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ive been putting off this kind of post, but it seems kinda rude to avoid it forever.
im phil. i grew up in south london. i took up clarinet at 7 and sax within a couple of years of that. i grew up playing in church bands - which taught me a lot about expression, improvisation and appropriateness - and bands run by croydon music service - which taught me a lot about sitting still, doing what im told and being good at sight reading when the music is too uninspiring to practice. when i was 15 i got the chance to play bari sax with the croydon youth wind orchestra (with whom i was later briefly principal alto) starting a largely unrequited and unfulfilled love affair with the beasts - though i did once own a dead 12m for a brief sad time.
i went to swansea uni where i learned quite a lot about maths and quite a lot more about slacking. though i started off with intentions of playing a lot of sax - and played a gig broadcast on bbc2w - i soon gave it up completely for my other musical loves - playing guitar and singing in punky indie bands and my solo material (kinda a grungey billy bragg with some shouty poetry mixed in) though i later introduced sax to a couple of my band's numbers (i love xray spex). after a year of being dolescum and not-very-successful aspiring muso i moved back to london
i got married, got a job (that bores but sustains me), bought a house, had a baby, formed a jazz band, got back into church playing, started really caring about sax playing again.
firmly indoctrinated into the punk band belief that only an idiot would spend more than 100 quid on a guitar, but also obsessed with soundchanging pedals and accessories - i carry this ethos over to my sax playing so i still play my 1992 yamaha 25 alto (still one of the best intoned and most versatile student models ever made - so much nicer than the current 275s) with a link STM 8 and a bg lig.
think thats more than enough to be going on with - please dont think i expect anyone to care or anything
anyway, ive been a long term lurker on this forum, and an even longer term user of petes wonderful resources to remind me of stuff and to point people at when they ask me annoying questions - so many many thanks are due to him
im phil. i grew up in south london. i took up clarinet at 7 and sax within a couple of years of that. i grew up playing in church bands - which taught me a lot about expression, improvisation and appropriateness - and bands run by croydon music service - which taught me a lot about sitting still, doing what im told and being good at sight reading when the music is too uninspiring to practice. when i was 15 i got the chance to play bari sax with the croydon youth wind orchestra (with whom i was later briefly principal alto) starting a largely unrequited and unfulfilled love affair with the beasts - though i did once own a dead 12m for a brief sad time.
i went to swansea uni where i learned quite a lot about maths and quite a lot more about slacking. though i started off with intentions of playing a lot of sax - and played a gig broadcast on bbc2w - i soon gave it up completely for my other musical loves - playing guitar and singing in punky indie bands and my solo material (kinda a grungey billy bragg with some shouty poetry mixed in) though i later introduced sax to a couple of my band's numbers (i love xray spex). after a year of being dolescum and not-very-successful aspiring muso i moved back to london
i got married, got a job (that bores but sustains me), bought a house, had a baby, formed a jazz band, got back into church playing, started really caring about sax playing again.
firmly indoctrinated into the punk band belief that only an idiot would spend more than 100 quid on a guitar, but also obsessed with soundchanging pedals and accessories - i carry this ethos over to my sax playing so i still play my 1992 yamaha 25 alto (still one of the best intoned and most versatile student models ever made - so much nicer than the current 275s) with a link STM 8 and a bg lig.
think thats more than enough to be going on with - please dont think i expect anyone to care or anything
anyway, ive been a long term lurker on this forum, and an even longer term user of petes wonderful resources to remind me of stuff and to point people at when they ask me annoying questions - so many many thanks are due to him
