Tag: improv

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fantastic ticket offer for gigs next week!

Wow – I’ve just managed to hook up a fantastic deal for anyone who wants to take advantage of it –

The night before the next Recycle Collective gig, Erkan Ogur is playing at the QEH – he’s an AMAZING guitarist, like a turkish-tinged Metheny/Frisell/Stern type player. His latest album is gorgeous, I’ve been listening to it a fair bit recently.

Thanks to a bit of negotiating, I’ve lined up a deal whereby if you get a ticket for Erkan’s gig at the QEH, you can bring the ticket stub along to the Recycle Collective gig the following night, and get in FREE! So it becomes four flavours of guitar, over two nights!

here’s the deets about Erkan’s gig – go see him play (I’ll be there, come and find me and say hi if you’re coming) and then come see us at Darbucka the following day!

ERKAN OGUR’S TEVLIN & YAN VAGH
Wednesday 15 MARCH 2006
QUEEN ELIZABETH HALL 7.30pm

” Erkan OÄŸur is one of those remarkable musicians who spins beguiling poetry out of his astonishing technique and passionate musicianship” Fiona Talkington, BBC Radio 3
“a player who does not waste a single note unless it is filtered through his soul; his fretless guitar playing is simply magical.” Antonio Forcione
“Erkan OÄŸur is a wonderful musician whose music has made an impact on my playing.” Eivind Aarset

Something like a meeting of Metheny, Gismonti and Scofield on a sometimes Quiet Night in Anatolia. Fretted, and fretless acoustic and electric guitars as well as the ancient Anatolian instrument, kopuz lute. With Ilkin Deniz (bass) and Turgut Alp Bekoglu (drums). A unique jazz project that draws on Turkish scales and melodies with Oğur’s fabulous improvisations. A UK PREMIERE. Read more. TELVIN will record a session for BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction the day before.

With support from Parisian guitarist Yan Vagh (nylon and 10-string fretless guitars). www.yanvagh.com

Tickets £20 / £17.50 / £12.50
08703 800 400
www.rfh.org.uk

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Bruford on Improv…

From David Cross’ diary

“I think the best music I’ve been associated with has happened while improvising. And also the worst. A high risk strategy, but pre-arranged music never seems to be able to achieve quite such intensity.” – Bill Bruford.

That just about says it all. I feel very lucky that those ‘worst’ improv moments tend to happen behind closed doors!

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FairTrade thoughts

The talk at St Lukes this morning was an introduction to FairTrade by Geoff Crawford – a fantastic photographer who has visited loads of fairtrade projects and co-operatives around the globe in his role as photomonkey for various aid agencies and fairtrade associations. He pitched the talk perfectly, and kept it to his central theme, which was about the difference that buying fairtrade produce makes to the people who make or grow it, how buying fairtrade coffee directly impacts the lives of coffee growers, and he gave some good pointers for people wanting to start thinking about such things, as well as lists of coffeeshops that stock fairtrade coffee and supermarkets that stock fairtrade produce.

It’s a discussion that could easily have been derailed by some very valid other discussions, about supermarket monopolies, fairtrade imported goods vs the food-miles argument of how far something has to travel to end up on your plate and the damage that transport process does, etc. Those are really important subjects, but a 20 minute talk in a church service wasn’t the place to have them.

What he also avoided was the notion of boycotts – with labeling it as such, he took the same path that I’ve been thinking about in regard to shopping of late – that of seeing everything you buy as an investment.

The problem with thinking of boycotts is that the surface value expressed in the action is that of damaging the profits of the company you’re boycotting. There have been notable examples of this working and starting to affect company policy… or at least marketing policy – Shell oil, Barclays bank and Nestle have all at times taken a major hit through boycotts, and have altered as a result. Not enough, but any stretch, but the change was noted.

The problem is, there are millions of companies who don’t behave the way we’d like them to – Naomi Klein’s vital and fantastic book No Logo highlighted corporate abuses around the world, and looked at the idea of using brand image as a weakspot in their armour. It works, she’s really onto something. But what she’s describing is activism – that’s something we all need to do, but it’s tough to fight every battle.

So what’s the alternative? When we realise that every single penny we spend is investing in something, we can start to think, on a day by day basic about what we’re investing in. I don’t have to see a change for it to have value. I don’t need to feel like everyone else is doing the same thing, I just need to know that the two pounds I spend on fairtrade Bananas is being divided up amongst people who are involved in the ongoing work of improving the world. The producers are improving their own world, providing better healthcare and schooling within their communities, the importers and distributors are people that have chosen to work within the rules of the fairtrade foundation, in order to further those aims. My money is being invested into the long term sustainability and growth of the fairtrade movement. The fact that Del Monte or Fyffes or whoever isn’t getting my money is an added bonus, the direct inspiration comes from that direct investment.

