{"id":8,"date":"2014-09-15T16:55:57","date_gmt":"2014-09-15T16:55:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/martinphilipsmith.wordpress.com\/?p=3"},"modified":"2014-09-15T16:55:57","modified_gmt":"2014-09-15T16:55:57","slug":"about-me-and-my-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alterativus.com\/martinphilipsmith\/?p=8","title":{"rendered":"About me and my blog"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi! \u00a0 I’m Martin Smith and, in-between stints in my “daytime job”, I am a musician, singer and songwriter.<\/p>\n

As a musician, I’m primarily a\u00a0guitar player and I can turn my hand to a range of styles – rock, blues, jazz, country, folk, classical. \u00a0These days, jazz and blues are my greatest passions.<\/p>\n

I play a few other instruments with varying degrees of success. I keep meaning to find time to really improve my piano playing.<\/p>\n

As a singer, I’ve performed\u00a0rock, blues, jazz and musical theatre.<\/p>\n

Here’s some performance \u00a0links:<\/p>\n

Rock<\/a><\/p>\n

Blues<\/a><\/p>\n

Jazz<\/a><\/p>\n

Regards songwriting, I had a purple patch about 8 years back when I was writing a lot of material. \u00a0Some of this found its way into live performance with my band at the time – SkyHunter – a bluesy rock outfit. \u00a0A subset was also recorded by SkyHunter. \u00a0The eponymous album can be found on Spotify here<\/a>. \u00a0 \u00a0By the way, the “Drive by EP” and the track “organFarmer” aren’t by my old band. \u00a0Seems a new bunch of lads have picked up the band \u00a0name and are running with it.<\/p>\n

Songwriting and recording are things\u00a0I’m keen to get back into the swing of and I’m hoping to use this blog to air song ideas – both new material and covers – and get your feedback.<\/p>\n

Recently, I\u00a0very seriously contemplated going down the solo “singer-songwriter” path – just me and an acoustic guitar. There is a nice, elegant simplicity about it – it makes your live act nice and portable – plus, there are no band members to fall out with!<\/p>\n

However, I’ve recently started to form a new band, playing a blend of jazz, blues, soul and funk. I will use this blog to post updates on the progress of the new band through formation, rehearsals, gigs etc.<\/p>\n

Beyond that, I will also\u00a0\u00a0generally let folks know what I’m up to music-wise, share thoughts with you about musical directions I’ thinking of taking, let you know about up-coming gigs, share my creative angst, let you know what I’m listening to and who’s influencing me \u00a0and generally share music related “stuff”.<\/p>\n

I hope that what I post going forward is sufficiently interesting and entertaining for you to pop by for read (and a listen) from time-to-time. \u00a0Please do feel free to comment, ask questions, make suggestions and so on. It would be great if this becomes a conversation and not just a mouthpiece for me.<\/p>\n

All the best,<\/p>\n

Martin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi! \u00a0 I’m Martin Smith and, in-between stints in my “daytime job”, I am a musician, singer and songwriter. As a musician, I’m primarily a\u00a0guitar…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[11,20,22,25,26,32,36,39],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.alterativus.com\/martinphilipsmith\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/martin-hsguit1-resized.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alterativus.com\/martinphilipsmith\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alterativus.com\/martinphilipsmith\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alterativus.com\/martinphilipsmith\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alterativus.com\/martinphilipsmith\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alterativus.com\/martinphilipsmith\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alterativus.com\/martinphilipsmith\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alterativus.com\/martinphilipsmith\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alterativus.com\/martinphilipsmith\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alterativus.com\/martinphilipsmith\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alterativus.com\/martinphilipsmith\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}