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Wedding Bell Blues?

5/31/2013

This weekend includes my usual Saturday morning gig at the Daily Brew café and also a wedding rehearsal late this afternoon and the ceremony tomorrow afternoon. I’ve played many weddings over the years. They are always charming and joyous events of course but almost without exception the planning and reality of the events are two different things.

Living on Cape Cod I get frequent requests to play ceremonies at beaches, as this one will be. Now, doesn’t that sound nice? A beautiful sunset, the bride in a pretty summer dress, waves lapping on the shore as the gulls cry out in the distance? Hoo boy, if only….

Last year I played one down in Brewster at a very fancy resort with a gorgeous private beach. The resort had provided nice seating for the few dozen guests, some nice structures on either side of the minister’s station with pretty flowers and even a long white fabric “walkway” for the bride to walk as she entered. Just one little problem. It was a picture perfect Cape Cod evening in late June with sunny skies – and no breeze. Those of us who live here know that at about five o’clock every day in the early summer this means one thing: gnats. About a gazillion of the annoying little devils attacked just as the ceremony was getting underway.

Now, understand this. These things are impossible to ignore and at their peak they are impervious to even 100% DEET insect spray. The lady minister was a veteran of these affairs so she had brought along some sort of natural insect repellent, which was barely useful but I certainly didn’t want some goopy chemicals making contact with my guitar so I soldiered on. Long story short – it was funny how quickly that ceremony moved along!

I have noticed those damn bugs beginning to make their presence known during my evening fishing trips this past week so fingers crossed for this evening and tomorrow!

Also, most people don’t realize that one acoustic guitar doesn’t sound like much outside, especially if there’s a breeze so I broke down and bought a battery powered Roland amp for this one. Which makes this gig a break-even proposition, at best. So it goes. I’m sure it will go fine in spite of the fact that they wanted the bride to walk down the aisle (??) to Pachelbel’s Canon. I found a guitar arrangement of this annoying piece of music and learned enough of it to cover the walk, hopefully.

This is something that is common in weddings I guess, the idea that the music is of much greater import to the overall event than it really is. Here’s the reality folks: the only time ANYONE remembers the music at a wedding is when it’s bad! I have a half-dozen or so nice guitar arrangements of pieces that work very well for weddings and I always send along a CD of them to people who want to book me for a wedding ceremony with suggestions. Some are well known songs like “Let It Be Me” and a nice drop-D version of “Here Comes the Sun” plus some beautiful traditional Irish melodies. Most people find them acceptable, but not always.

You would be amazed the songs that I’ve been requested to play in wedding ceremonies. They include: Elvis’s famous “But I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You.” In that ceremony the bride wanted to stop the ceremony somewhere in the middle, have be approach the altar with my guitar, stand in front of the bride, groom and minister and sing it directly to them. I gently asked her, what image does that bring to mind? Fat, sweaty Elvis in his too-small white jump suit? Is that something you really want? Or the bride who wanted to walk down the aisle to, I kid you not, “Send in the Clowns.” (!!!) I asked her if she’s ever listened to the lyrics of that song, which in a nutshell are: life sucks and then you die. No, she said…. It’s just such a pretty song!

She finally came to her senses on that.

A few times I’ve actually used as a recessional the Beatles “When I’m Sixty-Four” and that one works surprisingly well, assuming the bride and groom have a sense of humor. Interestingly, people doing their second or third marriage seem to get the humor there much better. (!)

Anyway, as I said, I’m sure this one will go fine; they always do. And very soon I am going to be on the other side of the wedding fence so to speak as my daughter Joanna is getting married in the near future. You can be sure when I walk her down the aisle we will not be “sending in the clowns” although I’m sure my buddies would argue that!

Peace & good music,
Gene

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Scale it back for goodness sake!

5/24/2013

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End of the week musings, observations and rambling. Not too much of that, hopefully.

My new buddy in Australia, Tony Obermeit sent another interesting and thought provoking email after my last post. Thanks Tony! He commented on the rigid structure of playing with a metronome and he’ll get no argument from me about that! I know I’ve endorsed using them to practice but there is no question they put a damper on creativity. Still, for some players they should be required equipment when practicing, particularly if it’s someone who has hopes of playing in a band. There are few things as frustrating as playing with someone who can’t keep a beat.

Tony suggested playing with prerecorded drum tracks or perhaps a rhythm machine. I like that idea better than a metronome although my last experience with one of those things (admittedly, many years ago) inspired by bass player friend Andy Groag and I to call the thing Korg the Relentless (!). Still, good practice for most of us I think.

