New Microphone!

This week, I was welcomed home by a big exciting cardboard box.

It turned out to be the Samson CO1U USB Studio Condenser Microphone that I had ordered from Amazon... and here is it set up with my laptop in all it's glory.

It being only around £70 for a proper professional microphone, I honestly didn't know what to expect from it, but I'm actually really impressed. Assuming you're close enough to the microphone, or the noise you make is loud enough, there's barely any background hiss at all, despite all the horror stories I'd heard. It makes sense I suppose- if you have to increase the volume of the singer, you have to increase the volume of the background noise too.

Renee and I also covered 'You're Gonna Go Far Kid' by The Offspring using the new microphone on Friday, which you can find on Youtube here. Beware, there's a fair amount of bad language in this song!

Another bit of band news, we've started talking to a couple of other people about forming a proper band (as in singer, guitarist, bassist, drummer) and we may be starting something on that front- but it's still probably a long way away.

Thanks for reading!

Making Music

I've played acoustic guitar since primary school, and have managed to keep it up. I started learning classical guitar in Year 7, and despite the fact I should practise a lot more, am trawling through Grade 5 (which I might even be ready to do the exam for, one day) and I think I'm certainly improving, little by little.

As well as classical, I've always enjoyed casually strumming a few chords and singing along to various songs. Occasionally, me and a friend of mine (called Renee) record the odd cover here

and there and upload to Youtube, with the band name 'Ruthless Mindz'. Since there are only two of us, it's all acoustic, and it's all recorded with a pretty bad microphone- but, here are a few link to a couple of songs we've covered anyway:

The Importance of Being Idle by Oasis

Just Tonight by The Pretty Reckless

We're trying to form a full band with a couple of other friends, but it's not going particularly well. We go to different schools, and have nowhere to practise together. On top of that, our drummer doesn't really have access to his drum kit.

Oh well, maybe one day we'll get our act together, stay tuned!

Neither of us have a massive knowledge of music theory, and we haven't managed to string together any original songs as of yet, but we're trying our best!

I was also given a photo shoot voucher as a Christmas present, and did a shoot with RLS Arts for the band. Here is one of the results, and if you want to see anything else about the two of us you can look at our Facebook and Youtube accounts.