audiot

hehehe, again i came across this youtube clip of the Barenaked Ladies – one of their bathroom sessions, called Bedside Manor – and again i fell in love with their performance. so i thought i just give you this video and tell you that this is the real thing. no matter what someone is able to do in a studio with the most expensive gear at the fingertips, there are times when it all boils down to what you can do right there on the spot. that’s why i like playing with an acoustic duo so much, there’s just no way to hide behind anything. the audience hears what you play – easy as that. and that’s what separates the men from the boys :-) or the women from the girls of course. we have a tv show here in germany (not sure if it still exists though) where the host sometimes invited stars and then (as a surprise) jammed with them. i remember two episodes, one with Ozzy Osborne’s daughter – whatever her name is, she just had a big hit back then – and the other one with Anastacia Newkirk. the host tried to play the Osborne-daughter-hit on his ukulele and wanted her to sing it. she didn’t, not one word. she told him she couldn’t recognize it because it sounds so different and thought she was off the hook. then he got his band to play it and they did a perfect copy of the original – again she didn’t sing and the whole scene became quite awkward… then the other show with Anastacia: as soon as he grabbed his ukulele she was already singing – even before he started to play. nothing specific, she just jammed along and it sounded great. that is what matters, at least in my book – just be able to do it. or if you’re faking, then don’t show up in a tv show, it could get ugly :-)

by the way, you might already know this clip – i guess it got around a lot. but i think it’s a must see for those who haven’t and it sure doesn’t hurt to see it a second time for the other ones, now does it?

anyway, enjoy this piece of art:

yep, and once again those are pictures of my cover rock band, some of them from 1997 – how cool is that? but i joined the band in 2000 – you could describe that as the millennium bug :-) – so i’m not in those old pictures, but in the others of course ;-)

check them out here

…or: the thin white line :-)

hopefully you worked a little on finding that line between stable voice and weak, fluttering, barely controllable voice. like i mentioned before, it’s important to always know where you are – linewise. think of it as kind of an abyss: stay at safe distance but close enough to enjoy the view (now, who is the master of lame analogies?).

knowing and dealing with that line is the first step in saving energy, because it doesn’t involve anything new to you, just using less strength or force. the next step would be to open your mouth wider. this leads us back to the second half of my first entry in this category – right here.

notice that i said opening the mouth as wide as possible saves energy. hmm, this may sound illogical at first – i’ll try to explain: there’s a certain amount of air coming out of your mouth (that was transformed into soundwaves inside your larynx, remember?) the wider the mouth opens, the more air gets through – the louder you are. more air means: mo’ loud, yeah. but it means another thing too (i really hope this makes sense to you in my crappy english…):

if

a certain tone = a certain amount of air + a certain amount of strength

then

more air + less strength = the same tone

well, more or less. but it really means you can compensate for less strength by just open your mouth wider. that’s not rocket science alright, but does it have to be? as long as it works – fine. and it does.

again go on practice that in connection with the last exercise: move to the ‘borderline’ and when you feel it slipping out of your hands, open your mouth wider and notice what happens. this could take a while though because chances are it will be something completely new to you…

p.s. i don’t want to irritate you by using terms like ‘strength’, ‘force’, ‘power’ and such all over the place. i’m using ‘power’ to describe something like a powerful performance, meaning something good, something wanted. what i’m talking about here, however, is not something wanted, it’s some necessary evil. so i’m using another word – strength. that means another form of power, muscular power, energy-consuming-face-turning-red-only-so-many-gos-per-day-power aka the one that needs to be reduced to a minimum. to provide another lame analogy: a fridge needs energy to cool your stuff – that’s the necessary amount. but if you keep the door open all the time, it needs lots and lots of extra energy because it has to compensate for your stupidity. so in my book power means something good and the other terms are…..ida know…..just……just deal with it, sorry

sheesh, i really need to learn english someday………………….

if you don’t get it, blame it on me and drop me a line through the contact form.

