Category Archives: Guitar-Dom-Ness

All items related to the world and kingdom of guitars.

Performance is about putting on a good show

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I don’t suppose any of you ever wondered if Yngwie Malmsteen was a magician what he would be like? Probably not then.

Not that I actually had this thought however having caught the guest act on “The Magicians” final, a BBC television show, my question was automatically answered.

Showmanship

OK in reality, it was not Yngwie Malmsteen but Hans Klok, the world’s fastest magician. Within five minutes he was completing illusions one after the other (I think it was twelve in all as he broke his last record) with his glamorous “Divas of Magic” assistants popping in and out of various boxes, covered by a variety of veils and curtains. Throughout his set I couldn’t help but smile when I made the connection: Yngwie – fastest guitarist; Hans – fastest magician.

Strangely enough, I realised it wasn’t just the coincidence of speed or the Scandinavian background (though Hans looks a lot more like Dolph Lundgren than Yngwie) which made me join the dots, rather it Han’s presence which really reminded me of Yngwie. It was the combination of his long hair together with his air of confidence on stage, his stage presence, in a word “showmanship”.

When starting out we often cite our references, guitar heroes and the like to give us a general idea of what is acceptable in terms of playing. However when we get to actually play live we can forget that the on stage performance is also a crucial part of the show. The right presentation or packaging can make all the difference and I encourage you to consider how to use it to compliment your materials! With the exception of the technical fanatics, turning up to a gig to watch a two hour show where the musicians resemble trees may appear worthless no matter how much you are into the music.

Thus it becomes a question of what more value can you give your audience so that they will find your performance an enjoyable experience and want to come back to watch you live again and again rather than just buying your CD or MP3 download once and being done with it.

So the next time you are to perform live, think of what other elements can be incorporated to embed into your. For starters here are a few ideas, and they don’t all have to be lavish!

  • Grooving with the music (opposite from standing still like a tree throughout)
  • Confidence in your playing – without coming off as being cocky (unless that’s the image you’re going for)
  • Smoke machine
  • Lights, preferably changing and semi automated
  • Interaction both on (with other band members) and off (with audience) stage – remembering that interaction isn’t just limited to the lead singer, don’t limit yourself this way
  • Stage placement – look up NLP spatial techniques to use spatial anchors
  • Free gifts (ones that don’t break the piggy bank)
  • Projection of video or images behind the band
  • Costumes
  • Dance moves (minding the cables and stands around the stage)
  • Stage fan (the ones which blow air towards you not a person)

Feel free to add any more of your own ideas below. Oh and yes, going back to the magic show I was also happy that world class magician genius Jason Latimer won the final and series too.

Good luck, have fun and catch you next time.

Interview with singer songwriter Laura Williams

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Based around the Harrow/North-West London/South-East England area, Laura Williams is a singer songwriter who blends blues, funk, folk and rock guitar techniques with soulful and haunting vocal melodies. She has recorded various snippets for various Channel 4 programs and her self produced debut EP Summon the World title track was used as the main theme for the Jodie Marsh show.

It had been a while since I’ve been out on the road with Laura Williams and being the seasonal holidays decided it was a good chance to catch up and ask her about what got her interested in playing guitar and singing.

Laura Williams Live at the Bird Cage, Thame by Matt Lai

When would you say you started playing and writing music?

I had always enjoyed singing and dancing but really got into playing music when I was about 11. Entering secondary school I had access to all kinds of free music lessons including drums, steel drums, guitar, piano. I was really lucky with the music teacher who saw potential in me and from the beginning encouraged me to pursue it, supporting me and nurturing my musical growth throughout my school life. By the age of 12 I was already performing in the school concerts which really helped to build up my confidence in presenting in public.

It seems that you loved to play many different instruments, what made the guitar stand out most?

I felt that the guitar was the most interesting to play in the sense that you can play it in many different styles and the majority of my favourite music were guitar based and so things all seemed to fit.

Since all of this happened whilst you were very young, growing up with all the other possible things to do, what made music stay at the forefront of your pursuits?

