Hello Blog Readers,

A topic that often rears it's head for me and I'm sure many other creative people is 'survival'. Will I continue to be able to keep on doing what I love and be actively involved in the creative side of the arts in the future? Over the years I have seen so many people move away from music and into more stable careers. For example I am the only person from my GCSE music class who is still actively pursuing their performance career. On my jazz degree course we started with 24 students and ended with 14, despite having gained extra students over the four years. Of the fourteen graduates I know of at least three who have embarked on non-musical paths. I would be interested to know if the stats are similar across the board with other creative disciplines.

It doesn't take a genius to come up with many of the reasons why people chose not to pursue their talents. The job description for a musician is arguably one of the most off putting and it is surely similar with other creative subjects. Firstly you have to work incredibly hard for very little monetary compensation, you also need to be able to motivate yourself and be good at finding jobs/projects/funding, having excellent people skills is also very helpful along with reliability and punctuality, you probably also need to be able to drive/do admin/haggle/chase up money/teach/lead groups/run promotional campaigns/work with children/use computers and not to mention- be superb on your instrument and have the ability to walk into a situation with people you have never met and make music.

What I am really interested in is what sets those who continue with their art apart from those who don't? Could it be that they are better at what they do than those who give up, maybe they have more drive and determination or perhaps they are just more delusional?

Sadly some of the musicians I know who have dropped out and followed other paths are also some of the most talented people I know. Having talent isn't necessarily a prerequisite for a flourishing musical career. Perhaps they don't have the drive to apply themselves to the above criteria or are simply too fearful of the consequnces of not succeeding?

I know for myself it is very simple. I have to play music to be happy. I feel most alive when I am involved in the creation of music at a high standard. I am well aware that there are many people out there who exceed my level of competence on their instruments and many people who are more talented creatively or far better connected than me but I still have a drive to improve at my craft and a need to keep doing it. Perhaps I am deluding myself in thinking that one day it will pay off? To be honest I'm not really sure that I know what 'paying off' will mean, I don't imagine that music will make me rich but I do have a sense that I am pursuing something better and higher than where I am now. I will continue with music and succeed because I have to.

I, like many others, look to my teachers for inspiration and I have been lucky to receive guidance from many masters of music. The late Tony Levin was house drummer for Ronnie Scots Jazz Club for years as well as having toured with Mujician and The European Jazz Ensemble, but he also ran a successful family business selling carpets. Jeff Williams has made a career with his creative playing including stints with Stan Getz and Dave Liebman and yet he took a few years away from jazz and set up a book publishing company. Paul Clarvis is an amazingly diverse player and makes his living solely from music but he plays many different styles and works as a session musician as well as playing jazz and world music. It seems that to have a flourishing musical career you have to be able to diversify, whether that be into other ways of making money or the types of music that you play.

It is very hard to predict what will happen in the future but I feel pretty sure that I will still be a professional musician for many years to come. My ideal would be to continue to make my living through musical activity- which at the moment includes playing, recording and teaching- but to increase my playing work so that I could choose to teach only those who I wanted to. If I had to I would definitely take on a day job to support the music that I love, which tends to not be the most commercial, but hopefully that won't have to happen.

I would welcome some feedback from others who are trying to succeed in a creative sphere. I would like to open discussion on the subject. Why do you pursue an artistic path? What drives you to succeed? Have you found any unusual ways to support your careers? Do you find teaching as rewarding as practising your skills? Please leave comments below!

Best Wishes

Lydia

Hello and welcome to the new and improved lydiaglanville.com!

If you've visited my site recently you may have noticed that change was afoot. The good news is that it has all now been updated. You can find out about and listen to all the new groups that I am involved with via the 'Projects' page , see an up to date gigs list (not surprisingly) on the 'Gigs' page and read my most recent biography on the 'About' page. If you click onto the 'Media' page then select 'Video' at the top you can see some new videos, which includes performances from the Harmonic Jazz Festival and The Horsedrawn Camp.

If you've got any comments about the site or any other enquiries please get in touch via the 'Contact' page.

Hope to see you at a gig soon.

Lydia

Hello All,

Some of my regular readers will be more familiar with my blog as medium to find out about my recent musical activities. This time I'm taking a break from that format with the hope to open up a discussion on an important topic for musicians- practice.

I started playing drums when I was eight years old, now I'm twenty three practice has taken on many different guises for me. As I am fast approaching my fifteenth anniversary of picking up the sticks it seems an appropriate time to take stock of the situation.

