Last summer I took part in the World Busk, which was an event to raise money for David Juritz’s charity - Musequality, the event was also a world record attempt to get the most people busking simultaneously around the world at any one time.
It was good fun and I’d been meaning to get into charity busking for quite some time, so being asked to take part in the event was a good opportunity for me to actually get round to doing it.
It’s been something that I’ve always wanted to do, especially since I started busking a few years ago and I thought it would be good to one day use my music to achieve something positive and make a difference to those in the world whose lives are less fortunate than our own.
Shortly after, I was invited to join a community called Pledging for Change by the site’s founder Karen Maskall, who contacted me on Twitter.
Pledging for Change is a non profit community interest organisation that supports charities, ethical business and non-profit organisations who are trying to make a difference in the world. After joining, Karen set me a challenge to find 100 musicians out there who are willing to play for charity.
At the time, I knew it would be a few months before I could get stuck into the task as I was struggling to set up my new business selling artisan goods from South America, so I had to put the challenge on the back burner until things had calmed down and I could get back to blogging.
That moment has now arrived and I reckon it’s time to kick off the -
Street Musician – 100 Musicians For Charity Challenge
That’s right, as the name suggests I’m looking for 100 musicians who are willing to stand up every once in a while and do something good for the world in which we live.
Now, I’m not suggesting we all rush out and save the planet or devote huge amounts of time and money to yet another bottomless cause, what I’m asking is that a few of our readers and fellow musicians, including myself, make a very small pledge to go out every once in a while and use the skills we have as musicians, whether amateur or professional, to do something good for someone else rather than ourselves.
It’s not about a raising money for a particular cause or event, it’s about getting people involved on their own terms on a general level and creating an attitude where musicians across the globe think about others more often and use their skills and abilities in a positive manner. The beauty is, we can all do this without really having to divert too much time or effort from our everyday lives.
Give Someone a Hand
The aim is to create a relaxed community of musicians and music enthusiasts who can exchange ideas about raising money for charity, promote various causes and gain support for their ideas and fund raising events, no matter how large or small, and post the results in a friendly environment.
It will also be a great way of meeting up with other musicians in your local area who want to get out and do something fun for a change. Members of the 100 Challenge can engage in their own solo projects or get together and arrange fun events like charity street gigs, busking sessions or jam nights with musicians in their locality when ever they like.
It’s a great excuse to just get out and play.
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But this challenge isn’t just about musicians playing music to earn money for charity, it’s about everyone, musically minded or not, using the skills we have and the positions we hold, and putting them to good use for the benefit of others…that is what the 100 Challenge is all about.
Reach Out
Being a musician and blogger, for me the best way I can help is to use my musical skills to busk and gig for charity every now and then, use my blog to reach out and help raise awareness for the charities we play for, and also motivate other musicians to do the same.
There is a huge community of guitar bloggers out there, along with many other music related sites who reach out to tens of thousands of musicians and enthusiasts around the world on a daily basis. If we can promote the idea of this challenge across a number of guitar/music blogs and other sites, we should get a good few people interested.
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I know everyone has got their own problems to deal with, but compared to millions of people out there who are desperately in need of help, where a few pounds can make a huge difference to lives of many, putting in an hour of our time once or twice a year to promote a worthy cause is not much to ask.
How many times have you seen adverts on TV for children going blind, or cancer research programs asking for money and every day we pass by street collectors fundraising for the Red Cross or Children in Need. We may put a few quid in the tin every now and then and think we are doing our bit, but if we can all do just that little bit more, and enough of us jump on the band wagon, then we can make a real difference.
Support
The one thing we all need if we are going to do something good, is support. This group will be focused mainly around the Street Musician’s 100 Challenge Group on the Pledging for Change social network site. PFC will be providing support in many ways for all our members and their charity efforts.
The Rules
There Are No Rules
It doesn’t matter what skills you have got, how good you are or what instrument you play. There are also no rules on when you are going to do your bit or what you decide to do.
All you need to do is make a promise to yourself and someone else around you, that on at least one day this year, you are going to go out and do something good for a cause that you believe in.
If you’ve been thinking about doing something for charity but weren’t sure quite what to do or how to do it, then this is the perfect opportunity to make that idea into reality at your own pace and without too much pressure.
It doesn’t matter how much or how little you raise, it can be £5000 or 50 p. It doesn’t matter what you do, you can perform in public or in private to your family and friends, perform solo or in a band, as part of a death metal group or the choir.
There are many ways you can contribute and what ever suits you is the best way to go. If you are not much of a performer you could head out to a jam night and stay sober for a change, maybe donate your beer money to charity, or lug some equipment around and help out at a charity gig. You could always sell an old pedal you’ve not used for years and send the cheque off to a relief fund.
The idea is to get creative and think of some really cool ways of raising that few pounds or completing the task you’ve set yourself to do.
You can also join in as much or as little as you like over the next year. If you have the time, you are most welcome to go out and do your thing once or twice a week. Even if you haven’t got the time to do this sort of stuff, as long as you can manage one event this year, that will do for us.
How Can You Join In ?
Experienced Players
Gig – Busk – Perform
For the pro and semi pro musicians out there, the obvious choice would be to go out and do a gig or performance and put the proceeds towards charity or a cause close to your heart. Even if you don’t get paid for it, if you promote the cause, you will help raise awareness. Play where ever you like or are able to, in a pub, club, bar, park or the street.
If you are a busker, go out and busk an extra day one week and donate your earnings to your charity. If you want to make the day more fun, get together with other buskers in your area and take turns. You could get a group together or alternate so one person busks while the other collects from passers by.
Collect
If you’re strapped for cash and can’t afford to play for free, a good way of raising extra funds without loosing your shopping budget would be to have a donation bucket at your gigs or send around a collection pot afterwards. Audiences, especially drunk ones tend to be very generous after ten pints, so a quick charity whip round after a successful gig could be quite effective and not affect your band’s earnings.
Website Widgets
Perhaps you have a band website that gets a lot of hits. Adding a donation widget for your charity to your website can be done very quickly and easily using features provided by charity organisations like Justgiving. Click here to see what they are all about and how a donation widget can work for you.
Organise a Group Event
If you want to go that extra mile, get together with a few other artists in your area, sell a few tickets and get a charity gig night going with a few local bands and musicians. It will be a great night and you should make a few quid for the cause while also being good promotion for yourselves and all those involved.
Amateur Musicians
Book Your First Gig or Busk
For the amateur musicians who want to join in – a great way to do something good, improve your skills and give your playing a boost would be to give yourself a target or date to aim for when you intend to do your first busk or live performance. It doesn’t matter how good or bad you are, if on the day of your first ever performance you are playing for charity, you’ll get a really warm response from your audience, who ever they are.
Non Performers – Lend a Hand
If you are a non performer or are not happy in the lime light, everyone can try and make use of the skills they already have. Whether it is raising money in a passive manner, or having a sponsored jam at home, lugging equipment around, helping out as a volunteer or just giving advice and bringing awareness to charities who are making a difference, whatever you do best, go out and book a date to do it so you can say you have done your bit.
