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

Hello.Hope you’re all well. Rather than
relying on my frequently befuddled memory ( age, etc….), I thought I’d
try and do a quick blog about last night’s Panic Room gig while it’s still reasonably fresh

Yesterday, we travelled up to The Venue
in Stocksbridge, which has a Sheffield address, but was actually closer
to Rotherham. We all had a slightly surreal feeling driving into
Stocksbridge as it is really, really similar to a Welsh valley town -
the scenery, the buildings, everything. I guess it comes from
Stocksbridge having been based on industry as were the valley towns,
albeit they were coal and Stocksbridge was steel. It even has a
prominent rugby club - just needed some Welsh road signs to complete
the illusion

The venue itself is lovely - a great hall, decent sized stage and
nice backstage facilities including comfy sofas and a shower room. I
also have to thank the staff for making us really welcome and generally
being lovely.

Once soundcheck was done, we had a couple of hours to kill so,
thanks to the detective skills of merchandise supremo Steph, we headed
off to the local Chinese. With yesterday also being Comic Relief, we
were joined in the Chinese by a group of people in pyjamas
Support last night came from Barnsley based Gaia who played a great set of politically charged rock songs.

And then it was our turn. We had a great time but were dogged by
monitoring problems all night which made it difficult ( and deafening!)
at times. I barely heard a note I played all night although several
people complemented me on the bass sound through the PA and how good
the sound was in general.

The set list was quite a departure from the struture we’ve generally used but seemed to work pretty well…

Yasuni, Pleading The Fifth, Reborn, Into The Fire, Go, Banks Of The
Ohio, Endgame, Hadditfeel*, Lily*, Blood Red Sky, Elektra City, Black
Noise, Firefly, Sandstorms, The Great Divide, Apocalypstick, I Wonder,
No Quarter
*Anne solo. I have to quickly say how fantastic Lily was…it’s one of my favourite songs of Anne’s and it was a great version.

Or at least that was the intended set list After No Quarter we left the stage and it soon become apparent that we would be doing a second encore
This was a wonderful feeling….except we didn’t really have anything to
play! We debated a couple of “well, I guess we could…” options before
returning to the stage and doing the only sensible thing - ask the
audience if there was anything they’d like to hear again
And so it was that we did an extended version of Sandstorms which
included a rare bass solo (which again I couldn’t actually hear!) and
an even rarer Gavin Griffiths drum solo! If you’ve not heard Gavin with
ourselves, Fish or Mostly Autumn then you should…he is a truly
incredible drummer and his solo was fantastic.

It was a great, fun gig. The set, despite the risk of opening with
two unrecorded new tracks, seemed to work really well and it was nice
to play Firefly again as we haven’t played it live for a while.

And now, time to finish writing the next album and get recording More news on our plans for the rest of 2009 coming soon!
Take care,
Alun

Hi, hope you’re all well.
As some of you may know, I took part in this year’s RPM Challenge where you have to record an album’s worth of material in the month of February.
The resulting collection, entitled “What I Did On My Holiday” after
the essays we were made to write in school after returning from school
breaks, can now be heard at http://www.alunvaughan.com/free.htm
You can download the entire album (a zip file - approx 25mb) or download individual tracks from the embedded player.
You can also listen to all the tracks, read liner notes and general
thoughts on the recording and read the blogs I posted on the RPM
website during the process.
I hope you enjoy it, and it you do…please tell people There is no better publicity than word of mouth so please feel free to let people know
Take care,

Alun

Hello. Just thought I’d post a quick blog about a couple of projects I’m working on that may be of interest…

RPM Challenge

The RPM Challenge is quite a simple idea…record an album’s worth of original material (10 songs or 35 minutes) during February, Why? Why not! I love the idea of working to such a constraint and coming up with new material. I have no
idea what I’m going to do, or even if I’ll manage to complete it but I’m going to have fun trying! I’m also not allowing myself to use any material written prior to February 1 2009 - great fun!

Once the project is done, I’ll be making the material available free to anyone who wishes to download it.

Steve Waterman Contemporary Big Band Course

From April 3-5 I will be, for the fourth year running, teaching on
Steve’s residential big band course in Llanelli, South Wales. It’s a
great weekend focusing on, not surprisingly, big band playing as well
as jazz improvisation and there are plenty of opportunities to play.
Sax virtuoso Alan Barnes is also appearing as a tutor this way which
promises to add a new dimension to the course.
If this sounds appealing, full details can be found at http://www.swjo.co.uk/index.php?page=7.
Take care

Alun