When I was very young practice was something my teacher would nag me to do. I had no method of how to go about it, let alone an instrument on which to do it, and would just sit down and try tapping through the stuff we had done in the last lesson on my practice pad. When I started secondary school it changed from being a solitary pursuit to one which involved wind bands, choirs and later on jazz and rock bands. The practice of music became very much my social life at this period, with many rehearsals at lunchtimes or after school. Despite being heavily involved in music I still lacked any kind of discipline on my own. I would occasionally practise things which my teacher had showed me at school but I was yet to develop the critical capacity and the patience to sit there and thoroughly practise anything. At that time I was playing and practising with so many groups that I thought it didn't matter.

It wasn't really until I was sixteen that I began to get an inkling of what practice was about. I entered for my grade seven drum kit exam which was one of the first real challenges for me. I found that without more regular practice I would be unable to play everything that was required for my exam. I think this was when I first began practising for up to an hour by myself on a daily basis and I immediately noticed the benefits. Instead of just getting by I was able to play things well. This level of practice continued through Sixth Form college and increased to upto two hours daily when I began preparing for music college auditions. I improved rapidly during that time learning challenging styles like Latin and Jazz. It was an exciting period of musical discovery for me and was the beginings of learning how to really practice.

When I first started at Birmingham Conservatoire I had to really review the way in which I practised and develop some kind of routine to make sure that I covered all the new material I was given. Drum lessons became less regular but for a longer period of time. Teachers would give me large amounts of stuff to work on in one go and then I wouldn't see them for a month. This demanded that I developed more discipline and a routine to make sure I got through it all. For my first two years there I regularly practised for five to seven hours a day and would try to roughly spend an hour on each area. I also developed the ability to look at my own playing in a critical manner in order to address what I really needed to work on. I spent a lot of time working with a metronome, correcting bad technique and playing at low dynamics. The results of this were that when ever I sat down to play with others I felt highly connected with my instrument, it was like we knew each other inside out. However the downsides were that I was overly critical of my playing and my confidence took a big dive. For the first time I understood actually how 'good' I was at the drums and how much work I needed to put in. Thankfully as I improved through practice my confidence did a little as well.

By my third year of music college I was playing in so many bands that practice took a back seat again, a little like my time at secondary school. I spent all my time in rehearsals with other musicians my age and it was exciting but highly stressful. I learnt a lot about how to play in a band context and performing to an audience: I was even running my own band. The downside to this period was that I wasn't looking after myself properly and lost focus on my own practice; I nearly flunked my third year technical exam through lack of time to prepare. By the end of that year I was burnt out and questioning whether I ever wanted to play jazz again.

The final year at the Conservatoire was more about getting through and trying not to take on too much. I was allowed time to develop my interest in Latin Percussion through my Major Project which was fantastic and kept me going through my period of disillusionment. Practice changed from an obsession to a short daily routine of an hour or two to keep my hand in. I also had to greatly cut down on the number of gigs I attended, for the past three years I had been at a gig almost every night. I could no longer keep up the routine of going to bed at two and getting up at six. At the time cutting back was the best thing for me and enabled me to get my degree (BMus Hons 2:1) but I was plagued with guilt about not practising hard enough.

Now one year on and I am a professional musician and practice takes a completely different role in my life again. I live in a terraced house where any practice I do must be as quiet as possible and not for too long a period. I teach for two and a half days a week which also restricts my practice time. If I'm lucky I get the opportunity to practise when my students don't turn up to their lessons, which is brilliant! (Not that they don't come but that I can practise) Practice has become more of a joy again as I get less opportunity to do it nowadays. I also find that I practise things in a more concise way. I look at what I need to work on for the music that I am playing and focus a lot on technique. I am much better now at creating a work/life ballance and really enjoy jazz again. I am also conscious of areas of my playing where I have lost the control that I would have had a couple of years ago, which is upsetting. I am gigging more than ever and probably need to develop some methods of practising whilst waiting around at venues.

It seems to be that practice has moved in cycles during my life and I'm ever conscious to avoid 'burn out' at all costs. Any thoughts from fellow musicians or practitioners of other disciplines would be greatly received.

Lydia

Hello Blog Readers,

Yet again I have let well over a month slip by without updating you on my recent musical activity. The blog is entitled 'The Bonfire Radicals' as the band have been my main musical occupation and obsession of late. First we had the photos with Colin Whitehouse back in March which I believe I mentioned in my last post. They were a great success and you can view them on our Facebook page.

