A bit more than 2 weeks ago, I was lucky to come by the opportunity to play music for 15 minutes at a talent show that was part of a Brazilian Exchange Student connect at Jackson College... It was an amazing night, and my show was pretty good! I performed 3 original songs and a sappy cover along with rappers, dancers, Brazilian guitar players and a fantastic African drum ensemble.
Now, I had about a week to prepare for this show, and of course I put off writing it until the night before the show. I ran into very big problems in filling up the 15 minutes because I didn't want to play covers, and only one original with lyrics came to my mind. There were also extraneous matters of socio-political commentary flying around in my head at the prospect of 15 minutes influence on people...
What I came up with in the end was 4 songs, 2 of which I wrote the lyrics the night before. I also prepared loose sketches of talking to the audience in between my songs. I tried to make my entire performance tie together into a message of sorts, and I modestly say it came out 60% clearly. This was due to lack of preparation and practice.
But on the Very Bright Side, this was the direction I was looking for to advance the creativity and originality of my shows. I will follow this up with posts on HOW I'm going to script some kick ass shows...
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Relative Minors
In the last performance, a magical scrap of knowledge was granted unto me by the heavens in the form of an unintentional accident! It really was an exciting moment, contributing to a very exciting morning where I participated in a skit, met a girl from lake Michigan... and witnessed a really emotional sermon. You see, it was communion Sunday, which is a monthly activity that really means a lot to people. I got to play a traditional Spanish hymn, "una espiga" during the communion. I was gently strumming chords, it was a low key, dreamy kind of lullaby hymn... and on the last chord of the phrase, I hit the wrong chord. Every time this had previously happened to me, it was an awkward mistake, a deviation from the song. But this time, my mistake sounded better than the original chord.
Was it holy intervention? I had just munched on the eternal body of Christ, but actually I had just mistakenly played the relative minor of the chord that was intended to end the phrase of musical melody. A relative minor is a chord that is heard in a way that is synonymous with it's specific major chord. The major chord that was written in the ending of that phrase was F major, also the keynote of this particular song. When I reverted to D minor, the ending of that phrase was melodically intensified and unresolved. I sang out that final note long in harmony with the D minor and then resolved and ended the song by exhaling the tension back on F.
So, I guess this scrap of information is just something that I can use for writing songs, or adding flavor to songs I already know. More updates on performances very soon.
Was it holy intervention? I had just munched on the eternal body of Christ, but actually I had just mistakenly played the relative minor of the chord that was intended to end the phrase of musical melody. A relative minor is a chord that is heard in a way that is synonymous with it's specific major chord. The major chord that was written in the ending of that phrase was F major, also the keynote of this particular song. When I reverted to D minor, the ending of that phrase was melodically intensified and unresolved. I sang out that final note long in harmony with the D minor and then resolved and ended the song by exhaling the tension back on F.
So, I guess this scrap of information is just something that I can use for writing songs, or adding flavor to songs I already know. More updates on performances very soon.
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Redemption
Not too long ago, I re-tried to perform that song I played so terribly that day in church. This time, it all went over just fine, though I realized afterwards that I may have been too serious about it. I just practiced and played a traditional hymn 'in christ there is no east or west" with my own add-ons and renditions. I'm not sure if people noticed that my version was any different, but either way it gave me satisfaction so overall a success. Practice makes perfect, shwaaws
Monday, April 7, 2014
Sucess and Failure
When I am successful, I am meeting a variety of psychological needs through an intentional activity, a process in which I give time/effort and receive some sort of rewarding situation. Once I made 1000 origami cranes. That situation achieved me an extensive amount of positive social admiration and appreciation. You see, I hung a good portion of them to fill up the ceiling of the coffee shop business I work at. I did it for free, and it was a complete surprise to my post-modern art enthusiast boss. Even his boss liked it. Everyone liked it because when the customers walked in they were just amazed by the suspended sea of swaying origami, or some of them didn't look up at all. Anyway, I just achieved this by doing. My mind imagined the idea, visualized it's creation with every step, and then I simply did it.
Right now I'm having failure in this blog project because I have been improperly visualizing and doing. My plan for it's creation was to schedule shows, do my best to prepare, and then play and film the shows. Since the project began I have performed 5 times, but I failed in the steps of preparing and filming. The purpose of expending the effort within this practice was to establish the tools for great, enjoyable music playing for people around me. I was going to perform, reflect and analyze, and direct the experience by revising and improving my practices.
The more I fail, the more inclined I am to fail. Obviously, I want to start succeeding. So, at this point I will simply use what I have. I will tell the story of every performance one post at a time. I will recall them as accurately as possible and compare them to how close they are to my vision of the great, like able performance... which will follow into a method to move from where I am to there.
Monday, March 24, 2014
Realisation
Two nights ago I had a group of four musicians over at my house playing music. We weren't playing for rehearsal or anything; just fooling around to experiment and stuff. Even though it wasn't a performance, and it wasn't even a serious interaction, I still came to a musical realization that is definitely worth mentioning here and applicable in some upcoming shows I have...
