Happy 2012!

Welcome to my new site, just updated for the new year! As this is Wedding Planning season, you may be visiting this site considering me for your ceremony or reception.

If so, please do visit the Music for Weddings page, you’ll find my new Wedding Music demo online, and I would also encourage you to check out my new longform piece called A Musician in Procesional, which tells the story as to how I started playing weddings, and what it means to me. I hope you’ll find it entertaining!

Also new is my solo guitar demo, accessible here on the main page, and then all demos and links are also available on the My Music page. The My Music page also has a link to my SoundCloud page, where I post multi-guitar arrangements of original music and recordings that I’ve done for wedding videos, commercials and other projects.

Theme for this year? Going deep! Trying to raise my game in every area. Look for a new single from Mas Trueno this Spring/Summer, and plenty of new recordings of guitar music throughout.

New in heavy rotation, additions to my Brazilian repertoire: Canto de Ossanha and Xodo de Bainia, and there’ll be much more coming!

December 2011: Just a short update for this month, as my 10-year mentor and great friend Alfonso Chacon passed away last week.

In the months to come I hope to write something more in depth about my relationship with Alfonso and what I know about his life and his work.

He was 77 years old, and went quite quickly from a stroke while with a student. I had a session with him in the previous evening, and he was in good spirits.

Before a week of traveling over Christmas and New Year’s, I’ll be in the home studio recording new solo guitar pieces for a new demo for 2012, and then I’ll be moving on to record the 4 original Chacon solo guitar compositions he taught me, along with my favorite arrangements he created, with the hope this will be my first solo guitar album.

My January News Update will coincide with an update to the site in general - all new Wedding Music demo, all new Solo Guitar, plus a lot more.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas/Hanukkah and Happy New Year!

November 2011 - A slower month gig-wise, and very welcome, as I’m now in the “home studio hole” recording new pieces for brand new 2012 Wedding Music and Latin Guitar demos.

I had received a couple requests from Brides this year to contribute recordings for their wedding videos - something which I’m happy to oblige. For a couple of these, I took the opportunity to create multi-track guitar arrangements for something that might hold up more for repeated listens. I’ve now posted some of these on my new SoundCloud page which I’m also using to post demos of original ideas and other experiements:

http://soundcloud.com/neildixonsmith

In other news, I’m now a “featured instructor” at the new Caravan Guitar shop, specializing in Gypsy Jazz guitars, and also home to the Koentopp Guitar studio. The store is located at 4754 N. Rockwell in Lincoln Square. If you’re in the neighborhood, this a great new local resource!

Big Gig o’ the Month: playing at Meze in Fulton Market with Alfonso, we hope this becomes a monthly appearance! You can now see videos of the Chacon/Smith PanAmerican Guitar Duo on our new YouTube channel:

http://youtube.com/chaconsmith

Happy Thanksgiving!

October 2011: This month the wedding season winds down with a bang, with 5 more on the books before Hallowe’en. My ceremonies this year have all been really wonderful, and I look forward to the one’s ahead.

Performing for weddings can be really intense, you want it to be perfect, and it can be a huge challenge to not only be playing well (ie, relaxed) while observing and reacting to the events as they unfold, which could mean creating an edit of tune on the fly.

My hands used to shake before ceremonies, but now I think I’ve crossed the threshold from the “new guy” to the “experienced guy", and even if I have to perform a very new or very challenging piece, my entire mindset now comes from a place of confidence and an excitement at the opportunity to excel.

I’m reflecting on my 6 years of playing for weddings Chicago, and one of my tasks for the month will be to get down in writing some of my thoughts regarding ceremony music and the role of the musician in a wedding, I’ll be sure to share with my friends in the bridal world.

The big shows this month: October 8 is massive! I’ll be playing the Schaumburg Business Association’s annual gala event from 6-7pm, then jumping in the car to head to Cole’s in Logan Square to join my band Mas Trueno on a great Saturday night party bill.

I’ll also be doing another event with the SilverEdge consultancy, part of their “Wine and Wisdom” series. It’s pretty incredibly to be embraced and made a part of these events - basically networking and business intelligence sharing opportunities, and the recognize the value that live music can bring to spark thought and conversation.

Enjoy this most beautiful month of the year!

September 2011: It’s crazy time! All hands are on deck as my schedule is filled with weddings, solo guitar performances, duets, quartet shows and full band shows. Some of the things people don’t think about when they deal with musicians is the incredible time management involved in it all, learning pieces for special events months down the line when a free moment materializes. It’s all exciting until the brain fart in the middle of a piece I haven’t played in a few weeks!

My guitar quartet, Los Guitarristas, just created a YouTube page, and we have videos from our show at Sabor a Cafe in August, more to come soon, please do check it out, a solo performance by me of Grenada is in the mix:

http://youtube.com/losguitarristasUSA

Beyond that, it’s mostly private events this month, but I hope to be back in the public sphere soon enough.

Enjoy the cool air!