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.

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.

Just as the saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder then I propose that value is in the mind of the beholder.

Does this situation sound familiar to you? You are a service provider contracted by a Customer to design a piece. You initially agree the basic scope, guess the provisions and timescales required and agree on an estimate or quote. You start off with the new project happily enough and it’s not before long when you feel you’ve done the deed and are proud of your achievement. On presenting the piece to the Customer, they decide they want some things changed. Not only that, they now want to add more things into the mix. So once again, being keen and eager to please you accept the feedback and rework the piece. Only to return back to the Customer who now wants even more things changed and added. Repeat this another several times and before long you’ve now spent five times longer on the project than you originally anticipated and now struggle to get the Customer to accept when you ask to increase the price.

In my experience when this happens it can be very draining and it also impacts your ability to work on other commitments. So why does this happen? I have come to the conclusion that once again it all comes down to a question of Value. The Customer does not recognise the value in the effort put into the design work, they have not been particularly involved other than the odd meeting and email here and there. So from their perspective all they’ve done is made a few comments and as if by magic, some time later you reappear back with what they’ve asked for. The other aspect to recognise is that unlike having the ready made product off-the-shelf to sell where it is much easier to set a standard price since all of the work has already been done, the Customer’s expectation is that it’s your job to produce the product they want with the same set price attitude. And how many of you are experts at predicting the future?

It takes team work to make the dream work

By contrast I’ve recently completed a web design project which was completely refreshing to the above scenario, enough so that I wanted to share with you some ideas and tips which I hope will help you avoid the dreaded above as much as possible. Teaming up with the multi-talented women’s fashion designer and design professional Elise Gustilo, I was greatly impressed with her creative ideas, her technical appreciation of the task at hand and more importantly at her ability to create a complete Vision up-front. The difference? She knew exactly what she wanted her site to do as well, how it would function and exactly how it would look. Thus not only had she the grand vision, she had also been able to break down her vision into smaller manageable realistic chunks. Quite often a blank sheet of canvas can be overwhelming and it is much easier to have such a “jump-off point” such as this to develop from. From Elise’s mind a detailed specification was drawn up and the scope of activities defined to a much greater depth than a typical project would normally be. Any additional work needed could now be easily identified and discussions taken place before any work was carried out. The result was a mutually agreed completion point and both parties happy with the achievement.

5S Formula to Documenting Value

So to apply my Continuous Improvement approach, here is my 5S equivalent formula to getting any project off to the right start!

1. Sort – Get your vision up-front! From NLP the term is “end-step” or “evidence procedure”. More traditional business terms include “strategy planning”. Whatever you choose to call it, you want to set the scene as early as possible to avoid the trap of meandering down the wrong path only to find you should have turned way back.
2. Straighten – This is the next very important part, the conversion of the Vision into tangible activities so that the project can be managed into smaller chunks and pieced together. This is your initial assessment of what would need to be done to achieve the Vision and from this the scope of work can be defined.
3. Sweep – Go through the definitions, details of scope, design expectations, functions and establish that the definitions are understood in the same way by both parties. Also at this stage establish formal channels for communication, reviews and records.
4. Standardise – Finalise the contract and formally agree on the documented specification and scope of work. And of course, start working to them!
5. Sustain – It’s all about good monitoring and communication. Keep a timesheet to record the activities to monitor actual vs planned resource requirements and keep your Customer updated as much as possible within reason or as contracted. As soon as you doubt range of scope, revisiting all formal documentation and discuss with the Customer. You will be better off having five extra meetings to agree on designs before progressing with function work than finding out at the end that you now need to rework the entire product.

So that’s my 5S approach to project definition in a nut shell. I hope you found this useful and if you have any similar experiences or ideas, please add your comments to this blog.

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

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.

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.

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).

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?

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

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.

I’ll describe and introduce my own personal CI cycle later but for now lets consider the factors of human emotion vs logical thought. Like the sales and personal success development worlds have known long ago, people react emotionally and through their values, mind-set and life conditioning, not by logic. Taking this into account, I propose you consider what I believe many companies out there actually use within their PDCA cycle:

• P – Procrastinate
• D – Deliberate or delegate
• C – Confusion
• A – Argue or avoid

  

  PDCA Cycles – The Shewhart Classic and realistic alternative

So lets follow this alternative PDCA cycle and see if you can spot any similarities within your business environment. Somebody has a bright idea or there is a need. It is presented to management who don’t really want to change (human laziness as they may be complacent in their current situation, “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” culture, sales targets are the focus not the bottom line, “by the book” culture, etc) and first procrastinate by finding any excuse or other “more important things” to do. Then in order to not have to worry about it (because in reality they may not know what to do about it – we can talk about “thinking” being too difficult which is why most people don’t do it another time) they hold a meeting to deliberate it and then delegate it to make themselves feel like they’re in control and managing the situation. After a while as events develop, other ideas and other needs of other people wanting not to miss out enter into the mix and everybody starts getting confused about what the real “value-driven” issues were in the first place. Finally everybody argues their own case for reasons why not to do anything about it (job security, change to their responsibilities, etc), and thus the cycle begins back to procrastination.

In general, people are reluctant to change because two core personal values present in our society are comfort and security – the baseline for why jobs are conditioned into our lifes from an early age as the primary reason we go to school to get good grades/scores.

