Of course they have to be great compositions! I mean, I guess there are exceptions but normally a great tune needs to be a great tune... Music = mood so it had better not suck, especially for film...

Anyways I have really started practicing on my Railboard a lot this year, it's starting to really get a lot of play again. So much music to be studied/created. Sometimes a year or two of "light" study after 4-5 years of hardcore practice can really allow for a perspective change and a lot of "Oh, now I get it" moments.

For me lately it's been a bit of exponential growth:

In 2004 I bought my first NS Stick. Prior to that I bought my first guitar in 2002 and played bass from 1982-present. However, playing live was something I rarely did. Hooking up with Steve Osburn in Ann Arbor who owns Oz's Music started to change that. From 2008 to 2019 I attended weekly group guitar lessons which developed into more song writing as a group and doing live performances for his benefit concerts. Add to the various Stick and Fingerstyle Acoustic guitar seminars at Interlochen also had open mic opportunities. Many things at Oz's also included Glen Poorman, Stephen Sink, Akin Unver, Jeff Luebke, and Art Durkee, as well a s few other Stickists not many from this BB would know.

All of the above tied together for me almost one year ago to this day - my plant in SE Michigan closed and I was offered to relocate further north in Traverse City. My wife and I now live a couple miles north of Interlochen. By a strange twist of fate, on my first day of work in TC, I went to lunch and standing in front of me waiting for a table was someone I knew from various acoustic guitar seminars not just Interlochen. We had lunch together and I learned he also moved north to TC, and invited me to weekly open mics. Just found my replacement for my lost weekly musical activities I had with Oz. Since then I've been playing live every week. I've rotated through all of my guitars, basses, and Sticks since last year and found the best thing to perform regularly is the 12 String Grand. So since April of last year, I've racked up 40-50 live performances. That's probably 2-3 times more than I've done since graduating from high school in 1984. So my "creative explorations" has been developing live performances for the last 12 months.

Now for the last two months we've kept it going via "Self Isolation Open Mics". I have a room in the basement set up and now I can pretty much play whatever I want and not have to carry everything as it's all inside my home. I just upgraded my Beat Buddy with the larger library and have been making way more use of it lately. Some of the other electronic drum gear I have is sitting on the sidelines now and I'm focusing more time into songs, instead of recording drum loops into a looper.

The challenge of online open mics is that I'm aware that if I share the performance to the group page, that could get boring over time as it's recorded weekly, so I try not to overkill the same material week after week. It's been a role reversal - in Ann Arbor I played more electric guitar, since moving to TC I've learned to always play at least one song on the Grand Stick. Playing electric guitar solo I find way more challenging as the audience will ask if I know certain songs. The Stick brings something different most people have not seen and I find it easier to connect with a live audience with. Second to the Stick is my doubleneck Emerald acoustic guitar and my fretless bass. I've also done well with my four string NS radius bass and NS Stick. Slowly rethinking what to do SOLO with electric guitar not being in a group setting anymore.

In some cases, I don't share the open mics after I'm done, if something went wrong or if to me it's too close to something I already saved, I'll just delete it.