11.27.09
Posted in Music at 10:40 pm by Steve
When my students stumble over chord fingerings in a lessons I often fall back on a trick I learned while at Berklee College of Music. It’s a simple method for training your muscles to get into and out of a chord form smoothly and quickly.
You set a metronome on the slow side (54-60 bpm) and let it begin counting off the time. Now, since most chords are not played in a musical vacuum you will want to approach your trouble chord with another chord, preferably the one that precedes it in the piece you are playing. So, if you were struggling with an Emi7(b5), for instance, and the preceding chord was a G7 you would use those 2 chords for this exercise.
So, with your metronome happily clacking away get yourself ready for the approach chord (in our case the G7) and count off 4 beats to get you to your first measure. On beat 1 of that measure play the G7 chord, and then immediately release your fingers and use beats 2, 3 & 4 to set up the next chord (the Emi7(b5) in our example). On beat 1 of the next measure you will play that Emi7(b5) and then immediately release it, using beats 2, 3 & 4 to get back to your starting chord.
You would go back and forth between these chords, hitting them only on beat 1 of the measure and using beats 2, 3 & 4 to position your hand for the next chord. After a couple of minutes you will feel your hand finding its way without much effort. At this point bump up your tempo a notch or 2 and continue until it’s smooth at that tempo and keep going and bumping up the tempo until you are at the tempo you will actually be playing those chords.
If you aren’t using a metronome in your practice routine, here is one more reason to go buy one. The simply help you become a better musician.
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11.24.09
Posted in Music, Studio Log at 11:03 pm by Steve
I just finished mastering an album for children’s performer Marcia Louis entitled Goin’ To Kindergarten. As well as the mastering, I engineered, mixed and even lent a helping hand with the instrumentation. This marks the 3rd album I’ve done for Marcia and, while they have all been fun, this one has been a real treat. We started this way back in February of this year and finally nailed down all 13 tunes.
If you have young kids, keep an eye out for it next month. We covered a lot of musical ground on this album. My 2 year old has had the thrill of hearing this album several times over that past months as we recorded, mixed & mastered this. He’s already singing along with most of the songs.
I wish I had taken a picture during one of the recording sessions to post here, but I was too busy thinking about the task at hand to think ahead to ‘a picture would sure be good for when this is all done’. Oh well 
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11.13.09
Posted in General at 1:21 am by Steve
A thought I had while arguing a point & thought I would share. The point presented was that we crave drama in our lives, drama that mimics a fairy tale.
What we want out of life are tangible sign posts along the way of our life’s journey, not drama. We want moments of sublime importance to usher us into our next life phase. Drama is a poor man’s substitute that doesn’t quite fit the bill.
Plus – I think many of us have had too much drama in our lives and that doesn’t make our lives any more like a fairy tale. It certainly doesn’t fill any void either.
What we are genetically (physiogenically that is) predisposed to needing are the “magical moments of threshold crossing”. Or, to use a more universal term, rites of passage.
The drama is a substitute for the fact that the predominant religion of the 20th Century and beyond (that would be Science), has stripped us of those all-important rites of passage that our psyches have relied upon for hundreds of thousands of generations, leaving us adrift is a sea of primordial subconsciousness desperately looking for signposts.
What we want out of life are tangible sign posts along the way of our life’s journey, not drama. We want moments of sublime importance to usher us into our next life phase. Drama is a poor man’s substitute that doesn’t quite fit the bill.
Plus – I think many of us have had too much drama in our lives and that doesn’t make our lives any more like a fairy tale. It certainly doesn’t fill any void either.
What we are genetically (physiogenically that is) predisposed to needing are the “magical moments of threshold crossing”. Or, to use a more universal term, rites of passage.
The drama is a substitute for the fact that the predominant religion of the 20th Century and beyond (that would be Science), has stripped us of those all-important rites of passage that our psyches have relied upon for hundreds of thousands of generations, leaving us adrift is a sea of primordial subconsciousness desperately looking for signposts.
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