I HURT MY BABY!

My guitar got damaged this weekend.

For five years I kept her spotless, in perfect looking and working condition. Now I’ll only have a perfectly working acoustic.

I picked the guitar up off my lap, in the way I normally do, which is grab it by the neck and lift. And for some reason, the guitar spun in my hand and the body crashed into the floor with a resounding crunch.

I thought my heart would stop.

Thankfully, the damage isn’t that bad, and largely cosmetic. The sexy veneer that covers the bare wood is cracked and chipped off on the spot where it collided, and a tiny crack between two pieces of the body has appeared, but it’s so small you cannot even see through it. Most importantly, the guitar sounds the same.

It’s interesting, the way people react to that sort of thing. Some guys say you wear a guitar scar proudly – it adds character to the instrument. Others say it’s like cutting a piece of your own heart out.

I’m in the second camp (although maybe not as extreme, but you get the idea). That’s why I own 2 drumkits. One is my carefully looked after tool of the trade, and I pretty much prevent anybody from playing it. Ever.

The other is a second hand intermediate kit that goes to all the gigs where I won’t risk my main kit, or wherever other drummers are gonna play my drums. I’m not bothered if this kit gets a knock or whatever, but if something happened to my other one I am certain I would feel gutted.

Which is silly, if you think about it. What are the chances of keeping a set of seven drums spotless forever? Especially when you’re using them constantly?

Anyway, the week ahead is looking promising. K, Ray & the Bird are finalizing mixing on Friday night, and then the album is ready for mastering and printing. Yay!

I am also busy looking into the ins and outs of building a very simple home studio, and I am hoping to get into it soon. With all the great technology these days, you can get a simple setup going for minimal expenses. I’ll talk more about this later on.

And schools are wrapping up their first term, which means holidays approach.

I’m feeling good.

A GIG IN THREE PARTS

I am, by nature, a bit of a perfectionist, particularly when it comes to playing music. I also like to improvise a little on stage; taking that risk and possibly messing things up is really scary and really healthy for a musician. But that also relies on being confident musically…hence, the perfectionist thing.

I did a gig once where things didn’t pan out so well.

Well, I suppose it can't be classified as a gig. It was a show for one of the schools where I teach. And, in a nutshell, what happened was: the school asked a few music teachers to play a complicated piece to show the students what can be achieved with hard work and dedication. Great idea. We all thought so.

But we didn’t rehearse properly. We sort of left it until the day before, and only had twenty minutes to run through the fairly difficult piece of Latin-jazz.

Now the other guys are all highly skilled, so I believed we could make it work live.

Except…

The sound guys forgot to pull out and activate the monitors when we went out to play. So we couldn’t hear a thing.

Now, I was playing an electric kit that night, which was blasting through the main system and should have come out the monitors if they were there. But they weren’t. So we could only hear the drums through the top. And, because of many scientific rules about sound waves and bouncing off walls, we were hearing the drums a few tenths of a second after I was hitting them.

And so, the band would start, and I would play in time with them. But the sound would be heard late, so they would adjust to the sound. Then I would adjust to their adjustment. Then they would adjust again. And on and on and on…

It was a disaster. And I still wish I could throttle the backstage crew who were too busy checking out girls to lay out some monitors.

Anyway, that whole story is just to show I don’t like screwing up on stage.

Now…

Tomorrow night (I am writing this on Monday), K, Ray & the Bird (the band I play for) are playing at Die Boer, a great restaurant in Durbanville, Cape Town. And to be honest, I’m not feeling so confident. The band has been so busy working on editing and mixing for our new album (to be released soon) we just haven’t had much practice time. We had one tonight, but it just didn’t go so well.

So. The night before, and I am pretty nervous. My plan is to take a simple kit, play tight and bash the hell out of the drums. Hopefully the audience will feel the energy so much they don’t see gaping holes in our execution, and hopefully the rest of the band follow and stay in time, while playing their hearts out.

THE GIG

Well, the gig went alright. I have to say it wasn’t our best performance ever. There were a number of contributing factors; we had our times mixed up, so sound check was shortened; as a result we did have a few sound issues. But most of all we just weren’t as tight as we normally are. Perhaps we were the only ones who noticed it, but there were cracks in the armor.

