Playing the guitar and playing beats

This blog post is written by Richie

I call myself Richie Rich Senior. I am a member of This New Ground Collective. In January 2020 we started our music project working with Sam. We have been playing instruments. We each take turns to do different things. Labake does singing, I’ve been playing the guitar, Martin on bass, Emma on the keyboard, Lizzie also on keyboard and Nicholas conducting. Faisal is usually on the bongos and Catherine likes to play her recorder. Kelly and Tamaz are making music on the iPads making funny tunes. Nathalie films and Sam plays his guitar with us.

We have learnt how to play Wild Thing using Figurenotes. Figurenotes is good for me because I have autism, it makes playing the guitar easier because I just follow the colours and the patterns.

Last week we started writing our own song, I don’t know what it’s called yet. In the past we have written a song called Hammersmith Bridge, but the bridge is closed so that’s why we are writing another song. Our new song is about a woman and a baby and all the different stages of life. I created the beat of the song with Sam. Our song reminds me of a Sean Paul’s song, I think it’s called Rockabye, it’s got sining and rapping like our song.

We might be doing a concert near Hastings. I am very excited about that. I have played in a band before at The Gate but when the gigs come up, I always get really excited!