The next stage is thinking about where I buy them from – obviously part of the money goes to the retailer. Shopping in the UK without going to supermarkets is pretty tough in most places, and we go to Sainsbury’s for a fair bit of our grocery shopping – it’d be great if there was a branch of Fresh And Wild on southgate high street, but all we have is a tiny health food store – he’s great for herbal tea, muesli, cleaning products, tinned stuffs, etc. and we buy as much there as we can, but he doesn’t stock fruit and veg. So for now we go to Sainbury’s, but as much fair trade organic stuff as we can. But soon we’ll get our organic box scheme sorted out, then it’ll be organic, fair trade and v. low on food-miles. Yay – ecomonkeys are us.

So, try it – go for positive investment, not guilt-trip boycotts. Either way, it means you’ll never go to McDonalds again, which has to be a good thing.

Soundtrack – me and theo, live in Cambridge last week. sounding good!

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Small but perfectly formed.

Cambridge gig with Theo last night, at CB2. It’s a lovely venue – very rustic in that it’s just the cellar of the restaurant with a load of chairs and some lights in it, but it’s free, quiet and the food upstairs is marvellous (recommended for dinner even when there’s no gig on!).

I had a feeling before the gig that it was going to be really full – not sure why, but in any event it turned out to be bollocks. It was a pretty small crowd, but a lovely group of people – like a handpicked audience of really nice listening lovelies.

Because Theo and I recording the gigs on this tour for a possible live album, we panicked a bit when we realised we’d left the minidisk at home. No problem though, as a quick call to Dweez meant that the able and equipped Tony arrived with tiny laptop (like the Rev. G’s Psion, only a proper computer), soundcard and cables to record it straight off the desk.

The gig itself went really well – doing the improv stuff with Theo is up there with playing with Michael Manring in the ‘best fun two people can have on stage’ stakes. The range of sounds and ideas that he conjures up is remarkable. And the recording seems to have come out beautifully, on first listen. Will transfer it to computer, boost the level and see how clean it is later on, but it sounds like it could form a major chunk of the live CD!

And today, Cleveland is coming round to make lovely noises and play Looperlative games.

And finally, congrats to the Rev. G on his new job in computer-geek world rather than bible-geek world – much deserved, but certainly the church’s loss.

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Recycle Collective III

Another fun evening at Darbucka was had!

The line-up, as you know, was me and Patrick Wood followed by Orphy Robinson and Roger Goula.

The first problem was how to get it all on the stage! There was so much gear it was untrue – Patrick had a keyboard, a Rhodes and a guitar, all running through mixers and pedals and stuff. I had the usual leaning tower of stevie, Orphy had a steel pan, bass marimba box thing, snare drum, trumpet and a huge hold-all full of miscellaneous percussion. So we did the set-up in two halves. First for Patrick and I, then for Orphy and Roger.

The set with Patrick went really well (from where I was sat!) – an opening ambient excursion, followed by a more jazzy/dubby piece, into a sort of drum ‘n’ bass/IDM workout over a heavily filtered frantic slap-percussive thing, and finally a version of ‘A Kind Of Prayer’ from The Works album, ‘Beware Of The Dog’. All of which was lots of fun. Because of the stage set-up Patrick was behind me, which was a little disconcerting for him I think – I’m kind of used to looking at buttons and not neccesarily at the person I’m playing with, so it was less problematic for me, but he played beautifully anyway. Patrick’s a really interesting person to play with, as he has myriad ways of shifting harmony against a loop – at some point I need to sit him down and find out what he actually does! The hugeness of some of his synth sounds added a lot of depth to the transitions between sections within particular tunes, and each time I use it, the Looperlative makes more sense, so I felt like I was really on top of the loop side of what I was doing – nothing happened that I didn’t want to make happen!

Orphy and Roger’s set started out in a much more ‘out’ free improv direction, with a sparse 9/8 loop off Orphy’s bass marimba thing, and lots of chaotic sounds over the top. Both the main strength and weakness of looping is that it imposes a sense of form onto what’s going on, which is great if you’re doing free stuff as it gives the audience something to latch onto, but it can be a problem if you trap a sound that you don’t want there and aren’t using a looper with an undo function! Orphy uses the Roland RC-20, which just has start stop and layer (oh, and reverse if you bend down and change it by hand, which he did at points). So the constant nature of Orphy’s loops provided both a reference point in the maelstrom of the out sections, and something for him to wrestle with when he may have wanted a more subtle transition.

fortunately, Roger was using one of the most sophisticated processing/looping/cleverness music packages in the world – MAX/MSP, a software program running on a Mac, which meant he could do all kinds of crazy stuffs to his loops and his processing.

All in, I enjoyed their set – it was a lot more out and free than previous RC stuff, and more out and free than most future RC stuff, but it felt good to stretch things a little and try some things out, and there were some really lovely moments. The quartet piece at the end was kinda fun too, which for some reason sounded to me like a Dave Gruisin soundtrack piece after some seriously heavy narcotics. In a good way. :o) So another enjoyable evening at the collective.

The great news is I also managed to get the next Recycle Collective dates booked in, or at least, two of the next three…

March 16th is the next one – not that far away – and it’ll feature me, Thomas Leeb (a brilliant acoustic guitarist from Austria, living in California) and BJ Cole. Put it in your diaries!

And then tonight, theo and I are in Cambridge – see you there!