So for those who have kept reading, my original statement regarding PDCA may have stunned you but here’s my thinking. You’ve heard of “ready-aim-fire” but the “success” educators/state inducers and entrepreneurs I’ve been following often use “ready-fire-aim” which thinking about it is much more in line with my working methods which has always given me the focus and results I wanted. Thus, “Plan-Do” seemed problematic. Even when I was younger and training in a kung-fu system I was always told intention is key but I had a hard time buy-into this as well. Plus you can keep “planning” as a method of procrastinating. Thus I realised that no matter what we think, any result first comes from a single decision. Therefore that is the start point!

So are you ready for this? The “Lai CI Cycle” – I designed my personal CI cycle to be D-A-R-E:

• D – Decide: Make that choice and with confidence. There’s a saying I picked up from a Chris Howard seminar presented by Johnnie Cass which goes something along the lines of “the average person waits to make the right decision whereas the succesful person makes any decision the right decision.” Also Anthony Robbins uses “decide” as his first step of reconditioning in his success seminars.
• A – Act: Get started, if you don’t you rarely will as your mind-set state isn’t in the right place in the first place – be empowered to do something or hence go back to procrastination cycle instead. There’s another saying I’ve picked up from T Harv Eker which is “how you do anything is how you do everything”.
• R – Revolutionise: This is where awareness and anticipation is key, perception, due diligence, research, feedback, creativity to adapt, infinite intelligence, innovate, etc.
• E – Evolve or Evaluate: This is the growth part, the act of adapting to make that decision the right decision – lessons learnt, enjoying the journey, falling 5 times and getting up 6.

Finally DARE is used as a reminder to dare to challenge the status quo, dare to change, dare to think, dare to be creative, dare to think big and to dare to dream.

So good luck in your journey for Continuous Improvement, do you have your own models to share?

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 1^st and 3^rd beat of the bar and the snare on the 2^nd and 4^th 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 2^nd fret on the D string to play E.

Step 4: Pick hand hammer on tap the D string at the 12^th 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 2^nd 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

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 (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)

Why do we want to create Blu-Ray video DVDs?

HD cameras have become so cheap that they have become mass accessible to the general public. So it is only fitting that we will want to produce HD quality video disks for storing our videos and sharing them. For those wanting to create your demo video disks (musicians, film makers, animators), imagine how much more professional you will appear to be when you can offer your video in HD format.

Why is this important to know?

Firstly not everybody has a Blu-Ray writer drive installed into their computers or laptops. By contrast, nearly any computer or laptop with an optical media drive comes with a DVD writer drive.

Then there is the price of the disk media itself, a blank DVD is around 1/10^th of the price of a blank Blu-Ray. At the time of writing this article, a blank DVD would cost around £0.10 whilst a blank Blu-Ray would be around £1 when purchased in bulk from Amazon.

I was one of those who wanted to “test the waters” before considering in investing in a new Blu-Ray drive and media.

What are the limitations?

Well a blank Blu-Ray can contain 25Gb of data whilst a standard DVD blank can only hold a mere 4.7Gb (Dual layers around 8.5Gb). So compared to a normal DVD, the Blu-Ray can hold a whopping five times more information.

On a normal single layer DVD-R, you can create Blu-Ray HD video disks which last about 30 minutes, ideal for demos and short films for the pro or semi-pro videographer/animator/musician.

Lastly, creating a Blu-Ray video disk with menus appears to be trickier at the moment as it looks like Blu-Ray players are still not entirely standardised with the firmware they have. What this means is that some players may be able to recognise the menu content whilst others won’t. Thus the safest bet seems to be to create a video disk without menus and without any major chapter points. In my case I used a Philips BDP2500 which played straight HD videos fine.

How to do it?

The overall process is pretty easy, you have to convert the video files to Blu-Ray video format, create a disk image file and burn that to disk. Here it is again broken down:

1. Covert your video files into Blu-Ray “Mpeg-4/H.264 AVC (Advanced Video Coding)” format.
2. Create your Blu-Ray video disk content and compile as an “ISO” image file. This step is important because if you attempt to write the disk straight away from your video editing software, when you put in a normal DVD most applications will recognise that it is not a Blu-Ray disk, even if the amount of data is well within the DVD’s capacity.
3. Burn the disk image “ISO” file to a normal DVD.

In reality this may require you to acquire several different bits of software. Here’s an example with licensed software (free alternatives are listed at the end):

1. Use media converter to convert in batch the videos to MP4 Blu-Ray H.264 files. (If you have access to Abode Encore or Sony Vegas, you can skip this step as they will convert the videos for you during the disk compilation process).
2. Use Adobe Encore or Sony Vegas to piece together your videos into a Blu-Ray DVD project using the timelines (remembering to check the project for any errors) and then output to disk image file. Note: Ensure you are indeed creating a Blu-Ray project and not a DVD-Video project.
3. Use Nero to burn the disk image straight to a DVD.

For free software, you can search the internet to find the free applications to help you create the file format, the disk image and then burn it.  Free versions that I’ve read about (which I’ll update as I come across) include:

• ImageBurn (http://www.imgburn.com/) – This seems to be the most popular one to use to write your disk image “ISO” files to a blank media disk.

Blu-Ray Logo Use

One final thing to consider when creating your Blu-Ray disks is the logo usage license. Depending on your application, you may need to apply for a license (free for packaging designers though application still required, burning Blu-Rays only allows logo to appear on the original media as the manufacturers are licensed). Find out more information at http://www.blu-raydisc.info/.

Good luck in experimenting with creating your own Blu-Ray video DVDs for your promotional materials. Please feel free to leave a comment below to describe your experiences and any other alternatives you’ve come across.