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Hints & Tips

Periodically I’ll be posting hints and tips from how I think about music and playing guitar. As well, I’ll provide downloads in PDF to some of the music I’ve written.

First Tip

"Just Kate" is a tune I wrote about my daughter, Kate. I wrote it by reversing a Japanese scale I knew (efabc) and adding a driving latin rock groove.

just Kate

The loud and soft sections reveal the various moods that I face each day growing up with this great girl!”

Perils of the Pit

I’m presently playing guitar on the blockbuster musical ‘Dirty Dancing’. To say that this Australian produced musical has been an outstanding success is an understatement as pre-bookings accounted for 85% of available seats for the season.

As far as my role goes, it requires a great deal of flexibility and discipline as the entire 10 piece band is playing in a basic recording studio environment, in a room underneath the stage, all on headphones (or should be), and to a click so we can sync. up to pre-recorded tracks generated by 2 Mac synced laptops (one the master and the other the slave for back-up purposes.)

This performance environment presents new challenges to a player in many ways. More time has to be taken to utilize the expertise of FOH sound people to get your gear sounding good to yourself and whoever has you in their headphones. It’s vitally important to REALLY listen to how you sound and how you are fitting in rhythmically with the rest of the rhythm section.

Never assume that the way you normally play in a live gig will work in this more structured environment. As we were playing the entire show with a click it’s vitally important to have plenty of that in your headphones and not just rely on trying to lock in with the drummer, as he is locking in to the same time source as you are.

There are many, many tips I could give about this performance environment but one of the best is to spend money on getting the best sounding pickup for your acoustic you can afford so that the sound imitates the sound of a good condenser mic. as much as possible.

I’ve had great success with a Fishman Rare Earth sound hole pickup for this gig running into a 60 watt AER. My electric sound was generated through a custom made Fender Strat. with EMG’s, a variety of stomp boxes into a Rivera 5012 (great amps). Any dirt sounds were from an Engl Preamp or the dirt channel of the Rivera (very sweet in a Marshall sort of way).
Cheers till next time.

TIP 3

In a city the size of where I live a freelance guitarist needs to be versatile and have a wide appreciation of lots of different musical genres. This will mean a lot of time and practical exposure to all these styles as well as having the right knack of picking up the stylistic nuances involved. Whatever the style, you must have the right gear for the job which means spending some money to get the sound right. Don't skip on this important area. Also, make sure you take steps to ensure that you are comfortable in both pick and fingerstyles and that your reading skills are up to speed. The good player in various stylesneeds to be a good reader but doesn't need to be a great reader. Always have the technical foundation at a level where you can traverse your instrument comfortably wth accuracy in both groove and style.

Cheers till next time.