He also commented on some online teaching sites that he likes because they concentrate on learning songs. I’m not in the business of endorsing my competition – ha! – but there’s no question there are some wonderful online resources out there. Tony recalled the drudgery of private instructors who force students to spend long hours learning and practicing scales. The relative merits of scale-practice is a highly subjective topic, for sure. Do I practice them? Yes, but not as much as I used to. There is a tradition in learning any melodic instrument that assumes scale work is of great benefit. I think this is true for someone playing classical music much more so than any of the varieties of pop music, due to the simple fact that scale-wise motion is present in hundreds of years of the classical repertoire; not so much in pop music.

Good for your fingers? For sure. But I also feel very strongly that imbedding scales on your tonal consciousness can be a bad thing from an improvisational perspective. If you’ve spent hours and hours learning scales they are very hard to avoid when you try to improvise. The more scale-wise motion intrudes on your improvising, the more your solo sounds like scales! I’m embarrassed to admit that I am still guilty of this from time to time but in the last decade or so I’ve been making strong efforts to avoid that. Ever hear a player who gives you a feeling he’s doing some sort of math problem on his fretboard? No matter how pyrotechnic his solo may, before long…. Boring! I guarantee that guy plays a mean three-octave major diatonic scale though.

If you’re stuck in that rut the best advice I can offer is quite simple. Learn melodies! All the great jazzers know this. The first thing they learn is the “head.” A great melody, no matter how simple stands on its own. Listen to Miles Davis doing “Bye, Bye Blackbird.” Miles was never a flashy player but every note was planned and RIGHT, and as with all great improvisers you never forget the melody no matter how far he strays from it.

I guess all I’m saying is: learn your scales but don’t allow them to dominate your practice time or your playing. “Play what you hear,” a jazz guitar teacher once told me. What you should hear, at least in the beginning, is the melody. Not do,re,mi,fa,sol,la,ti,do.

Peace & good music,
Gene

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More on rhythm

5/20/2013

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Just a bit more on the importance of rhythm. This is a bit of a rehash of a post I did a couple years ago but I think it bears revisiting.

Ah, rhythm. Our hearts keep a beat (hopefully!) and most anyone can tap his or her feet or hands without much effort. But based on close to 40 years of giving guitar lessons I absolutely believe that internalizing rhythmic concepts and repeating them may be the single most taken for granted and for some people, difficult musical concept there is.

Most people have never really thought much about it before they begin learning a musical instrument. The idea of breaking down beats into small sections and defining those sections with names like 2/4, ¾, 4/4, 6/8 or more complex meters is tough – and frustrating. It seems like it should be so easy, assuming a person understands the concept. I tell my students to imagine measures as links in a chain – individual pieces connected to the whole. Unfortunately, theory and practice are often difficult to combine.

One of the reasons I bring this up has to do with recent trends in acoustic guitar music. Groups like Mumford & Sons, Punch Brothers, and many others are writing songs that are quite complex rhythmically, often switching meters again and again within a song. I admit without shame that some of those tunes are difficult for me to play accurately and all but impossible to teach unless the student has deep familiarity with the song. I’m working on it though.

It’s pretty easy to understand the attraction of multi-rhythmic songs. Their initial unpredictability catches your ear. A musician can’t help but try to break them down right away and predict what’s coming next. The harder that is, the more interesting the song tends to be. But only to a point.

The dilemma songwriters have faced as long as there has been popular music is to combine familiarity with freshness, in such a way that the listener doesn’t have to work too hard to internalize (i.e., “like”) the song. My dad, who was a great musician, used to talk about “body music” and “head music.” He felt that early rock and roll was purely the body type and was quite disdainful of it as many of his generation were. I didn’t agree with him – as no teenager ever agrees with his parents’ disdain of current pop music – but I secretly understood what he was saying. Not that I would admit it until years later!

Putting aside for the moment any discussion of the relative merits of the lyrics in Mumford and Punch Brothers songs, I have finally begun to understand the attraction of today’s acoustic popular music. It DOES combine both the body-and-head aspects and it does that with rhythm. I do find most Mumford songs to be a bit on the formulaic side but there is no denying the joy of playing in their music.

So I guess I just have to work harder to find a way to teach what they and their contemporaries are doing. Old dog, new tricks. Concentrate – and count the beats!

