Wise words

Why hello.

I'm blogging today because something someone said the other day has stuck with me. He asked me what I want to do with my life. I then responded by saying a few tasks and goals within music and all of that stuff. This is when he replied:

"Oh, so you want to change the future? Nice"

Those 3 words stuck with me - change the future.

That's the new goal guys. No matter what I end up doing, I want it to matter, I want to make a difference.

I want to change the future.

The aftermath of my brief spell in radio...

Well, having flirted with fame at the beginning of the week, I was due to leave for Isle of Wight Festival on the Friday. However, this didn't quite happen.

Friday afternoon happened to be the time set for my first A Level exam, A2 Music Technology. I won't lie to you, it was horrible. These papers are usually pretty simple, a walk in the park even. Apparently they chose this year to change things up a little bit. 

The thing about the music tech specification is that it doesn't tell you EXACTLY what can come up for the 16 mark essay topics. It just says "History of Music Technology". That could be anything from how synthesisers work to the Nyquist theorem to the ins-and-outs of how A/D converters work. This means that teachers have to guess which topics are actually examinable. My teachers guessed wrong. They asked us about the history of reverb or how microphones work. That was a horrible panic moment in the exam. I had a rough idea of what to write, but having not covered it, confidence levels plummeted. 

Then there was also this section where you had to note down the levels of certain MIDI parameters that had been programmed by the exam board. Luckily, us candi students had these BLOCKED on our exam logins on the Macs, so we couldn't actually answer the question properly. We mentioned it to invigilators for them to tell us we aren't allowed any help. Great.

All in all, it was a horrible exam when it was actually supposed to be a really nice way to start the exam period. No. I need an A from Music Technology to take up my place at the University of Surrey in September. Looks like I'm taking a gap year!

After that disaster and change in life plans, I really didn't feel like departing for the Isle of Wight festival. Luckily, my cousin was on hand to take the tickets so they didn't go to waste. Otherwise I would have worn the wristbands as glorified bracelets, but you know. It's not the same. 

The other exams weren't as bad as music technology, just so you know. 

That time I was on the radio and the like (6/7/8 June)

Hello bloggers.

I only partially know why it's taken so long for me to blog about this experience, but the important thing is that the time is now. 

Basically, my friend Jack told me that Absolute Radio were running a competition to win tickets to Isle of Wight festival. To win them, you had to recreate a song by one of the headlining bands using only household objects. So that's exactly what I did. I thought "hmm, that could be interesting", as I'd already dabbled in household percussion on my track "Sounds Like Breakfast". I started out doing "All My Life" by the Foo Fighters using things like scissors, deodorant, mugs, general cutlery and a load of other things. My recording session started at about 11pm, and then carried on in to the early hours of the morning. The only thing that stopped me doing another one was a mouse running across my kitchen floor during the session (I record in my kitchen or living room late at night so I don't wake anyone up). That was *joyful*.

I woke up the next morning to a phonecall from my dad to say he'd just heard my entry on the Christian O'Connell Breakfast Show and that they were ranting and raving about me "being a star" and "being better than Glee" etc. That was amazing, actually. I knew my entry wasn't bad, but I didn't expect that much attention from it! Not only did the people at Absolute Radio spend that day sharing my entry all over the Facebook and Twitter pages, they tweeted me asking if I would be able to do another one, as they'd love to hear what else I could do! 

Naturally, I got to work straight away, pulling out the hairdrier and the cellotape to mimic the guitars in "Sex on Fire" by the Kings of Leon. This one didn't take as long, as the ball was already rolling with the general household object tomfoolery. I managed to record this one before nightfall so I could get an ordinary nights sleep. 

Next morning, I woke up again, now thinking "Mm, I wonder if they'll play it?". Absolute Radio confirmed this general musing, as I turned on the radio literally a second before they started playing my rendition of the KOL song. Absolutely ecstatic (geddit?), I called my mum to tell her the good news just as Christian O'Connell confirmed that I'd won the tickets to Isle of Wight Festival. 

