This past Monday was my birthday and the icing on the cake was our Monday night band practice. I had a really great birthday celebration with my wife and daughter and then it was off to play some rock and roll! We had to take last week off because our drummer hurt his arm, so I had a whole extra week to practice on my own and I think it paid off. I don’t really get to practice the upright much at home, so most of my practicing is done unplugged on my Fender.
Something that’s really helped my playing is a book by Victor Wooten called The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music. It’s written as a novel about a mystical music teacher who shows up and teaches him a new way to approach the music, and some of that stuff is slightly painful, but what he actually teaches is incredibly helpful.
The most important thing is that the groove is more important than the actual notes. Since your typical scale is made up of 7 notes and there are 12 whole tones per octave, you’ve got more than a 50/50 shot at hitting the right note, and if you hit the wrong one it’s easy to use that to get to the right note and still make it sound right as long as you’re playing in the groove.
There’s other stuff about how to practice more effectively and a whole lot more which I haven’t even gotten to yet, but just the bit I have read has helped me greatly and I would recommend this book to anyone who plays any instrument.
Anyway, here’s an MP3 of us covering King Crimson’s Easy Money. I’m on the upright and there’s a brief bowed part during the jam. To the casual listener it might sound like just another rock song, but those who know music will be able to tell right away that the time on this one is a little bit crazy. During the verse, the vocals are in a different time signature as everything else. I don’t know how John Wetton managed to sing that one and play bass at the same time when I can barely sing harmonies during the intro (I didn’t even attempt that this time).
Now that I’m actually playing music, I find myself not feeling a whole lot of need to blog about it. But for both of you people who actually read this thing (and to get enough unique impressions to maybe make more than $.50/month), I really ought to post more often. So in that half assed spirit, I’d like to share a clip from our last practice. I had just gotten a bow for my birthday (thanks, Dad!) and last monday night was the first time I really tried using it with the electric upright. While it took a bit to get comfortable playing with a bow and it’s going to take a lot more practice getting proficient with it, It was a lot of fun to play and I managed to get some cool sounds with it.
Here’s our attempt at playing Red by King Crimson. We’ve been working on this one since the first jam session a month ago. It’s still a little bit rough. We’ve got 2 basses on this. Our singer was playing bass guitar while I was playing the upright, and I play the drumless interlude with the bow (which is particularly rough sounding here).
After a few weeks of jamming around, it looks like we’ve got the core of a band. There’s me on bass, a guy who plays keys and guitar, another guitarist and a drummer whose wife might be our singer. So far we’ve been doing a bunch of Pink Floyd and King Crimson covers like Echoes, Red, Astronomy Domine, Interstellar Overdrive, One More Red Nightmare and we’re struggling to get Larks Tongue in Aspic pt 2 down. So what now? Besides getting our shit tight through lots and lots of practice, we need a name. Before I even started putting this band together I’ve been thinking about band names. The one I really liked was Strange Botwin, a reference to the first few episodes of Weeds. I’m not so sure about that now. I also don’t want to have the name be a reference to the bands we cover since that is more for single band tributes. The other thing is getting gigs. I’m not sure how much of a market there is for a cover band that plays nothing but old prog and psychedelic rock from the 70’s. There’s a great coffee house near me that has live shows where I’m sure we could book our debut performance. I also work right next to a place where Johnny Cash recorded a classic live album and I’m sure the inmates of San Quentin would enjoy any performance people are willing to give them. Tonight we play at our drummer’s warehouse in Oakland. It’s not as convenient for me as our space around the corner from my house, but it beats having to load a full drumset in and out every week which also cuts into our playing time.
I try to browse my local craigslist musicians ads all the time just to see who’s out there and what’s going on with the local music scene. Last night I found a posting that was so funny I almost peed my pants. Here it is:
Reply to: comm-dgn3n-1220545234@craigslist.org
Date: 2009-06-13, 8:48PM PDT
Hey there; i’m an adult (aka “over 30″) who wants to find musicians who are not egomaniacal, strangely self-absorbed in their inflexible, hateful lame-ass unlistenable originals no one will ever buy a drink long enough to painfully absorb and if so, have nightmares about, and hopefully, people with chops who will sacrifice all things for music that has soul and danceability–even if its frigging metal, do you know how to groove it? Does James Brown have a place in your heart–even though you might also have a marshall stack, or a girlfriend who’s stacked, or a stack of money, or a smoke stack? WTF? I don’t know. All i can say is, getting into a band with people who don’t suck is like trying to date a hot girl and not expecting her to be freakishly stupid or intensely high maintenence. Why is this? I dont’ know. I guess people only evolve when nobody is looking. So if you are in it to get laid, and you suck, then good luck; if you understand dynamics, have a singer who is a singer and not a guy imitating a singer (especially guys who imitate like, Jack Johnson, who in my opinion, fucking blows), and i dunno, if you have a bunch of nymphomaniac rich girlfriends who hang out with all their friends and take shitloads of X and dance naked, oh shoot, now i forgot the question. Anyway, i am a trained drummer (trained to go in the box, trained to hate loud fucking guitarists, and paid money to go to music school and learn to read music which i probably should have saved for stuff like rent); i am also funny, unstupid, and have a recording thing that lets me record stuff, like, with really good microphones i have.
influences: Primus, Police, Public enemy, James brown, Soundgarden, The Who, The Replacements, Foo Fighters, The Jackson 5, The supremes, Rage Against the Machine, and the chick in the front row with the hot rack who keeps looking at me in a way that make me pretend I don’t notice.
Assholes encouraged to apply; retards, sure, because, if you are a retard, you don’t know it, so go for it; but really, if you want to just “get together and jam”, i will mock you and pretend i’m coming and then NOT come because you are a fucking hippie and must die.
Location: Walnut Creep
it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Although I’ve started several bands, apparently I’ve never done it right. But now, thanks to the great correspondent’s course from the University of Andy, I know how to start one:
The University of Andy is the best place to learn this and other valuable life skills such as surviving a bear attack and holding your liquor. Andy Botwin is a brilliant educator.
I know, it’s been ages since I’ve posted anything here. Life has been rather hectic as of late. In fact, until last night I hadn’t picked up a bass in several weeks. I’ve written before about the local Thursday night jam session in my town. I haven’t attended in a long time. Besides being somewhat bored by the standard blues rock fare, I’ve been really busy on Thursday nights. First it was the Opeth show which completely rocked my world. Then I was recovering from some minor surgery. Then we were having a really tough day with the kid and I just couldn’t deal with other people after we finally got her to bed. Plus thre’s something like 3 other bassists who have been going and from what I hear they’ve all been playing at once. Four would just be ridiculous!
So that led me to organizing my own night at the studio. I took out an ad on craigslist looking for people who are into playing hard prog rock and got three solid responses. One guy played sax, drums and theramin, one played guitar, and the other played keys, guitar, bass and drums. All of us were really into King Crimson, and we busted it out last night. After some aimless noodling, we gave Red a try and it really came together after a while. It’s a tough song with a lot of parts, and I got most of the parts down but definitely need work on the opening riff and figuring out where each one starts. We also did a sick 21st Century SchitzoidMan jam, One More Red Nightmare, and a half assed attempt at Thela Hun Gingeet. We did Shine on You Crazy Diamond. We did Tom Sawyer that went into a pretty sick jam, and some freeform stuff that the sax player referred to as being rather quaalude-y.
For the most part, I played the electric upright. At one point I picked up my Fender and the guitarist said I should keep playing the upright since it creates such a different sound. I got a really killer tone from it last night too. At the other jams, I’d been going for more of a standard thumping low sustain upright bass tone, but last night I cranked up the gain, sustain and the lows and it was nice and fuzzy. The more I play that thing, the less I want to play my Fender, and I love that Fender!
I was so pumped from playing I could barely sleep when I got home. I kept tossing and turning with those riffs going through my head. I can’t wait to do it again next week.
When I first heard Primus, I thought that it would be impossible to ever attempt to play bass like Les Claypool. But when you slow it down and break down the parts, it’s not that hard to learn and master with a lot of practice. Playing that and singing at the same time is a whole different story. So below is a nice breakdown of the first song on the first Primus album, minus the Rush sample intro. And here’s a clip of the original to compare.
Odd time signatures and polyrhythms are fun to play around with. It’s not going to make people dance. It could possibly create whiplash if you’re headbanging to it. It will make your progressive music that much more progressive and interesting. Rather than try to explain it myself, I turn you over to a drummer. And not just any drummer. Dream Theater’s Mike Portnoy is the perfect music geek to help demonstrate how this sometimes difficult mathy stuff works in practice.
So that big gig that I had then lost then had again…
…well, I lost it again, and this time for good. The combination of learning a new instrument and learning to play songs in a style I have little to no passion for without the benefit of a drummer to help keep me where I need to be is what did me in. There just isn’t enough time to get my shit together enough to pull off a professional performance. At first I was rather devastated by the news because I was more excited about playing in front of my town than I was about the actual music. I made peace with it quicker than I thought I would and I’m now well on my way to moving on to the next thing.
Seeing Opeth the other night definitely helped me to get past it. Despite the fact that you can rarely even hear the bass doing anything distinctive (with a few notable exceptions) either live or in recordings, seeing them a year ago inspired me to pick up my bass again after years off. And seeing them last week reconfirmed for me that I should not settle for playing music that I have no passion for just because it might be convenient. It’s always fun to play, but creating your own music on your own terms takes it to the next level. These guys play incredibly unique music completely on their own terms, taking liberal helpings of progressive rock and death metal and coming out with something completely unique, powerful and mind blowing.
I think I have one guitarist who is definitely on the same wavelength and another one who could be. We’ll definitely need a drummer, and beyond that it’s pretty open. Keys would be nice, though the idea of incorporating more diverse sounds is also really appealing. I’ve recently fallen completely in love with the sound of the bassoon, thanks to some stuff I’ve seen on YouTube. I also have a friend who plays the musical saw which could add a piercing sonic layer that can cut through everything else and induce shivers in the audience.
I want to explore different time signatures and polyrhythms. I want to create dynamic, moving, sweeping sonic tapestries that break down into seemingly aimless cacophony only to reemerge into tight, technical, progressive, heavy rock, based in everything but the blues.
This Thursday night I’m going into San Francisco to see one of my favorite progressive metal bands, Opeth! These headbanging Swedes make some incredibly intense, intricate, heavy and melodic music. Even in their early days as a death metal band, their sound was far more progressive than pretty much any death metal out there. They still incorporate some of that death metal sound, but they are musically in a league of their own. Check it out:
Come join Music Monday and share your songs with us. One simple rule, leave ONLY the actual post link here. You can grab this code at LJL Please note these links are STRICTLY for Music Monday participants only. All others will be DELETED without prejudice.
