Jim's Analogue Noise Bunker - An Introduction

Hello! Gosh, I'm writing again. It's been a while. Well, I did start a Blade Runner 2049 review, but that's on hold until I'm in the mood to watch the film again. I've been thinking about it in the last week, so I'm hoping I'll finally have that with you soon-ish.

Anyway, on with the subject at hand...

While I still consider myself an amateur guitarist and very much the "noob" at heart, after fourteen years or so of playing seriously, my passion for it is as strong as ever. This surprises me. As someone who is essentially a swirling vortex of forever changing interests, sexuality, gender, habits, diet and personality traits, playing guitar is something I genuinely didn't think would stick. I thought, by now, I'd be looking back and going "Hey, do you remember those weird few years where I wanted to be a rock star?" and be really embarrassed by it. But, looking back, much of my hobbies have gone through cycles, being very intense for a short period, then going cold for a while, then returning a few weeks or months later. I even went off movies for years when things got a bit stale in the mid-00s, even though I still identified as a "movie buff". You gotta have a central point to start at, right? Well, I'm sticking to that rule, but feel that my interest level in playing guitar has shot up enough to where I need to start expressing myself about it properly. My main three outlets for this recently have been: my Twitter feed; an old friend (and ex-colleague) who I consider my "guitar Obi-Wan Kenobi" and who I bug regularly via Facebook for gear advice; and my music tutor, who I have half an hour once a week to squeeze as much information out of as possible. I also text him when I'm drunk sometimes, but that's another story.

So, while the latter two outlets listed above are still fine (until I get blocked by either gentleman), the Twitter thing hasn't received a particularly vocal response from my followers, so I'm a bit concerned that they're either just confused or slightly annoyed by my tech talk.

And so we come to this.

I thought a few times a week I could write a summary (or digest) of all my guitar playing/tech thoughts, feelings and obsessions, rather than just spewing them onto Twitter as and when they randomly come up. I'll try and make notes and - shock horror! - maybe even record a few musical samples for you. If I manage to keep up with it, I may even open up a separate blog for it, rather than just adding to The Whittling Post. This should all reduce my output from twenty tweets a day on the subject, down to a few a week simply linking to this blog.

Everybody's happy.

Right, I'll go away and start jotting ideas down for the first official post.

Rock on.