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Monday, November 30, 2009

Christmas Songs For Solo Bass

Hi everyone.

Yes, that time of year is sneaking up on us at an alarming rate and soon the sound of relatives saying “play us something on that big guitar” will be ringing in our ears. With this in mind (and the fact that I’m a bit of a big kid where Christmas is concerned!) I thought I’d let you know (or remind you if you were around last year) that a collection of solo arrangements is available from http://www.bassbook.co.uk and is now also available at http://www.learnthelowend.com ( If you haven’t already checked out Learn The Low End, I highly recommend it – it’s a fabulous site with a range of courses and lessons from some truly incredible players. I’m really honoured to be involved!)

NB If you order from Bassbook, I’m afraid I’m doing everything manually so there may be a slight delay in emailing the file to you (but it should be with you within 24 hours at the most). If you register with Learn The Low End it’s all there waiting for you

So what is it? Basically,you get the following in PDF format:

10 Christmas chordal arrangements for solo bass in notation and tablature

Auld Lang Syne, Away In a Manger, Ding Dong Merrily On High/Deck The Halls, In The Bleak Midwinter, Jingle Bells, Joy To The World, O Come All Ye Faithful, O Little Town of Bethlehem, Silent Night, The First Noel

11 Christmas melodies specially transposed to “easy” keys ( ideal for less experienced players) in notation and tablature

As above, but “Ding Dong Merrily On High” and “Deck The Halls” are presented as seperate pieces

2 mini lessons

An introduction to natural harmonics and a lesson on the two handed tapping technique used for the arrangement of “Jingle Bells”

I also have a favour to ask of you – if you like the arrangements and use any of the bass forums or social sites, please tell people about it

Word of mouth is often the best advert an independent musician can get so any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your time and take care,

Alun

9:20 PM

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Saturday, November 14, 2009

Panic Room – Aylesbury and Bedford

Hi. Hope you’re all well and surviving the weather! I realised the other day that I hadn’t put my random thoughts from the Panic Room gig in October on the blog so here we go with a double bill about that one and last night’s Bedford adventure.

So, back in October, we headed up to Aylesbury to play the Limelight Theatre, which is actually an arts centre in a school. It’s a great place, although the stage is actually some flooring so the edge of the stage is less than inch above the floor everyone else is stood on. This makes for a great intimate venue, but does make it hard for people not in the first couple of rows to get a decent view.

When we arrived, we were told that the soundman they expected to be there had dropped out but a new one was on the way so, after moving a piano to the side of the stage, we got on with setting up. Soundcheck went OK, but unfortunately the venue only had two monitors at the front of the stage which couldn’t be seperated so it took a bit of fiddling to get to a point where Paul had a chance of hearing his vocal and meant there was no drum monitor at all ( made no difference to me as I never have a monitor anyway – hee hee).

Soundcheck done, the traditional takeaway hunt found us a chip shop ( with possibly the worst sausages of all time) and an Indian takeaway ( which in hindsight would have been the better choice!), and it was back to the venue in time for an acoustic set from Jump who were great as usual.

And then it was time for us! The stage sound was pretty good, and the outfront sound by all accounts was great, and the gig was pretty relaxed and lots of fun. The setlist was the same as we played in Worcester in September:

Freedom To Breathe, Fifth Amendment, Yasuni, Reborn, Into The Fire, Go, Endgame, Sandstorms, Blood Red Sky, Elektra City, Black Noise, The Great Divide,, I Am A Cat, Dark Star, Apocalypstick

Encore: Satellite

I believe there is video footage of the gig, definitely of “Reborn”, so I should probably explain what’s going on in the breakdown of “Reborn” so it makes sense when it inevitably appears on Youtube

It all started not long after we began to play live. The first lyric in that section is “look” and myself and Paul would often point to random things of interest at this point to amuse ourselves. Over time, it has evolved into varoius words ending with “ook” including “hook”, “cook”, “ah fook” and “chinook” ( complete with pictures). On this particular occasion, we were using a classroom as a dressing room and, amongst other fun stuff, was a pocket sized Postman Pat book. So, what you’ll see at that point in the video clip, is the “reveal” of this “BOOK” to Paul. If there’s footage from later on the gig you can see it propped up on his amp. Childish yes but always keeps us amused!

