Yesterday I was sent an email by
Gondwana Records,
the label formed by trumpeter Matthew Halsall
to shine a light on the talent Matthew heard in the local clubs. The
subject was saxophonist/flautist
Jasmine Myra, announcing
the imminent release of her second album, 'Rising' that will be released at the
beginning of May 2024 (why the wait if the music is ready?). The email contained
a link to the title track, at
Bandcamp, but the track can also be heard at
YouTube.
Along with the saxophone of band-leader Myra, the recordings feature flute,
harp, piano, guitar, bass and drums, producing a sound slightly reminiscent of
Halsall's earlier albums, with the sax replacing the trumpet, although here
there is prominence given also to the guitar (played by Ben Haskins), an
element that is not to be found in Halsall's recordings. A definite yes to
this sound!
Once I heard 'Rising', I had to see what else was available from Myra: her
debut album, 'Horizons', can be found in its entirety on YouTube, along with a
few live performances. On one of these (at the Art School live festival,
2022), she dedicates a tune to the Canadian musician, Kenny Wheeler, who
played on Bill Bruford's debut solo album, "Feels good to me", so this is for
me a point of reference. At the moment I have yet to ascertain any structure
to the pieces (presumably written by Myra), but that will no doubt come in
time.
I'll order 'Rising' in due course.
In the mean time, I made a 'proof of concept' setup of all the equipment that
has been arriving over the past few weeks. The equipment in the picture is not arranged in
any sensible order, so I'll explain it logically: the blue box on the right is
my practice amplifier. Next to it are two pieces of equipment: at the bottom,
looking like a mobile phone in a closed case is a 'solar power bank' - this is
like a battery that can be charged either via the electricity mains or by an
inbuilt solar panel. The output of this goes into the little box with lights
on it - this is the power distributor - and the output of this goes into the
red box with the light on - this is the octave pedal. In terms of guitar
signal, the guitar is connected via the lead that plugs into the right hand
side of the octave pedal (black cable); the output of this pedal (white patch
cord) goes into the multi-effects box (on the left) and the output of this
(black cable) goes into the amplifier. Nothing is connected to the mains power
supply.
It all works together. The octave pedal sounded much better today than it did
in its initial trial although it was slightly noisy; this presumably is a
side-effect of the power distributor. Not all the outputs of this box are
equal - half have low output and half have high output, so next time I'll try
powering the octave pedal with a high output to see if this makes any
difference. Otherwise I may have to buy a noise gate pedal. I made a new preset for the multi-effects box that has a slight
amount of phasing and nothing else; this is intended to be the default preset
for the box.
There are two more items that have to arrive that will complete the set-up: a pedalboard, on which everything will be mounted (this should arrive in
the next few days) and a tuner pedal. The order of effects will be mixer (in
case I use two guitars in a performance; this won't be wired up at first),
tuner (ordered yesterday), octave, chorus, multi-effects. This is, to say the least, slightly unconventional, but I'm relying on the multi-effects box to produce overdrive, and anyway I'm a rhythm guitarist, not a lead guitarist.
This day in history:
| Title | Tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 65 | Post Mortem | Programming, Cooking, Migraine | |
| 680 | Somebody's been lying | Psychology |
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