Be Creative
As I said above, think about what you can do and you’ll come up with some great ways of earning money or showing your support in as many creative ways as possible.
Quit Something
Quit partying for a week and vow to practice every night instead. This will give your playing a huge boost and donating the beer money you’ve saved to charity will make you a better person and a healthier one at that.
You could do the same by giving up smoking and play like hell through the cravings and suicidal thoughts for the next two weeks.
Just don’t throttle yourself with your guitar strings if it gets too bad.
Diet
Stop eating junk food and munchies for a week and send the cash to charity. You’ll lose some weight, look better and will have kicked off a worthy diet you can feel good about.
Gear/Tec Heads
Fix or Sell Something
If you are more of a gear or tec head, flog some equipment or fix up an old amp and sell it. You could always set yourself a challenge to buy a piece of equipment from the free ads or Ebay for a few pounds, do it up and sell it. If you make a profit, donate that to charity, if you loose out, well at least you tried !
You never know, if you get the knack for it and make some cash, you could find yourself starting up a business fixing gear and flogging it.
Sing it - play it - fix it - sell it !
Guitar Teachers
Charge a Little More
Tell your students that you are going to charge an extra pound or couple of dollars for your lessons one week and give the proceeds to charity. I’m sure if it’s a one off or few and far between, students wouldn’t mind paying that little extra for a good cause. You could always add an extra ten minutes on the end of your lesson to make up for it.
Bloggers
Spread The Word – Blog/Retweet
Bloggers can really help out by simply doing a quick post or reference about this challenge on your site, Re-Tweet links to the 100 Musician’s Charity Challenge and if an event is happening in your area, even if it is just a guy out busking for a few hours, let your readers know about it.
Already Involved ?
If you are a musician who is already involved in charity projects and have events coming up and would like to gain more support for your cause, join in and tell us about what is going on.
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I think when it comes down to it, everyone has a duty to do something good for our planet at some point in their lives as each and every one of us takes so much from it on a daily basis.
It doesn’t matter how much, how little or how often we decide to give something back, or even what that ’something’ is…all that matters is that every now and then we at least try our best to do some good.
A Call to Action
Once we’ve got enough people involved in the Charity Challenge and have reached 100 musicians (and hopefully many more), the idea will also be to extend to bigger projects every now and then where we will be calling for volunteers from the group to take part in large fund raising events such as Children in Need etc. so we can all focus our sights on one particular cause and really do some good in that direction.
With plenty of support from Pledging For Change, these events will be properly organised and on a much larger scale than our own personal fund raising antics, and as always there will be no obligation to get involved in anything unless you really want to.
Having a large community of people will allow us to engage in some really positive work in the long term future, both on a small scale, raising money for fun amongst ourselves and also on a large scale as part of the bigger 100 volunteer charity events.
Should be good fun !
How Do I Join ?
Joining the challenge is easy…
First you head over to Pledging For Change take a look around and sign up for free as a member of the community.
Once you have entered your details, when you reach the ‘Create Your Profile’ page – Click the box that says ‘I Am Joining For A Specific Reason’ and select ‘Musician’s Challenge’
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Once you are registered, log in and join my Street Musician’s 100 Challenge group and you will see other members there who have already joined and a few discussions telling you how to get started.
Check out my ‘Introduce Yourself to the Challenge‘ post and tell us a few words about your self. What music you are into, what instruments you play, your general skill level and the sort of things you would like to do to raise a bit of cash in the future.
You can also mention if you’d like to join up with others in your area to arrange something or perhaps get an event going. You can aim for something simple like a street jam or busking session, or be a bit more adventurous and see who’s up for a charity album at some point in the future. Other like minded musicians will be able to contact you through PFC and as the community grows, the possibilities and opportunities will grow too.
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Have a look at my ‘Collecting For Charity Guide‘ which gives useful information on where you stand with the law regarding your future fundraising activities.
Take a look at some of the posts and join in the discussions.
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Once you have decided what you are going to be doing and where it’s going to take place, tell us about it by listing your event in the ‘Events Guide‘. You can then link to your own blog posts or website and start a new discussion about your event in detail.
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You are also welcome to start your own posts in the group about anything you like. You could list your future intentions or tell us about your past successes, or failures as the case may be..
..and feel free to promote your particular charity or cause if you have one.
As part of the 100 Challenge group you will find plenty of support for your cause and as we grow in size over the next few months and head towards our target of 100 musicians busking for charity, you’ll find a good few like minded people willing to help in what ever way they can.
Whether it is busking, joining in the jam, getting a charity gig together, promoting an up and coming event or just coming along and offering support, if you are up for doing something positive or want to get an event going on in your area, put your name down for the Street Musician’s 100 Challenge, start a group post about it, and tell the world.
It is still early days yet and we have a long way to go, but it only takes a few people to make a big difference.
If you’ve been watching the news unfold over the last fortnight you’ll be well aware that twelve days ago on the 12th January, a massive earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale tore apart the tiny Caribbean nation of Haiti, devastating the populated district of Carrefour and the capital city Port Au Prince, causing massive widespread destruction to the surrounding areas for miles around.
The quake hit around 10 miles West of Port Au Prince and was followed by two more severe aftershocks that wreaked havoc on the capital city, killing an estimated one hundred and fifty thousand people and injuring countless others.
The devastation that ripped through the island of Hispaniola, which Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic, has bought a nation to its knees and was on an unprecedented scale, the like of which has not been seen for over two hundred years.
Click the image below for an interactive map of the Haiti earthquake zone. Includes layered information on various statistics such as population density, damage zone and an animation showing the key aftershocks that hit the area over the following days.
The catastrophic effects of this earthquake have caused a massive humanitarian crisis in the stricken region, leaving hundreds of thousands of men, women and children homeless with no food, water or medical supplies.
Not only has the destruction taken the lives of many of the population, the situation has been worsened by the destruction of large parts of the country’s infrastructure, making it extremely difficult for aid organisations to mount an effective relief effort to deal with the crisis.
Although the international community’s rescue and aid efforts were initially criticised for being slow to react to the disaster, aid agencies have explained the sheer scale of the devastation and the logistical implications involved in dealing with an earthquake of this magnitude on an island such as Hispaniola, are making the task immensely difficult to cope with.
Apart from taking time for aid workers and supplies to be able to reach the destination, the task of landing hundreds of supply planes a day on the islands’ small and ill equipped airports and runways was only one of the many problems facing the relief agencies as they scrambled to the devastated region. The main port was also heavily damaged meaning larger, more permanent relief vessels could not be docked and only smaller supply ships were able to dock at neighbouring ports.
Getting aid to the people who need it most and distributing vital supplies throughout the affected zones was also made virtually impossible due to the severely damaged infrastructure of the affected areas and the limited resources of the ruined nation.
Co-ordinating the effort was further hampered due to Haiti’s phone, internet and communication systems being down for the first 48 hours after the quake.
A lack of vehicles, fuel, storage facilities and badly damaged roads strewn with vehicles, demolished buildings and thousands of desperate refugees leaving the capital, has made getting aid to those who need an extreme challenge.
