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Setting goals for the approach to 30

Setting goals for the approach to 30

I’m 28 and 4 months, by February that will be 28 and a half.

I won’t say I’m NOT doing well, I’m married with three children, have a lovely house and a job I enjoy – but everyone needs goals.

So, instead of setting normal goals for my age of career, family, home… I’ve decided to play on my geeky obsessive tendencies and round off my guitar skills.

I can already play guitar, acoustic, electric, whatever – as long as it has six strings I can find my way around it.

I won’t go as far as to say I’m any kind of guitar master – but I could hold my own in a band.

But that’s mainly on the rhythm side – I’m a drummer at heart – but with a tab in front of me and a couple of hours to practice – I could learn the lead part to a song or two.

But I’m not talking about rounding off my six string guitar playing skills – nope I want to add other guitar shaped instruments to my repertoire.

So between now and 25 July 2011 I want to have learnt to play the ukulele, the bass guitar and the banjo to a level where I could comfortably perform a middle level song on the radio.

As I can already play the guitar, these instruments shouldn’t be TOO bigger stretch for my limited mind and capacity to learn.

So I’m starting with the ukulele (thank whatever you believe in for spell check on that one), and already have enough chords down to play a couple of VERY simple songs.

The Janet & John of the ukulele songbook if you will.

I’ll keep you posted with my progress and if you live in Jersey, have a proficiency in any of the instruments I’ve mentioned and don’t mind a difficult student – I’m looking to record this as a series for radio – so need another voice.

In fact – my first public performance on the ukulele – an instrument I picked up for the first time yesterday evening – will be on Children in Need Day at the Jersey Arts Centre as part of the ‘Do Something Different’ mentality.

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Making a musical trail

mic_mPart of my job includes making promo trails for my show, for the BBC Jersey website and occasionally for other things as well.

Usually this just involves me writing 30 seconds worth of speech, finding a piece of music and talking over it with a fade in at the start and fade out at the end.

Sometimes I’ll pull together something a little more creative – adding sound effects, other voices, acted scenes.

Well the one I’ve just been asked to help on included singing and me on the guitar – it didn’t go out.

I thought I’d share it with you thought: Clash of the Colonies (sung radio trailer).

I will say in my defense that I didn’t write the lyrics, I’m not singing on it and was asked at very short notice to perform and write the music.

If I had my way I would have recorded the music track first, then recorded the two people (a Canadian and an Aussie) singing the words.

This would then give me the freedom to mix it properly and put together a properly balanced jingle.

I should probably also have played the music a key higher as well – but as you can barely hear the guitar – I don’t think that really makes much difference.

And if anybody is interested the trail is for a special being repeated this Easter on BBC Radio Jersey that was originally recorded for Commonwealth Day that saw an Aussie and a Canadian (both BBC Jersey journalists) argue for their own part of the Commonwealth.

What do you think?

Also I’m interested in improving my voice over skills so if anyone wants a good quality recording for their podcast give me a shout and I’ll do it for you – within reason based on legnth and copy.

More from me

You can listen again to my show on the BBC iPlayer (wherever you are in the world) or listen to a trail I made a few years ago for a Podcast Sitcom I started writing but got bored with.

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