FIRST job of the day is PR for next Friday’s (4 October) show for Borders Blues Club.

After writing up a news release I call round the music/entertainment journalists on the newpapers in the area and follow up with the news release.

The prototype ‘colours’ guitar necklace I painstakingly added colour to yesterday hasn’t worked out so I spend a little time redesigning it and cutting an acrylic master for a test casting.

After lunch I plug in the signature National and play hard to try and recreate a ‘live’ show – the guitar has randomly cut out on a few shows but before I see about getting someone to look at it I need to be a bit more specific about what’s happening. Despite all the jiggling, switching and other capers the guitar is fine.The stress of an intermittent problem!

A few years ago (well, probably eight or nine if I’m honest!) I got hold of a Fishman TriplePlay MIDI pickup while on tour in the ‘States. It’s an interesting gizmo but it never really worked for the job I’d hoped it would do – I thought it might be a way of transcribing guitar parts for my students but the software was unable to detect the difference between two notes of the same value – ie: an open A/fifth string and a A played at the fifth fret of the E/sixth string.

I’ve messed around with it a fair bit and even used it for creating MIDI parts in recordings but it just never really cut hot for me.

I noticed that Fishman has launched an updated version of the pickup…and updated all the software. The pickup is essentially the same as the one I have but there seems to have been some major advances not eh software. I download and message round a while. No time to check it out properly but it looks like it might have legs.

I take a walk up the loch side as darkness falls then get busy making chicken enchiladas for dinner.