Over the last two weeks the relief efforts have gained massive pace in an attempt to bring the worsening situation under control, but the overwhelming need for food, clean water and medical equipment to treat the hundreds of thousands of injuries has meant there are still not enough supplies to go round, the surviving population have been forced to live and deal with unbearable conditions since the disaster struck.
With the situation becoming more desperate by the day, concerns for the security and safety of the aid workers have also been a major problem hampering the distribution efforts.
Severe Shortage of Medical Equipment
Due to the nature of the casualties sustained in an earthquake situation, the majority of injuries involve heavily crushed limbs, resulting in amputation and wounds prone to infection. With a shortage of medical supplies and antibiotics, many operations have had to be carried out without the use of sterile equipment and proper instruments.
Huge numbers of people caught in the quakes have been unable to reach medical centres and receive treatment in time. In these situations even small injuries run the risk of infection leading to gangrene and sepia (blood poisoning). Medical centres have been reporting huge numbers of amputations being performed every day as a last resort to prevent the onset of sepia in the unsavable limbs and other wounds of crush victims.
Amputees then have to return to face unbearable living conditions and deal with the aftermath of the operation, surviving without antibiotics, clean dressings and fresh water.
The disaster is said to have left over 150 000 children orphaned and it is estimated the death toll may reach 200 000 with many more men, women and children still feared dead or missing. Last night the confirmed death toll had already reached 120 000 with agencies believing that many of the dead would have already been buried by their families and relatives soon after discovery.
The crisis has left tens of thousands of families suffering, with loved ones missing and unsure of their future. The earthquake is said to have affected the lives of over three million people in the area.
It is now the 24th Jan and we have been watching the nightmare unfold on our screens for nearly two weeks.
Hundreds of independent charities and aid organisations from around the world are working in the heart of the disaster zone bringing relief to those in need.
Thousands of volunteers from all over the world have flown to Haiti to help the aid process and collections are being held in towns and cities across the globe.
Although there is now a sustained and co-ordinated relief effort dealing with the situation, it is going to take billions of pounds and many years to return some sort of stability and normality to the area and we all need to individually do our bit to help the effort.
Have you donated yet ?
When disasters of this magnitude strike, we see the nightmare unfold on our screens across the world and are inundated with news bulletins and reports on radio, television and the internet. The shock and horror hits our hearts as we see a nation’s plight and we feel the urge to do something to help. The campaigns for help grow in number and the money starts to roll in.
As the days pass and aid organisations pile in to deal with the situation, we see anarchy and chaos give way to organised chaos and start to hear stories of miraculous rescues and record amounts of cash being donated to the disaster funds.
Viewers subjected to daily broadcasts of suffering and trauma quickly become accustomed to the images they see, and after a couple of weeks news reports start to drift back to matters closer to home, devoting less and less air time to the crisis. The viewing public think ‘Oh well – that’s that sorted then’.
Well it isn’t and won’t be for a long time.
It is easy for us to believe everything is now in place and the situation is under control, with plenty of money and aid available and that we can forget about it and get back to our comfortable lives. Don’t be lulled into thinking it’s over.
The people of Haiti are now facing months of unimaginable physical and psychological suffering due to the damage that has been caused to their nation.
Even with the help the aid the agencies provide, the scale of the disaster is on such a massive scale that they will be dealing with the terrible consequences for years to come, with the final cost to repair the situation running into billions of pounds.
Donate
Many of you will have already donated money to the cause over the last twelve days, but for those who are still yet to offer support, your help is still desperately needed and will be for a long time to come.
It doesn’t matter how much you donate, or which program you donate to, as long as you do something to help, no matter how small.
Interaction.org has compiled a list of many of the charities and organisations operating in Haiti. If you would like to help or donate to the cause, please click the link below and visit the listed charities websites.
These agencies all deal with different aspects involved in coping with this disaster and you may find one you choose to support that is closer to your heart.
Click the image below or visit Interaction.org’s relief list page for more detailed explanations of the charities involved and how they are helping the Haitian people in their time of need.
If you would like to donate by phone here are a few ways you can donate by Text or credit card.
Haiti Text-To-Give Numbers
Text HAITI to 90999 to donate $10 to the American Red Cross
Text HAITI to 25383 to donate $5 to International Rescue Committee
Text HAITI to 45678 to donate $5 to the Salvation Army in Canada
Text YELE to 501501 to donation $5 to Yele
Text HAITI to 864833 to donate $5 to The United Way
Text CERF to 90999 to donate $5 to The United Nations Foundation
Text DISASTER to 90999 to donate $10 to Compassion International
Text RELIEF to 30644 You will be connected with Catholic Relief Services and instruct you to donate money with your credit card.
As always, amongst the constant reports of doom and gloom emerging from the scenes of destruction, there are always a few miracles that take place amongst the carnage. These scenes of compassion and kindness provide us with a glimmer of hope for the future and show the generosity of the public and the unbreakable nature of the human spirit in times of need.
A nurse and child pulled from the rubble after 4 days
The miracle baby – 3 Week old baby Elizabeth pulled from the rubble after being buried alone for 8 days
The last few days has put me back on course for the new year and I’m (almost) back on track with the blogging and practice that I’ve been neglecting for weeks. There’s still a hell of a way to go till we’re back up to scratch but with it being freezing outside and half the U.K still snowed under, there’s no way I’m going back out into the blizzard to sell my stuff for a while, so I don’t have to feel bad about staying in and plugging away on my guitars and laptop.
That’s the great thing about ecommerce, as long as the post gets through, you’re still in business.
It feels good to be back in the driving seat as far as my online duties are concerned and I’ve had so much pressure building up in my head over the last few weeks that just to sit here and plug out rubbish on screen for a few hours feels good.
I’ve got some serious issues to tackle over the next few weeks and I’ll soon get back to blogging about the more useful subjects like playing guitar, but for the moment I thought I’d waffle on about the weather and where I’ve been for the last few days.
It’s mad cause I live down on the South Coast in a pretty cool seaside town (depending on how you look at it), which has got a lot going for it in Summer, but is a bit of a dump in Winter.
You get all sorts of people coming down here in Summer on holiday from all over England and a lot of people come here for a vacation and decide they like it and stay, even Archie from Eastenders lived here before he got the Queen Vic smacked over his head.
That’s how we ended up moving here when I was a kid. The place has changed a bit since then though.
The beach is always packed out in Summer
It’s not out the way or anything and not too far from the bigger towns and cities, and if you love the sea and the beaches and turn a blind eye to the drug deals and smackheads that roam the backstreets, you can have a pretty good time here most of the year round.
In that respect it’s great, but it’s not the city mind.
My other half is a city girl and can’t stand the place, well she used to hate it but has lived here for a while now and over the years has got used to it and appreciates the town for what it is, but you’ll never take the city out of the girl and you’ll never get the beach out of a bum.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the city too, but you can’t go kite surfing or cliff jumping in a city river, there’s too many shopping trolleys in the way.
The difference between us is that she wouldn’t dream of going cliff jumping anyway and there are no record breaking mega shopping centres like Lakeside in Dorset.
I appreciate the benefits of living near the city too though, and it’s cool to be able to jump on the train and be smack in the middle of London in about half an hour.