As if that wasn't enough, I got a phonecall from the radio station asking for an interview live on air! Madness! On Saturday, I had been sitting outside making music technology revision material, by Tuesday morning I'd had roughly half an hour of radio airtime! I won't lie, it was an amazing time to be me.

The tickets arrived on Wednesday morning, but they didn't. The bloody postman didn't ring the doorbell, so they slipped one of their "Sorry, we called while you were out" cards through the door. Stupid man. However, my good old mother went down to the post office and told them what it was for and they said "Sam Togwell? Absolute Radio? We heard her yesterday morning! Well done!" and then handed over the tickets 24 hours before they said we could pick them up. It's amazing how the tiniest bit of fame can lead to such corruption in the post office :P 

I think that's roughly it. Now exams are over, I'm trying to overcome my writer's block to write some banging stuff to put out there.

Video killed the radio star? B*££0cks

Let's hear it for the award winning composer :D

Hello followers (Gannon).

So today, I spent an afternoon at the Odeon in Leicester Square. I was there for the First Light Awards 2011, as the film I wrote the soundtrack to was nominated for an award. That film was called "Hey Jumper" and was directed by Elishama Udorok. You can see it here. 

From the title of this blog, you can tell that it came first in its category, thanks to all the people we pestered in to voting. Thankyou very much everyone. It means a lot, as we got a funky award that we got to pose with with Adam from Spooks (Rupert Penry-Jones) and some other lady. Very fun. 

Can I just add that the goody bag was GREAT! I now have a deck of casino royale playing cards, a Wallace and Gromit carrot pen, a free ticket for any film at Vue, a few books, a tshirt, a football, a frisbee among other things. Even if we didn't win, the goody bag would have been a suitable consolation prize.

THEN there was the after show party at Planet Hollywood. There were loads of semi-important people there, and we had some very interesting conversations with them. Unfortunately, I didn't get to talk to the film composer, David Arnold, as our paths did not cross. However, the free food more than made up for this. You know the food you normally pay about 50 quid for in there? FREE. Everything was just free. I was so amazed by the lack of money I spent.

All in all, I had a brilliant day. This probably isn't that interesting for anyone else to read, but at least I had fun. 

ALSO, I took a screenshot of this email my music tech teacher Jack sent around as it's so lovely! 

Almost made me blush.

The next blog may or may not be more interesting.

Casserole - What's the point?

Today, my main objective is to find the purpose behind casserole. I just don't get it.

Casserole: - 

A dish, usually of earthenware, glass, or cast iron, in which food is both baked and served.

 Food prepared and served in such a dish.

Ok, so by the "Food prepared and served in such a dish" definition, casserole can be anything. THIS IS VERY WORRYING. By this definition, I could put play-doh, potatoes, glue and mushrooms in a casserole dish and it could still be classed as a perfectly acceptable casserole just because it was made in a casserole dish. WRONG. THAT IS JUST WRONG.

Another thing about casserole is that it's just an excuse to hide food from people. It's just all piled in that dish really horribly, thus hiding the food from the recipient. That's just plain weird. If you're cooking for someone (or indeed, yourself) you want them to find the food you just cooked. If you're going to hide it from them, then what's the point? Oh yeah - YOU MUST BE RETARDED. 

For some reason, it gave a real headache to eat this casserole. I sat down at the table, my head was fine. Start eating the casserole, the onsets of a headache appear. I think it just perplexed me too much.

OH YES, and it burnt my mouth. 

Why would you want to do that? You could easily make a nice pie in half the time.

So I've come to the conclusion that casserole is a bit retarded and should be avoided at all costs. Good day.

Just a few things to share with you.

Ok, so this Christmas holiday, I've been ever so slightly creative. Might as well, I've had the time.

I started off by writing a song about how ill I was. This song was called 'Man Flu':

Man Flu by SamTogwell

After the success of 'Man Flu', I rerecorded an old favourite of mine, 'Anon'. This song is about the awful state of the plumbing in my house:

Anon! by SamTogwell

Enjoy!