After the gig, we experienced an amazingly humbling thing. We met a gentleman, Roger, who had been seriously ill and, throughout the worst parts of his illness, had listened constantly to our first album “Visionary Position” and has continued to listen to it ever since. It was so special to realise that something you’ve created can have such an effect on someone (it’s one of those things you hear about but never expect to happen to you!), and it was wonderful to spend some time with him. Roger, if you’re reading this is was great to meet you and hope the bass playing is going well!

The journey home was a bit of a nightmare as a combination of fog, closed roads and a lunatic satnav saw us travel from Aylesbury, round Cheltenham, and then back down to Bristol and back onto the M4. A late night was had by all! Gavin and myself had a gig the following night with The Root Doctors and were both a little bleary eyed!

And now we fast forward to last night and Esquires in Bedford. We had a reasonable journey up until we got to the outskirts of Bedford and which point an exciting adventure of traffic jams, ring roads and one way streets ensued (Anne lated referred to the road system as the “eighth circle of Hell” which summed it up pretty well).

Eventually we found the venue and carted the gear up the stairs to the venue, assisted by the promoter ( this rarely if ever happens at venues, so thank you thank you!). Anne and Gavin were travelling seperately as they were also playing at the same venue on the following night ( in fact they are probably playing as I type this!) so we got on with setting up the rest of the gear and soundchecking. Both were held up in the nightmarish traffic ( as were Ray and Steph, our merchandise people, who took 4 hours to get from Tamworth!) but we soon got everything together and managed a full soundcheck (the crew at Esquires are fantastic and nothing seems to be too much trouble – really great!) plus a quick run through “The Fall” which we had never played live.

Soundcheck done, tonight’s takeaway of choice was Chinese and the dish Paul introduced me to (and I’ve since become mildly addicted to) – Singapore special fried rice ( basically special fried rice but with chillis so much hotter – absolutely gorgeous!)

Support tonight was from local singer Amy Leeder who was fantastic – great singer and guitarist with some really nice songs. Only shame was that a lot of people decided to talk through most of her set but that’s their loss. The other thing that was slightly distracting was that there was a second band playing downstairs so there would be occasional rumbling from them.

We unfortunately didn’t have the intro music available, so instead used Massive Attack’s “Teardrop” ( on the journey up we had pondered various highly inappropriate Tenacious D songs, and the overture from Seewney Todd, but Teardrop seemed a better choice).

The set was largely the same but with with the addition of the live debut of “The Fall” and a second encore of “No Quarter”:

Freedom To Breathe, Fifth Amendment, Yasuni, Reborn, Into The Fire, Go, Endgame, Sandstorms, The Fall, Blood Red Sky, Elektra City, Black Noise, The Great Divide,, I Am A Cat, Dark Star, Apocalypstick

Encore: Satellite, No Quarter

It was amazingly hot on stage which made it difficult to keep some of the instruments, especially the acoustic guitars, in tune but overall it was a pretty good set. We also suffered a bit from “chatty syndrome” and the low end rumblings from the club downstairs but on the whole it seemed to go well. The venue recorded part of the gig so hopefully some of that may see the light of day at some point.

It was great to play “The Fall” for the first time, it’s a nice song to play and Anne wrote really beautiful lyrics for it. A quick note for the bass fans – on the album this ( and “I Am A Cat”) were played on my electric upright bass so it was a bit strange playing it on bass guitar and I’m still not sure whether to play it on fretted or fretless. I’d love to use the upright but most of the stages aren’t really big enough to have it sitting on its tripod in the corner all night for the sake of a couple of songs.

Esquires is a great venue and it looks like we’ll be back next year, all being well.

