It's time to revive the channel! (2021 Update)

Hey! Welcome to my channel/website.

It’s been a while since I’ve put anything out and a lot of things have changed. I think the big thing that everybody can agree on is COVID and lockdowns. Great fun, really great fun(!) But apart from that, I’m in a new place. I live on my own now so this is pretty exciting and my career has been changing. I mean I used to be a gigging musician. Of course, not any more. But also, I’ve been doing a lot more teaching and a lot more- just sort of contemplating of what I want to do because this channel has been left gathering dust for a lot of years and I didn’t exactly know what I want to do next. But I know now and I’m pretty excited. This is gonna be cool.

Obviously there are gonna be some more performance videos as per usual. But I’m also going to be bringing out some more teach-y videos for guitar players and musicians in general but specifically guitar. And I’ve also got some other fun little videos as well like some opinion videos of favourite guitar players, top 10 lists, all that stuff. I’m not going to do too many of those. They’re just a fun little side project.

Apart from what’s been happening with the channel, even though I’ve not been around- Not even on social media. I’ve kinda just blocked everything out for a lot of months. The reason why is because I’ve been so focused on getting this album done. This has been a long time coming and lockdown has provided the opportunity for me to actually start recording through this horrible period that we’re living in.

So I’ve been recording a lot of tracks for this album and I feel like I can say for sure that at least some time this year it’s going to be done. I’ve recorded a lot of tracks already. There’s just a couple left to do and a little bit of mixing and mastering and hopefully we’ve got a finished product. I am super, super excited about this. This is going to be very big. I’ve had to slay a lot of personal demons to be able to do this. I didn’t think that I would be up to it. I didn’t think I would know how to do it and I didn’t think anybody would care. But regardless of what anxieties and limiting thoughts I’ve been having, I’ve just got on with it and done it. This is it now. So stay tuned this year. We’re going to have a proper album. It’s gonna be good.

To be honest, it’s been very difficult not even during lockdown but over the last couple of years to tackle some of these limiting beliefs that I’ve been having. One of them is I’ve been such a perfectionist. I have to make sure everything is completely accurate and 100% perfect. And anyone who knows what that’s like, you’re gonna know that you hardly get anything done and you kind of just reside in not doing anything at all because anything you put out is going to be not 100% perfect. So that has been a big challenge for me and also facing the rejection from people being like “oh this isn’t quite right,” “this is not perfect,” “you could do better.” Those kind of thoughts have really been niggling at me for a good few years. Well to be fair, quite a lot of years. Most of my life! But specifically if we’re talking about recent times, I’m getting through it. This is going to be something brand new, exciting and hopefully worth it in the end. I know it’s gonna be for me and I really hope that for anybody who’s gonna stick around and have a listen when it’s all finished, hopefully you’re going to find this quite rewarding too.

I’ve been recording it all myself. I’ve not been consulting anybody. I’ve not been going to recording studios. I can’t! This is all my own project. I’ve designed the album cover. It’s not very complicated to be honest but it’s an album cover. Everything about it has had my input and nobody else’s. This is gonna be very special for me definitely and hopefully the first album of many to come in the future. I really want that.

So aside from my album and the channel, I’m also going to be looking at my website a bit more. I’m gonna be putting out blogs now and again. It’s kind of an informal space anyway. Maybe just like tidbits that I might write like recommending pieces for you to listen to, or it could be like teaching little bits, or whatever. Just anything that I feel like doesn’t deserve a full video, I might put it on my blog. So I’ve got that.

And also on my website I, of course, advertise teaching. Teaching guitar is my day job. That’s what I’ve been doing since I left uni and I’m getting really good at it now. I feel like I’m getting really good at it now. With the rise of Zoom and Skype, I feel like online guitar lessons are obviously a lot more popular now because they have to be but we’re not as scared of them. We’re not scared of them anymore. So I’m also putting it out there that I’m happy to offer guitar lessons.

So to sum up really, we’ve got new videos coming to the channel, we’ve got an album on the way for this year and we’ve got blogs and lessons online. Things like that. It’s basically all to say that I’m coming back and I’m making sure that I’m staying back. This is gonna be long-term. I’m not going to have another hiatus. I’m not going to let it happen. This is it now. So yeah, I hope you join me for the ride.

Thank you for watching this video and thank you to everyone who has subscribed already and who does indeed watch my videos. It really means a lot. I know that for the amount of time I’ve been away, I’ve seen the comments. I’ve seen you all chip in and say how much you appreciate it. It does- I do read them. I do read them all and it really does mean a lot to me and definitely keeps me going. And it makes me feel like this is exactly why I want to come back because I can safely say that not everybody is going to care what I do in life. This is a very niche thing, right? This is a guitar-specific channel. Not everybody is into that. But the few that are, thank you very much. I really encourage you to stick around because you ain’t seen nothing yet!