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***************************************************Here comes the much needed update!
So this is it,
This is me, Dave...
I've spent the best part of an hour trying to describe my love of music, but its no easy task. As any lover of music, or lover of anything knows, the feeling is just there, rooted deep inside of you. I can only hope that my love of music, comes through in my playing.
Music is my release, my escape, and the way I feel most free and comfortable in expressing myself. A single song can connect to you, or connect you to. Move you in any way. I'll be walking along with my headphones on, music up full and feel like I'm floating, or not even there at all. It can make you transcend. It can make you dance. Toes tapping, hands drumming away at anything, with your body moving incontrolably!. The right song, at the right time, and you're hearing the soundtrack of your life!
I think music's most amazing strength, is in its power to make the listener transcend through time and space, for three minutes, they are somewhere else, on another planet. Free from the chains of daily life.
Sounds like heaven to me!
I've played a number of other instruments in the past, though none gave me the feeling that guitar does. From the moment I was given my brothers old guitar a little over 4 and a half years ago, the feeling it gave me hasn't changed. Like I've said, it did then, and still does let me open up, and play.Express myself. Thats what makes me pick it up every day and keep playing.
I started out strumming chords, and desperately trying to pick out Street Spirit [Fade Out] from a memory of my oldest brother playing it years before. But over the next year and a half, I gradually got more into blues, with players like B.B. King, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, who amazed me. I couldn't believe how much feeling they had in their tone, such expressive, and incredibly skilled players.
Although I started out on Electric, on an old Epiphone, things changed after I'd been playing for about 2 years. By luck, fate, or coincidence, I happened to see Michael Berk play. The guy amazed me, I was in absolute awe My mouth dropped when I saw and heard what he was doing, convinced there must be a second guitarist hidden away somewhere. I was immediately inspired, it was all so new to me. So I plucked up the courage to ask him for lessons.
His teaching inspired me so much, they are most definitely the best lessons I've ever had. A good teacher is truly invaluable. All the while, his wisdom, advice and playing, along with the playing of people like Doyle Dykes, Tommy Emmanuel and Michael Hedges, inspired me to keep practising.
These lessons went on for about a year, and since then, I have spent time recording, practising, and writing new tracks, although the only fingerstyle piece I've been happy with so far is What You Will(although there are a few tracks in the pipeline as I write this).
So this is where I am now.
Over the past year, although I still love acoustic fingerstyle music, my playing has changed quite a lot. Since I bought my gorgeous Ibanez archtop (Artcore AK 85) off a good friend of mine, I have gotten far more into jazz. Influenced by a number of guitarists such as Joe Pass, Jim Hall, Wes Montgomery and Django Reinhardt not to mention the dozens of other instrumentalists that have influenced me.
Currently I am working with another guitarist called Peter Cook. He's a fantastic musician and in the couple of months that we've been working together I feel like I've learnt a lot from him. Together we play a number of Jazz standards. We have started gigging and also spent much of the summer busking together in Cambridge. Although we don't have any recordings yet, I'll be sure to upload them as soon as we have.
As well as working with Pete, I have also started playing with a fantastic vocalist, pianist and songwriter called Steph Brown (http://www.myspace.com/stephbrownmusic). She's incredibly talented, and I have the privilege of working with her on a number of her songs.
Next year, I'm hoping to do a BA in Jazz at Middlesex but in the mean time, I'm going to practise my ass off!
I'd like to apologise that the recordings I have up at the moment have been up for some time, but now I have a new acoustic aswell as the archtop, I'll re-record those and others at some point and get them online along with more of my own material. I'll also upload recordings of mine and Petes duo as soon as they're done.
Thanks to everyone for their continued support and I'd like to offer my total amazement to anyone who's read this through!
I'd also like to apologise to those of you who are waiting for me to accept your add requests, if I've taken a while, its largely because I like to spend time listening to your music and reading through your profile before I leave a comment.
Take care, and keep listening
Dave Toule