And that’s it for Panic Room live activity this year, although we’re currently booking 2010 dates so keep an eye out for announcements! The new album is with the manufacturers at the moment and should be going out to all the people who’ve pre-ordered in a couple of weeks.

Take care,
Alun

8:25 PM

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Monday, September 21, 2009

Panic Room September Tour Parts 1 & 2

Hi folks, hope everyone is well? I've just added a couple of posts to my main blog ( http://alunvaughan.wordpress.com ) about the recend Panic Room gigs so thought I'd copy them over here too. So sit back, relax and here we go......

Part One

Hello all, hope you’re all well. I’m sitting here slightly blearily after a fantastic run of gigs with Panic Room so thought it was time to write a quick blog about it!

We started off at The Venue in Stocksbridge near Sheffield, a great venue that we also played at last March. Due to there being a show in the afternoon, we had a late load in but everything got set up fairly quickly and soundcheck was pretty straightforward. Unfortunately the late start meant the doors weren’t opening until 9, so we headed off to the wonderful Chinese takeaway on the corner.

I should also say thank you to Val and Barry who presented us with a bottle of champagne on arrival to wish us luck with the tour – thank you!!! We really do have wonderfuly generous fans.

Support tonight came from Gaia, who also did the March gig, who were played a great powerful set and went down really well.

And then it was time for us to take to the stage. For those who were wondering, the intro music we’ve been using on the tour is the overture from Bjork’s “Dancer In The Dark” soundtrack – such a beautiful piece of music.

The setlist was…

Freedom To Breathe, Fifth Amendment, Yasuni, Reborn, Into The Fire, Go, The Great Divide, Endgame, Blood Red Sky, Elektra City, Black Noise, Firefly, I Am A Cat, Dark Star, Apocalypstick

1st Encore: Satellite
2nd Encore: Sandstorms

It was a good fun gig and also the live debut of four new songs ( Freedom, Cat, Dark Star and Satellite). The reaction to “Satellite” has been amazing on this tour, it really seems to be grabbing people ( and is of course the title track of the new CD which can be pre-ordered HERE. Ok, blatant plug over!).

It was nice to see Bryan, Livvy and Iain from Mostly Autumn too!

The most surreal part of the night came in trying to leave Stocksbridge and find our hotel. The satnav had been a little temperamental on the way up ( and renamed “Satan Nav” thanks to the bizarre gothic voice it was set to use!) but it decided that it would be fun to get us to drive in circles for a bit. To add to the situation, we were listening to Jon’s “Moog Cookbook” CD, a collection of rock classics recreated in a very cheesy daft way on vintage synths so our circular route was accompanied by Ted Nugent’s “Cat Scratch Fever” in the style of a Japanese cartoon. I wish we could have filmed this adventure – it would have looked and sounded like something from a Peter Sellers film!

Next stop was The Peel in Kingston upon Thames. We arrived early and slumped around the beer garden for a bit trying to wake up before loading in. Soundcheck was straight forward enough, although the fairly small Peel stage meant a bit of shifting about to allow support band Only Until to set up. I loitered at the back of the room for most of their set – really interesting instrumental rock.

Our set was a tiny bit shorter tonight…

Freedom To Breathe, Fifth Amendment, Yasuni, Reborn, The Great Divide, Go, Endgame, Blood Red Sky, Elektra City, Black Noise, Firefly, I Am A Cat, Dark Star, Apocalypstick

Encore: Satellite, Sandstorms

The set up meant we skipped the intro music ( as there’s nowhere to “walk on” from really and we might have looked a bit odd standing there for 3 1/2 minutes!). The set was really energetic and went really well despite some technical problems with Anne’s mike towards the end.

For the encore we had a little surprise for the audience in the shape of Roger Waters guitarist ( and Anne’s partner) Dave Kilminster who joined us for Sandstorms, leading to an amazing (and loud!) guitar duel with Paul. I noticed a few phones and camers about, so if anyone filmed it I’d love to see it.

