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The band will play on ...

My various adventures and ups and downs while trying to put together a band in Buenos Aires. Connecting with like-minded musicians, who want to play for enjoyment rather than money or ego, isn't as easy as it might seem ...

Blog posts : "General"

(He's got) Betty Davis eyes

So far this year the boat that is the band has been pitching and rolling from one storm to the next, with me at the helm doggedly fighting to stop the whole thing from completely capsizing. First there was the cowardly walkout by half of the band, just when we had a gig to prepare; then the painfully slow process of trying to get Hugo and Nacho ready for the concert itself; followed by the impending departure of Germán and the desperate and largely fruitless search for a suitable, and ultimately any, replacement. While that search should be taking up most of my attention, other unnecessary distractions continue to arise.

At 50 years old, Nacho is an overgrown schoolboy and - in that sc…

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Changes

Vinilo Sensation has undergone huge changes since the return from summer recess; not all of them for the better ... perhaps.

Everyone was back and ready to move forward by the end of February. Things had slipped quite a lot and it was going to take a while to get everything tight again. My stated goal was to be ready to play a concert by the end of April. In addition we now have two new members - Hugo and Nacho on sax and trumpet - and these guys need time to fully integrate and learn the set.

Summer had been a bit disappointing in terms of progress. With various band members away, we were incomplete from the end of December to the start of March.  Practice continued, and I had hoped t…

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Ice-cream sundae

Make mine a 99
With the concert getting ever closer - only 6 more days to go - everything is sounding pretty tight; which is good, because there will be no more rehearsals before the gig. I'm not particularly nervous and I keep telling myself that we are often too self-critical and the audience won't really notice minor fuck-ups. The selection of songs was chosen with that in mind: Familiar, but not too familiar.
 
The band has undergone another name change and is now called: "Vinilo Sensation"; this is supposed to be Spanglish for 'Vinyl Sensation', but to me it sounds like something you'd get from the ice-cream van if you didn't have enough money for a ninety-nine. …

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If you leave me now

OK. So maybe I spoke too soon in my over excited last post. I'm not sure if it's the pressure of the coming gig or something else, but Marelena - trombone - isn't happy and possibly wants to leave the band.
 
Marelena is a tiny little woman who hardly says anything and has always pleaded poverty to avoid contributing to the cost of the studio. I'd always assumed she was about 20-22 and a student or something, so let her do what she wanted; besides, with 7 other people, her lack of financial contributions were easily absorded by the rest of us and we were happy to have her and her instrument along. However, things are not at all as they seem.
 
A couple of months ago, it was noted by various pe…

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Come together

Undercover Brother ?
A gig! A real live gig! Three weeks and we will play our first live concert; I can hardly believe we have got this far already.
 
To be honest, it's a bit too soon, but the opportunity has come up and after all the hard work it's time for a bit of a reward. We will be on the bill with two other bands at a 'Funk Night' in a local bar/music club. The venue, "El Suburbano", seems ok: There's a large enough stage area for all of us to be comfortable; the sound engineer is paid for and we might actually get paid! ... yes ... paid! Based on how many people actually turn up to see specifically us, rather than one of the other bands.

We are supposed to …

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Feels like the first time

So six months have passed since my last post and obviously a lot has happened. After a difficult summer where things were beginning to grind to a halt and the whole project almost fell apart, we managed to find some new people and the band has gained some extra momentum. 
The Wow Factor
 
There have been a few ups and downs, as one would expect, but I've been avoiding writing anything about it because for some reason positive comments seem to put the kiss of death on things. Every time we make a tenuous step forward I want to put fingers to keyboard, but I hold back. However now seems like a significant moment and time for a review of the past few months.
 
Janu…

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Summer holiday

Mouli.
My very dear friend who sadly
passed away just before Christmas.
A happy soul
who will be missed by many.
The Christmas/New Year period would present a small interruption to band practice wherever one happened to be living, but here in the Southern hemisphere it represents the start of everyone's summer vacations. Even people who aren't taking much of a break still manage to get away from the city for a while. Consequently, practice sessions have been a bit thin over the last couple of weeks.
 
