Musicals May

Ok, May is nearly done with, so here is my account of what has been going on this month.

In the first week of May I played Bass for my first show in Manchester! This was an exciting step for me as I have not really done a lot of pit type playing since I moved out of North Yorkshire! It was great to get back into it. I played Bass for Meighan Youth Theatre's Production of Les Miserables at the Garrick Playhouse in Altrincham. Needless to say, I had a fun week and I really enjoyed having the opportunity to work with such talented musicians and an absolutely superb cast.

The day after the last performance of Les Mis, I took part in the band call for Happy Days the Musical! For this musical I only played a couple of rehearsals and a couple of shows, but the experience was fantastic. The show was performed by the North Manchester Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society at Middleton Arena. Another great theatre group and another great team of pit musicians!

Another exciting event this month was the purchase of a new bass! "Ebony" is another Overwater by Tanglewood bass, making her my third. The reason this bass is different to my others is that it is my only Passive Bass Guitar. For the record, she is also my first Jazz Bass which is really cool. Ebony did her first gig on the 16th of May with the James Christy Band at Roadhouse in Manchester.

 Myself and "Ebony" at Roadhouse with The James Christy Band 16/05/13

And finally, I won't say too much, but Ollie Harding, Charles Macdonald and myself are part of some exciting studio type developments which will come to fruition in the near future! Needless to say, it's great stuff.

To finish, I will be travelling to London with my bass gear this Sunday! Don't get too excited though as I am actually changing trains at Kings Cross Station London in order to travel to a gig with "Spinoffs" in Witney near Oxford! I'm excited as this will be our first gig together however, I fear I may need some devine intervention for the trip to London with my Bass and Amp! Fingers Crossed.

See you in June.

Alasdair

April

I have 10 minutes left to explain April in blog form. So here goes...

Basically, I have spent a lot of time doing arrangements for the RNCM Session Orchestra gig in June. This has proved to be a fun and interesting challenge! However, it now means that I am thoroughly sick of Sibelius, and my laptop. But hey, it is fantastic practice and each time I do it I feel better about developing those skills.

Another fantastic thing from April came in the form of an audition for the James Christy Band. We performed in front of a panel of Access to Music officials at the Jabez Clegg venue to win the opportunity to perform on the "AtoM Live Tour". This exciting event takes an act from each Access to Music centre across the country to perform in a National Final in Birmingham at the 02 Academy. The winners will get to perform on a nationwide tour in October / November of this year. I'm delighted to announce that we won! And as such we will be performing in Birmingham on the 6th of June. We're all very excited!

And finally, a big part of this month for me has been rediscovering the man, the hero, Pino Palladino as a bass player. I'd always appreciated him, but never really gave him the respect he deserves as being the best Session Bass Player of all time. After a couple of sleepless weekends listening to hours of Pino basslines from the late 80s right up to the most recent John Mayer stuff I decided that he was my new hero.

I was so inspired by Pino, that I invested in my first real effects pedal. It is a Boss OC-3 Octave Pedal and I love it to pieces. Expect to hear it in all of my live performances for the forseeable future.

Apologies for the stream of consciousness form of this post. But hey! It was fun to do!

This Month

As it's getting towards the end of the second term at RNCM, I thought I'd better summarise what has happened in the month of March!

March started with a gig to celebrate St David's Day at RNCM! A very enjoyable gig playing with some members of the RNCM Session Orchestra, and some ex course members of the Pop Course! We played a set of Pop Covers that got people dancing, we were well received! It was a fun evening.

The next day, I went on a train to London with my friend and fellow bass player Frank Morgan. We went to Kensington Olympia to visit the "London Bass Guitar Show." This was a great day and a great opportunity to play some lovely basses and amps. Session Legen Guy Pratt gave a very informative masterclass and we were also fortunate enough to see a performance by Stevie Wonder's Bassist Nate Watts.

