One year ago today: June 6, 2017, the poorest kid on campus.
Five years ago today: June 6, 2013, in the hotel industry . . .
Nine years ago today: June 6, 2009, some common symptoms.
Random years ago today: June 6, 2005, the death of road maps.
Happy D-Day. I took a second last look at book repair. It’s not for me. Having the knowledge of how it is done is good enough. But I did learn enough to watch out for certain types of binding if I’m buying a book I want to keep. I have dozens of manuals with the so-called Perfect binding that pages fell out after just a few uses. The repair instructions say to stay away from tape unless it is the special kind of tape that they sell. Hmmm, where have we heard that one before? I’ve had satisfactory results using duct tape. Shown here is one of the books we practiced with last Friday. This one would be classified as a spline repair.
I’ve stated I don’t consider a band a success just by the first gig. Nope, it is more like a band of the original members after a year and a profit. Hence, the 5-pc band, after 17 months, was a flop because I lost money. I was recalling how, when I was around 19, one of my earliest guitarists criticized my musical ability. The fact is, he was mediocre, but he was better than me, the guy who trained him. The reason? I was so occupied putting the bands together I never did focus on my musicianship. I explained it to him that “my expertise centered on organization, not execution”. I really did talk like that when I was in college. Anyway he took that the wrong way. I was not issuing an apology, but a warning.
That was the first, but not the last time musicians have totally underestimated the value of band management experience. The Campbell brothers still play together, but after they struck out on their own, they never again put a successful group together. They are quick to state they’ve played for 50 years, but have not made a penny at it since the day they lost me as their manager. Like so many musicians, they wasted a fortune on recording equipment and not that they would have listened to me, but I never did have the nerve to tell them they didn’t have what it takes to sell their recorded music. It takes effective band management. We lived within visiting distance the first 8 years after high school, and they were still playing the same song list.
That’s significant, because the lack of management meant nobody was scheduling rehearsals, picking new songs, finding gigs, promoting the group, or looking after the money. And it is a persistent problem, to this day I still meet musicians who have gone nowhere yet still have no idea that they have a lack of management problem. I’ve put together around four successful bands since high school. This would be my fifth. It doesn’t sound like many, but that’s from around 80 startups that failed, usually guitar player problems. Of the four successful bands I’ve created, the lifespan is same, that is, around three years. That’s the point where the guitar player thinks he’s better than the others and either leaves or tries to take over.
When you see it.
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How did this afternoon’s rehearsal go? Actually, great. This is the old guy who’s 14 miles from here, not the army guy 40 miles away. I’m not sure how things will work out, so both are in the loop. I watch for progress toward playing out, not toward better music. Since he lives in a subdivision abbreviated Twood, we’ll call him that for now. He certainly has been doing the homework. Better yet, from the questions he had and problems encountered, he has seen the light. Taking my directions literally (right after I left), he applied himself to a couple tunes on files I sent him and said he was amazed at the results. That tells me he is listening as a musician, not as a guitar player. Guitar players take pride in never being amazed.
The fact is, they strive to play guitar like the recording and often do a good job of it. But this type of playing has its limits. After the predictable 12 songs, the quality suffers. Each new tune they try to learn bumps an earlier one down a notch no matter how hard they work at it. They’ve reached said limit, though rarely that count is much higher, like the Hippie, who can play the crap out of a good 35 songs. But he hasn’t learned any new ones in close to 40 years now. This photo is from around ten years ago when I used to train guitarists five at a time in the hope one of them would work out. It never happened, but I did encounter the blonde just right of center up at the Home Depot a while later.
Well, Twood is at least partially familiar with this situation. As usual, he’d just never met anyone before who described the thing as ugly and pointed out its shortcomings. I always give new people a quick spiel about the problems I am seeking to avoid, such as endless memorization sessions some guitar players call rehearsals. In his case, it was like watching the lights go on in series in a dark factory. Ah, he was matching what I was saying to situations he recognized. That’s a good sign and I’ll proceed to say why.
He did not object that doing things this way meant he could never be a guitar hero. That’s important that he did not complain. He figured out that playing it to my directions meant he could conduct the whole evening at a constant above average level without tiring out. No spectacular numbers traded away in return for better than average sound all night long. And he plainly sees the value in that, tipping me that he’s been in bad bands before and recently. He reports this got him motivated to grab song after song from the recordings, many of which he’d never heard before and found he could now already play them to a basic standard. More lights came on, he said.
Let’s put it to the test. I asked him to haul out the list he used and we’ll step through it. He’d thrown it away, but retrieved it, now realizing it was valuable. I asked trick questions, such as which tunes are his favorites. The correct answer was none, or as he put it, he now likes playing them all this way. (At this juncture most guitar players would want to run over the ones they’d learned best and call that headway.) We went through 21 songs and were able to half-play them. Even at this early phase, they were both danceable and listenable.
[Author’s note: Playing this way and all variations of it do not duplicate the actual guitar parts of the music. We are not so much playing certain passages but instead play what the audience thinks they hear. Many guitar purists classify this as faking it. I recognize it as merely another guitar style, albeit one that is not as natural as most. However, I don’t pay no nevermind to anyone who calls it faking until they prove to me they can do it and then say the same thing. Hasn’t happened yet.]
Twenty-one new songs in a week? Fantastic, and there were more on that page but his fingers were blistered. What’s more is as we played them, he was able to readily see for himself what he needed to do for that duo sound. I’d showed him note-for-note a few tunes the first week so he could hear the effect, and already he’s able to map that onto new tunes we were playing as a team for the first time. That is pure encouragement to my ears. Time and again he mentioned how he now knows what I meant about working hard to keep it simple. Consistent performance for the whole gig also means not getting tired out. Good, because most guitarists would accuse me of trying to stifle them.
And he’s sold on the method. There’s more to it, but it amounts to playing the drum beat pattern by strumming it on the guitar, but in a manner best learned from somebody who knows the exact “end product”. Better yet, as we went down that list he could now automatically “hear” the parts that he still had to learn and knows it is a function of time put in. If this is an indication that he will apply the required hours, we could be gigging in no time. He’s already begun to glimpse the electrifying results this style will have on the crowds. Good, because it is designed specifically for that by highly competent, super-experienced, and, I might add photogenic, management.
Twood looks a bit like Colonel Saunders with a full beard. This concludes your world-class article on duo musical arrangement. In fact, if you’ve read many articles as lately appeared in guitar magazines, this writing is above world-class. Why, it contains information you can actually use, not a hallmark of many publications any more. And yours for free by visiting this, Florida’s granddaddy of all non-sports non-political non-my-cat-had-kittens blog.
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