Taking a Trip
We’re always taking trips up to stay with her family in Essex and go there many times a year. I haven’t been able to do it for a while because of what I’ve been doing back home, but a few days ago, just when the big freeze that’s been hitting the U.K for the past few weeks seemed to be getting worse, we had to do it again.
There had been nothing but severe weather warnings on the news for the whole week leading up to the trip, with every channel on T.V constantly repeating stories of carnage on the roads and churning out news bulletins about people freezing to death and being trapped in their homes and cars by the unrelenting blizzards that were sweeping the country.
‘What ever you do, don’t travel unless it’s is absolutely necessary..’,was the message being rammed down our throats, and typically the day we were booked to come up here was warned to be one of the worst.
The funny thing was though, in our nicely sheltered bay on the coast we hadn’t had much snow at all, and apart from it being bloody cold and raining like hell most of the time with a few doses of snow and sleet, the sea salt that coats the entire coastline means that nothing ever really settles here and there wasn’t much of a problem.
Nothing bad ever really happens where I live, no droughts or hosepipe bans in Summer, no hurricanes or flooding in Winter, no bomb scares, fires, dirty bomb threats, serial killers or anthrax attacks like you have to deal with living in the city. This town’s even got it’s own weather system. Living here you always feel a bit left out watching these nightmares unfold on the news all over the rest of the country.
Actually..
The only bad thing that ever happened here in Weymouth was this was where the Black Death started in 1348. It spread throughout the country killing half the population of England.
The Black Death killed millions of people in the U.K
I suppose that makes up for it then !
We knew that a few km up the road it would be a completely different story as over the years living here you know that as soon as you go inland more than a few miles in Winter, you’re faced with bad conditions and huge snow drifts.
It’s funny really, I’m talking about huge snow drifts, but it’s absolutely nothing compared to other parts of the world that face these sort of conditions all year round and think nothing of it. Every year in the U.K we get the slightest bit of snow for a few days over Winter and the whole country comes to a standstill. This happens EVERY SINGLE YEAR and they still haven’t worked it out.
The authorities just can’t cope. We run out of grit, there aren’t enough snow ploughs to go round, the airports close, the hospitals and shops run out of food and supplies and the army has to move in. It’s ridiculous.
I was watching on the news a few days ago, and in Sweeden and Norway they were taking the mick out of the English because they get ten times the amount of snow we do and it doesn’t have the slightest effect whatsoever on their airports or public services. They just deal with it as a normal everyday occurrence and the country runs as smooth as clockwork…it’s called P.R.E.P.A.R.A.T.I.O.N … Mr Brown.
The Big Freeze
Anyway… My fiancee was worried sick at the prospect of the 200 mile journey that faced us, especially with a child to think about and almost cancelled the trip. In the end we had no choice but to go really as we’d already booked loads of meetings in Essex with the the vicar and various other people essential for the wedding plans in a few months time.
We stocked up with extra supplies and blankets in case we got caught in the snow for 16 hours like so many other ‘victims’ of the big freeze and headed out.
What an anti climax…there was me all ready with my Bear Grylls firelighting spark key ring thingy and pen knife, ready to kill, skin, gut and eat the first thing that wandered by our frozen ice coffin of a car, and what did we get..?
Nothing….not one blizzard, not one frozen ice blocked road, not one death trap frozen glacial motorway and not even a measly ‘Slow’ sign for nearly 200 miles.
The one thing the authorities did get right was keeping the motorways clear. We’d seen on the news the day before, hundreds of people getting trapped on the M3 overnight for hours on end and having to be rescued, so they had obviously got their arses in gear and sorted the problem out.
The scenery was fantastic with massive coverings of snow across the fields and farmlands, you could see the cars’ roofs on the motorway that had travelled from areas with seriously bad conditions. Huge coverings of snow still on their roofs.
We were pretty thankful really, we got all the way up here without a fuss but as soon as we got off the motorway we were greeted with a huge blanket of snow and ice covering the back roads. Once we got off the beaten track the isolated lanes leading up to the house were absolutely lethal with the car slipping and sliding all over the place.
We did the last mile and a half of the journey at a serious crawl and then kicked off a huge snowball fight as soon as we got out of the car.
Funny how a bit of snow turns even adults into big kids.
These coppers got themselves into big trouble when they were caught on video using their riot shields as sledges.
Well Funny !I think they all got sacked for it in the end
It snowed for the rest of the day and I ventured out next morning and took some pictures.
It’s a really beautiful sight seeing the whole land covered in snow and I remembered back when I was little, we lived in Yorkshire for a couple of years and it snowed practically 6 months of the year. We used to live on top of this hill and the snow plough would get stuck every day in Winter with huge 12 foot snow drifts.
It was great cause every day we’d wake up and the garden would be completely white under about a foot of snow, and we’d go straight out and make a real mess of it. We’d grab our sledge and trudge our way up the hill until we got to the huge long steep fields above the house and half kill ourselves hurtling down them with our wood and metal sledge.
We’d follow the stream at the bottom of our garden up the valley until we got to Catterick Foss, a waterfall which would completely freeze in Winter and be an awesome sight. We go up to the big caves in the hills and pick huge icicles and use them as lollipops. It was mental !
It was great fun for us kids, and I can never remember the cold really being a problem, apart from when we had to keep digging the car out every morning to get out of the driveway and you couldn’t get up the hill because of the ice. You don’t really notice the cold when your a kid and having fun but my Dad still goes on about how unbearable it was and how it nearly drove him mad.
We left after a couple of years and came to live by the sea. They say it only snows here once every ten years. I’m sure it’s more than that.
Funny how the snow brings back memories.
Back in Essex, the snow was still coming down and after a few more snowball fights I went off to see my busking tree and take a few more pictures.
There it is !
Nearly there
That’s my Busking Tree
It’s great to have the contrast between the two places we move between, and my daughter loves playing in the snow here in Winter and swimming in the sea at home in Summer.
When we come up here she gets to see her grandparents and get spoiled rotten, my Mrs. hits the shops and is in her element, I go off into the fields and make a racket, then we hit London and have a few days out.
I think at the end of the day, I’ll always be a beach bum and love the smell of the sea and she’ll always be a city girl and love the smell of the bus station, and although you’ll never change either of us, I think we’ve got the best of both worlds and are very lucky to have that.
Back home tomorrow.
I am currently located in Weymouth on the South Coast
Welcome back people, it’s 2010 and another great year is upon us.
Firstly I’d like to thank all our faithful readers who’ve been supporting this site over the last 16 months since Street Musician went online and wish all our visitors, new readers and fellow bloggers a great new year and a very prosperous one at that.
2010 is definitely going to be an explosive year for Street Musician and there’s plenty of good stuff in the pipeline for our readers to get stuck into over the next few months.
Although I’ve only posted a couple of articles over the last few weeks since we updated our look, there have been many changes going on behind the scenes that should help secure the long term future of this blog and I can happily announce that we are ready for the new year ahead and it’s time to relax and get on with some great new posts.
What’s Been Going On ?
In case you haven’t noticed, the last few months have been mostly been taken up by my efforts to start a new business on and off line selling these amazing handmade goods and instruments shipped all the way from South America by my family who have been out there for many years.
