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Happy music!!!

3/24/2012

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      We all need a new musical challenge from time to time, and while I certainly could find many of them to take up with my guitar I recently decided to go in an entirely different direction. My new thing is the ukulele! When I mentioned my intention to learn this wonderful little instrument to some of my students, musicians I play with and even my spouse the reactions ranged from incredulous to bemused for the most part. You see, until very recently, i.e. the last five years or so, most people, musicians and non-players alike viewed the uke as little more than a toy and associated it with such immortals at Arthur Godfrey (if the person is old enough to remember him) or Tiny Tim. But of course there are plenty of people in Hawaii where the instrument originated and elsewhere who take great umbrage at those attitudes. Unfortunately, New England in general and Cape Cod in particular is not exactly a hotbed of ukulele enthusiasts.

I’d been thinking about it for a quite a while however and last year when I saw the movie “The Descendents” with George Clooney, which features lots of Hawaiian slack key guitar and ukulele music, mind was made up and I dove into research about the uke with intentions to buy one and learn to play it.

My research immediately revealed that this would be a reasonable goal because of the way most ukuleles are tuned: A, E, C, G, 1st string to 4th. Not the same notes as a guitar, obviously, but the intervals between the first three strings are the same as on the guitar. Meaning I could play the “tops” of guitar chords and at least get something like correct chord fingerings in many cases, right off the bat. That pesky 4th string, which is lower in pitch by a whole step than the 1st string would be something of a challenge to deal with but I figured I could handle it (which proved to be more of a challenge than I’d anticipated – more on that later).

I found that there were dozens of wonderful ukulele-based web sites with plenty of chord diagrams, strum and finger patterns and also many songs. Great! Still, I researched and bought some books that I’ve found to be pretty helpful, my favorite being “Ukulele Fretboard Roadmaps” by Fred Sokolow & Jim Beloff. This book starts from “square one” so to speak and proceeds into some fairly complex material.

But the first really big decision was: which size and brand of uke to buy? Ukuleles are available in four basic sizes: soprano, concert, tenor and baritone. Most are shaped like small guitars, although some are made in the traditional “pineapple” shape and there are also ones called Fleas, which are triangular and have a small but loyal following. I opted for the much more common guitar shape. Most web sites recommended the concert size, which has the same size body as the soprano but a slightly longer and wider neck, making the playing somewhat easier. Then it came down to materials and construction and here my guitar experience helped. As with guitars, less expensive ukuleles are made of laminates and while most sound just fine, all players seem to agree that solid wood makes for better tone. So in spite of the higher cost – just like with guitars – I decided to go for an all-solid uke.

Being a traditionalist by nature, I decided early on that I wanted one made of koa, which is the traditional wood grown in Hawaii and used from the very beginning to make ukes. Other options included mahogany (used almost always by the Martin company) and recently some more exotic woods like cherry and mango have been used. I love the look of koa though, with its complex grain that varies widely from tree to tree and even from one part of a tree to another. Koa is also supposed to give the most universally appealing sound, bright and clear but not “barking,” which didn’t sound appealing to me but is actually preferred by some uke enthusiasts. Some ukes have spruce tops with mahogany or koa backs and sides; interestingly, as opposed to guitars, this wood is said to make a much mellower sound than mahogany or koa, which I didn’t think I would like.

After a solid week of research on brands I settle on a concert ukulele from Kanile’a, a small but very well respected company in Hawaii. Just as with guitars, high quality usually comes with a very high price tag and I opted for their K1 Deluxe. I purchased it from a shop in Hilo, Hawaii – Hilo Guitars and Ukuleles. They were very helpful with advice about brands and features and put me at ease spending more than I’ve spent for some very nice guitars for my first uke. I waited impatiently for it to arrive (with a great hard foam/nylon case – the store owner said he was reluctant to sell it to me without a case to protect it on its long journey from Hawaii) and when it did I tuned it up and proceeded to spend almost three hours getting to know my gorgeous new ukulele, all the time with a huge grin on my face.

And there we have a really important part of playing a ukulele. It is truly a happy sounding instrument! Regardless of whether you play some silly tune or a jazz standard or the saddest ballad, the sound is light and airy and uplifting. In short, just as I hoped it would be. I liked is so much that a couple weeks later I contacted Ken at Hilo Guitars again and ordered a Kanile’a K1 tenor! Now I bounce between the two; I do not have a favorite. The concert is brighter sounding but the tenor is wonderfully complex and sonorous, whether strummed or finger picked.