Me playing a Conklin 7 String Bass at the London Bass Guitar Show

Following this was the RNCM Revue, where I played as part of The Danny Ryan Jazz Quartet. It was a fantastic event with lots of impressive and varied music. The night held everything from Jazz to Classical, Percussion Duos to Rock Bands. It was in all a great showcase of all the fantastic talent at the RNCM.

Me playing at the RNCM Revue with the Danny Ryan Quartet

Within March we had our second "Ensemble Week" task of the first year of the course. Another busy week, this time with the challenging task of rearranging jazz standards. Everyone handled this task in an extremely creative manner, some using chords from the originals, others using melodies and lyrics in order to create completely different songs. The whole week was a true test of everyone's ability to arrange and create rather than merely learn songs.

The final element took place tonight! I've just got back from playing a gig with the RNCM Gospel Choir at Matt and Phreds in Manchester. What a gig! The energy was absolutely electric. Everyone sang well, everyone played well and it was a great laugh putting the tunes together and eventually performing them.

What a month.

Alasdair

James Christy

A project that I've been involved in since the start of this year is playing in the backing band of up and coming singer songwriter James Christy. So I thought I'd tell you all about that...

James is a middle of the road singer songwriter from the north of England who plays original material in an acoustic pop kind of vein. His music has been likened to Ed Sheeran, Paolo Nutini and Joe Brooks; his love of story telling lyrics and 3 or 4 part harmonies comes across in his recorded material. James' previous performing experience involves playing at many venues from Cardiff to Edinburgh.

The band are: James Christy (Guitar and Vocals), Andrew Bauckham (Keyboards and Vocals)... and Sessions Collective of course! Charles Macdonald (Guitar), Me (Bass and Vocals) and Ollie Harding (Drums and Vocals). In January, we rehearsed material from James' most recent album "Man Made of Glass" extensively to prepare for upcoming gigs in Manchester.

 (L-R: Ollie Harding, Charles Macdonald, James Christy, Andrew Bauckham and Me)

Our first gig was at Retro Bar on the 3rd of February where we supported Unsung Lily; also on the bill were The Ragamuffins and Alex Louise. Following this gig, we supported a band called Nude at Night and Day on the 6th of February. Nude are a band who comprise of RNCM Pop Course Students as well.

Our plans for the future include gigging James' material to different audiences in different places. In the immediate future, we will be learning more of James' older songs to augment the set. We also hope to write and record new material with a view to creating a live album later this year.

You can check out James at http://www.jameschristymusic.com

He's also on Facebook and Twitter.

Me onstage with the James Christy band at Retro Bar Manchester

Alasdair

RNCM Session Orchestra

Happy New Year! And welcome to my first blog of 2013!

My 2013 has been fairly action packed so far, my first week back at college contained various rehearsals and a performance with the Royal Northern College of Music Session Orchestra! As well as this, a gig in Dimitri's Tapas Bar with an Acoustic Pop Band, but the Session Orchestra project was in the forefront of my mind.

After a Christmas holiday of learning songs written by such bands as Jamiroquai, Amy Winehouse, The Jackson 5 and Michael Buble, rehearsals began with the Session Orchestra, comprising of a rhythm section (Guitars, Keyboards, Bass, Drums and Percussion) a 15 piece string section, a 5 piece horn section and 5 singers for the gig. The 32 strong ensemble rehearsed a 45 minute set of 10 songs ready for performing in the RNCM Theatre as part of the Lunchtime Concert Series.

Andy Stott and the Royal Northern College of Music Session Orchestra

The whole experience was fantastic. From rehearsing my own parts, to putting the songs together with the orchestra, soundchecking the equipment and doing the concert I loved every minute. The response from the 750 person audience was incredible. Standing on stage made me feel proud to be part of a project that united all of the schools of teaching and all ages of students at RNCM in one ensemble.

Another factor that helped the event's success was the addition of a live video link to the concert for all the people who couldn't make it to the gig. The concert can be seen here...

http://new.livestream.com/accounts/2465314/rncm

In other news, over Christmas my sister Catherine took some professional pictures of me. I've now added them to my website and updated it. If you would like to take a look, the address has now changed to http://www.alsimpsonmusic.co.uk

And finally, check out James Christy! http://www.jameschristymusic.com I'm playing Bass in his live band. His album "Man Made of Glass" is now out, and our first gig together is the 3rd of February.

