I bought my wife a Nintendo DS with Brain Training for Christmas. Obviously, I’ve taken it upon myself to do as much testing (*cough*) as possible and am now pretty hooked, playing with it on a daily basis.

One of the games that is featured is called Low To High. You are given a brief glimpse of various shaped grids with numbers in it. The number disappear and you then have to click the squares in the correct order. Some of the grids are easy – just four numbers in a square. Others are harder – a line of eight numbers or a more random gridded shape. I’ve got a crap memory (mainly because I’m lazy and use my iPhone or the web to help me remember..well, everything), so this game is particularly interesting.

In playing this, I’ve noticed an interesting “dual mode” of memory emerging. On the one hand, I can do what I guess most people do – read through the numbers and then recite their order to myself as I figure out which empty boxes to click first. This is accurate (usually 100%) but very slow. It’s surprising how difficult it is to order numbers when you’re under time pressure… 

The second method, which is rather more interesting, feels less like a “scan” and more like a “snapshot”. I find that – provided I let myself relax enough to not think I can – sometimes – literally glance at the numbers as a whole without looking at the actual detail of which one is bigger than which, and then rapidly select the order. This is at least five and possibly ten times faster than the first method. But it’s not reliable. When I can do it, it works, but for the most part it’s very hard to relax enough to let it happen. It’s intuitive rather than procedural. 

Two things came to my mind with this. Firstly, it reminded me of Blink, the Malcom Gladwell book about rapid cognition:

Gladwell maintains that we “blink” when we think without thinking. We do that by “thin-slicing,” using limited information to come to our conclusion. In what Gladwell contends is an age of information overload, he finds that experts often make better decisions with snap judgments than they do with volumes of analysis.

The key point here is that I quite noticeably break my ability to “snapshot remember” if I think too hard about it. I can’t run the two processes next to each other – instead needing to actively prevent myself thinking about the order of the numbers if the snapshot/blink method is going to work.

The second thing relates to the way I play the piano. I’ve been playing since I was – well, forever. I’m not nearly as good as I once was, but I’m still at a pretty reasonable level.

There’s a huge level of intuition when it comes to piano playing which feels similar to the Brain Training / Blink examples. Once you’re at a particular level as a pianist, you pretty much literally follow your fingers – your brain is somewhere there but not actively processing each finger movement. It’s hard to explain, but if you listen to, say Maurizio Pollini playing a Chopin Etude, you’ll probably begin to understand that this speed and accuracy doesn’t – can’t – come from anything other than intuition.

With piano playing, things are a little different to the DS example – sometimes, particularly when you practice and re-practice a phrase your only strategy is to start slowly and work (then re-work…again and again…) on each individual finger movement. The holy grail moment is when you can release yourself from this active thinking and switch into something more intuitive. For me this is a very tangible moment – it’s very clearly when you stop thinking.

What’s also interesting – as I found recently when stumbling badly through the first half of a Beethoven Sonata before suddenly finding  myself able to play one particular section incredibly well – is that this memory is deeply embedded. I’d forgotten until that moment that this latter section was one I’d worked and worked on until it became intuitive. Maybe 5 years had passed since this intensive practice, but the memory of it was still there.

I’ve been aware in my music writing recently that I’ve got a bit of an obsession with order.

I have a tendency to automatically reach for the quantize option to pull all the notes into time – and much as I love fiddling with the various effect options in Ableton, I’ve realised recently that I’m a bit regimental with the way I use these.

One of the loveliest things about Ableton is that it give you pretty much infinite opportunity to make the thing sound rougher, which is ironic given that driving for higher quality is probably foremost in the feature set of most music software.

So, with this in mind, I spent an evening last week knocking out a rough cut of a new tune:

Ballache6

In this cut, I’ve tried deliberately to push and pull the shape around a bit. The random morse code tune over the top for instance is an arpeggiated single note but with a beat repeat to give it a random edge. Underneath there’s a whole bunch of filters and a “scratched vinyl” VST which I think works quite well.

All the usual disclaimers apply – it’s unfinished, needs a bunch of work, etc.

I’ve never been a CompleterFinisher

About 18 months ago I had a brief flirtation with “depression” – if it is possible to flirt with something as dark and miserable as depression – and spent roughly 7 months following that in counselling. I put “depression” in quotes there not because I see it as something to be laughed at, but because my depression was mostly stress-related; it culminated in me giving up a job I was doing from a distance and moving instead back to Bath where I now both live and work.

I wouldn’t go back to that time for any money at all – it was very dark, very disconnected and very frightening. Feeling out of control is not something I’m used to, or good at, and for many of the early days I was – as is often the case – completely in denial. Ultimately, as always, something good was untangled from the knot I’d got myself into, and I’m now happier and more stress-free than I think I’ve been in about a decade.