Which gets me to the challenge of that pesky 4th string. I found that usually it sounds just fine either fretted or open with what look like guitar chords. In fact, what I am doing is adding something like a 7th or a 9th to a chord or sometimes doubling the sound of the first string but that’s OK. And of course there are many fingerings that don’t relate to the guitar at all for common chords and I continue to learn more of those. Finger picking is interesting too, to say the least. After playing only low sounding notes with my thumb for all these years, usually on the beat or with a treble string, I find myself trying smaller versions of Travis style or other patterns that now begin with a high tone. This tends to throw my ear off if I don’t concentrate really, really hard – which is a good reminder for me of what my students go through when I introduce them to finger picking.

Anyway, after a few months I can play the thing pretty well I think, both finger style and strumming. So much so that I will soon be offering a limited number of good quality ukuleles for sale and will offer beginner to intermediate private lessons on the uke. I’m also working out some chord/melody arrangements of jazz and pop songs similar to what I perform on guitar. I haven’t *quite* gotten up the guts to show up with it at my regular weekend gig at the Daily Brew but soon….soon. And when that happens I guarantee you I’ll be smiling!

So if you’re a guitarist who wants a new thing, something to compliment your guitar playing I urge you to consider the ukulele. If anyone gives you grief about it, invite them to view this You Tube video:

And by the way – no, I do NOT play “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” or “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” (!)

Peace & good music,

Gene

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Timing: The required component of performance

3/15/2012

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    I went to a performance by a local singer/songwriter not long ago and was very impressed with his songs, which were melodic, passionate and he was a fine guitar player. But one element of his performance needs some serious work. Between songs he noodled on his guitar, tuned way too many times and generally took too much time between songs. It was almost as if the audience was expected to hang in and ignore the gaps. I noticed more and more members of the audience talking softly between songs as the performance progressed – definitely not a good thing.

Pacing, timing, whatever you want to call it is a skill, one that deserves just as much thought as the performance of the songs themselves. I think that in many cases younger performers don’t realize this. OK, I’m going to sound like the old guy that I am now, but I still subscribe to the idea that a musician is there “but for the grace of the audience.” What I mean is – holding the interest of your listeners goes way beyond the music.

Back in the 1960s when solo performers were the norm in acoustic music, much more than they are now, the best of them knew how to hold an audience from the beginning to end of a show. Tom Rush was and is a master of this, telling jokes and giving short explanations of the songs he was playing, crediting the writers and knowing just how long to keep up the banter. Jonathan Edwards, who I opened for about 15 years ago, is another who has mastered this skill. In the case of Tom Rush, I once watched him change a broken guitar string and tune back up without taking off his guitar, all the while talking and joking. And this was in the days before digital tuners! A very cool thing to witness and instructive too.

Regarding tuning, this is a very subjective and delicate situation. We of course want our guitars to be in tune but tweaking strings should be done only when things get so bad the out-of-tune guitar is impossible to ignore. Wouldn’t it be nice to be a big deal star and have your own guitar tech right at your side when you finish a song to take the guitar you’ve just played and hand you another, perfectly in tune? Well, I don’t have that luxury and I’m guessing you don’t either. So if you do have to tune, do it quickly and as few times as possible. Remember, tuning up is a total disconnect with your audience plus it sounds annoying. Be absolutely sure your guitar is perfectly in tune before you begin a performance and resist the temptation to change your strings just before you play because they will surely go out of tune frequently until they settle in.

Then there’s the subject of talking to the audience. Some performers are very uncomfortable with this. The late, great Miles Davis used to do entire shows with his back turned to the audience and one of the reasons Joni Mitchell doesn’t perform very often is her overwhelming discomfort being in front of a crowd. Some performers worry that what they say will sound uninteresting (certainly a possibility!) and some just cannot effectively deliver a joke or a story. These things can be mitigated by simply rehearsing what you intend to say. I know that may sound weird and lacking in spontaneity but it will pay off, believe me. Just remember to change up your rap from time to time. If you’re fortunate enough to have regular listeners who come to hear you perform frequently they will get bored with your banter after hearing it a couple times.