The turning point was pretty much when I was 16 and my dad died. It was a very emotional time for myself and my family and the ability to play and write music helped me get through it all. Music gave me the means to express myself, without having to speak nor needing to feel that I had to go out and interact with anybody. Being able to have your own space yet still able to express exactly that which I was feeling was very important to me at the time. That is why I am still so passionate about music today. I’ve not really come across anything else which gives me the same level of personal gratification and freedom of expression.

So what’s been happening in Laura Live World since our recording sessions and what can we look forward to in the future?

Well since the full band days, you can say I’ve gone back to my roots in a sense of toning it down and playing more intimate gigs. Gideon Letch is still on board and we’ve adapted our set to be more acoustic in nature with Gid now playing a cajon instead of a full kit. We’ve also added a few covers into the set to be able to reach out to a wider audience and have been gigging pretty much regularly several times a month, slowly building up our fan base around the country. I’ve also been out to the US a few times and have been very well received over there too. For the future, well I had been approached to enter the tv show The Voice but wasn’t allowed to play guitar so for the next opportunity, I’m not going to say too much at this point other than to ask you to please keep your fingers crossed and watch this space!

Finally being the season to be jolly, here is Laura Williams and Gideon Letch covering Mariah Carey’s, All I Want For Christmas. Enjoy!

For more information about Laura Williams, here is her link:

www.myspace.com/musicoflaurawilliams

Basic Volume Swelling Guitar Technique Explained

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The first time I came across “volume swelling” or “violining” was listening to Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams in the Rumours album. A delicate song where Lindsay Buckingham uses the effect to “swirl” his guitar lines in and out with Stevie Nick’s vocals like a duet. Yet despite being able to create this effect for free on any electric guitar, as well as being such a simple technique to learn, it’s rarely used. The only other time I recall hearing it was with Dream Theater’s Awake in Scarred and Voices where John Petrucci combined the volume swell principle with a square wave modulator to make it more ambient.

What is Volume Swell?

So what is swelling? It’s basically the technique of using your guitar volume effectively (effective use of volume on your guitar will probably appear on another blog article here at some point). The principle is really easy, you use the volume control to change the sound envelope of your guitar. Normally, a guitar when picked gives a sharp “attack” as lots of energy has been placed into the string. This occurring at the beginning is what gives the guitar its characteristic “twang”. So instead, you can pick the string and whilst it continues to ring, bring the volume back up for a smoother entry. The result is a much smoother sounding note.

 Sound Envelope Volume Swell diagram

One you’ve mastered controlling the volume either by your hand or foot, the only really complication is timing your playing correctly as you have to play earlier than you would normally. As you create more complicated parts, this will be the bit which you’ll have to experiment and get a feel for.

So have fun and see you next time.

Ane Brun, Live at the Scala, Kings Cross London 2011

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It had been a few good years since I had last caught Ane Brun live, roughly around the time when she released Changing of the Seasons where she performed on her own armed just with her acoustic guitar, an incredibly beautiful and intimate show. Unlike that previous time, the type where the artist performed a few feet/metres in front and where you got to shake their hand/hug them at the end of their set, this was a full band affair. Despite seeing all the notices on Facebook about her latest album “It All Starts With One”, this would be the first time seeing Ane Brun without knowing any of the new songs. What were my fellow drummer friend Gideon Letch and I to expect?

Ane Brun Poster

We were welcomed with Ane’s talented cellist singer-songwriter Linnea Olsson who reminded me very much of French Canadian Jorane, using digital delays and sampler pedals to create fully layered backings using a single cello and her voice.

When Ane come on, I certainly realised how much more popular she had become, having appeared on the Sky advertisements and as recent support to a Peter Gabriel tour, this exposure was very clear. This was something Gid, I and our other musician friends were used to spotting, remembering once a time before a band became popular how we would have the entire venue to ourselves (believe it or not this would be for Dream Theater, Opeth, Porcupine Tree, Nickel Creek and of course Ane Brun).

There’s also something to be said about Scandinavian musicians from all genres of music and this was no exception. In simple terms, Any Brun and her band were phenomenal! Gid and I smiling away agreed that this had to be up there with one of the best all time gigs we had been to. The musicianship and performances were faultless and the atmosphere created by the lighting production, the small spurts of smoke together with the huge natural drum sounds from the two drummers, made for a blissful and awe-inspiring experience.

