Hi

I have really been enjoying my break over here in Amsterdam, it's such a great city to unwind in. It's the first time in six months that I have spent more than two days not doing something towards this project. I must admit it has taken me two days to actually not be thinking about doing something, well after such a long time it takes a while to switch off. So with that it's time to switch off, but before I go....

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!

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Hi

The last two days I have been busy in the studio writing and recording away, putting a complete track together can be very time consuming especially when you are a perfectionist like me. The actual songwriting can be quite quick but then turning it into fully orchestrated track with all the parts working together takes time.

I have also been starting to prepare some promotional material ready for the Midem conference at the end of January, I need to get a pack together that states exactly what this project is all about and what I am trying to get out of Midem. Good question, what am I trying to get out of Midem, I had better get some ideas together.

I am off to Amsterdam in the morning for a well earned break over the new year so if I don't manage to get online... ( well you never know ) then Happy New Year!

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As I have said before I don't like to comment on anything outside my own site, especially politics or religion, but today on Christmas Eve all I want to say tonight is to the children of the world "sleep well".

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Well things have been going really well this week with the writing and the general buzz leading upto the January recording sessions and of course the Midem conference in Cannes. But now it is time to wind down a little as the holiday season is upon us and concentrate on family and friends. For those of you who have been reading the blog entries since the start will know what a few months it has been and I am looking forward to a few days off to re-charge the batteries ready for the New year. My only real task to do is to write the January eNews which I will start tomorrow ready to post on the 1st January. I will be doing a bit of traveling over the next week or so visiting friends and family so the blog entries may be a little bare.

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Hi

Hi today something remarkable happened, I was just strumming my guitar and then within an hour I had written a brand new song complete with all the lyrics. OK there will be some fine tuning but essentially it's all there. I'm still in shock really as this is by far the quickest song I have ever written by a very long way. The name of this track is "Questions and Answers", it is essentially about the ancient Egyptians, why?, you may ask, well earlier in the year I went to Cairo and had a personal tour around the Great Pyramids, as with most people who visit I was full questions and few answers. Why was I thinking about this today?, well there has been a recent TV series on here in the UK about Egypt and how the explorers brought the magic of Egypt to the world. So with that in my mind the lyrics just flowed, here's a few lines.

Seek from the people around you
See from the sun high above
Your soul is the last to deliver
Stars are your traveling light

I will post the demo on the site soon.

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One of the the things that I have mentioned before that is always going to be difficult is how to get maximum exposure to this project. In January as I've said I will be taking some time to really get the album to near the finish line. Also in January is the annual Midem conference in Cannes where the worlds music industry gathers to show off it's wears, make contacts and well party!, why would I ever be interested in such a thing.

My thinking is to go over there and make as many contacts as possible especially with album distribution in mind. I have my promotional postcards and will get together a press kit and 3 track CD sampler to help.

So can I do the Cannes Can? - you bet!

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Hi

I'm still on the creative streak, the ideas just keep coming at the moment and long may it continue, the only thing is that it has created a slight problem of what songs should make it on the album. You may think that is a nice problem to have but it does mean more work to record the songs and see which ones stand out. Also the style of the songs is changing which means I think the selling genre may have to change as well, again which one. A few questions to work on but I am pleased with what is evolving.

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Back to the writing and recording, this time some of the backing elements for You're Gone, I think this is going to be a great track, it has a nice feel to it, yes I know I need to post it on the site, I promise I will do that over the next few days - have I said that before? :-).

Time is racing by and the holiday period is rapidly approaching, also a new year, 2006, only seems like yesterday we were ushering in the millennium, what ever happened to that Y2K bug anyway, that was supposed to blow up all computers and or render them useless?, maybe that is available in the next upgrade.

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With January looming and a lot of recording to be done I am anxious to make sure that I can hit the ground running with the studio in good working order. I ordered a piece of equipment to help in this ( no company names or descriptions for legal reasons :-) ) and after talking to the company in detail of what I was trying to achieve it was shipped, anyway after 10 days waiting for this they have sent me completely the wrong one!!!, this is so frustrating especially as I had spent such a long time explaining what I required. I hope I can get this resolved as I don't want to be waiting too long in January for it - so another phone call tomorrow - keep calm Richard!

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I'm really enjoying writing at the moment as it feels right, what I mean by that is that I'm not questioning if something works or not, that is something when you're writing that can giving you nagging doubts about a song and leads to a bit of negativity. The two tracks that are on the table are "Real life" and "You're Gone", both are great to play live and I'm looking forward to see what audiences responses are.

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Well the songwriting is just flowing at the moment, not sure why, maybe it's because most of the website creation is now behind me, 2 new songs in a week - wow that's good going, these are Real Life, you can hear this in the members section and You're Gone, I'll post this demo on the site in a few days. Really enjoying getting back into writing and playing and looking forward to putting it all together in January.

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Today I have been experimenting with some ideas for playing live, I want to end up with two very different styles, a purely acoustics set and a full blown all singing all dancing set, well not the dancing of course. One of the difficulties is trying to re-create the album tracks live but with as much live performance as possible, I don't want just to play to backing tracks as I want to have some sort of interactive feel to it. So that's what I have been doing today seeing how I can interact with the computer to create a unique live performance, it will take some time to perfect but I think it will be worth it.

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Well another month gone and another eNews issue hits the wires, the figures of hits on the site are still very encouraging and it will be very interesting to see if I actually sell anything when I finish the album. Now that the members section is out of the way the next task is to try and get some gigs to help promote the site, this is going to be a bit tricky as showcase events are what I am after. So I am going to be spending the next few weeks splitting my time between Live practice and writing and recording. I want to try and do something before Xmas but that may be a bit difficult but I'll have a go.

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