So yeah, that's it for now.

Alasdair

Ben Folds and Skyfall

Another busy, bizarre week this week! It's been great fun though!

The first thing happened on Wednesday, where following something that Ben Folds posted on twitter, I walked to the Richard Goodall Gallery in the Northern Quarter of Manchester. The post said that he was there opening an exhibition of his photography work and people had the opportunity to meet him! As I am a huge Ben Folds fan, I jumped at the chance and I was not disappointed. Many other people were there with similar plans to myself, namely to meet Ben, and get him to sign something, but I hoped that I would be able to stand out in this case...

Ben Folds Signing my Trainer

Ben Folds performed in Sheffield nearly 20 years ago, a gig which my Dad attended. As a result of a misjudged stage dive, someone stole one of his shoes. He told this story the two times I saw him live in Sheffield (2007, 2010) so I thought it would be funny if I asked him to sign my trainer, he laughed and asked if I was the guy who stole it? I'm not.

On Saturday night I went to Leeds to see Ben play with his band Ben Folds 5 (all personal heroes of mine) on their 20 year reunion tour. They were fantastic. It was definitely a gig that I won't forget, marking the fourth time I've seen Ben live, but the first time I've not been the youngest there. That title was taken by my 16 year old sister Cathy Simpson on this occasion.

 Ben Folds 5 Live in Leeds

(L-R Ben Folds, Darren Jesse, Robert Sledge)

After fangirling over Ben Folds for nearly 4 days straight, I returned to Manchester on the Sunday for another recording session at SSR. This was a different experience for me as it was the first time I had been called upon to arrange parts for a session. For the project, Charles Macdonald, Ollie Harding and I recorded the band parts for Adele's newest song Skyfall for Stuart Armriding's Audio Engineering Degree. So last Saturday I recorded Piano and Bass Guitar, as part of the full band recording.

Sunday, we recorded a 4 piece Brass section and a 4 piece String section. I arranged the parts for the session, marking my first time doing that kind of thing and pretending to be a Musical Director! I really enjoyed myself and it was a great experience to hear the real orchestral instruments playing the music that I'd arranged, as opposed to the MIDI approximations "playing" the score before.

The Brass Ensemble at SSR

The String Quartet at SSR

Another busy day at SSR, but another great experience recording. Yet another busy week. How far away is Christmas again?

Alasdair

Royal Albert Hall

On the 13th of November, I was lucky enough to play in an ensemble at the Royal Albert Hall in London as part of the Music for Youth School Proms. It was quite an experience.

The ensemble in question, "Fourtissimo" Percussion Quartet, played first of all at the Huddersfield regional MFY event. Following that we qualified for the Birmingham National MFY event, where we received an award for outstanding rhythmic ability and musicianship. In August, we were invited to play at the Royal Albert Hall for the final event of the MFY festival.

Fourtissimo at MFY School Proms

(L-R Me, Tom Pritchard, Jake Brown, Sophie Smith)

The event was fantastic, an amazing range of instruments and genres of music, all performed by extremely capable young people of all ages up to 18. We were lucky enough to see a full symphony orchestra, an Indian music trio, a 600 strong massed choir of young people from Huddersfield and many more different acts.

Our performance felt awesome. Everything clicked in such a way that we knew nothing could go wrong... Well, aside from Jake Brown playing his djembe a little too aggressively and puncturing the skin. (See below) But this minor slip happened in the last 5 bars of our first piece, and in a venue as big as the RAH, who was to know?

Jake Brown's Djembe

All in all, the whole experience was one that I won't forget. We only played for 10 minutes, but that doesn't matter. It could have been 10 seconds and it wouldn't have mattered! It seemed bizarre to just go back to RNCM the next day and continue with college work, but life goes on!

Alasdair