As well as the two drummers, her band also comprised of the cellist (who also doubled with some bass duties) and two keyboardists, all of whom were also perfect as backing vocalists. Ane’s music had certainly grown over the years with the arrangements being very mature oozing with signs of musical growth. With the powerful yet never overpowering drums I felt some of the songs were even on the “tribal” and “hypnotic” edge and I found myself humming the songs for days after.

So final verdict, the album recordings as good as they are do not do Ane Brun and her band any justice in recreating the atmosphere so if you get the chance to catch her live, go for it!

(For a more detailed reporter style review of this gig, check out this article in music News written by Rahsian Parris who I managed to randomly meet in the audience only to discover she had intereview Ane earlier).

Emergency Strapping – Add to your Gig Inventory!

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If you’ve become a seasoned “gigging” professional, you probably have your own list of must haves, your toolbox of faithful items which you gather for every gig you play. But have you ever considered adding Gaffer tape and a pen to this?

Picture this, you’ve set up your gear and are about to go up on stage, but pull out your acoustic only to realise that the pickup-jack/guitar strap pin has fallen out. You try pushing it back into place only for it to drop straight out. What do you do?

Emergency guitar fix

This dilemma was exactly what singer-songwriter Laura Williams faced moments before her set in Kingsbury Square, Aylesbury Festival “Women Fronted Bands” special. Luckily, the sound guys had gaffer tape handy from the stage and mics set up and after a bit of “Matt” engineering, we were able to get her guitar in working order for her to play. You’ve heard of the pen being mightier than the sword, and in our case it certainly the case being handy as our equivalent knife. So with this emergency and Laura not worrying about glue residue left on her guitar body, this is how we did it:

  1. Cut 3 strips of the gaffer tape, 1 long piece & 2 shorter pieces.
  2. Use the pen tip to pierce a small hole in the middle of the long gaffer strip.
  3. Use the pen to enlarge the hole further to fit the jack guitar strap side (but not so big that the entire jack easily went through).
  4. Feed the jack belt pin side through the hole in the gaffer tap.
  5. Place the jack into the guitar body and fix the tape to the guitar body. This has now secured the jack plug in place.
  6. Place the guitar strap over the newly tapped belt pin.
  7. Finally, use the two shorter gaffer strips to tape the strap to the guitar body.

Job done! And as you can see from the video, Laura was able to play the gig. So if you have any similar last minute guitar surgery stories, please share them below.

All the best,

M

Has music lost it’s value?

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If Video Killed the Radio Star, have today’s DJs and portable music players killing music?

On a long drive out of town to a business conference I was forced to listen to the radio where Radio 2 was the only station I could consistently pick up. The topic being discussed was how some UK university had discovered the secret formula to popular music. So Queen’s We Are the Champions came on as fitting the criteria. I thought great, however soon after Bryan May’s guitar solo section kicked in, the DJ (whom I shall not name) started talking randomly over it with complete unrelated nonsense. Now whilst driving at fast speeds on a motorway and being annoyed is not recommended, it did make me think, has music and musicianship lost its value?

There was once a time when listening to music was a foreground activity, something to enjoy, something to marvel, something to absorb yourself in. Yet today, even though songs have the power to change our moods, remind us of fun times, sad times, whilst the iPods/Mp3 devices have made listening much more conveniently accessible I can’t help but wonder that they have also taken away what makes it special. Convenience means everybody is able use their favourite songs as background noise, a task once left to the genre known as “Muzak” or the “elevator music” in shopping centres and supermarkets.

To reinforce my point I recently attended an Ane Brun gig in the Scala and there were two moments when members of the audience decided it was ok to have conversations out loud whilst the rest of the venue was listening to the performance. Soon after people were shouting at the people in conversation to “shut up” which turned into a slight argument and it’s interesting that for these people it seemed ok to pay to go to watch a concert and not actually want to watch it.

So ultimately why write a blog about this? Well it all comes down to why musicians such as myself play and write. Rare are the days of getting easy records deals, if you really want to make a career from music your marketing has to be much smarter as a recording artist is no longer competing against other forms of music but other forms of entertainment, cultures and lifestyles. So my suggestion for all those like me who still love going to gigs, playing in a band, record and writing, do it because you still love doing it, because at the end of the day, music is one of the ultimate forms of expression with much deeper personal meaning.