I’m happy to say the business has been going pretty well, in fact so well that I haven’t had time to concentrate on the really important things in life like blogging and playing guitar.
Neglecting my blog and guitaring skills has been really killing me over the last few weeks, and while I have seen my ideas grow from mere thoughts into the reality of a real life street business, a virtual shop and an EBay shop, the ridiculous amount of hours I have put in to the project have left my guitar and vocal skills weakened and my blog virtually unnattended. The whole time this has been going on, my brain has been focused on work, but I’ve been dying to get back to what I really love doing.
Fearful of the toll this neglect would take on my blog stats, I’ve been surprised to find that my readership and daily visits have actually increased by a modest percentage without me posting anything for weeks. Alas, the one thing I could not avoid was the hand of god Google slapping me back down to a PR2 for a festive Christmas present.
Google’s Christmas Present
Nevermind, it was expected and to be honest didn’t really bother me as I was still happy to have gained a good few readers without a single keystroke. You just can’t keep a good blog down.
Over the past few weeks, the harsh reality of spending thousands of hours creating a physical and virtual business whilst trying to live a family life has left little time for much else. Every time I thought I might just get a few minutes free, something else has always come up and taken the last few hours out of the day. There’s nothing worse than having the potential to do something good, but not having the time to do it.
I’m glad to say that the Christmas rush has now past and the most important parts of the business are in firmly in place. With with not much left to sell and the post festive season slumber closing in, it is time for me to take a breather and concentrate on the many other things I have been meaning to do over the last few months.
Video Lessons
One of the things I have been planning since this blog started is to post video guitar tutorials, covers and lessons to get my readers playing some great songs from the likes of Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Pearl Jam, Metallica, David Gray, Chili’s, Coldplay, Muse, Nirvana, Slayer and just about everyone else I can think of.
Last year I set up my makeshift green screen in my studio to do just that and recorded a few raw videos to test them out. They were o.k but I ended up getting sidetracked again and never quite got round to finishing and editing them. I’ve got a better set up now and am going to give it another go once I get my arse in gear and get back to playing properly. Hopefully we should get some good results in a few weeks time and I’ll actually bother to edit them this time and put them online.
Keep a look out because once I’m back on track, I’m going to be covering just about every song in my gig list over the next year or so.
Busking for Charity Challenge – Pledging for Change
Another thing I’ve been promising faithfully to do over the last few months is promote an excellent social network site called ‘Pledging for Change‘. The aim of the organisation is to provide positive help and support for ethical businesses, charities and non-profit organisations who aim to make a difference in the world, no matter how small. I’ve been challenged by Karren, who runs the site to find 100 musicians who are willing to give up a little of their time to busk for charity or a good cause every now and then.
I’m pretty sure there’ll be a good few musicians out there who will be willing to give it a go. Nobody’s asking for miracles, it only takes a few people out there to make a difference and a very small amount of money can change lives.
It’s a great network and the challenge should be good fun once it gets going.
I was challenged ages ago but because of work committments I’ve not yet had the chance to put any time into it, so it’s time to get on the case.
I’ll be doing a post on it in a few days but if you want to take a look before hand, head on over to www.pledgingforchange.com and see if you’re the type of person who can make a difference in the world.
More on that coming very soon.
I’m also hoping to do a bit of busking for charity myself over the next few months once I get back into it, and hopefully we should be able to promote a few good causes and hear some good music at the same time.
Get Fixed, Get Fit and Get Married
I’m getting married in a few months time in July and thanks to my back problems, Christmas, months of building, chopping, writing, selling, sawing, freezing, hammering, eating, drinking, getting soaked and willful neglect, my fitness levels are at an all time low and it’s time to sort my back out, shed some pounds and get fit again.
I’m nearly 6ft 4 and used to be 12 stone 10 when I was at the peak of my physical fitness. I didn’t have an ounce of fat on me and could kick the head off a horse . Now I’m 16 stone 3, getting porky and can barely make it up the stairs without having a heart attack.
No, I’m not quite that bad, yet !
To boot, I don’t know what the hell’s been up with my knee for the past few weeks but it feels like someone’s taken a hammer to my femur and pulled out the cartilage. I’ve been dealing with it for weeks and have been having real trouble just doing the usual things people take for granted, like standing up for instance. It’s funny because I’ve never had knee trouble before and I haven’t got a clue when or where it started.
It feels a bit better than it did before Christmas but it’s beginning to look like it may turn into a long term problem and is going to take some serious rehabilitation before I can train on it. That suits me fine cause my back is going to take even longer to sort out before I can get back in the gym or slog the hell out of the new punch bag I got for Christmas.
I know there is only one type of exercise that’s going to sort me out in this condition and that is Pilates. I hate to say it because I used to think that Pilates was for grannies, but the science behind it is what works and many of the world’s top athletes and performers also use Pilates as a way of keeping fit and recovering from injury. Anything else will just completely wreck me nowadays and if I push myself even slightly over the edge I could easily end up frozen solid and stranded on the couch for the next few months as has happened to me many times before.
A few years ago I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing something as soft as pilates to get fit and would just go out on a massive exercise rampage whenever I felt like getting fit, but in the end that is what wrecked me, being reckless with my own fitness.
I’m not going to let that happen again. I’ll be doing a few posts on pilates and the other things I get up to once I get back into it. Hopefully, within a few months I might be able to get back to the Kung Fu and Thai boxing.
These are dangerous goals for me, not because of the martial arts themselves, but because in the past they have ultimately led to the destruction of my back and my downfall on several occasions in my life. I’ll also be filling my long empty health section with some other useful stuff, advice and tips when I get the time.
The Stag Do
There’s going to be my stag do on the books in a few months time and I haven’t got a clue what’s going to be happening for that. If I want to do more than just hit the pubs and clubs getting slaughtered for three days, I’m going to have to get fit for it. I’m hoping to get some action out of it like skydiving or a surfing weekend or something decent like that, but in my condition there’s no way they’ll let me on a bus, nevermind the plane. If I’ve not got myself sorted out and rock solid by then, I’m going to be left sat on the sidelines while all my mates are catching waves or jumping out of planes. There’s no way I’m going to let that happen.
Then again, there’s always Amsterdam !!
Busking
Whilst I’ve been slogging it out there in the street, battling the worst and wettest weather in the UK since records began, and then when that died down, braving the coldest spell since 1969, apart from it being a complete nightmare and having an evil time due to the weather, I’ve also had the pleasure of whiling the hours away whilst being entertained by a wide variety of musicians and entertainers sporting their skills in the street and along the way I’ve met some great people.
The best thing about selling in the street all day is you get to see loads of different buskers turning up and doing their stuff one by one. Some are good, some are bad, some are bloody awful and some are truly excellent.
I’ve met saxophonists, flutists, guitarists, jugglers, harpists, banjo players and loads more over the last few weeks and they all have their own story to tell.
These guys were cool
Hopefully over the next few months, as I venture out more into the street, I’ll be taking my own guitar, laptop and web cam out with me and bringing you some videos and interviews from a few of these weird and wonderful people. As I’ll have a street stall to film from, I should be able to take a few vids of myself busking aswell.
