces that grew from an improv is the extra bonus track on the Bandcamp version of the album, but you can download it for free if you sign up to my mailing list with your email address.

I always tell people that piano is easy – the notes are there, you just play them, but playing piano well is the difficult part. But really, if you’re interested in piano you should watch that entire masterclass with the three different pianist being coached by Barenboim. It also features this wonderful piece of wisdom about the piano:

The piano, like this, a very primitive, neutral instrument. Any weight you put on the keys produces a sound, look. It’s a C# – not particularly interesting, but I do with the elbow. You can do that with an ashtray – anything, you can do that!

You try to do that with a violin, you get nothing! You have to first find a note, then you have to know how to put the finger, then you have to know how to connect the two hands.. then you have to decide… so before you can actually make the equivalent of that [pointing to the piano note].

Therefore, the piano is, from that point of view, a very neutral element, and it is precisely this neutrality which gives it the possibility of so much expression. Because you can put on the neutral wall any colour you want – you cannot put whatever colour you want on a wall that already has a colour – blue, red or whatever it is.

And the neutrality of the piano is what gives it the possibility to be so expressive. But in order to do that, you have to accept the fact that in itself, left to its own devices, it is a very neutral, inexpressive instrument, but that it is open to 20 million different ways of seduction of each finger.

Daniel Barenboim – Masterclass on Beethoven – Chicago, USA. July 2005

I was already a fan of Pekka Kuusisto’s violin playing after coming across his take on Vivaldi’s Four Seasons last year via an interview on Lyric FM, but this reworking of a Finnish folksong has made me a fan of his non-classical projects too.

The piece really starts about 2 mins into the video, and is a beautiful listen on a Spring morning.

I’ll Know (Fiona Apple cover) [Soundcloud]

Later today I’m heading in to watch Grace set up the screen to go and print the handmade covers for the CDs finally. We were waiting for a new screen bed to be installed in the studio, which was yet another unexpected delay that you just can’t plan for I guess. Hopefully Sunday will see us folding endless covers and sticking them into envelopes to finally start posting the limited edition ones off to the wonderful funders. There are still quite a few of those funders who’ve not emailed me in their addresses, but I’ll be going through those one by one and emailing them individually to remind them after I’ve sent out the cds to everyone who has already sent in their addresses.

In the interim I’ve been busying myself with meeting people who are interested in helping put together some videos for my songs. This Sunday just past I met up with two wonderful contemporary dancers who want to work on a piece using one of my songs, so I’m really excited to see how that develops. Hopefully we’ll be filming the dance piece and making it available for people to watch online. But even to have other creative artists collaborating with me and wanting to use my music for their own art is reward enough for me to be honest.

There’s another video piece being worked out at the moment too – I’ve had some ideas for videos for some of the songs, and I’ve been looking for people who are interested in getting involved to help make them happen, and it seems that one of those ideas might come to fruition. Meeting someone tomorrow who might be the very person to perform on the video, I just need to make some more contacts with filmmakers here in the west who are interested in getting involved in low/no-budget video projects using my music. But at the moment, there’s four different video ideas being actively worked on, and at various different stages so far.

Aside from all that, I’ve been continuing to teach myself how to play things on the ukulele – which I picked up a few years ago as an instrument that I don’t have to play for work, or play well, but that I can just noodle with idly at home while waiting for something to load on the computer, for example. Ukulele and knitting were my two de-stressers when I had major computer problems last year. I really enjoy the lightness of the texture from the ukulele – in many ways it’s the complete opposite to piano for me. It’s something I don’t play well, and has this light fragile sound sometimes, but that’s possibly just how I play it.

But, last night I recorded a quick one-take cover of a Fiona Apple song on ukulele just for fun. I’ve had the song running around my head for weeks now, so I figured the best way to deal with it was to learn it somehow and try sing it. Her music has really singable melodies, and they’re such a pleasure to sing too between some of the wordplay and the range that she sings in. Her albums are some of my favourites to stick on a sing along to at the top of my voice while baking, for example.

But here’s that cover if you’re interested in hearing it. I posted it last night on twitter, tumblr and facebook, so you’ve possibly already heard it, but I don’t trust myself to write a blogpost when I’m tired anymore, and this thing was recorded at about half ten last night: