Motivation

Recently, I've been going though a very hard time in my musical career. I'm hoping this blog post will either act as a vent so I can think things through clearly, or maybe give direction to anyone who reads this.

For the last few months, I've felt like I should just quit while I'm ahead. I've done my time at college, I've played in bands, I've learnt more guitar theory than I know what to do with, so what else is there? We all know that the chances of getting a good standing in the music industry are few and far between, so why am I putting in all this effort for it to just never work out? 

It's a very pessemistic thought, and I've never been a 'glass half empty' kind of guy, but that's where I'm at right now. After having the idea of playing jazz guitar on a cruise ship, I studied for days on end all about jazz theory, jazz chords, everything jazz. I then put it into practice, managed to have a pretty decent backing of theory and technique (nowhere near where I want to be though) so I began to contact cruise companies. Every single one of them came back and effectively said 'Jog on, mate'. It was a real kick in the teeth, and since then it just feels like it's all for nothing.

As I metioned in a previous post, I could quite easily walk into a covers/tribute band and play 2 gigs a week and be able to afford to live. But then it just feels like I'm selling out. I want to play original songs I've co-written, or written myself. I want people to be singing MY lyrics, not me singing other peoples. 

On the other hand, would selling out be so bad? I'd get to perform a lot, I'd meet loads of fun people, I'd be making a good income, it sounds ideal right? I'd be gigging everywhere and all the time, it would be perfect in a way. I might try to contact some people in covers or tribute bands, and see what it's like from someone who has experienced it. 

I'm already in an originals band, and that's doing well. So I could put my eggs in different baskets and audition for a covers and tribute bands. I'll see what's out there, and see if it's something I'd be into. As for the cruise ships, I've given up on that now. Although, it did motivate me to learn a lot of jazz theory in a very small amount of time, and that's never a bad thing!

This blog post may just seem like a huge ramble to anyone who reads it, and it's in no way related to my college course, but this is really the only place I can post things like this. It's kind of helped being able to write it out too, and maybe if someone stumbles across this in the future, it could help them. 

Careers

In our careers class, we were given the task to really sit down and think what we want to do in life. For me, I originally wanted to go on a cruise ship in a jazz trio, but after getting shot down by lots of different companies, the motivation has gone and I'm left wondering what to do.

Our tutor mentioned what's known as a 'Goldilocks Goal'. This is a series of 3 goals, one which is so massive it almost scares you, one that is achievable with a certain amount of work, and one that can easily be achieved. My Goldilocks Goals are:

1. Get signed, release an album and tour everywhere with my new band.

2. Cruise ship guitarist (Although the motivation for this has gone)

3. Play in a covers/tribute band 

The thought of being signed and touring everywhere doesn't exactly scare me, but I feel like it's a long long way away. It's more of a luck thing nowadays, although we have performed with bands that have recently been signed to a label.

As I mentioned earlier, I contacted a lot of cruise ship companies recently after I had the brainwave of wanting to do it. I was so hyped for it, thinking it would be ideal. Seeing the world and playing 2-3 hours of jazz a night? Getting paid and having next to no expenditures? Perfect! However, every company I contacted said they aren't hiring jazz bands anymore, because it's almost an outdated genre. It was kind of a kick in the teeth, seeing as I was set on doing it. But hey ho, life goes on.

Although I could pretty easily walk into a covers band, or a tribute band and make money to live on, it's not where I want to be. I want to express my life through my music, not stand and robotically express someone elses. It's more a case of weighing up whether I want the money. It feels like I'd be selling out almost, by doing something I wouldn't like to do. But I need to eat. So this seems like a viable option.

Speaking of how much I'd need to live, we were given the task of adding this all up. Say I spend £50 a week on food, that's a fair amount. I don't eat much anyway. Unfortunately, I gave into the temptation of smoking. So £3.50 a day, 7 days a week is nearly £25. That's not too bad, in all honestly. I was expecting worse than that when I got the calculator! Luckily for me, I have nice parents so I only pay £10 a week rent. So, in a month, that's £200 on food, £100 on cigarettes, and £40 on rent. £340 a month. 

I work in a pub for the majority of the week too, so that makes a fair amount of money for me. So in all honestly, I don't need to rely on music as much as I thought I would. I can get by working in the pub, but then I won't be doing what I love as a living. I could try and find a happy balance, but seeing as I only started working there 3 weeks ago, I don't want to tread on any toes. So until I'm settled with the bosses, it looks like pub work is for me.

Creative Arts Research Skills

This year has been a completely different kind of course, for me. Every other year, I've had to sit up until 2 in the morning writing essays and paragraphing and everything else you can think of. But this year was a lot more relaxed and free.

I much prefer blogging to writing essays. My blog is a place where I can go and post all things musical, and it's really useful. I can store things on here that I think would be useful later on. The fact we can also record ourselves playing and upload it for people to see is good too. I've never really thought about uploading a video anywhere, but blogs have changed that. I also found myself falling into a routine, where I would type things and save them as a draft. This is so they were not public, but I could go and read what I was thinking two weeks ago or something. The course has shown me I learn things and organize things in my own way. For example, most people wouldn't prefer to sit and write things that are on their minds down, but I find it easy to do and I potentially have a  blog post on me. Having the blog has helped develop that because it's a designated place for me to ramble. Also, learning new techniques on guitar and videoing myself doing them has improved my playing vastly. The fact I can sit there and watch my technique gives me the opportunity to see where I'm slacking and give me areas to tune up. For example, I wrote a post earlier this year about my picking technique. I hadn't even noticed that until it was brought up and I saw myself doing it on a video, and I've now changed it and I've progressed since.

Instead of getting an assignment brief and being told to go and write an essay, we would have a lecture about a certain subject and then write a blog post on it. I found this so much better than writing essays, because I could be informal and just ramble on. I found it good practice to sit with my blog open during the lecture and type notes and later edit them to a post. If it were an essay, I would have to wade though pages upon pages of notes and find what I needed. The blog got rid of that, because it was all there and I just had to expand on ideas I wrote down. As said before, I prefer to write as if I'm talking to someone, so quite informal. With my blog, I see it as I'm talking to the people who read it. An essay just seems like I'm typing to no one, and it gives me no context to write in.

On the other hand, I can see where essays kind of have the upper hand. While blogging may be informal and place to ramble, it can get extremely messy. If I need to find something relevant, I have to find related blog posts and scour through to find what I'm looking for. In an essay, it's all there in one huge chunk of writing. The worst you would have to do it really quick scan it to find what you need. Looking at it from an tutors view, it's the same kind of thing. If you need to mark a student on something, it would be a lot easier to have it all there in front of you than stored in bits around a blog.

For next year, I think I'm going to stick with what I already do, but just do it better. I'll sit in a lecture and write down the key talking points in a draft blog post, write some notes beneath and then shape them into a post that night. Talking about blogging is all well and fine, however getting work in on time for me is something I must focus on. For next year, I'm going to work on this and hopefully improve my organization skills. It would be better I guess to once I've finished a blog post, while I'm still on a roll, I should do any work assigned to me that night too and not leave it or leave it half way finished. I'd like to see the freedom continue next year, because it is a really nice feeling not to have the pressure of outstanding essays over your head. The blog covers essays in short little posts, and it works so well. I would very much like to write an instrumental album too, and record it and release it all myself. It would be an awesome achievement. I'm hoping to record myself a lot more too once I finally have my home PC and studio sorted.

Health & Safety Talk (Notes)

Health & Safety at Work Act 1974

H&S shouldn't be seen as a barrier.

Use common sense.

An accident can affect working life. You could throw your back out and not be able to work.

Things to be careful with:
Tie cables down, carrying the PA (legs bent, back straight), overloading electics, stacking smaller on bigger, fatigue while driving

Walk into venue and:
-Find fire exits
-All doors clear (putting you and fans at risk)
-Electrical safety (Shoddy looking plugs) (Check Residual Circuit Breaker)
-Check the carpet, you could fall if it's lumped up
-Check (before you go) how you're going to get gear in

Third Party Insurance
£50 a year. If someone hurts themselves on my gear, the insurance will cover it.

Musicians Union:
-insured for £10m
-Instrument cover
-Tax investigation cover
-£20 a year (for students)


PAT Testing:
Supposed to be PAT checked every year, visual check every 6 months. About 60p an item.

Leave the earth connected in plug ALWAYS. Things could stay live if not earthed.

Always tape the cables down when it's a high traffic area.

If someone's getting electrocuted, they'll grab on to whatever shocking them. First thing to do it remove the current, and then get an insulator and break the link. Call 999 immediately.

If possible, tape cables going around the door of an emergency exit, not in front.

3 plugs:
-Standard household (has up to 13amp fuse)
-Round pin plug (15amp, no fuse)
-European plug (16, 32, 64 3 phase)

On the back of most gear, there's a sign that says the wattage and voltage of the equipment. You can work out how much wattage you're using by just adding the numbers up.

To find out how many amps, divide the wattage by the voltage to give you the amps. If you end up with more than 13 and you only have a 13 amp plug you're screwed. Could end up in a fire.

H&S at work act says there shouldn't be sounds level over 135db for longer than 10 minutes. Basic sound level shouldn't be over 80db for longer than a day.

Musical Direction

While performing on Moulin Rouge, I had a lot of direction from the MD. Some things were not written in the score which we're important to the overall show.

Some of the things were kind of trial and error. For example in rehearsals, sometimes I would play the melody in a different octave and asked what the MD thought. Sometimes, it worked, other times it didn't. I was also told which inversion to do some chords in too, which I had to remember.

As a new thing for me, I was also given direction on how to act. Relating back to my post on comfort zones, I almost had to learn some stage techniques in a different area of an art. My part was simple. I had to walk on stage with my guitar and sit with a group of actors. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing in rehearsals, but after a chat with some tutors, they gave me some good advice. One tutor said 'Don't look at the audience. As for as your concerned, the audience isn't there'. This helped me a lot, because it made me think it was just us on the stage with no one watching. Another tutor said 'When you're on stage, just go with the flow. Follow the other actors, you own the part of the stage you're on.' Again, this gave me the confidence to just relax and go with the flow. It took away the awkwardness of myself being somewhere I shouldn't.

All in all, I enjoyed playing the show. Seeing as I've never acted in my life, giving me a taste of what it's like has made me appreciate my comfort zone more (although I would like to stretch myself).

I've also started to notice how people approach rehearsals. Being at college for the time I am, I've experienced a lot of techniques.

For example, while rehearsing for a show with Andy, we were given time to get musicians together and to get the song sorted. I'll go more into how we went about this later in this post. After the song is done, we then all congregate in a room and almost give a mini performance. I remember the first time I was put in this situation, I was terrified. Being in front your peers while you're basically still practicing is  a horrible situation. But it works! The pressure and desire not to mess up is an amazing motivator.

While rehearsing with Murphy, I noticed it to be a lot more methodical. While rehearsing for Moulin Rouge, we took each track and broke it into it's sections and worked through each one separately. This is a really good technique, as it gets you comfortable with each section and then you can put it all together. Although it takes a little longer, it's probably the best way to rehearse.

As mentioned earlier, rehearsing with the Musical Theater is completely different. After learning all the tracks with Murphy's method, we would then go in the the actors and singers and work through things. We start by going through the acts, so the actors can rehearse, and we come in when needed. This helps us get the cues right. As we go along, we tweak parts that need it so the show flows better. After we do the acts, we then go through any parts that need working with the singers, and we repeat this until show night.

I'm now going to talk about how I rehearse with my band. It's quite weird, because it's a mix of all the techniques mentioned above. Normally, I'll come up with a verse and chorus, and make sure everyone's up to speed with them. We then link these together and do an A, B, A, B run. This shows us any transitions that need tweaking, and it puts us all on the spot in a way. We then write a C section and make it into a full song and keep going over it. If someone makes a mistake, we carry on and talk about what went wrong after. In the next run, we play the whole song and focus on where we messed up. If it's a recurring problem, we then run the section over and over until it's perfect.

Obviously, everyone has their own techniques, and if they work for you then hey, go for it!

Different Genre Sessions

In the past few weeks, I've been doing a lot of work in studios. I've blogged about it before, but I thought if blog some more about it.

First of all, I've been in the studio with my band working on our EP 'No Ball Games'. It's been quite a hard task, seeing as we only have our for a few hours at a time. We have a pretty good system, because before he gets there I'll record a guitar ghost track for the rest of the band to follow. I know this is bad practice, as if it was real studio time and we were paying, it would be a waste of time. After our drummer leaves, we work on the rest of the instruments and get their takes down. 

We've only encountered one problem where we were a few bars short of a verse, and the drummer had already left. We were going to try and cut and paste it, which is a legitimate technique, although I feel like this is almost like cheating at it. Soon, the EP will be mixed and up on BandCamp for a 'pay what you want' download.

Secondly, I've been asked to feature on a drum and bass track playing guitar. This is something completely out of my comfort zone, but no one gets anywhere sticking to one genre. After talking to the guy who wanted me to play, he sent me the track and asked me to create some nice chord inversions and a melody. I managed it, but it was quite difficult as I don't normally write for this. I also added a riff for the build up, which seemed to work well when harmonised.

Last of all, I was asked today to do the same kind of thing playing on a Folk track with Alice Coley. I've played with her band before for a short while, so I have some experience in this genre. I made up a melody that followed the chords, and again, added a harmony to it. It seemed to work well. I was then asked to do the volume swell technique while playing the chords, which was added after the first chorus.

All in all, I think it's been a good experience, because I've been thrown into a broad variety of genres. Let's hope the tracks and EP do well!

Perfectionism

Recently, I've been recording a lot of things. I'm currently in the middle of recording an EP with my band, and I also record videos for this blog. One thing that has really thrown me is the fact that I have to get it perfect, or I hate it.

In a few of my videos, I make mistakes. I know that once that happens I should carry on like it was nothing, but I can't. I have no definite answer why, but I have a few ideas. One of them is that as I was growing up listening to my favourite bands, there are never mistakes on the tracks. I think this is mentally conditioned me to think that if I make a mistake, it's not right (which is completely untrue).

Another idea is a kind of ripple. I don't know about anyone else, but when I make a mistake in a high pressure situation, my brain goes into overdrive and I keep thinking 'You made a mistake', 'You went wrong', 'You played an F#, you f***ing idiot!'. This then continues making me loose focus on what I'm playing, thus leading to many more mistakes. It's an on going thing.

While recording the EP, I've taken at least 15 attempts at a 16 bar solo. After playing for almost 14 years, you'd think this would be a piece of cake. I thought it would be easy, to go into a studio, record a few licks, then listen to the playback and it sound like Metallica. I was wrong. It's incredibly difficult for me. Everyone else was saying each take was fine, but there was always a bit of unwanted string noise, or a bend wasn't perfect. This really bugs me, meaning I'd delete the take and go again. 

I've been taught a really good way to get over this. A college tutor told me to do 3 takes, and then choose the best one. I think this is a great idea, because that way you have set a limit and you have a kind of deadline. I tried working to this discipline, but again, each take had something wrong with it, and it bugged me.

This is different in a live situation though. I remember our bands second gig. We played a small festival type party for someone's birthday. We we're up on stage, and there was about 200 drunk teenagers watching. It came to one part in a song where everything cut out apart from me and the vocals. What happened next, I blame on Jack Daniels. My fingers stopped working right when I needed them the most. Nothing but me hitting every wrong note ever played in a succession, and the vocalist. The notes were that wrong, our vocalist actually stopped and started laughing. But it was okay, because I was laughing too. I just made a joke out of it, fell onto my knees and started playing some country licks for a laugh. Even the audience we're laughing, but I didn't care. A mix between whiskey and laughter created a bubble around me. Then, we finished the set, got off stage, and got our party on.I think the reason I could laugh it off was because it was live. I knew there was no going back, I knew there was no second take, so I just went with it.

 Why I can't do this in a studio situation I will never know, but I'm going to work it into my practice regime to film myself playing every time and get used to being recorded and allowing a certain number of errors. After some time, I'm sure I'll learn to disregard any mistakes.

Music Philosophy

Nowadays, most people have a favourite band, or song. This is a common thing. But, while someone might love a certain song, another person may hate it. This begs the question, what makes a song 'good'?

The real answer is, no one knows. People spend their lives trying to make a perfect track to please everyone, but this will never happen, because people have different views. No matter how much effort you put into a track, how perfect or tight it is, it will never be enough for some people. And yet, us musicians still try.

It all comes down to aestheics. Because I'm in a ska band, it's expected of me to write happy, jolly songs that people can dance to. An aesthetic of ska. It's about how appealing you are to the audience, whether or not you're 'good' enough to grace their ears with your music.

If you're lucky, you will be good enough, and they'll come to your shows and buy your CD. But with so many people liking so many different things, what are the chances?