Part 2: How to play two-hand percussive tapping guitar- principles

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This is the second and concluding part so please re-watch part 1 if you wish to re-fresh your memory of what we will be looking to achieve. In part 1, we discussed how the new generation of acoustic guitarists were pushing the boundaries of acoustic guitar playing and creating wonderful new arrangements, both complex and rich in timbres.

To finish off the tutorial, we will be learning one pattern which pieces together and incorporates most of the primary combinations of right hand movements required for this style of playing.

The writing approach

When listening to music with a full band, we often either listen to the song as a whole or focus on a specific instrument. With percussive guitar / 3d guitar, we actually want to emulate the entire band so we have to listen to or imagine each instrument and decide which parts are the most important. Then we can break down their parts, pinpoint what notes and sounds we want to produce and at what specific points in time. This will provide the basic patterns which our hands will have to reproduce.

To keep this lesson brief and just to introduce the principles, the pattern we are going to go through is a riff based pattern which is easily developed from standard two-hand finger tapping technique.

The breakdown of parts

Now in modern rock drumming, the sense of groove is ultimately provided by the kick drum and snare drum. As these are often the loudest in the mix they are definitely worth considering in our new arrangement.

A good rhythm section will have the bass player tightly orchestrated with the drummer so a good concept is to consider having a low note (like a chord note) sound together with the kick drum. If we use a simple 4/4 rhythm, the kick drum appears on the 1st and 3rd beat of the bar and the snare on the 2nd and 4th beats.

Writing it down

Once we’ve got the general idea of what to play and when, it is then worth writing it down so that we can follow step by step whilst learning it. Here’s the steps for this session’s pattern.

Step 1: Kick drum note playing open E.

Step 2: Pluck the open D string.

Step 3: Fret hand hammers on the 2nd fret on the D string to play E.

Step 4: Pick hand hammer on tap the D string at the 12th fret to play an octave above.

Step 5: The finger used to tap then pulls off the string to play the open D string.

Step 6: Fret hand hammers on the 2nd fret again to play E.

Step 7: Kick drum note to play open E.

Step 8: Tom drum tone.

Step 9: Hold the E minor chord and pick hand strums upwards across the strings.

Now here’s the same again within a musical notation form to provide the rhythmic timing reference.

2 Hand Percussive Tap Pattern Exercise

2 Hand Percussive Tap Pattern Exercise

As this is a video tutorial, take advantage and replay any sections as you desire. For those with a metronome, I recommend starting with a very slow tempo such as 60bpm. Once we get comfortable playing it at this speed then increment it by 8bmp each time.

Summary

Once you have become comfortable with the pattern of movements, you can then start experimenting with the rhythms, the notes being played and even adding more percussive sounds. You can then look at other percussive tones or other forms of finger tapping such as double tapping (e.g. chord tapping) and incorporate them into your own patterns which lead to grooves and melodies.

So to finish off, here is the notation for the example I played in part 1.

2 Hand Percussive Tapping Demo Transcribed

2 Hand Percussive Tapping Demo Transcribed (See part 1 for video demo)

 Enjoy, have fun and good luck!

 

2 Minute Guitar Lesson – Two Hand Percussive Tapping on Acoustic Guitar (Video Part 1)

2 Minute Guitar Lesson – Two Hand Percussive Tapping on Acoustic Guitar (Video Part 2)

An alternative way of getting gigs – even at the Notting Hill Carnival

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As if it is written in stone, as a band once you’ve got your demos done, one of the main ways to go about getting yourself or your band heard is to approach venues (this can be via email, Facebook, MySpace, etc) which offer live band music and persuade them to add you to a slot of an upcoming regular night they hold.

The first alternative route I heard about came from hearing the Dixie Chicks story (before they upset various people around with a passing comment made in a UK gig of theirs many moons ago). They played wherever they could – building up their initial a fan base in supermarkets around the US.

With the internet, personal MP3/ Apple Players stunting CD sales, rock bands everywhere have heightened the emphasis on being a live act again. Thus getting the opportunity to play to large audiences is an ever increasing challenge.