thank you

yeah, check this out. i saw it once on tv years ago and just remembered it again, looked a bit…et voilá:

ladies and gentlemen…..the waterphone:

i bet you already heard this in movies, right? how cool is it to finally see this thing – love it. you might have to turn up the volume, the clip’s not very loud. by the way, the guy playing is the inventor of this instrument. his name is Richard Waters, here is his website.

a few minutes ago i finished a bass recording session which got me thinking about growing in a musical context. although i’m not a bass player, i’m usually surprised at the decent results i get when trying. i guess a good bassplayer would notice all the mistakes i make and maybe have a good laugh as well but the non-bass-guys out there might never know that they have been viciously betrayed muwahahaha.

anyway, what struck me right during my kind of suboptimal performance was that i was learning a lot right there on the spot. because i did something different than usual, well usual might be a bit far-fetched for i recorded bass about five times in my life… and in those five times i played bass like a guitar player. a very common thing for someone who plays guitar more frequently than bass, i might add. and even if that’s not necessarily wrong, it’s still one-dimensional because drums are as much important for the bass – at least. so this time i had a little tuning problem, the song is in ‘d’ and i want it to sound deeeeeeeeep, so i tuned to ‘drop d’. but in the main riff there’s a ‘c’ as well. tuning further down a whole note didn’t work, the string felt like a spaghetti that’s been cooked for 20 minutes – ptui. by the way, is there a singular for spaghetti? maybe spaghetto, spaghettus?…). playing those parts of the riff an octave up or somewhere in between didn’t provide comfort to my ears. so i ended up playing no ‘c’ at all, and leaving some notes unplayed. that seemed to work and while i still bathed in my own look-how-i-solved-this-problem-coolness i saw that i just played the bassdrum pattern. no more coolness because i should have noticed this a lot earlier. but better late than never (grrrrr).

after writing so much, it’s about time to get to the point, right?

what i wanted to say is that dealing with other instruments expands your horizon beyond belief. i know i mentioned this in earlier posts but it’s important enough to mention it again and again. take an instrument that’s new to you, be it guitar, keyboard, bass, flute or any other weird thing you can come up with and try to think like a guitarist, keyboarder etc. – that’s important. this will kill two birds with one stone (the right saying? quite a cruel one…): first, it adds a whole new dimension to your playing (of your ‘usual instrument’), second it will lift communication with other musicians to a higher level, which simply can’t be overestimated. and even a third bird passed away (maybe the other two fell on it): you learn to play another instrument :-)

of course you don’t have to go buy dozens of instruments, just find someone who is willing to help you out. ask your drummer if it’s alright with him, then arrive at rehearsals an hour early and play some drums. or don’t ask and do it anyway ;-) but drummers are incredibly good at noticing if someone even looked at their kit in their absence. if it’s guitar, buy a used one for 50 bucks – it doesn’t have to be high-end, you’re not a guitarist (cool, huh?). you get the idea – get into other instruments, or better: get into the minds of other instrumentalists – it will pay off, guaranteed…

recently i was asked a lot about my cover rock band called R-JAM. people wanted to go to our website, look at our myspace page, listen to our songs etc. problem is, our website wasn’t updated in years and we don’t even have a myspace page (yes, i know…).

when i moved to this town about 2.5 years ago the band kind of went into standby mode, we did gigs – but only very few and we didn’t see each other for long periods of time. but because i’m moving back there at the end of the year, R-JAM is about to wake up again. so there is a new website (not finished yet but online) – a blog to be precise – that will be updated on a regular basis. and we will have a myspace page and whatever else too. the first step is the website, it can be found right here. it’s also powered by wordpress and has a cool design. i’m considering to use the same theme for this blog, might be a bit silly to have two almost identical looking sites though – we’ll see. there is not much content yet, i just set it up. oh, and it’s only in german….yet. maybe we’ll do an english version too because we have a bunch of english speaking fans as well….and french, of course :-)

anyway, that’s it. just go, have a look and drop us a line about what you think. you can find a contact form at….well….’kontakt’.

thank you.