The next gig was Swansea so we headed back overnight, a journey which would have been easier without the motorway being down to one lane and doing 10mph for a few miles ( we got back about 5.30am)

And so, after a day at home, it was time to head for Milkwood Jam, a great venue in the centre of Swansea. Tonight’s support was a brilliant solo acoustic set from Jon Owen, singer with The Last Republic. The venue was amazingly hot which meant we had great fun trying to keep the instruments in tune as they seemed to be melting!

The set was a slightly tweaked version of the previous night…

Freedom To Breathe, Fifth Amendment, Yasuni, Reborn, Go,The Great Divide, Endgame, Blood Red Sky, Elektra City, Black Noise, Into The Fire, I Am A Cat, Dark Star, Apocalypstick

Encore: Satellite, Sandstorms

Milkwood Jam is a great venue to play and I really enjoyed having room to wander about onstage. Good to see The Reasoning out in force too, along with fans who’d travelled mad distances to attend!

Coming soon : Pt 2 featuring York, Derby and Worcester

Take care,
Alun

Part Two

Hello again!

The next phase of the Panic Room adventure started by heading north to The Duchess in York, a long journey at the best of times made worse by assorted roadworks. About 7 hours later we arrived in York, admittedly briefly at the wrong venue (onyl by about 20 feet though – the stage doors are on the same little lane!). Somehow we managed to set up and soundcheck in record time and all was well.

We had two support bands tonight – Satori and Kasiuss. I regret to say I only caught the first song of Satori’s set but did get to see some of Kasiuss’ wonderfully tight and energetic set.

Due to the line up, we had to cut the set down a little so went for the uptempo approach…

Freedom To Breathe, Fifth Amendment, Yasuni, Reborn,Go, Endgame, Blood Red Sky, I Am A Cat, Elektra City, Black Noise, Sandstorms, Dark Star, Apocalypstick

Encore: Satellite

Really enjoyed York – great audience,lovely venue and a great reception. The only downside for me was the stage sound which meant I spent a lot of the set not realy hearing myself depsite being right next to my amp. I think I need to go back to York socially too – I really liked what I saw of the town and want to explore!

Finding the hotel was much easier this time (once we managed to get the receptionist to open the door!) and we only had a shortish journey to Derby the following day so managed to get a decent lie in and check out at the last possible second – bliss!

The Flowerpot in Derby is another venue we played on the last tour and was one of the real highlights so we were looking forward to it. We managed to load in early and set up at a more relaxed pace before nipping off to the local Wetherspoons for food before soundcheck. Soundcheck took a while due to various technical gremlins but eventually we got it all sorted and souding good.

No support band tonight so we were able to do a full length ( just under 2 hours-ish) set…

Freedom To Breathe, Fifth Amendment, Yasuni, Reborn, Into The Fire, Go, Endgame, Sandstorms, Blood Red Sky, Elektra City, Black Noise, The Great Divide,, I Am A Cat, Dark Star, Apocalypstick

1st Encore: Satellite
2nd Encore : No Quarter

The Derby audience were absolutely incredible – loads of people and very, very enthusiastic. It was my favourite show of this little tour, such a great vibe! So good in fact that we resurrected our mutated version of Led Zeppelin’s No Quarter as a second encore.

And so, after a relaxed evening and morning staying with our wonderful merch people Ray and Steph, we set off for the final gig of this leg – The Marrs Bar in Worcester. Again we managed to get in early, set up at a relaxed pace, and eat before the soundcheck ( another Wetherspoons – always reliable for food while travelling as they’re pretty much all the same!).

The hospitality at the Marrs Bar is wonderful, the dressing room basically being the landlord’s flat! Well, I say it belongs to the landlord but in effect I think it’s really owned by Rufus, the black cat who lives there and seems to have missed his vocation as airport security – there is no bag that he won’t find his way into!