I thought it would be best to keep the practice sessions happening - even without all the band - to maintain some kind of continuity and in order not to lose the practice ro…

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Stop 'n go

After a somewhat disappointing start, November has seen a lot of progress: It would appear that I now have a band ... including that ever elusive keyboard player.
 
It seems I have to be very careful what I write here, as almost always the opposite of what I say or expect happens. When things are going good and I write about them, there is often a sudden down turn in fortunes. Equally when I express my frustration about the lack of progress, my words can ignite a light at the end of the tunnel. I hope my positive tones here don't put the kiss of death on things.

In my last blog entry I voiced my doubts over the level of commitment of some of the band members. I was right about Victor t…

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I'm waiting for the man

Lou Reed died this week, so it seems kind of appropriate to name this post after one of his songs. I think 'The Man' to which Lou Reed was referring is something of an abstract concept; the man I'm talking about is more tangible: my guitarist, Nicolas.
 
What is it about guitarists? I mean, they're easy enough to find and therefore fairly easy to replace, so they should be generally easy to keep under control ... one would think. But guitarists seem to be at the root of all my recent band problems. The last band, El Reflejo, all fell apart because of an overgrown teenager on guitar (the details have been discussed at length elsewhere), and now this band is slowly grinding to a halt, large…

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Let's hang on

Despite any ups and downs and setbacks, it's important to maintain a clear vision of where the project is going and to keep things moving forward.
 
It's almost October and the current band has been holding together for around two months, perhaps a little more, and I'm generally pleased with the progress we have been making. There have been some changes in personnel: Pablo on bass has been replaced by old friend Tomas, and there were a couple of different guitarists before we settled on Nicolas. The great news was that Nicolas has a friend, Victor, who can play keyboards; not so well, but it fills out the overall sound and provides a palate of additional colours to add to the mix. There a…

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Back in the saddle

After the long dark winter months, a new ray of hope has come peeping over the horizon.
 
I haven't written anything for a couple of months, because there's really been nothing to write about. After a somewhat disappointing May followed by a completely lifeless June, finally, at the end of July something seemed to be happening.
 
Around the middle of the month there was a flurry of emails from interested parties - mainly guitarists and bass players - and a couple of weeks ago I gathered a few together for a try out session. Things went well and the following Friday some of them actually came back. I've been holding back from writing about any of this as I didn't want to appear too hope…

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Come what May

The month of May has been a bit of a disappointment. I knew that this process would be long and hard with dry and demoralizing stops along the way; I guess that's where I am now.
 
As I said in a previous post, at the end of April I got rid of the people who don't fit into the plan, which left just Tomas and myself. I had a singer, Ariel, waiting in the wings, but he was largely untested. This meant I had no musicians to play melody and so practice sessions were put on hold. Around the middle of the month I found a guitarist, Gustavo, and we all got together, but he wasn't interested in continuing, so everything is back on hold. However, the session with this guitarist did provide an op…

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Falling apart at the seams

A change of some faces might reinvigorate the rest.

As I predicted, keeping this band together in its current form was simply too much to hope for. Gonzalo (keyboards) was enthusiastic, but time and other commitments have forced him to drop out. Anna (vocals) is very unreliable and doesn't always come to practice; she's missing about 30% of the time, which is really not good enough. She is also very focused on her Blues style - Joss Stone covers - and not really interested in other suggestions. Andres (guitar) is Anna's boyfriend/toyboy and so if she goes I guess he will too; his style is a little too Rock, anyway. That leaves just myself and Tomas on bass.
 
These musical differences and …

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Leader of the Pack

If any clarity of vision or direction is to be maintained, somebody has to be the boss.

