2012 - First post of the year!

I will endevour to try and keep adding to the blog a little more regularly this year! Have just created a new website which is devoted entirely to my guitar teaching business. This is called guitartutor.co.nz .

Matt Paull's drum solo

My son Matt has just uploaded a video of him playing to a Dream Theater backing track. He created the backing track on his own and played all the instruments himeself. The sound and picture quality of the camera was not too brilliant but the drumming was very good.
Follow the link below to check it out.

Matt Paull's Dream Theater drum solo

Taupo Community Expo

The Taupo Youth Wind band is playing tomorrow (Saturday 16th) at the Great Lake Centre in Taupo. Both my sons are members of this fantastic ensemble which is steadily putting together a very good set of material. They will be playing for half an hour from 12:30pm.

Latest news

Extremely busy week. Couple of gigs over the weekend. One at Suncourt with the bliss duo, the other at the Taupo Cossie for the Ulysses club with Working Class. Both nights were fantastic. The Cossie was absolutely packed and the dancefloor was full right from the first song of the evening till 12 O'clock.
Spent many hours helping my son Matt put the final touches to a Dream Theater backing track he has created. He is going to be using this track to audition for a drum competition in Australia later on in the year. He is also going to upload a film of his drum solo on youtube, I'll post a link to this at a later date.

Guitar Tuition Wairakei

I've been teaching guitar at Wairakei school for about 9 months now. I started off with 4 groups of 4 kids. Since the beginning of the year this has increased to 6 groups. I've been really impressed with their enthusiasm and the speed with which they've picked it up.

I did a small musical item with the kids last Christmas and tomorrow we're going to perform again. The School Hall at the moment is sited on the other side of the road. Over the next few weeks the Hall is being relocated on to the School grounds. The performance tomorrow will be the last time the kids have to cross the road to have assemblies and concerts etc.

Great Lake Big Band Review

Just read the review of the Big Bands last gig at the Rotorua Jazz Club. Very pleased with the write up. Click on the following link to read it:

http://www.blissnz.co.nz/text_files/RotoruaReview.pdf

Rob's Ditty

An old friend of mine from London wrote a song once which we used to play in our local pub, the Magdala in Hampstead. His name was Robert Plant, not of Led Zeppelin fame, just West Hampstead fame. Anyway he never came up with a name for the song so we just used to call it 'Rob's Ditty'. I've just recently transcribed the song and have begun using it in some of my guitar lessons. Most of my students who have heard the song really enjoy the challenge of playing it, it's played very fast! I've just included it as a sample song on the guitar tuition page of my website.