However this weekend at the Notting Hill Carnival, I came across a very unique idea which I thought was brilliant.

This young group of lads had taken it upon themselves to set up a gigging platform on the balcony of one of the buildings within a carnival shortcut route (quite possibly one of them lived there), a relative quiet spot for the spectators to relax a bit (the ones who weren’t following the lorries set up with DJ equipment). With a guaranteed crowd turning up, plus the fact there would be lots of loud music in the area (so no problems with having to deal with noise complaints by neighbours), people celebrating, alcohol and food what more could they ask for – a happy partying crowd for free! I commend these chaps for also arranging to have a video camera and photographer document their set and as cheeky as it may be, can now claim to have played at the famous Notting Hill Carnival. It was great to catch part of their set as I walked by though would have been even better if they had a large banner pinned up so that by-passers such as myself would know who they were and could look them up on the web afterwards.

Taking advantage to take credit for having gigged at the carnival

I think the lesson learnt from this demonstration of pushing the boundaries is to remind ourselves that the traditional “get a gig in a live venue” routine is not the only way to get heard and sometimes it is worth considering every opportunity, opportunities that are often right in front of us all the time without us even knowing it at the time.

Please feel free to comment and leave on other gig seeking ideas you’ve come up with and used. Many thanks, have fun and good luck!

What to you do when a venue has a sound/noise limiter?

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The set up

Picture this – you’ve got a gig booked to play in front of a large audience, a fantastic opportunity to get your songs or playing known to a new crowd. However the venue is not a traditional live music venue but however does have a live music license so no problems right? Well everything looks good to go so you arrive with your band to set up on stage. You perform a back line check (i.e. each individual musician plays a bit to make sure everything is on and working) and all seems ok – so far so good. Then during your sound check as a full band, out of the blue the power goes out. The dilemma begins!

So what’s the story with sound limiters?

With Health and Safety and Noise Pollution laws in the UK becoming ever tighter, it is inevitable that some gigs will be within venues with limiters built into the mains power circuits. The sound limiter (or noise limiter) has the job to sense the current sound levels within a room and trigger an electricity shut down should it trigger above a certain volume. The power circuits for ceiling lights are normally kept separate on another circuit so you shouldn’t generally experience horror movie style screams from the crowd however for the uninitiated, in the heat of the moment it can be confusing looking like your equipment has just died.

Illustration of Sound from Sound Advice

Further info and image linked from: http://www.soundadvice.info/index.htm

Back to the main point…

I was recently at a wedding and watched as the band Red Rocket hired to at the reception experienced the dreaded power cut limiter phenomena. The groom, being a bass player himself (of rock covers band Metro Gnomes), had had his fiancée (now wife) arrange it so I would be sat with their other musicians friends. Watching the frustrations the band go through sparked a discussion amongst our table where we shared our experiences and ways to get around it. Now whilst I’m not advising in anyway whatsoever you actually do any of this (and therefore do not take any responsibility should you use any of them), here’s a brief list of what we came up with:

  1. With this idea I won’t be able to write it out directly (as it goes around what the purpose of the limiter unit is designed to do) but a hint would be to consider that the sound limiter may only shut down a specific electric circuit in the room.
  2. Dampen the drum kit using spare heavy materials to stuff into the kick drum cavity and have the drummer play lighter so that the other instruments volumes can be set lower – though this can have dramatic impact to the playing of a rock drummer who will most probably find showing great lengths of restraint an annoyance. (They are after all rock drummers for a reason!)
  3. Again, with this idea I won’t be able to write it out directly (as it goes inhibits what limiter unit is designed to do) but consider what you could do if you knew where the sound sensor was (without thinking of turning it off as in most cases it is tied directly into the mains circuits).
  4. Similarly test having the guitar amplifiers and drums facing different directions, preferably facing away from the sound sensor, or even changing EQ settings. In the case of the wedding reception, they found a large dry wipe-board and placed it in front of the kick drum. So it was the lower bass frequencies which set off the sound limiter.
  5. And of course the final point, check in advance if the venue has a sound limiter installed in the first place! Just like wanting to check out fire safety restrictions and fire exits etc.

