Wednesday 25 March 2015

What's happening March 2015

I once again find myself in the tropics.  Funny, when I say it like that, you think of white sandy beaches and coconut trees, balmy warm weather.  But no, this is The Pilbara.  Barren vast stretches of red dirt, blazing sun (hit 43°C the other day, that's just short of 110°F for my American mates).  This is the heart of iron ore mining, Western Australia.

I brought an old '74 Yamaha classical student guitar up here two years ago, which lives here, and I re-find it from whomever was looking after it.  I get in plenty of practice, and put in time for learning new songs. Songs jump in my head randomly, and then I have to arrange them.  Even though I have songs I should be working on.  This time it is Elton John's "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road", always loved that tune.  I looked up the chords and they were pretty hard to deal with, I tried transposing up 2 semitones which made it better, but still hard to deal with.  It is quite a chordy sort of song, more than three in this one!

I checked out Naudo's version and what can we say, he is Da Man. He transposed it up 4 semitones which fits well, and made some great chord resolves.  So I've followed his lead.  As usual I changed it a bit to suit me, but it's all done, I just struggle to play it!  Watch this space, still really enjoying it.

Last night, heading back to my room, there was a bunch of people having drinks nearby.  One of them recognised I "was that guitar player" and I offered to play some tunes.  An hour and a half and a tall glass of Baileys Irish Cream later, I bade them farewell and hit the hay.  It's always enjoyable to play to people who have never heard me before, see if they guess the songs, see them enjoy it too.  Generally two out of three people I play guitar for "understand it", they get it, what I'm trying to achieve.  What's more, when people realise that someone playing the guitar doesn't mean be quiet, sit up and listen, it's something that is woven into a relaxed scene - sometimes you listen, sometimes you converse, it's just something that is there and enjoyable - even better.

I've been playing 1-2 hours every night for the past two weeks and I'm back to my A-game.  Fingers are good, I'm relaxed, brain is in the groove, I'm getting good tunes out.  I'm really keen to get a regular gig back in Perth and keep this groove going.

Oh, I ordered a hat.  Monz, who I work with up here, who has a lot more fashion sense than me, I showed him a few I was thinking about getting, he pointed me to the one I ended up ordering.  Apparently it is "like something Bruno Mars would wear".  I looked up Bruno Mars.  Good muso, I should arrange one of his popular tunes :-)

JAW

Thursday 5 March 2015

Open mic with Mike the drummer

I went down again to Shaun Street's Open Mic night, trying something different this time.  He has a backing band (including himself) if anyone needs it.  Since I have played with drummers before, I said "I'll have a crack with the drummer!"

I mentioned this to a few people before hand and there was a lot of "so when are you going to rehearse?" This surprised me, because I was quite sure that if I meet him 5 minutes before we went on stage and sketch out a quick game plan, it will all be just fine.

So I spoke to Mike just before we jumped on stage, I mentioned how I only ever play solo and my tempo is all over the place, and I probably wouldn't notice if I was drifting, so it was probably safer if he followed me rather than I follow him.  And that my endings to songs are generally a slow down, perhaps I just nod to indicate to rit?  And I rattled off a list of songs to see if he knew them, a few he was familiar with but "I'll follow in with something appropriate".  I thought it was a good game plan.

Away we went, and I think it worked out well.  A few of the usual things happened when I've played with other musicians - I started playing hard because I felt my sound was being drowned out, kinda "we are competing".  The house drum kit is acoustic, but he was playing with brushes to keep it low.  After the first song I got Shaun to crank up my feedback speaker which helped me hear myself better and I then eased off a little.  When I start digging in I start making more mistakes as I am less relaxed.  Performance nerves already make you tense, you don't need anything to make you more tense.

I called out to him between songs what we were tackling next, and started, and he jumped in at the speed I was playing.  On a few of the songs I realised I went in too slow, or too fast, but since we were sync'ing up pretty well I felt I couldn't just move tempo, so I played out the songs at a speed I wasn't completely comfortable with.

See, it's all solo performer control freak nature ;-)

I'm super critical of myself, but I've learnt to let it go (to a degree) and the bottom line is he is a fantastic drummer, and made everything work.  Some of his drum work was very close to the studio version, some was just nicely improvised.  I enjoyed it a lot, and would certainly do it again, I'm sure with practise I would loosen up and get more of a feel for playing with a drummer.

...but at the same time, it reinforced my love for solo instrumental.  If I had to choose, would I try to integrate into a duo/trio/fullband or would I stay solo?  The answer is, after 35+ years of being a soloist, it's all I know and I've learnt to love it.

After my set the house band (drummer, bassist, guitarist) took to the stage with an open mic singer, she had a great voice, and they rocked out!  During their set patrons to the joint wandered in and I could see they were enjoying the show.  And why wouldn't you, they were great fun, entertaining and sounded really good.

So yeah, I need to get back into my cafe background music style gig.  There is a place for rockin' out with the full band, and a place for nice background music :-)

I really enjoyed the experience, and would do it again, but my love still lies in solo instrumental fingerstyle, in a venue where it fits.


...Oh, I set my microphone up and recorded the whole set.  10 songs, about 40 minutes, here is a few that I think worked out well (ignore my nervous mistakes).  I didn't place the microphone particularly well, so the mix isn't amazing, not to mention the background noise.

Enjoy, if you dare!
JAW


The Beatles, "Get Back"

Australian Crawl, "The Boys Light Up"

The Beatles, "Something"