Abi Makes Music

The Must Be The Abi Makes Music Show. Best show ever.



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I used to play with my £46 Ebay Yamaha PSR-282 keyboard, record with my Poundland microphone, and vocalise with my chords damaged from laughing at my mum's exasperated face too much.



BUT THESE DAYS I make life happen a bit more effectively thanks to the lovely government who gave me a free Music Production course at Point Blank. SO NOW I have made some nearly-not-terrible recordings all by myself and they are on this page (apart from the Prostitution one - that's from back in the terrible days).



I have a degree in BA Mixed Media Fine Art and half of a degree in BA Interdisciplinary Performance. I play piano, clarinet, saxphone and flute. Sometimes I leave my pointe shoes on my floor and pretend that I still do ballet. One day I will again. I used to scare my teachers by drawing pictures of cut up animals and by writing stories about Steve Owen from EastEnders using various animals to attack Saskia's dead body with. I didn't have many friends at school. I used to pretend to fancy Craig David to ward off people who thought I was gay. I think they have found out the truth now.



It might be a good idea to mention my family at this point because there are some people in it who do things and because my mother made the fabulous decision to pay for piano lessons instead of holidays and food. Well we did have SOME food, but not as much as the families who had more than one car.Well actually we had four or five cars, but one was mouldy and had no wheels and one was broken and another was nearly broken and so were the rest actually. We broke down on a hill once and my mum looked like she was going to cry, like the time my brother hid in her room whilst she was doing her facial exercises. My Irish father, when he wasn't cutting up dead bodies and taking heads of railways lines, used to play double bass in The Weavers Green. He also did some touring stuff with some famous people who I can't remember the names of, but I do remember he said that Little and Large were terrible because one of them stole his cigar. My dad was also on the BBC series 'Ambulance' and dropped an elderly man down the stairs.

My cousins now run the famous Tommy Ellis Studios in Dublin, where people like the Spice Girls have recorded (I wrote a letter to my aunt when I was 12 asking for their autographs, but unfortunately the postman did not bring me anything), but I've never been to Dublin because I haven't had a passport until recently, when I joined the band The Duloks (http://myspace.com/theduloks). We went on two tours of Germany this year and now I know what a plane looks like inside and I also know that people in Germany eat a lot of bread a cheese and animals. Shizer Minelli.

My auntie Angela is the pianist woman at The Four Seasons hotel in Hyde ParkI think it used to be called Inn on the Park. She has been there for years and everyone loves her. She also used to play the piano on 'Opportunity Knocks', that television show presented by Hughie Green where people try to be famous. Her son Gary O'Toole, my cousin, owns the Gary O'Toole School of Music in Denmark Street. His students include Will Champion of Coldplay, and Steve Sidelnyk who tours with Madonna. He is also in the Steve Hackett band and has played drums for people like S Club 7 and Kylie.

The one I like to mention the most is Michael William Balfe, born 1808, died 1870. I used to recite encylopedia entries about him when I was at school and I told my music teachers I was planning on developing a fine baritone voice in his honour. I did not follow through with that plan luckily, but MW Balfe composed The Bohemian Girl and 27 other operas for London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Milan, Trieste and Palermo. He wrote Marble Halls – that song that Enya ruined a few years ago. My favourite quote at school was something that said "Balfe called upon Rossini the following day." because Rossini was a good and famous composer. Balfe is something like a great great great uncle to me. He hasn't phoned me for years though. I hope he's ok.



This is me in my BA Mixed Media Fine Art degree show. I made this room and I played sounds in it. My piece was the best piece in my year. I made a complaint when I didn't get a 1st and the response was "you should consider yourself lucky to have obtained a 2:1 at a university that you didn't exactly over-frequent." True I suppose.



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I also make nights of fun. Here are some past nights of fun that I have made happen:



I have good days.



.and I have terrible days.