Should be fun.
Gigging
This year my aim is to get the blog back on the right path, let the e business run itself, sell some stuff in the street, get my skills as a semi pro musician back and get out there and do a shed load of gigs.
Gigging and busking a couple of times a week, a bit of street selling, two web businesses and a guitar blog should give me enough freedom to chop and change between them over the course of the year and give me a solid base to promote my work as a musician. I should also be able to work on my blog and business at the same time, do a bit for charity and teach some of my readers how to be better singers and guitarists. It all sounds like a good plan, but none of it is going to happen if I don’t pick up that bloody guitar and put the time in. Only an effective plan will give me the time to do all this without my fiancee leaving me at the alter.
Reviews
Last but not least on my list is my reviews section. I’ve had them in mind since this blog started and hopefully as I thrash my way through everything I’ve been mentioning above, I’ll make some time to review a few guitar and other music related things that come my way. If you have anything out there you’d like me to review over the coming year, just drop me a line, send me the stuff to review and I’ll give you my honest opinion. You never know, if I like your product, you could make millions.
So there you have it, my life’s plan for 2010. The one thing that people who know me will tell you is that I have a lot of big plans and weird ideas and I’ll often bite off more than I can chew, but in the end I’ll always get there. It might take a whole lot longer than I thought and go way off schedule, but if I promise I’m going to do something, then sooner or later…I sure as hell am going to do it.
Have a great year and stay tuned, it’s all coming this way.
Street Musician is now proud to be able to offer our readers a small range of handmade classical guitars from South America, made by the same expert luthier and musician who has been touring South [...]
You might not think it, but preparing for a gig is a logistical nightmare, especially if you are a solo artist.
For those in a band it should be a much simpler process with each member bringing their own gear and (in theory) being responsible for their individual equipment. Serious musicians are usually [...]
Don’t worry, you’re not not going crazy, Street Musician has changed for the better.
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Every now and then I get confronted with a song that has either a ridiculously long set of lyrics containing about twenty verses or one that does not make any sense at all, making it extremely difficult to learn.
Most people think learning lyrics is easy. An average person will assume they [...]
One thing that really bugs me about myself is my ability to get drawn into a new task and become so completely immersed in whatever it is, that I do nothing but that for weeks at a time.
Being able to focus on a project sounds like a good quality to have, [...]
An age old problem encountered by beginner guitarists battling with bar chords is which way to finger them.
The most common method of fingering an average bar chord is to stretch your first finger across all six strings and finger the chord with your remaining 2nd, 3rd and 4th fingers.
The Street Musician Top 100 Guitar Blogs is the best resource on the net for all the greatest guitar blogs on Earth. Each blog is listed with Google PR, Technorati and Alexa rankings and updated daily.
The Top 100 has been going strong now since July 2008, and over the last 15 [...]
Check out the shred master kick some ass on stage (not!)
This cracks me up more every time I watch it.
Ok, before we start receiving any death threats over this one, it is of course a complete fake. I assume it’s completely obvious to most people, but after reading [...]
Here’s something for you vocalists out there. This is a cover of Bohemian Rhapsody performed by comedian, actor, vocalist and playwright – Rick Miller. He has been named as ‘one of the 100 most creative people alive today’ by Entertainment Weekly.
In this video, he performs the song mimicking 25 of the [...]
Here we have a hand made professional charango for sale. This charango was crafted by a famous Bolivian musician, luthier and composer who has been making instruments and touring South America and the rest of the world for over 30 years.
Featuring beautiful native South American flutes for sale. The quena and the larger more deeper sounding quenacho.
Quena (Kena) Flute
The quena or kena as it is also known, is a traditional Andean flute used commonly in all areas of traditional Peruvian music. The quena produces an exceptionally beautiful sound [...]
So how did this site come to sell handmade Bolivian instruments ?
Since the creation of this blog, Street Musician has spread itself out in many different directions over the last year and being a relatively new blog I still have many great things in mind for it’s future. I guess [...]
The charango is a small traditional South American stringed instrument that resembles a ukulele and has 5 sets of paired strings.
The charango is a member of the lute family and is said to have descended from the Spanish vihuela which had six pairs of double strings and was most commonly used [...]
It’s my birthday today, and I’ve had a great day. I got a few prezzies, been out for a Mexican and got tickets to see Nine Inch Nails at the O2 in a couple of weeks.
All the guitar shops in my area have shut down. So Instead of travelling miles to the nearest store every week to get new strings, I now buy mine online and in bulk to save a load of cash.
I used to get my D’Addario electric and acoustic strings locally for £5 [...]
We are constantly hearing in the news about the current global economic downturn and how every day thousands of people are loosing their jobs and local shops and businesses are being forced to shut their doors and close down for good.
Being musicians, we can be forgiven for thinking we should be [...]
Just got back from my Musequality charity busk in town.
I was a bit worried whether I was going to be able to hack it today as I’ve had a cold and a sore throat for a number of days, and after canceling a gig in a local [...]
There are many different types of battery you can use to power your equipment, ranging from small 6v hand held rechargeables for small busking amps to huge deep cycle RV and forklift batteries capable of powering full out door gigs and lighting systems. They all have different uses and characteristics which you should [...]
If you are intent on buying a marine or deep cycle battery at some point as part of an inverter, battery and charger system to provide power for your equipment outdoors, then there are a few things you need to be aware of when calculating battery life, capacity, losses and discharge rates [...]
If you are intent on taking your band or set to the streets or you feel like setting up an out door gig where power is an issue, then there are a few good ways of getting round the problem. Generators and battery operated systems provide good alternatives to consumer mains, but if [...]
Every time I venture out to do a bit of street busking, I am always surprised at the wide variety of objects people seem to offer me or place in my guitar case instead of a simple coin or two.
I have received just about everything you could imagine from melted chocolate [...]
Probably the most widely used scale in the whole of modern day music. The blues scale is used extensively in rock, jazz, blues, metal, funk, country and almost every other type of music you can think of.
The most obvious feature of the blues scale is that – you [...]
If you enjoy any of the articles, advice or guides on this site, please help support this blog by having a go at one of the following. It only take a few seconds and a couple of clicks and you really will be helping me out and doing this site a big favour. [...]
I’ve just registered to take part in the biggest busk the world has ever seen.
UPDATE : STARTS TODAY 8th JUNE
The World Busk is a charity event which will raise money for good causes and attempt to break the world record for the biggest simultaneous busk around the world at [...]
Since posting my guide to installing Adobe CS4 products on Vista, I recently tried to install Adobe Premier Pro CS4 on my laptop and encountered a major problem.
The program installs without a hiccup and everything seems normal until the application is started.
As the start up splash screen appears, the program loads as [...]
Attending jam nights, or come and have a go nights are without doubt the best way amateur musicians and new bands can prepare themselves for a first gig or stage performance.
Busking is a great way of getting your self used to public exposure and can be quite a scary experience for those not [...]
Pentatonic minor scales are extremely popular 5 note scales most commonly used in modern and classic rock, blues and jazz music. They are widely embraced by beginners and shred masters alike and are great practice scales for those learning to improvise.
