I’ve had to do some editing of this one! But you can download it now and give yourself almost 2 glorious hours of random chat and music:
Anyways, I’m not saying it was rubbish this night, far from it. It was good music (natch), the phone rang and there was an instant-ish request, there was a bit of Christmas music and I had Ben Rutter as a special guest co-pilot which is always good fun.
I just think my head was in a different place and I struggled. I lost my train of thought as I was speaking a few times which is just insane, words came out of my mouth that were completely different to what I said in my head (saying “General” instead of “Glenfield” for instance and having no idea I said it wrong at the time) and other vocal mannerisms that were down to not engaging my brain enough as I was speaking which I just loathed and I knew I’d done it after the fact.
Frame of mind is definitely everything, and I my mind wasn’t quite focused on where I was. No explanation, it just wasn’t. It’s happened before doing the clubs where it’s like I’ve just gone through the motions. The fact I ended up doing 3 dance tracks back to back mixing on the CD decks during the show just shows my brain wasn’t where it was meant to be – although I proved I can mix live using the radio kit (even if the 3rd one slipped a little, oops), which I could make a little feature of perhaps since I never miss a beat.
The difference with frame of mind in radio is that it shows more than working the clubs, because I can just put my headphones on in the club and flawlessly hit every beat and nobody knows my mood (I miss that, with life in general too, because I was the shadow man).
In radio, it’s much harder to disguise frame of mind because I’m speaking more. It probably doesn’t show as much to anyone else as it does to me, if it shows at all to be honest. But it’s the perfectionist in me and I’ll beat myself up over something that goes wrong until I get another chance and completely nail it. It’s music, and if I’m not awesome at that it feels pretty rubbish.
Although a couple of points of note I’d do well to remember:
- I’ve done just 3 shows running it myself, so it’s bound not to be perfect or even close to it.
- Friday’s show, although a little bit rough around the edges, sounds just fine I’m sure and I’m being WAY too harsh on myself.
- Slow down and engage my brain a bit more.
- Winging it works in pretty much everything I do in life, certainly did in the clubs because you feed off the crowd. In radio, not so much, and just a little more prep will go a long way.
- Once I’ve done it more and settled down and get my timings nailed with some decent features, it’ll come together and it will all be second nature. I’m miles away from that as yet, so should relax about not being perfect.
6.5/10…?
DOWNLOAD – Friday 10th December
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