I hope you and your loved ones are all safe and well during these super challenging times. I wanted to reach out to my Amanaska family and thank you for being part of my musical journey. I miss playing with you all and really look forward to playing live again when all this passes.

Until then, I’ve had a bit of a crazy idea I would like you to be part of. For the past 14 weeks I have been doing a regular Tuesday evening live stream on Facebook as a way to keep the creative juices flowing. It can be a very lonely affair playing solo to a virtual audience. Fortunately I have been able to play live with my kids a couple of times.

My latest idea involves asking artists who have been part of the Amanaska journey to improvise a phrase or two over a basic track I have created, currently titled, Prayer for the Isolated. You would film yourself singing or playing a couple of ideas whilst listening to the track on headphones. A phone video would be ideal. There are more ‘high end’ solutions available but I wanted to try it out first with the least amount of fuss for you guys. Just make sure you shoot in landscape mode and not portrait.

My plan is to create a collection of short clips of each phrase you submit and be able to trigger them live from a keyboard or controller of some kind. This would mean that I could at least jam with you and see you performing at the same time.  I tried a basic set up with some clips I created and it seemed to work pretty well so I think it could be super fun. Each performance would be unique, and the more people that get involved, the more interesting the combinations could be.

The first performance would be on my Facebook live stream on August 25th where your clips would be projected onto a wall in my studio with me playing live on the side.

The only direction I would give you is to sing or play what you feel. It could be anything from one spoken word to any kind of interesting phrase or sound ( or more if you feel like it) If you don’t feel like being part of it that is cool too.

I have attached the backing track I created today that is based around a D drone at 117bpm. Have fun with it.

Thanks again for sharing your musical gifts with me over the years and stay strong. I miss you all!

Peace Simon