Archive for the ‘General Information’ Category

Barney has just been playing Keys 2 on the Wycombe Swan’s production of The Wizard of Oz

Arts Educational Schools London have just announced a Part-Time Evening Courses Open Day on the 17th April which Barney will be working on.

It is an ideal opportunity to get an idea of the courses available and they are open to anyone at any level.

The day will begin with an introduction to the courses on offer, from the Course Coordinators, and the Part-Time Courses Manager.  After this there will be opportunities to tour the school, as well as participate in some introductory classes.  The day will end back in the Main Reception, where you will be able to discuss particular courses with individual tutors, and enjoy a complimentary glass of wine.

So not only do you get to see the fantastic set up at ArtsEd you get a glass of wine as well! Everyone’s a winner.

Barney is accompanying the wonderful Valerie Cutko at the opening of the Cabaret Season at Lauderdale house on Sunday 7th February.

Valerie is hosting Lauderdale House’s Cabarets this season.

Her credits include Grand Hotel (Broadway), Cabaret, My Fair Lady and Beautiful and Damned (West End), the Warner Bros. film of The Phantom of the Opera, and BBC1 series Material Girl and The Robinsons.

Barney is giving a talk at the Archamps Convention Centre in France today for Seek Research about how different arrangements, styles and musical colours can affect emotions and conjure changes of mood. Using a world famous song by The Beatles, ‘Yesterday.’

The Arrangement explores many different musical styles from Opera to Gregorian Chant, Close Harmony to Power Ballad. There is even a little bit of Radio One’s top DJ Scott Mill’s favourite, Wing!

I thought I’d write a post about the equipment that I mostly use and prefer to use!

Keyboard – On most of my recent gigs and shows I’ve been using a Korg M3 full size weighted keyboard programmed by the very talented Trystan Francis for Vivace Music Services.

I personally have a Roland FP-2 keyboard which I find has an excellent piano patch and is very portable. I can’t understand why it is that the only keyboard I’ve come across with ‘patch hold’ (you can change patch and not stop the current sound from being held on or reverb trail being cut off) is the Kurzweil K2600 which I played on CATS. Surely this is software based technology and should be standard on all professional keyboards?! It makes playing, arranging and programming more of a mission!

Pedals – I use a Roland EV-7 Expression pedal as I find it has a fantastic range of movement on it without being too sensitive like the lesser model the EV-5.

For composing, scoring and sequencing I use a Macbook Pro with Logic 9, Sibelius 6 and occasionally Finale as drum parts recorded in Logic don’t generally enjoy being scored by Sibelius directly. In these instances I export the midi file to Finale then export as an XML file and open it in Sibelius. I do prefer the layout and ease of use of Sibelius however. If Apple teamed up with Sibelius to create a sequencer that could instantly and easily print what you’ve recorded in Logic then I would be very happy indeed!

It’s been a long while since I’ve blown a trumpet in anger professionally but I currently use an Edwards Custom Bb which is an absolute monster of an instrument that used to belong to my old teacher Mark Bennett.