So how long should you take between songs? I’m sure I could find some debate about this among professionals but my feeling is – as little as possible. Even a minute can be a long time if you’re playing in front of a restless audience or in an environment where some people are listening and some are not. I’ve seen local rock bands go as long as five minutes between songs – yes, I timed them – and the only way they could get the crowd to begin listening again was with pure volume. Ugh! So – the instant you finish a song and the applause stops be ready to chime in with something, anything, or jump right into your next tune.

The overall timing of a performance is an art unto itself. Mary Chapin Carpenter and Lyle Lovett, two of my favorite singer/songwriters are experts at this. They will start their shows with a familiar moderate to fast tune (never, ever start a show with a slow song!!!) and play a few more in that vein, then proceed with a mellower, more intimate middle section of the show, perhaps just them with a single guitar. Then they crank it up again, leading to a climax. While this may not be practical if you’re playing in a bar or somewhere that you don’t at least begin with the full attention of the audience, variety in song selection is vital to building and keeping the crowd’s attention.

So what I’m saying is simply this: a well rehearsed, well paced performance that is thought through before is begins will keep an audience on your side. And the reason is quite simple. It shows that you respect them and appreciate they’re there. In the end, don’t we all want to feel that way in every aspect of our lives?

Peace & good music,

Gene

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A "dynamic" performance

3/6/2012

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_    Just returned from a week in the beautiful U.S. Virgin Islands. We stayed at the Marriott on St. Thomas and one evening we happened to go into the lounge where there was a piano player. He was playing for a scattering of mostly disinterested people (the frequent fate of a professional lounge musician!) and we listened for while. While he was a fairly accomplished player one thing was immediately clear – the guy knew only one way to play: LOUD! I joked to my wife that he kind of reminded me of the saloon piano player in countless Westerns who is pounding away when suddenly the bad guy walks through the swinging doors of the saloon and everyone stops talking and Mr. Piano Guy stops too, only to start pounding away again when the cowboys realize there isn’t going to be a gun fight! In a nutshell, he got out attention all right but pretty much not in a good way. Why oh why beat up on that poor piano?! We didn’t stay long.

It brought to mind something that I think most players, professional or not seem to neglect: the importance of dynamics.

Remember the commercial a few years ago for some perfume that ended with the tag line, “If you want someone’s attention – whisper.”? Those are words to live by in musical performance. Not whispering all the time, mind you, but being willing to vary the volume and intensity of what you’re playing. Sure, some tunes need to be played aggressively and with a fair amount of volume but others demand a light touch and the most interesting performances include a healthy mix of those things, referred to in music as “dynamics.”

In classical music, dynamics are indicated on the sheet music with letters above the score like “p” for pianissimo (soft) or “f” for forte, or loud. Composers realized hundreds of years ago that the emotional impact of dynamics was an integral part of music. These days in popular music, dynamics are almost always overlooked. I think the reason for this is that many performers think if they play too softly they will lose the interest of the listener. Which is not the case at all.

For the last few years I’ve been concentrating on working out my own arrangements of instrumental guitar music. Jazz, bossa nova, blues, folk, pop music all have been my challenges and although I have a long way to go, I’m reasonably satisfied with the repertoire I’m performing right now. In some cases though, even if I was satisfied with what I was playing I realized that something was missing and that was dynamics. In the venue I usually play – a small coffee shop/café – there can be a room filled with people conversing loudly or only a couple folks quietly sipping their coffee and playing with their lap tops. I have to be careful not to intrude on their comfort zone and my function can be background music, something to fill in the gaps in conversation or sometimes I’m fortunate to have a few people intently listening to what I’m playing. The only way to succeed in all these functions is to be constantly aware of dynamics.

A piece of music that has an ebb and flow of dynamics is so much more interesting and involving than one that is uniform in volume and intensity. This holds true whether you’re playing for one person or many. Locate culminating points in a composition, things that may be as simple as playing a verse slightly softer than the chorus and practice those variations. The real bonus is that your focus is more exacting, that is, you will invest more emotion in any song you play with good dynamics. This is the absolute best way I know to involve listeners in your playing.

Peace & good music,

Gene

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