Unfortunately, the intro music CD decided it didn’t want to work in the venue player so had to be skipped but otherwise everything went pretty much to plan, with the set being largely the same as Derby…

Freedom To Breathe, Fifth Amendment, Yasuni, Reborn, Into The Fire, Go, Endgame, Sandstorms, Blood Red Sky, Elektra City, Black Noise, The Great Divide,, I Am A Cat (dedicated to Rufus), Dark Star, Apocalypstick

Encore: Satellite

The layout of the venue meant people were largely sat a distance from the stage so the gig didn’t have the atmosphere of the previous two nights but it was still well received and people seemed to enjoy it.

Overall, the tour has been a great success. It’s been lovely to see so many old friends and meet new ones – thank you to everybody who came to the gigs and made it such fun for us!!!

We’ll be busy beavering away for the next couple of weeks working on finishing the album ( which, in case I haven’t mentioned it can be pre-ordered HERE – hee hee) but then we’ll be at Limelight Theatre in Aylesbury on Oct 23 and Esquires in Bedford on Nov 13. Hope to see you there!

Take care,
Alun

4:45 PM

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Friday, August 28, 2009

Panic Room - Satellite Pre Order and Autumn Tour 2009

Hi all.

Hope you’re all enjoying Summer ( which I guess it is even though the weather suggest otherwise!). I know some of you already know, but for those who may not….

The new Panic Room album, “Satellite”, is now available for pre ordering at http://www.panicroom.org.uk/satellite.htm . You can also listen to a sampler of the rough mixes. We’re really proud of this album, so please have a listen.

We’ll also be playing a few shows in the UK over the next couple of months, which will feature music from the album that has never been performed live before as well as favourites from our first album, Visionary Position, and anything else that springs to mind

We’ll be playing….

September
Friday 11th – The Venue, Stocksbridge
Saturday 12th – The Peel, Kingston upon Thames
Sunday 13th – Milkwood Jam, Swansea
Friday 18th – The Duchess, York
Saturday 19th – The Flowepot, Derby
Sunday 20th – The Marrs Bar, Worcester

October
Friday 23rd – The Limelight Theatre, Aylesbury

November
Friday 13th – Esquires, Bedford

Hopefully see you there!

I’ll also being writing a couple of blogs shortly for the bass – centric amongst you : one on the recording of the album ( prepare your anoraks for details of which bass, which pedal, etc,etc) and one ( on the Bassbook blog ) which will feature transcriptions of some of the bass riffs so you can play along!

Take care,
Alun

4:10 PM

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Wednesday, August 19, 2009

No Treble Artist Spotlight

Hi all, hope you’re well and enjoying the occasional glimmers of Summer that pop out from behind the clouds? Apologies for the distinct lack of blogs lately, the last few months have been a little bonkers, workwise and personally, so I’ve been busy doing things but not actually blogging about them :-/ I will try and be a little more communicative!

And there will soon be lots to communicate about as the new Panic Room is recorded and will be out very soon. I should have some news on pre-ordering, and maybe a little sneak preview, very very soon!

But for now, I thought I’d share the news that I’m featured in bass site NoTreble.Com’s latest Player Spotlight. NoTreble is a fantastic resource for all things bass related so I’m really honoured to have been asked, and to be the second ever player to be featured, the first being the wonderful Evan Marien.

Take care,
Alun

12:38 PM

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Saturday, July 18, 2009

Panic Room Autumn Tour 2009

Hi all. As you may know, I’ve been locked away for the last couple of weeks recording the new Panic Room album. And now I’m pleased to announce our Autumn 2009 dates…

September 11th (Friday) – THE VENUE, 650 Manchester Road, Stocksbridge, SHEFFIELD, S36 1DY http://www.thevenuestocksbridge.co.uk

September 12th (Saturday) – THE PEEL, 160 Cambridge Road, KINGSTON UPON THAMES, KT1 3HH http://www.peelmuzik.webeden.co.uk

September 13th (Sunday) – MILKWOOD JAM, 50 Plymouth Street, SWANSEA, SA1 3QQ http://www.milkwoodjam.com