Peace & good music,
Gene

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Steady beats, Mumford & guitar of a lifetime

5/17/2013

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Friday dis’ n’ dat. I haven’t posted in a few days so I thought I’d better let my small but loyal group of readers know I’m still alive, pickin’ and grinnin’ as they use to say on Hee Haw. (if you’re old enough to remember that show, well, God bless!)

A very nice and astute guitarist/reader from Australia suggested I address the subject of tempo, i.e., keeping a steady beat but from a slightly different perspective. I’ve talked about the absolute importance of this in the past but it has usually been a case of students slowing down or stopping on chord changes. But there is another thing to watch out for: speeding up!

I have been totally guilty of this many times in the past and I most likely still do it. Usually it has to do with the adrenaline rush of playing a tune you really like or have great confidence in. Examples: Back in the 1970s when I played, toured and recorded with fiddler Marie Rhines we went into the Philo Records studio to record out first record. It was a heady experience to say the least. We were very worried about a couple tunes that were somewhat complex and had fairly complicated arrangements. And you know what? We nailed them in two or three takes. However… a couple tunes that we thought we could play with one hand became big trouble. On the first one we were about one verse in when the recording engineer suddenly said through the headphones, “Uh… you’re speeding up!”

Well, after a half dozen takes he finally suggested putting a “click track” through the phones, which is essentially a metronome. That worked but man, what a mind blower and it made those tunes good, but frankly not quite so spontaneous. Oh well. He was right. But those four or five “easy” ones ended up taking a few precious days of recording time. Lesson learned. Kind of, anyway.

Later on when I was playing lead guitar with my all-time favorite band we were often guilty of starting familiar 60s dance tunes way too fast – and then speeding up! This was obvious when we viewed early videos of our performances. The people always danced and our disregard of tempo came from the pure joy of playing. Not very professional, for sure, but it was fun!

So the take-away point here is basic and simple. Use a metronome when you practice – and don’t take for granted songs you thing you play pretty damn well!

Other stuff. I watched a great show the other night: Mumford & Sons Live at Red Rocks. OK, folks, I am a dinosaur musically speaking in a lot of ways and it’s taken me about a year of exposure to their music, but I think I finally “get it.” And like it very much! If you get a chance to see that program, do check it out. Their performance is amazingly dynamic and my overall reaction was, wow, those guys are TIGHT. Multi-rythmic changes, 2/4 into ¾ into 6/8 and back to 2/4 with absolute precision. I do wish they’d mix up their writing formula a bit. Every song seems to start slow and mellow and then at some point the leader yells “hey!” and they start pounding and strumming and picking and jumping around like crazy – and the crowd loves it, every time. Maybe I just don’t get that part of what they do. But there is no questioning their talent, precision and pure joy.

And lastly for today – I think I’ve finally found it: my Guitar of a Lifetime. It is a virtually new Martin Custom D-42, made in a limited run of 25 pieces for The Guitar Center. It features gorgeous Madagascar rosewood back and sides, Italian spruce top, premium ebony bridge and fingerboard, 45-style pearl inlay, scalloped braces, premium mahogany neck and I installed Colosi antique stained, pearl inlaid bridge pins. The sound? Well, I don’t have the vocabulary to describe it with true justice. Deep, complex, resonant, punchy, much crisper treble than any dread I’ve every heard, and LOUD. A true “banjo killer” if ever there was one. And did I mention beautiful?!

It plays like a dream too, with perfect action. And try as I might, I CANNOT over-drive it – it just keeps giving and giving. I will post some images in the next installment here. The cost was staggering but I have lusted after a D-40 series Martin for all my guitar playing life. And now I have one. The dilemma is now, do I chance taking it out on gigs?!?

Peace & good music,
Gene

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Bits 'n Pieces

5/7/2013

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Bits n’ pieces. (That was the name of a band I played with back in the 1980s. All 1960s dance music. Most fun I’ve ever had in a band. But I digress…)

If there is one basic piece of advice I try to convey to all my students and is worthwhile for ALL guitarists, it is this: think ahead. Over the decades I’ve taught this has been the basic take-away point that when all is said and done, determines whether or not someone will succeed on the guitar. A player who can think ahead and be ready for chord changes will be able to keep a steady beat. Someone who cannot do this, will not.

I know that may sound harsh. As I’ve said here many times, part of my job is to be a cheerleader and please know that I am, all the time. But the fact is we all process information at different rates. Some people must deal with analytical problems in a singular fashion. You know – the ones who “can’t see the forest for the trees.” This does not mean a person who goes through life like this is less intelligent than one who sees the big picture – far from it. I’ve had some students over the years who were brilliant thinkers. Here in Falmouth where I live and teach we are home to some very impressive scientific institutions such as the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and the Marine Biological Laboratory. I’ve had students who work at those places who have a half-dozen letters behind their names but they struggled with playing the guitar because in some strange way they over-thought each element of playing. The idea of just “going for it” was just not in their nature.

