I made a decision to seek out some local musicians to help me out with my album project.

The biggest issue I have with my songwriting is on the music side. I believe that I write good songs, and that's been backed up by countless musicians and industry professionals.

I'm very happy with my lyric writing, and the general melodies. The problem comes when I try to get the song out of my head into musical form. Because I only play basic guitar, I cannot seem to add the expression I want from the musical instruments. Like I do with the vocals. I'm sure that I will in time, but I really want to get this album out before the end of this year.

I was chatting to a friend of mine who goes to the odd karaoke, and I discovered that he was in a band. He asked me several times to come with him to an open mic night. So I did on wednesday.

I ended up getting up and doing 2 numbers, with the help of a guitarist.

I have to say that it was a very enjoyable evening. The venue had shades of the cavern club (of beatles fame). It was all underground, and mainly arches. The acoustics were great because the long arches created a funnel effect for the sound. Nice and loud.

Before I left, A few of the musicians came up to me and asked me to come back and perform again. So I agreed that I would gen up on one of the songs they perform, if they would learn one of the songs I like. There were no objections . So it seems I'll be up under the arches again soon.

All of this gave me an excellent idea. I could go to various open mic nights and get to know a number of local musicians. Then find out if they are interested in helping me develop my album. I will run up CD of a number of my original songs for them to check out. If they like what they hear, then we will talk

I'll keep my blog updated about this. I came across 2 potentials on wednesday, though nothing is for certain until they are recording with me.

What's been going on with the Youtube figures. They have a habit of changing things, and this time they've removed the total video views from their statistics. So I had to do a manual count up. Here's the latest:

My subscribers are up to 746.

The channel viewings have climbed to 17,049.

The total video viewings are now at 262,877.

You can visit my Youtube channel at the following link:

Jeffstunes Youtube channel

Right. I've got to go and learn "Afternoons and coffee spoons" for the next open mic night