Welcome! (Every new year starts like this…)

Why have you made a site Matthew, isn’t it a little pretentious?

The void and Matt

Recently I’ve found myself more and more concerned with the state of #bigSocialMedia, and yet still needing or wanting somewhere to put my noise in to the world. When I was 22 I started a reviews blog- which was very short lived (and hopefully gone in to the ether!). I’ve spent a lot more of my ‘non-musical’ work life recently in comms and tech. So much so, I’ve become quite obsessed with playing around with design and web elements… and so all of this considered, I’ve set up this little website as a place to share and connect with people which isn’t owned by a mega-corporation. I used to Tweet, now I build my own Tweet-esque space to shout in to the void… apparently!

Maybe there’s a small ulterior motive?

Got me. Whilst most of the website is an absolutely shameless, and probably quite static, self promo for musical work (never pass on a PR opportunity eh?)… I’m going to use this space to write thoughts about whatever occurs to me. Whether it’s life and work updates, brass banding, general music, or even just random rambles on whatever I feel like at any given moment. With that said…

Happy New Year!

I’m starting 2026 how I’ve started most years… learning two (this year 3!) new scores for brass band. I’ve decided that over the next few weeks I’m going to share my thoughts about all of them here.

The start of a long journey to Blackpool in March.

First up, is the area piece which I will be working on with Wingates Band during the next couple of months. Variations on ‘Was Lebet’ by Andrew Wainwright is proving itself to be a little mine of gems the more I dig. I confess, by recordings from when the pieces were announced, I wasn’t much excited at the prospect of the area rehearsal process this year. However, once I turned my back on existing sounds and started to think about the sounds I wanted to find, by learning the score, charting the history of the hymn tune, and playing parts… well I’m now absolutely chomping at the bit to get going on the rehearsals.

For now though I will wish you, dear reader*, a happy new year and I’ll be back to share some thoughts on Was Lebet soon.

Matt

*obviously no one is reading this!