Rising to the surface

Its been a long, long three months since I returned from Japan, and Ive been guilty of lack of contact with friends and family, neglecting my flute practice, sleeping too much, and other such crimes against life. But, its time to get on with things.

There is a shakuhachi festival in Bisei in Japan in August this year. Its run by Yokoyama and his school, and may represent the best chance I'll have of meeting and learning from him. JetStar have cheap flights from syd->osaka now too. So a few weeks holiday to go is do-able. This will also help give me something to focus my practice towards. Bronwyn has a baby now, and is not teaching for at least another month, so I dont have weekly lessons to kick me along. the last two weeks have seen me get back into the flute, though a bit erratically, but the sound is good, and it feels great.

In an effort to provide an incentive to practice daily again, im going to try an experiment. I've been recording pieces as part of my practice, and ive put a few up on my website. I am going to try and put up a new recording every few days. Of course, because you guys might be listening, I will want each one to be better than the last - which ought to result in a similar effect on my amount of practice as upcoming lessons have.

i still need to get some webspace sorted to put these files, but for now, ill hang them off the webpage and link to them from here. So, have a listen if you like and if you have any comments, let me know.

here's the first recording: Hon Shirabe, bare bones version, as usual, recorded in the bunker at Middle Head.