It’s ok to have a broken leg, a chest infection or ear ache. As soon as you mention that your brain went wrong for a bit, people start moving away from you at parties, coughing behind their hands and wondering when you’re going to murder everyone in the room. I’m fine now, of course.. ~twitches uncontrollably and reaches for the Prozac~

Counselling is a funny process, surrounded as it is with these taboos and unknowns. I’m a pretty analytical person. That doesn’t mean that I’m devoid of emotion but it does mean that I’m reasonably comfortable taking a step to one side and considering myself in the third person. As I started my sessions, I consistently couldn’t help but examine the counselling process itself. Questions like: “Is this working?”, “What does success look like?” or “When should I stop being counselled?” were in my head all the time.

During the time I was “in session”, I learnt three big things. The reason they’re big is that they resonated with me, and now form an important part of who I am and what I do. The reason I mention them here is that they are likely to form an important part of this blog, too.

The first of these sounds incredibly trite, but is increasingly forming the basis for many things in my life. It is that finding space – mental, quiet, self space – is absolutely key to fulfillment. At my stage in life – two young boys, job, social life, etc – it is extremely easy to just work, watch TV, go to bed, rinse and repeat. I am – slowly – starting to find ways to find silence and space. Sometimes this is late at night or early in the morning when everyone is asleep. Sometimes it is simply about removing headphones and instead finding quiet when en-route between home and work.

The second is that it is important to reach the end of things and to pause and savour the gaps. This is the moment that Donna Farhi talks about between outbreath and inbreath. It is the glow after orgasm, the satisfaction of finishing a piece of work, the out-suck of a wave before the next one comes in. Farhi talks about actively savouring the moment between thought and fulfillment. In the online world, particularly, it is very very easy to think of X and immediately be able to DO X. Savouring the anticipation is a skill that takes practice.

The third is the importance of the present moment. This is kind of a Buddhist point of view, but perhaps because of who I am, rings incredibly true with me. It is so, so easy to spend our time remembering the past or planning the future and forget that we are in the now; and that the now is actually the only “real” thing. Like many people, I find it intoxicating to plan, to think about the projects that I could to, the places I could go, the people I might meet. Thinking about the now rather than all this other stuff takes an active effort.

Counselling has illuminated these three things as synergies between many spiritual and philosophical approaches.

At the heart of these is the notion of awareness – looking around, noticing things, noticing our place in the world, having ideas.

This blog is about these things.

I belonged to a band called The Dead Lovers for a couple of years. We gigged around Bristol and Bath, every so often heading up to London to do some stuff up there. We supported Snow Patrol in 2003, just as they were rising up the ladder to extreme super-stardom (fuck me we got pissed that night…), and had a great time before the inevitable falling out which saw us splitting up in 2004.

In 2004 we also released our first (and sadly, only) EP, Judas the Gun. A review at the time said this:

“Judas The Gun is the first collection of songs from this Bristol, UK band. Self-released through the NJB label and distributed as a promo to magazines and record companies, the self-produced EP features the band’s standard “Lady Napalm”, a galloping, pitch-black affair which crosses from mid-nineties Radiohead into early Jeff Buckley and even Muse. The overwhelming emphasis is on the tight group performances – nothing dominates or tries to shine too brightly: singer/songwriter Tobey Keane’s voice, easily capable of swooping dynamic changes, sticks to a low register, while his acoustic guitar (beautifully played and recorded here) chimes through the uplifting chorus. It’s still a little too dark, perhaps, for the mass-market, but this kind of pretty-goth has a big following, and initial radio-play response seems to have been positive.

Much of the rest of the EP explores softer, but no less dark acoustic material. Overall, this is glorious, beautiful gloom, and as a mood-piece, Judas The Gun is tremendously appealing. The influences occasionally come through a little too strong: “Nicotine Angel Wings” plays like a companion piece to Radiohead’s epic “Exit Music For A Film” from OK Computer, but by and large the band find a path of their own and follow it with a great deal of confidence.

As a showcase of the talents of this young, unsigned band, Judas The Gun is very effective. As a complete and self-contained work it might eventually be considered too narrow to illustrate everything this band can do. However, it showcases an interesting, capable songwriter with undeniable skill, and leaves open the way for limitless expansion.

A very impressive beginning. ”

Here’s the songs – please feel free to download or just listen.

• Lady Napalm
• Flightless
• By The Lake
• Lucky

Check out the comedy promotional pics we had shot. That’s me in a cheap suit. On the right is Toby Keane, the genius who wrote all the songs. He’s still looking for a record deal and he’s re-recorded Lady Napalm for his new release. I put together a website for him at www.tobykeane.com during June/July 2008. Down the bottom are James and Harry, both musical geniuses in their own right.