September 18th (Friday) – THE DUCHESS, Stonebow House, YORK, YO1 7NP http://www.theduchessyork.co.uk

September 20th (Sunday) – MARRS BAR, 12 Pierpoint Street, WORCESTER, WR1 1TA http://www.marrsbar.co.uk

October 23rd (Friday) – LIMELIGHT THEATRE, Queens Park Arts Centre, Queens Park, AYLESBURY, HP21 7RT http://www.qpc.org

November 13th (Friday) – BEDFORD ESQUIRES, 60a Bromham Road, BEDFORD, MK40 2QG http://www.bedfordesquires.co.uk

We were originally scheduled to play The Flowerpot in Derby on Sept 5 but unfortunately have had to postpone that one. The good news is that we are working on rescheduling it ASAP!

We have a LOT of new music to play for you so look forward to seeing as many people as possible

Take care
Alun

PS More news on the new album, pre-ordering, tracklisting, etc coming very very soon – stay tuned!

5:22 PM

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Monday, June 15, 2009

Charity Webcast - June 20

Hi all. Hope you’re well?

From June 20-27, Cancer Research UK are running a fund raising event called Busking Cancer where musicians busk ( as the name suggests!) and donate the proceedings to helping cancer research. When I saw it, I decided I definitely wanted to get involved in some way, but soon realised my diary is pretty full between those dates. The only free time was Saturday night and busking in a town centre on a Saturday night is probably a pretty risky venture!!

So instead, I will be busking….from my house. At 8.30pm UK time (International times can be found HERE ), I’ll be doing a 30-45 min live solo bass webcast which you can watch at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/alunvaughan. I’ll also be recording it so don’t worry if you’re not able to see it live, you’ll still be able to watch the recording at the same website (although miss out on heckling me via Ustream’s chatroom thing!)

All I ask is that you make a donation to Busking Cancer at their Justgiving site – http://www.justgiving.com/buskingcancer2009. You can do it any time, you can even donate in advance if you really want to

. When you donate, please enter “Alun Vaughan webcast” or similar in the Comments box so that we can identify the donations from this event.

I hope as many of you as possible can tune in for this, and help raise money for a really worthwhile charity.

Thanks in advance,
Alun

4:49 PM

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Sunday, May 10, 2009

New educational blog

Hi all. Hope you’re well.

As some of you may know, last year I set up a website called Bassbook.co.uk, with the intention of publishing downloadable ebooks and other resources for bass guitar.

Well now I also have a new blog, where I’ll be posting short lessons and thoughts that don’t really fit in the scheduled books.

Incidentally, the next book will be a collection of etudes which take common technical exercises such as string crossing/skipping and chromatic passages and make them into musical pieces that are much more fun to play than a bunch of exercises. More news soon!

Take care,
Alun

1:05 PM

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Monday, April 13, 2009

Imogen Heap Remix

Hi all, hope you’re all going have a good Easter.
Just thought I’d post a quick update about a recording I’ve just uploaded to my Reverbnation page
(if you’re reading this on Myspace it’s on the player). It’s a remix of
Imogen Heap’s “The Song That Never Was”, recorded as part of the
charity project Twestival to raise money for clean drinking water in developing nations (more info can be found here).
There are some fantastic versions on the remix
page, and it’s an honour to have taken part. If anything, mine is a bit
of a cheat as I left the lead vocal exactly as it was and simply
recorded a new backing

The bass track is a live take on my Cort Curbow 6 string, recorded
directly into Tracktion 2 on my laptop. I then used a little of
Tracktion’s built in reverb and compression and that was it. The only
extra recording is the reversed harmonic swell at the beginning ( which
was taken from the live take so still only one press of the record
button required

)
Hope you enjoy it.
Also, in case you’ve missed it, I’ve also added the improvised solo
bass tune Sunset from “What I Did On My Holiday” to the player ( the
album is still available for free download here).
Take care,

Alun

4:48 PM

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