WORD OF WARNING be mindful that should anything happen, if you have done anything “drastic” you may not be covered. A good source of general information is the Sound Advice website. I hope you found this article useful and if you’ve had similar experiences and used other work-around, please feel free to share your comments and views.

Part 1: How to play two-hand percussive tapping guitar

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 Whilst the latter half of the last century of music nurtured the electric guitar, fuelled by advances in digital electronic technologies (which in turn fuelled electronic, hip-hop and the likes), a rather smaller proportion of guitar players have stuck to their roots and taken acoustic guitar playing to the next level. Continuously evolving over time, these “new acoustic guitarists” emerged making use of the additional sounds possible on an acoustic and consequently developed ever more complex arrangements. The body of an acoustic guitar presents a naturally unique yet surprising globally unexplored potential which many of these players have capitalised on – i.e. it’s still a sound box!

I first came across this style of playing in the late 1990s when my friend, then singer of the same band we were in, bought me a Tuck and Patti album for Christmas. As a classically trained guitarist herself, she knew that the world of Tuck Andreas, Michael Hedges, Acoustic Alchemy (UK readers may remember the theme tune to the BBC show Gardener’s World with Alan Titchmarsh) would open up to me and I was eventually introduced me to today’s geniuses of the genre, such as Preston Reed, Jaquie Gipson and Vicki Genfan. The principle also made it into the popular music genre with Newton Faulkner taking the lead. Now before you feel you have to rush out to buy your very own “guitar-harp” or anything fancy, it’s possible to use your own acoustic to get very similar results.

What is percussive guitar playing?

“Percussive guitar” or “3D guitar” is a method of playing an acoustic guitar by complimentary incorporation of percussive sounds together with traditional guitar techniques. It provides guitarists with a larger palette of tones and voices to write and play with. The advantage is that you no longer have to consider an acoustic guitar just as a melody or chord generating instrument, but also as a rhythmic generating one too.

Why use this style?

Having come from a rock guitar background myself, the way these players used the instrument attracted me due to the sheer power and grooves you can add to your playing. This is a particularly useful technique to have within your “guitar-dom-ness” for playing solo or being an accompanist to a singer. Certainly for a time in the UK, many pubs and clubs held regular “open-mic nights” which allows up to two people to perform without the venue having to arrange and pay for special public performance licenses. Thus it was a great way to find lots of places to air your music to an audience and quickly stand out. Also check out my Percussive Strumming tutorial for another technique I use for similar reasons.

How to play percussive tap guitar (Part 1)?

In this mini lesson video, we first locate where on the acoustic guitar body we want to generate our sounds. Here are just a few other notes to add.

  • We will use the two hand finger tapping technique as our springboard baseline method. This way, all we have to do is slightly modify a style we may already be used to.
  • I’ve chosen to teach the principles using standard guitar tuning. Once the principles are understood, alternative tunings can be used – the guitarists named above use alternate tunings to make fingering of chords more accessible for this style.
  • I know some of you who have already studied Preston Reed may be thinking that I’ve chosen different parts of the guitar body to play the equivalent kick drum and snare drum tone. I show the kick drum tone from the upper part of the guitar body to give access to playing bass notes with the kick drum tone. The reason for this being that typical arrangements with a full rhythm section, the kick drum falls tightly with the bass note. The other option is to develop your fret hand technique to pick strings too!
  • For the snare equivalent, there is another alternative which is similar to my percussive strumming lesson. You can form a “flat fist” (similar to a kung-fu style Leopard fist shape) and tap over the strings with your finger nails at the same time applying a palm mute. For this tutorial I’ve chosen to use the tapping method which is a slight alteration of finger tapping which allows notes to ring out rather than cutting off everything every time. One extra tip I need to mention, when tapping notes on the acoustic guitar with your picking hand, you will find you have to mute the other side of the string with your fretting hand to stop it from sounding as well.

In the second and concluding part, we’ll go through the basic principles for putting it all together.

If you enjoyed this mini tutorial and found it useful, please feel free to leave me a message and let others know. Thanks, enjoy, have fun and good luck!

2 Minute Guitar Lesson – Two Hand Percussive Tapping on Acoustic Guitar (Video Part 1)

2 Minute Guitar Lesson – Two Hand Percussive Tapping on Acoustic Guitar (Video Part 2)