All I’m saying is this: In the beginning anyway, don’t get into enjoying the wonderful sound of that chord you’re playing because before you know it, it’ll be time to change to a new one!

There was an interesting article in the Boston Globe a couple Sundays ago in the Arts section about the dearth of harmony in much of today’s music (except some country stuff). This is a subject I have pretty strong feelings about and I wrote to the writer of the story via email to make my point: without melody, there can be no harmony. Apparently he and his editor thought my opinion had some merit because my letter was published in last Sunday’s Globe. Check it out if you’re so inclined. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts!

Had a “bargain basement” sale of guitars last week and sold five in a couple days, three Martins and two Taylors. It was a break-even situation for me but I’d been sitting on them for a while and wanted to bring in some new pieces. My prices were good, which proves that there are plenty of buyers out there who are willing to jump at a fairly priced premium guitar. You’d think the clowns who put up good guitars on EBay or Craigslist would get this, but alas they do not. Whatever.

One last thing. If you live in the Northeast, don’t be surprised if your guitar’s action changes as we go into warmer weather. It may get too high or too low but don’t worry, this it totally normal as the wood adjusts to changing temperatures and humidity. A tweak of the truss rod will usually bring things back to where they should be.

Peace & good music,
Gene

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Finger picking solutions & guitars coming and going

5/2/2013

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Some random stuff today.

One of my students is struggling with technique while finger picking. I confess that I’ve tried every trick I know to make it easier for her, with limited success. The problem, interestingly enough, may have been that she was a little TOO concerned with technique, hand and finger position being the things she’s agonized over the most. But I’m happy to report that maybe – just maybe – a solution has been found. Somewhere along the line she had determined that what finger picking is all about is “plucking” the strings. To her way of thinking that meant stiffening up her fingers and getting UNDER each string. Despite my admonitions to relax her hand the act of playing each string by plucking it almost from below meant she not only had to stiffen each finger, but even worse, she was dealing with strings one at a time, which slowed her down and was very, very tiring.

But this week when she came for her lesson she seemed to do better and I needed to know what was different. She said that she was allowing each finger to bend back just a bit at the knuckle closest to the fingertip. Ah, I said – you are “brushing” the string rather than plucking it! Imagine a paintbrush rather than a nail puller!

That made all the difference. By keeping that analogy in mind she was able to relax her hand, perhaps for the first time. The results were compelling and I’m confident she will now succeed and be a good finger-style guitarist. Sometimes a student just has to work things out on their own in spite of all the direction they get from their teacher.

On to another subject. This was a good week for me in terms of guitar sales. I moved four of my best guitars (two Martins and two Taylors) and I’m pretty confident a third Martin will sell tomorrow. What I did was painful but necessary. I lowered the prices down to what I paid for each instrument and then posted them in the buy-and-sell section of a popular guitar forum. A couple of the guitars I will truly miss as they were very special and all of them were above average in looks and sound, in close to perfect condition. But all of them had hung around for too long and I keep reminding myself not to get emotionally involved with my guitars. That is hard, damn it! The conundrum of selling guitars (and in all retail) is: why does something sell or not sell? The origina prices I had on those guitars were very fair and in fact under market value. Perhaps someday I’ll figure it out. Or not. Anyway, at least now I can begin the search for the Perfect Guitar again. You know – the one that hasn’t been built yet!

Speaking of guitars, I just bought a pretty cool electric, a limited edition reproduction Epiphone Sorrento, originally produced in 1962. Mine is number 68 of the limited run of 1962 instruments. It is a thin line hollow body with two Gibson mini humbuckers, trapeze tailpiece, in natural maple (laminate) color. It even came with a period-correct repro hardshell case. A very cool instrument and way fun to play. Yes, I do play electric guitar from time to time, mostly blues/swing and jazz. The price was quite reasonable too. They are exclusive to Musician’s Friend. Definitely worth checking out if you want to get your electric vibe on. Now I’m lusting after a nice, small tube amp…

That’s it for today. Keep on playing!

Peace & good music,
Gene

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Wedding Bell Blues?

Scale it back for goodness sake!

More on rhythm

Steady beats, Mumford & guitar of a lifetime

Bits 'n Pieces

Finger picking solutions & guitars coming and going

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