Anyway, it still seemed well received. The songs did get better as we played, and there were one or two real standouts.

MY CONCLUSION

Situations like this make me think about the prospect of being a full-time employed person who plays in a serious, working band.

Our time issue was that the venue wanted us ready to play by 6, where it had always been 7 in the past. I have no problem with a change in policy. But we all work, and we all finish around 530. So even starting sound check by 6 would have been an issue.

I think this is why bands fade away in South Africa. It’s so difficult to find paying gigs (or even gigs in general), guys have to do them on the side, usually for nothing. But this means working somewhere else, and that sucks up time and energy that could be spent perfecting songs. We just don’t have the musical infrastructure to support bands that are unknown. It's not like, say, America, where guys can make a day to day living walking into bars and just playing. As a general rule, only the really big guys are able to concentrate all their efforts into their music.

And so young, talented bands try to get into the scene, and they have good material, but it feels like there are so many barriers, and their music just doesn’t get to the right ears. And so they throw in the towel in disgust and walk away.

How will this change? I don’t know that it will. The entire music network needs to expand, incorporating into it more venues, artists, and, of course, fans. It can be done, but it’s like moving a mountain.

Here’s hoping.

AND SO IT STARTS...

13 March 2011

It’s worthwhile wondering why I would decide to write a BLOG. I mean, you’re always gonna wonder if anybody actually reads it, or even cares. There’s also that sense that you are putting a piece of yourself out there to be read by pretty much anybody, so how honest/open do you make it?

And just how important do you think you are anyway, thinking people want to read what you get up to?

I think the guys who really commit to writing a BLOG – those guys who upload daily updates like an online personal diary – I think they really show a lot of courage and determination to remain so faithful to their project. I always worry that I would forget one post, or just not have any desire to upload the next post. And I’m talking once a week here. Daily posts are simply out of the question. I’m not interesting enough.

So I decided to use this space as a place to talk about the other side of being a musician – everything that goes on around gigs, rehearsals, sessions, lessons…all the weird and wonderful things most guys tend to keep quiet about. I’m not going to say you’ll find it fantastically exciting, but I hope it is entertaining.

So what can I say today? Well, perhaps it would serve as a good opener if I explained what I actually do.

And from the very start I will say being a muso in Cape Town isn’t easy. This isn’t New York, where scores of clubs and pubs line the streets literally waiting for musicians to waltz in, entertain the masses, and leave with enough money to get home. Gigs are few and far between in the Mother City, unless you’re extremely well known or extremely well respected. Both reputations are difficult to achieve and take considerably time, so for those who have not achieved super-muso status there’s teaching.

I spend five days a week teaching. Drums, guitar, and a little recorder for the toddlers in junior primary. Teaching isn’t for everybody. You need an exceptional amount of patience not to crack at some point and shove a drumstick up some young kid’s bottom. I believe I’m a pretty controlled guy, but even I feel tested sometimes.

I do play for one band as a full-time member – a five-piece outfit called K, Ray & the Bird. The music is as strange as the band name, and that’s why I love it! If I had to describe the sound I would say a bit of Dave Matthews Band, with jazzy and R&B influences, as well as some orchestral size. Not exactly radio-friendly, but certainly fun to play.

We just recorded an album – the 2^nd one to be released by the band – and are in the process of editing and mixing the songs. In the next few BLOG’s I am going to share more information about this process, but let me say my eyes have been opened to some unbelievable work done by a few anonymous people to make your CD’s sound really good. It’s been a challenging but rewarding process.

I also just got involved with a corporate band. For those who don’t know, corporate bands play covers at corporate events, parties, dances, or anywhere else where they will pay us. Some hard work will be needed to get it off the ground – we need to learn at least 80 songs, and constantly add new hits to our repertoire. But it’s exciting, and the guys in the band are really awesome and really talented.

So now you know what I do and what I’ll be talking about with this BLOG. I am not going to pledge any commitment to regular updates, because I don’t believe I will abide by it. I will therefore add a new post whenever I feel like it. You are thus forced to check regularly for updates, or wait for a link on Facebook.

So. My mission this week is to practice my guitar scales, and practice single strokes in front of a mirror to see how my two hands differ in playing style.

Exciting stuff.