On the 11th and 12th of April we recorded 4 tracks for our new Ep which is due to be realeased in the late summer/early autumn. We recorded percussion, guitars and a live take of 'I Wish' on the first day and added the strings, woodwind and stomping on the second day.  It was all a great success and I was impressed with the standard of musicianship from the band and the quality of sound that the technicians recorded. Initially I thought that we weren't going to get everything recorded as it took a while to get all the percussion mics set up but luckily we all sailed through our parts in only one or two takes. We were fortunate to have our photographer Colin Whitehouse at hand on the first day, he got some great photos from the shoot which can be viewed on our Facebook page but I will post a taster below of some of the Radicals on a quick tea break.

Another cup to tea.

As well as recording we had a couple of successful gigs over the bank holiday weekend with dates at the Midland Arts Centre and the Urban Fox Folk Club. As always it was so much fun to play with everyone on stage and the performances were well received by the audience. We got a live recording from the night which will be uploaded onto Soundcloud soon so watch this space. If you can't wait til then we found this video of us playing at the MAC to keep you busy.

At the moment we are gearing up for upcoming dates at a Gypsy festival near Henley-in-Arden on the 19th of June and Moseley and Edale Folk Festivals in September. More details about dates for the Bonfire Radicals can be found on our band Facebook page or on the gigs section of this site.

Even more excitingly we are all set to embark on a video project with Director and Producer Desmond Crowe. Desmond is better known for his work as an Art Director on productions such as Spielberg's 'Band of Brothers' and Branagh's 'Frankenstein' so we are delighted that he has taken on the task of making us a music video. The aim is to shoot the video in early December and try to get three tracks recorded. He has some very exciting ideas for the film but they shall remain top secret for the moment! As always the results will be posted on here when it is finished.

Now then, I think it is high time I stopped writing and got myself ready for my gig tonight in South Wales. The gigs section of the site has been updated again so have a look and hopefully see you somewhere soon.

Lydia

Hello all,

Looking back over the last month or so it feels like a lot has happened in a small amount of time.

A lot of energy has been going into getting 'The Bonfire Radicals' of the ground. We had our first gig on the 4th of February at a Lunar Society event at the Hare and Hounds. Thankfully we were very well received and the gig was a sell out. As a result of that success we will be playing at the MAC on the 1st of May, Urban Fox Folk Club on the 2nd of May, Moseley Folk Festival on the 3rd of September and at Edale Folk Festival which runs from the 9th-11th of September. It would be lovely to see some friendly faces at any of these dates but if you can't wait until then you can hear the best bits of our last gig on Soundcloud.

A couple of weekends ago all of us Radicals ventured out to the back streets of Brum for a photoshoot with Colin Whitehouse. We were all quite nervous about the day- not being sure whether we would find good locations to shoot or whether our outfits were quite right- but Colin did an absolutely brilliant job and put us all at ease. In-fact it seems that some members of the band were clearly cut out to be models and career changes are in order! At the moment we are busy preparing for our first proper recording session with Sal Broughton on the 12th April. To be the first to see/hear the results why not follow us on Twitter or Facebook?

Last Friday the David Garside Band had a final rehearsal with Raphael Mann- our producer and the brain behind Frizz Records- in preparation for our recording over at Gizzard Studios in Bow on the 8th of April. The aim is to get all of the rhythm tracks finished so as everything else can be recorded on top. As usual Raph had a lot of helpful things to say and I came away with completely new drums parts to try and remember!

Aside from The Bonfire Radicals and David Garside things have been very busy at school and in my life as a freelance musician. Last week three of the classes that I teach had concerts all of which were a great success. As a teacher you can never underestimate the amount of inspiration you can take from your students. I was so proud to see them play and my love of performing was renewed by watching the joy and concentration on some of their faces.  I have also been enjoying playing some jazz recently with a few gigs at Theatre Severn, some teaching at The Conservatoire Junior School and even venturing out to Hereford to play with Dave Price, Lee Goodall and Erica Lyons.

Last night I had a gig with Wildfire Youth Folk Ensemble- all the kids had come on a long way but I was particularly impressed with Rosie the percussionist who was the most confident I have seen her yet. It was a special treat for all as we were supporting the Urban Folk Quartet. It was great for everyone from Wildfire to see their leader Paloma Trigas play at her best and in my opinion they probably put on the most exciting live performance in the UK at the moment. If you have not heard them yet you should really check them out.

I will leave with a video of The UFQ live at The Cross in Moseley.

See you soon Lydia