When learning a particular scale across the whole neck, in our case the natural or pure minor, is it best to ensure there are no vague or hazy areas left on the fret board that leave you unsure of where to place your fingers in order to play the correct scale notes.
In our previous scale guides you have been learning all seven positions of the minor scale right the way up the fret board and should now be pretty fluent in crossing the neck just about anywhere you like.
As I stated earlier in my post on scale runs, you may find the [...]
Welcome to Street Musician’s new competition section.
Over the next few weeks and months if I get a good response from this sites readers, I’ll be posting a few competitions every now and then to win cash prizes and other various goodies to make your day go with a smile.
Now we are going to take our previous run highlighted here in blue, and play it in various other G root note positions and at different octaves on the fret board, indicated in yellow and red.
The tab shows pretty much the same run (with slight alterations at the endings) [...]
Below is a full scale diagram of the G minor scale. We are going to work on some runs from one end of the fret board right the way to the other and back again.
First we’re going to take an easy minor scale run on strings 5 and 6. [...]
In Parts 5 and 6 of our easy guide to scales, we learned that the major and minor scales are closely related and that they also contain the same notes. This means each one can easily be changed into the other and any key you choose can be easily transposed to a different [...]
For a few weeks now I have been plagued with an intermittent error where for no reason, when I open certain folders on my PC, I get the message ‘Explorer has stopped working’, followed [...]
Vista Home Basic – Dreamweaver – Photoshop – Master Collection – Acer Aspire
Error 1603. Fatal Error During Installation.
Many people seem to be having problems installing the new Adobe CS4 products like Dreamweaver, Photoshop and the Master Collection etc. especially on Windows Vista operating systems. I recently encountered the same problem myself and had [...]
These next few exercises are really good for building your finger strength, stamina and stretching abilities. As always, they are best performed using some form of metronome as this will help to improve your sense of timing. If you don’t have a real one, then try the internet as there are many available [...]
Playing the guitar places an enormous amount of strain on the muscles, fingers and tendons in a player’s hands and also requires a great deal of finger strength. It is for this reason that it is vitally important that all guitarists, from beginners to expert, should perform some form of warm up routine [...]
Now you’ve got the hang of the first few exercises, here are some more combinations that start with your 2nd, 3rd and 4th fingers.
Keep practicing these with your metronome, or on-line metronome and remember to improvise with your own techniques such as string skipping, hammer on’s and pull offs [...]
Chromatic scales play a huge part in building a guitarists finger strength, speed, agility and co-ordination and their importance should not be underestimated.
The chromatic scale consists of 12 half step or semi tone intervals and comprises of every note in the common musical scale.
This song from Pink Floyd’s – The Wall, was once described by Roger Waters as a ‘mood piece’ and is the second track on CD 2 of the album. It is an extremely emotional and moving piece of music and the solo classical guitar playing provides us with a great finger picking exercise [...]
Here’s where we find out everything about you and the visitors to this site. The whole point of this page is to give us musicians, singers, bloggers and webmasters an idea of what every one else is doing.
Hopefully this will give us all a better understanding of what we [...]
For this scale we will be starting on G (3rd fret 6th string), work our way up to C (13th fret 2nd string) and back down again to G or below. Follow the exercise shown in the video and start with a gentle humming.
This second exercise uses an octave and a half scale range. This is slightly more difficult and takes a bit of concentration to get right. Match your fingers with your vocals.
Check out my Vocal Warm Up Techniques page for details on how to hum and perform lip rolls and tongue trills.
This 3rd exercise is the most awkward until you get used to it. The scale spans one and a half octaves and 5 strings and as you move up the fret board and across the strings the fingering patterns change as the scale ascends and descends with your vocals.
Pink Floyd live shows are legendary and their music has broken through the boundaries of reality for over 30 years.
Dave Gilmour and Roger Waters are two of the greatest songwriters the planet has ever known and here is just a small section of some of their best songs.
This page is dedicated to Pearl Jam’s epic first album Ten. It is one of the greatest albums of all time and as the name suggests has ten incredible tracks. Alive and Black have to be two of my favourites, but every track is a classic and the album totally rocks.
This page is purely for this sites Metallica fans, and has a good mix of the best tracks from Metallica’s 4 best albums, Master Of Puppets, Ride The Lightning, Metallica and …And Justice For All.
Choose a song, then click this link to pull up another page and you can surf this [...]
Here is an amazing set of videos I found on You Tube with virtually the complete set of vocal training exercises from Seth Riggs, the actual founder of the speech level singing method. This guy has taught over 120 grammy award winners including Natalie Cole, Janet Jackson, Sinéad O’Connor, Barbra Streisand, Luther Vandross, [...]
For those of you thinking of designing your own website, apart from using web editing and blogging platforms such as Dreamweaver and Wordpress etc.. there are a few other helpful tools and utilities that can help you along the way.
Most web editors, whether free or commercial give you the ability to [...]
A domain registrar is generally a body or company that sells and registers domain names to people.
When you visit an on line registrar with the intent of purchasing a domain name for your web site, you must first perform a simple search to see if the domain is available. [...]
Now you can handle the natural or pure minor scale in all twelve keys, by simply learning the Gm, as shown in parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 of this no nonsense guide. It’s time to use these minor scales to play all twelve keys of the [...]
Ok, by now you should be completely familiar with the 7 overlapping patterns of the G natural or pure minor scale, as shown in parts 1, 2, and 3 of this no nonsense guide.
If you’ve been practicing them for 20 – 30 mins on a daily basis for a couple of [...]
Here’s a collection of vids featuring some of the worlds most famous (and not so famous) people busking.
It’s nice to know that however much cash these guys have got or how famous they are, none of them are too proud to hit the streets and play for the people.
Here we have our videos section. If you are too lazy to look for them or read the articles and lessons you’ll find all this sites own vids from various pages here in one place. Click the links to view the full articles.
Street busking is a great way of building up your confidence as a musician and gives you just about the best training you can get in dealing with people and overcoming any fears you may have of performing in public.
Once you’ve been busking a few times and got used to playing [...]
Nowadays, town and city councils are clamping down on unauthorized busking in an attempt to clear the streets of unsavory types hassling people for money. You often need a permit to perform or busk and if you don’t have one you will be removed by the police, even if you are really good.
That depends on what town or city you’re in, where you pitch, what you play, how long you play for, what time of year it is and most importantly, what mood the people are in.
You will often find people approach and chat to you [...]
Vitamins and minerals are essential nutrients the body needs to function properly and stay healthy in your every day life. Trace elements are also vital to the body’s well being, but are needed in much smaller amounts.
If a body has a good supply of these nutrients, then all your internal and [...]
If you have read my previous post on vitamins and minerals and how important they are in our daily lives, you’ll know that vitamins perform crucial biological functions in the body and without a replenished source every day, we can fall foul to a huge number health problems. A few vitamins a [...]
Most people don’t understand the importance of these amazing nutrients in our bodies. If you’ve already read my post on vitamins and minerals in our everyday lives, then you will have some idea of how vital they are to our health and well being.
Minerals are only needed in small quantities in [...]
There are many sites out there dedicated to web site creation, design and troubleshooting, so you should have no trouble finding some form of help to solve your problem.