what i’d like to pass on to you is one reason why i love the internet so much – learning. it never ceases to amaze me what sources are out there, at the click of a button. and although i’m not sure how far online teaching can go, what it’s capable of and where the limits are, there’s still so many things to suck up before you get to the point where only a real-life-flesh-and-blood-teacher can help you. not to mention that lots of those real-life-flesh-and-blood-teachers are not really helpful at all…

so this time here is a guy i recommend. maybe you already heard of him, it seems he’s quite famous on youtube. his name is Justin Sandercoe and this is his site. you can find lots of video lessons on ‘da tube’ (yeah baby, can i do cool talk or what), but i think the best place to start is his website and going from there because there’s over 100 video lessons of him and it’s kind of easy to get lost…

i’m not a guitar-beginner but there is a certain amount of important things i found in Justin’s lessons that my teacher did not teach me. so i’m kind of polishing my guitar-playing with Justin’s help. and i learned a lot in no time.

if you think about learning to play guitar or maybe you already play but not to your own satisfaction – qualitywise, or you’re just bored and a new hobby would do the trick then you’d want to check out justinguitar.com. it all is completely free, however there is the option of donating, so you can pay for what you use…

check it out

yes, a student of mine really asked me that once. what she meant was, why is it impossible for me to sing more than two songs in a row, or something like that…

did i write something about saving energy already? i think i mentioned it but haven’t really explained yet. so first of all, and the same with every instrument, being relaxed and using as few power/strength/force as possible is the starting point. take a drumstick or a guitar pick for example: you hold it very relaxed and loose, with just enough strength to not let it slip away. if your knuckles turn to a bright white, you’re doing it wrong. with the voice it’s quite similar, you need enough strength to stabilize the tone but not more. that’s a common mistake and an understandable one because for a newbie it’s hard to sing a good, round, stable tone. think about a kid that learns to ride a bicycle. in the beginning he/she will hold on to the handlebar (right word?) as hard as possible but with practice comes competence and the grip will get less firm – less strength is needed. this takes not only practice but also a certain feeling of safety aka losing the fear. and another point is related to this: holding the handlebar too firm will result in some sort of trembling because of the cramped fingers.

back to the voice now: you need a certain amount of strength to sing a stable tone – more in the beginning, less if you’re experienced. so now it’s up to you, try to find out how much strength you really need. just sing a song the way you usually do and then reduce the strength, the energy you spend until it becomes all weird and fluttering, unstable and imprecise. then increase strength until you’re on the safe side again. do that a few times until you know exactly where the ‘tipping point’ is. this is very important! you need to know at all times where this point is and how far you are away. exactly how fast can you go before your car slips off the road? how loud can you crank up your amp before the neighbours call the police? how much beer can you….you get the idea.

i’ll give you a little time to experiment…

have fun

just to let you know, i added a simple contact form to the site. just go to the ‘contact’ page to drop me a line…

and if you wrote a comment that didn’t appear somehow, it might have been caught be the new spamfilter – if that’s the case i’m sorry. just let me know (maybe through the brandnew contact form :-) ) and i will fix it…

i don’t know if you ever heard of her, if not – that’s a shame. back when i was around 22 or so, a guitarist and i started an unplugged duo (two guitars and two voices) called twilight with mostly covers and a few own songs as well. i went through my record collection to find some neat songs we could cover and found a song by Sara K. on some compilation. if i remember correctly it was ‘brick house’ – a ‘Commodores’-song covered by Sara K. i fell in love with it at once and ordered a whole cd of her. come to think of it, i should write a review about it…

anyway, we picked two or even three songs of her for our project and we were lucky that she was in a town nearby doing a show. i was blown away by her performance – in my opinion one of the best singers i’ve ever heard. afterwards we had a little chat, she really is a very nice person, and i am still thankful for that experience. two years later we saw her again at the same location, this time alone (last time she had Hui Cox on guitar with her) – and again it was mindblowing.

if you ever get the chance to see her play, just go. period. and you might want to check out her records as well…

the reason i wrote this entry right now is, i stumbled upon a video on youtube of her playing with guitarist Chris Jones. here it is (i hope, this works…). enjoy: