I don't know that this will make sense until I start posting some audio/video of me performing some of my new songs (or older songs with new arrangements) but lately I have been really trying to get my head, musically, around the idea of ultra minimalist percussion as a way to control a song's momentum.
Like so many others, in recent years I've been quite taken with Mumford and Sons, and particularly Marcus's way of controlling a song with just a bass drum and occasionally some additional tambourine. It's not that he's doing anything that has not been done before musically, but his execution is quite another story.
He's fronting the band, playing guitar, and ALSO playing these percussion parts with his feet. The songs are amazing, but as a musician there is also an entire other level of brilliance to behold. And I have found that his take on percussion to control momentum has really been influencing me.
The trouble is that - and here is where the audio/video are kinda needed to make sense of things - my performance rig doesn't allow me quit the same level of rhythmic flexibility as Marcus. I'm creating many layers all at once, but I;m not looping anything, and so, quite frankly, my feet are already rather occupied with other tasks most of the time to make all the layers happen. FYI, in simplest terms, I ma playing the main riff on guitar, with a bass line, with some percussion, with some strings underneath if I want, with a solo line on either the guitar and/or a piano, all at the same time. No looping. Yes, I know that sounds absurd, but that's my rig. Really. Yeah, I'll post video soon.
In any case, at this point, my ability to play the rig means that I cannot create too elaborate percussion lines. Lots of 4-on-the-floor kinda things right now. But I also have been finding that I need some kind of percussion variations beyond just playing or not to make the songs really work.
Enter the 1/8 note. Such a simple and easily accessible variation, but yet I could not see it for a long time. Could not hear it in context. Yet now there is a great sense of variation in momentum at my disposal.
I know this all has made little or no sense, and I know that I need to post video of the rig in action for that to be resolved, but I have just bee so overcome by the simple musical elegance of this that I wanted to quickly post something. Much more coming very soon....
Showing posts with label Looping pedal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Looping pedal. Show all posts
Saturday, November 8, 2014
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Practice, Perspective, Patience and Musical Intuition
One of the issues I've been facing as I have been developing my new live performance rig is the transition between it being mostly conceptual to being comfortable to actually use. Never mind the fact that it's taken me more than 4 years of experimenting with what in retrospect is an absurd amount of gear, or the fact that much of the experimenting was slow due more to my lack of programming skills at the time, or the - I would like to think this is the biggest factor - fact that I could not really find anyone doing what I was trying to accomplish so there was no road map to follow.
The sense I had from the start - through all the trials and tests to finally get a working rig - was that I was radically changing my entire approach to live performance in this process. Now, of course there is the very real possibility that the sense of epic change I felt was mostly self imposed and perhaps this is all no big deal, but for me it has been very real - self-imposed or not - and what that has meant is that I have had to delay and delay and delay doing actual shows.
This has been disappointing on a number of levels, but on the other hand there doesn't seem to be any point in presenting what could be an amazing musical moment to anyone until it's actually ready to be amazing.
As a songwriter I tend to think in the moment of the song. Everything moves outward from there. Get the song itself in place and the rest will come. But translating that song to an audience requires practice. And that practice can require a lot of patience - something I am generally not always that good at. Plus my entire performance technique has had to change and - I'd like to think - evolve, as I have developed the new rig.
This has meant that every time I make a change for the betterment of the bigger picture concept I have had to reteach myself how to operate the rig. Then as I go through that process if something is not doing what I need it to do, I have to stop the entire process and look for a solution before I can move on. Many times this takes additional weeks of tinkering until I can get everything running right. Till there is another bump in the road and then it starts over again. To be fair I should admit that part of me enjoys the tinkering - even if it seem endless. Anyway...
In a way all this "practicing" has been a bit disconcerting, but recently something has happened that took me out of my now "Songwriting" mentality and back to more fundamental musical experiences of my youth. The rig now makes sense to me intuitively. Perhaps this is an effect of my doing so much with it that my brain moves faster than it did before through the process, but whatever the reason I find that I "see" the rig differently now. It feels more like an instrument unto itself rather than just a way to facilitate song performances.