After much consideration I've come to the conclusion that bands work best as dictatorships rather than democracies. One of the main problems with my previous band was my decision to try to form a 'band of equals'. Almost inevitably this opened the door to a strong personality who could manipulate the band to his own ends. This isn't going to happen this time.


Already I can see 'drift' within this new band. There's a lack of firm decisions regarding choice of songs ... or even real discussion of the subject. I'm determined that the project won't go off in some undesirable direction so I think I need to tak…

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Stool Pigeon

This has been a truly inspirational evening; full of ideas.

My wife has taken to rescuing pigeons from the street; actually they're Turkish doves, but the word in Spanish is still 'Paloma'. She finds the little babies abandoned and brings them home to nurse back to health, feeding them with a syringe - the local chemist has been giving us some very strange looks recently. Once they are big enough to look after themselves, she is loath to part with them and it's generally up to the birds to seize the moment and make a bid for freedom. The apartment isn't big, so consequently, at any one time there can be 4 or 5 pigeons doves flying around in the kitchen.

There's a quiet little cafe bar ju…

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Take Five

A short list of tunes is beginning to take shape.

Tonight's practice went pleasingly well. After a couple of somewhat frustrating sessions, we now - for the first time - have all the necessary band members, and so were able to have a proper attempt at our short list of covers. We are only working on five songs at the moment - plenty for only 2 hours in the studio.

Sunny - A much covered Jazz/Pop standard. Quite complex arrangement, but coming along.

Alright - cover of original by Jamiroquai. Very simple song (from my perspective).
 
It ain't over 'till it's over - cover of song by Lenny Kravitz. A few interesting little tricks and a very fast hi-hat make this challenging for me to play…

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Piano Man

We urgently need to expand beyond Bass, Drums, Guitar & Vocal.
Recent experience has led me to believe that keyboard players are a) very hard to find, and b) all mad. With my previous band we (actually mainly me) spent 3 years trying to find someone ... anyone ... and the ultimate failure was at the root of many of the problems which eventually developed inside that group.

Many of the keyboard players I met were full-time professionals looking for session work. Others were very talented amateurs with their own music already written and trying to find a readymade band to play their music. All seemed incredibly driven people with no time to spend just having fun. This pretty much sums …

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Ring, Ring

Trying to get a good sound from not so good equipment: Does a bad workman blame his tools?

Tuning drums is both an art and a nightmare, and something which I've never been very good at. Well tuned drums can sound fantastic but badly tuned they can be awful. It's easy enough to get a passable sound from the bass and toms, but the most important piece of the kit, the snare drum, has always eluded me.

Getting a good sound from the snare was always complicated ... but now we have YouTube!

I recently had to change the head, so I went on line and watched about 50 videos of various professionals doing it; some getting very technical and complex, while others just put on a new head in a matter of min…

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Can you feel the beat?

I found a room for individual practice: It's not great, but it's better than nothing.

One of the big problems with playing drums is practice. Some instruments, particularly electric or electronic ones - guitar, keyboard, etc - can easily be adapted for practice without annoying anyone: headphones. Trumpets, saxophones, violins and the like are melodic (assuming a certain level of ability) and the neighbours aren't going to mind. But drums ...

 
In the apartment I have a 'practice kit' - 5 rubber pads attached to a metal frame in a way which allows them to be positioned similar to the way a real set of drums would be distributed. Hardly an ideal solution, but placed on a rubber mat it makes…

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Come blow your horn

A firm hand will be needed to maintain direction.


I had a meeting yesterday with a potential trumpet player; an interesting and unexpected new instrument to add to the mix. He seems enthusiastic and has every intention of coming to the next practice session. Hopefully his style is 'bright' and 'up' rather than that low mournful New Orleans funerary style.

This addition has lots of potential, but will require some adjustment to the selection of songs. We also still need a piano/keyboard - and I'm not having Fernando back; that would be a big mistake. Once we have all the pieces in place, I foresee a tricky balancing act to keep everyone happy and together.

Previous experience has tau…

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