So, my realization came from the couple hours I spent with these people trying to play the same thing together in order to sound like a band. I realized that a piece in a song (at it's most basic function) is a combination of rhythm and melody. A musician must recognize these to play with another, and so it follows that in order for this to happen, the music must be rhythmically and melodically recognizable.
Rhythm: the thing that makes rhythm understandable to people is for it to be guided by a tempo. The rhythm is a repeating phrase, each with the same number of beats in the tempo. A rhythmic musical exclamation is known as an accent. Accents can have different length, or value. An accent that takes up the entire phrase is a whole note. One half is a half note, on fourth is a quarter, on and on until it becomes difficult to play that fast. Most of the time accents are on the tempo beat, but not always. They can be in between the beats as well.
Melody: melodies that obey the laws of musicality follow chords and are derived from one chord, or a keynote. A lot of melodies begin on the keynote, and a great number end on them too. Say for example, a song was played in the keynote of C major. It would involve combinations of notes in the C major scale- CDEFGABC. If the song had a chord change- say, G -the melody would have to find it's way to the G note in the C scale and then direct to the G major scale- GABCDEF#G. This is the logistics anyhow.
So, this pertains to performance in the sense of playing something that a person with no musicality can listen and groove to, just by their natural sense of rhythm and melody. In my songs, I need to pick out a rhythm and a melody and then stick to them, at least to begin with. The deviations will come late,r but not until the establishment of the song's source.
So, my realization came from the couple hours I spent with these people trying to play the same thing together in order to sound like a band. I realized that a piece in a song (at it's most basic function) is a combination of rhythm and melody. A musician must recognize these to play with another, and so it follows that in order for this to happen, the music must be rhythmically and melodically recognizable.
Rhythm: the thing that makes rhythm understandable to people is for it to be guided by a tempo. The rhythm is a repeating phrase, each with the same number of beats in the tempo. A rhythmic musical exclamation is known as an accent. Accents can have different length, or value. An accent that takes up the entire phrase is a whole note. One half is a half note, on fourth is a quarter, on and on until it becomes difficult to play that fast. Most of the time accents are on the tempo beat, but not always. They can be in between the beats as well.
Melody: melodies that obey the laws of musicality follow chords and are derived from one chord, or a keynote. A lot of melodies begin on the keynote, and a great number end on them too. Say for example, a song was played in the keynote of C major. It would involve combinations of notes in the C major scale- CDEFGABC. If the song had a chord change- say, G -the melody would have to find it's way to the G note in the C scale and then direct to the G major scale- GABCDEF#G. This is the logistics anyhow.
So, this pertains to performance in the sense of playing something that a person with no musicality can listen and groove to, just by their natural sense of rhythm and melody. In my songs, I need to pick out a rhythm and a melody and then stick to them, at least to begin with. The deviations will come late,r but not until the establishment of the song's source.
Monday, March 17, 2014
Failure
I don't have a video or anything of my performance a couple weeks ago at my church, but if I did I honestly might be too ashamed to show it... I played a rendition of an old christian hymn 'In Christ There Is No East or West', and the show was undeniably the worst I have ever played in my life. It was painful to hear. It was 50 seconds of utter nonsense. If I had any sense at all, I would have started over. But I didn't. I just kept floundering, trying to jump back on the rift. Unfortunately, I never did, and after about a minute of chord guessing and plowing on with the lyrics, I just gave up. And walked off the stage. The audience clapped politely.
\But when it came down to it and I began the song, my voice sang the melody in the book, and my guitar played the chords I tweaked. This mistake caused my song to train wreck, but instead of stopping the train I just kept driving, playing chords and guessing to get back on the tracks.
So, I guess I should specify exactly how it went down. You see, the song I had planned was a simplified version based around the chords and melody that was in the hymnbook. However, I wasn't satisfied with just repeating the song in the version it had always been played before. I decided to write my own original intro by tweaking the melody a little and changing the chords to suit it. I mean, this is how songs evolve, and it's not worth playing something everyone has heard before.
\But when it came down to it and I began the song, my voice sang the melody in the book, and my guitar played the chords I tweaked. This mistake caused my song to train wreck, but instead of stopping the train I just kept driving, playing chords and guessing to get back on the tracks.
This experience was terribly embarrassing and discouraging, but all that means is that I have some major things to learn from it, in order for me to enjoy my shows. So, even though it is painful to recall and analyze, I did and established the distinct reasons that caused my terrible performance.
- I did not practice the song within a half an hour of the performance. This is important because it was not ingrained well enough into my mind
- I was too nervous getting up onto the stage. I was out of breath, my mind was racing. This was the problem that set all the others into motion. I realize now how important it is to take a minute to calm yourself into a meditative state before you try to do it. It is completely a state of mind.
Monday, February 10, 2014
Ladies and Gentlemen
This blog is a documentation of my passion, philosophy, and experimentation in performance of my original songs. I lover playing guitar and believe I can successfully entertain a crowd. I will be posting videos of experimental performances, and follow each one up with thoughtful analysis of aspects of performance that I think will take off some real bring the house down shows.
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