Millions of web sites are created every year and there is always somebody, somewhere who has encountered the same problems as you and [...]
This is subject to a matter of opinion and there are many web editors and design programs on the market that will do a great job. They all have their advantages and disadvantages, from cheaper packages that will accomplish the basics, to complex design programs that give the user almost unlimited potential to [...]
Here are some products myself and many singers use on a regular basis to help improve the quality of our vocal performance. Some of products below can be taken immediately before we perform as a standard preparation when we sing or go on stage, others can be used for occaisions when we may [...]
Any beginner guitarist has to face the daunting task of learning a huge bunch of chords in order to familiarise themselves with the guitar, help them play their favourite tunes and enable them to write and play their own compositions.
But as there are tens of thousands of songs out there all [...]
The problem with being a singer and a guitarist is you have to do two jobs at once. This means that before you practice or perform, you have to warm up both your fingers and your vocal chords.
I used to get frustrated when going into practice as doing my vocal warm [...]
The time has come for I.G Blog to finally leave the Top 100 and head off for the Great Blog in the Sky. (sniff !) The place where all blogs go to spend their final resting years in peace and [...]
Most new guitarists begin their training by learning and practicing the usual standard 10 – 20 open chords such as E,D,G,A, Am,F,Dm etc.
Once proficient with these, many players tend to stay within the confines of these open chords at the lower end of the fret board and never venture past the [...]
My name is Kier and I’m a self taught musician from the UK. I have been playing the guitar on and off for twenty years and a few years ago I decided to quit my job as an electrician to become a full time musician.
Next time you hit the road, watch out for the phantom freeway fret wrecker. This latest attack caught on film by Channel 5, wiped out six lanes of traffic on a busy highway, killing 15 people and injuring 42. You have been Warned !
Here’s a quick beginner’s guide for those of you thinking of buying a guitar. If you haven’t really got a clue what you are doing, or even what type of guitar you’d like i.e an acoustic, electric, strat or spanish etc. there are a few things you need to look out for and [...]
Most guitarists actually string their guitars the wrong way by winding the string around the top peg a number of times and then through the hole. This actually causes unnecessary stress to the strings and contributes to tuning problems and string snapping. This vid from D’addario’s Musician Hub shows you exactly how to [...]
I often get people complaining to me that they are no good on the guitar and that however much they try to play a particular piece of music they just can’t get it right. They will often give the excuse that perhaps their fingers aren’t long enough or maybe they’re just not naturally [...]
Here’s a great vid proving that even the best musicians have bad days. It doesn’t matter how good or famous you are, we all have to break down our songs, patterns and riffs into small manageable chunks until we get them sussed. It’s only once we have them burned into our brains by [...]
Ok, you’ve got your guitar, you’ve got your books, you know the song, but you’re sick of learning twenty different strumming patterns for every verse of every song you want to learn.
When you see an experienced guitarist strumming away on the acoustic, they look good, sound great and never seem to [...]
For all you people out there who are thinking about creating your own web site for what ever reason, there are many web based resources that you can use to help you get up and running.
If you are feeling lazy and couldn’t be bothered to read the next few pages, then [...]
Generally, any musician’s web site or blog worth it’s salt, sooner or later will have to add some form or means for the public to communicate it’s views and opinions to the web site’s owner or creators. This is a great way for band members, fans, musical students, other blog owners and whoever [...]
Having made it through our no nonsense guides parts 1 and 2, you should now be well on your way and have a firm grip on the first 5 positions of the natural minor scale.
You should see now just why I divide the scale up into 7 easy over lapping parts as [...]
If you are considering singing as a full time occupation or intend to be singing as a hobby over a long period of your life time, it is vital you learn how to do things the right way. You need to ensure you don’t pick up the usual [...]
Here are some video demonstrations of the most important vocal warm up techniques used by professional singers today. The humble ‘Humm’, the mighty ‘Lip roll’ and the dynamic ‘Tongue trill’. These techniques play absolutely vital rolls in any successful singers daily practice routine.
By now, if you have been following the first part of our no-nonsense guide to scales, you should be very familiar with positions 1 and 2 of the natural or pure minor scale. You should have spent at least two days learning the first two positions and should be able to move [...]
Someone recently asked me which of the two open G chord shapes they should learn and practice as standard considering they are both fingered differently and different song books and tablatures seem to switch between the two shapes depending on the groups and styles of music they are transcribing.
In my opinion, about 90% of you should probably be considering a shared hosting package. This will be ample for your needs and if you decide you want to upgrade to dedicated hosting in the future, it should be easy to do so. Just ask your host provider.
This weeks pick of the week is an amazing bit of guitar lap tapping by the canadian composer and guitarist Erik Mongrain. His debut album Fates is an brilliant piece of work and has been described as ‘unbelievable’, ‘original’ and ‘an incredible achievement’ by his fans and the music press.
This weeks totally unrelated yet amazing pick of the week is a piece of 3D anamorphic art by street artist Julian Beever.
His mind blowing pictures have earned him the nickname ‘ The Pavement Picasso ‘ and he has traveled the world creating these works of art for over twenty years.
This guide may not be 100 % theoretically correct, but it will be everything you need to know to get you through the theoretical nightmare of scales that’s been haunting you for years.
Scales represent a huge barrier to many musicians and dealing with the mass of information that comes with them [...]
Traveling light and just taking your acoustic guitar busking can be great if you are planning on playing in a subway, a pitch with great acoustics or in a narrow street, but if you want to play in a city or crowded street on a Saturday [...]
Dedicated to helping you become an all round better musician and guitarist.
Street Musician recently celebrated it’s first birthday in July and over the last few months has gone from strength to strength hitting the Top 20 guitar blogs across the planet after only 9 months on the scene.
The reception you get from an audience will generally depend on quite a few things. Obviously it matters how good you are but being a great guitarist doesn’t mean you’ll always get a great response. What counts is what sort of music you play, the clientel, [...]
A web host is a company that provides space on it’s servers for you to keep your web site, almost like a locker in cyberspace. They promise to keep your site online 24 hours a day for the whole time you pay for their services. If you have a web site that your [...]
There are many things you should and shouldn’t do to keep your voice sounding good and your vocal chords in good condition.
Warm Up
First and most importantly, you should always do a vocal warm up before you sing or go on stage. Many artists do not do this and risk doing permanent [...]
If you’re bored with playing at home and want to take your music to a different level and get out there and do some gigs, there are a few steps you can take to bridge the gap without having to throw yourself to lions in one big step.
Welcome to the Street Musician – Top 100 Guitar Blogs
Over the last year or so Street Musician has been scouring the web for the best guitar blogs on the net and placed them all here in one place for you to check out.
Street Musician is brand new and will be constantly growing and changing over the next few months as we continue to expand. Some of our pages are still empty but we do have some great articles on busking, gigging, web design, vocal stuff and the first part of the Street Musician No Nonsense Guide [...]
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If you enjoy any of the articles, advice or guides on this site, please help support this blog by having a go at one of the following. It only take a few seconds and a couple of clicks and you really will be helping me out and doing this site a big favour. [...]