It reminds me a lot of when I was first learning to, for example, play basic grooves on a drum kit. At some point I did not have to consciously think any longer about the groove. It just flowed out of me. At that point I was able to just play. In the moment. Intuitively. Musically. It was very freeing and it set a kind of benchmark for all my future musical experiences.
Of course there is always more to learn and add to one's toolbox, but the concept of musical intuition as a part of performance (in all parts of the process: writing, recording, performing, producing) has always intrigued me. The idea "Nothing Forced Endures" (thank you, Richard Beal!) comes to mind.
All that in mind, as you might expect, I cannot at this point say "it's done." Funny, if not predictably, enough, as the rig has reached this point of ease-of-use, I am still awaiting the release of some new gear from a few companies to complete my current vision of how it will all work. In fact in the photo you can kinda see a "blank" area that is reserved for this very reason. Most significantly I am looking forward to the Keith McMillen QuNexus and the Electro Harmonix 8 Step Program. Both are due this month. And then let the fun begin!
I did create a very raw video on the concept a few weeks ago, for anyone interested. It's more of a prototype here, as since filming I have swapped out the SL-20 for an Adrenalinn 3 and reworked the actual placement and wiring to be more cooperative, and numerous other changes, but the idea behind the rig should be clear regardless.
It's an exciting time. Lots more coming! Gotta go practice now...
The sense I had from the start - through all the trials and tests to finally get a working rig - was that I was radically changing my entire approach to live performance in this process. Now, of course there is the very real possibility that the sense of epic change I felt was mostly self imposed and perhaps this is all no big deal, but for me it has been very real - self-imposed or not - and what that has meant is that I have had to delay and delay and delay doing actual shows.
This has been disappointing on a number of levels, but on the other hand there doesn't seem to be any point in presenting what could be an amazing musical moment to anyone until it's actually ready to be amazing.
As a songwriter I tend to think in the moment of the song. Everything moves outward from there. Get the song itself in place and the rest will come. But translating that song to an audience requires practice. And that practice can require a lot of patience - something I am generally not always that good at. Plus my entire performance technique has had to change and - I'd like to think - evolve, as I have developed the new rig.
This has meant that every time I make a change for the betterment of the bigger picture concept I have had to reteach myself how to operate the rig. Then as I go through that process if something is not doing what I need it to do, I have to stop the entire process and look for a solution before I can move on. Many times this takes additional weeks of tinkering until I can get everything running right. Till there is another bump in the road and then it starts over again. To be fair I should admit that part of me enjoys the tinkering - even if it seem endless. Anyway...
In a way all this "practicing" has been a bit disconcerting, but recently something has happened that took me out of my now "Songwriting" mentality and back to more fundamental musical experiences of my youth. The rig now makes sense to me intuitively. Perhaps this is an effect of my doing so much with it that my brain moves faster than it did before through the process, but whatever the reason I find that I "see" the rig differently now. It feels more like an instrument unto itself rather than just a way to facilitate song performances.
It reminds me a lot of when I was first learning to, for example, play basic grooves on a drum kit. At some point I did not have to consciously think any longer about the groove. It just flowed out of me. At that point I was able to just play. In the moment. Intuitively. Musically. It was very freeing and it set a kind of benchmark for all my future musical experiences.
Of course there is always more to learn and add to one's toolbox, but the concept of musical intuition as a part of performance (in all parts of the process: writing, recording, performing, producing) has always intrigued me. The idea "Nothing Forced Endures" (thank you, Richard Beal!) comes to mind.
All that in mind, as you might expect, I cannot at this point say "it's done." Funny, if not predictably, enough, as the rig has reached this point of ease-of-use, I am still awaiting the release of some new gear from a few companies to complete my current vision of how it will all work. In fact in the photo you can kinda see a "blank" area that is reserved for this very reason. Most significantly I am looking forward to the Keith McMillen QuNexus and the Electro Harmonix 8 Step Program. Both are due this month. And then let the fun begin!
I did create a very raw video on the concept a few weeks ago, for anyone interested. It's more of a prototype here, as since filming I have swapped out the SL-20 for an Adrenalinn 3 and reworked the actual placement and wiring to be more cooperative, and numerous other changes, but the idea behind the rig should be clear regardless.
It's an exciting time. Lots more coming! Gotta go practice now...
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