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New Music/Recycle Collective tomorrow…

Went into town this morning (town=central London), ostensibly to pick up a copy of Sibelius G7 software. It’s a score-writing package, that I need to be able to a) do my column for Bass Guitar Magazine properly and b) get a load of PDF scores of my stuff up on the web-shop ASAP. I get emails every week from people requesting the sheet music or ‘TAB’ for my tunes. Rest assured, there’ll be precious little TAB going on. Reading music isn’t hard, and is a much more useful skill that interpreting numbers of frets on imaginary fingerboards so that you can learn lots of really simple songs badly.

Anyway, long story short, no-one had G7 in stock. Shit! A wasted trip into town. Well, not entirely – I did get to call into Ray’s Jazz, and picked up a couple of very cheap CDs. One was Daby Toure’s album (something I’ve wanted since seeing him at Greenbelt last year), and the other is ‘Nordic Quartet’ by John Surman, Karin Krog, Terje Rypdal and Vigleik Storaas. It’s a fascinating album, featuring lots of classic Rypdal guitar loveliness, and inspired me to record another idea towards the new album. I don’t think it’ll make it on there, as it was just recorded to stereo, not on separate tracks, but it is a great idea that I’ll definitely revisit. Terje’s stuff always inspires me, please check out some of his CDs. {EDIT – I’ve just compared the recording of this new tune with ‘Not Dancing For Chicken’, and it’s SOOO much better – amazing how clean the sound of the Looperlative is!}

And recording that piece has got me all excited about tomorrow night’s Recycle Collective gig – I’m playing in a duo with Patrick Wood – Patrick and I have recorded together lots over the years, lots of lovely improv stuffs, some of which is in the street-team stash (or was – I’ve no idea what’s currently in the stash!). We’ve also played live together at Greenbelt, both in a duo, and he was a part of my Global Footprint huge improv thingie last year.

So we’re playing, followed by Orphy Robinson and Roger Goula – both of whom are fabulous players I’ve collaborated with in the past.

I really am like a kid in a toy shop with the Recycle Collective – I get to book all my favourite people to come and make lovely noises with me, in a gorgeous venue, to lovely audiences, which you’re more than welcome to come and be a part of. See the RC website for more details.

So that’s tomorrow. I’ve been doing LOADS of teaching of late – schedule is filling up, for sure, I’m almost maxxed out on evening teaching (if you’re wanting any lessons, best book a fair way in advance…) but I’m looking forward to my next lot of gigs – book shows in April with Muriel Anderson in the UK, and some solo stuff in April, as well as some clinics/masterclasses around… watch this space!

Soundtrack – right now, it’s my new tune, before that it was the Franks – Sinatra and Dunnery (not together!)

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forgotten influences…

It’s happening to me a lot of late – hearing things I haven’t listened to for a while, and realising how formative they were in me getting the ideas together to do what I do solo. Hearing Iona again was one, and seeing the Doug Wimbish clinic at the Bass Centre at the end of last year was another.

And now I’m listening to Iona again, and hearing Robert Fripp‘s parts on one track, and having a vivid flash back to his opening soundscape set at the ProjeKct one gig at the Jazz Cafe in London back in, er 98? 99? something like that… Anyway, he came down 40 minutes before the rest of the band, and set up all this soundscaping stuff, overlapping asynchronous loops of mainly synth sounds. The effect was mesmerising, and as someone who was already experimenting with looping (at the time, all I had was my old Lexicon JamMan, and an ART Nightbass processor) it was a big inspiration.

Not long after that I got one of his solo soundscape records, and was a little disappointed. Not in the musical ideas, but in the synth sounds, and it swore me off ever getting a MIDI pickup fitted – I’d had one for a while to demo it for Yamaha, but ended up sounding like a bad keyboard player. Fripp sounded like a much better keyboard player than I, but it still sounded like keyboards a lot of the time, and that to my ears lost much of what is magic about stringed instruments – the attack, the decay, the way we can keep moving the note after it has happened (especially if you’re using an Ebow or the Fernandes Sustainer circuit that Fripp uses in his guitars) – to use that to trigger a synth seemed a little disingenuous.

Still, it meant that I was less likely to end up sounding like him, which was a good thing I guess, but the influence is undeniable, and that gig was a pivotal moment for me. As was the rest of the night – watching the free improv of Fripp with Trey Gunn, Tony Levin and Bill Bruford, I got a glimpse of what was to become one of my main ways of making music – just getting up on stage and playing. The sense of each sound evolving from the last, in an instantaneous thought process, with the intentions of the players meeting, combining, clashing and melding into one another. It’s a magical thing, and the direct descendent of that gig (and in no small way, the interview I did with Tony Levin and Trey Gunn after the gig) is the Recycle Collective.

Soundtrack – James Taylor, ‘Hourglass’.

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Weekend away…

Just back from a weekend away teaching a bass and drum course at Lee Abbey in North Devon. Lee Abbey is a Christian retreat centre, and runs all manner of courses throughout the year, and I was approached over a year ago, I think, to be involved in this one. The idea was to have a Rhythm Section weekend – they do a lot of creative stuff there, but most of it is fairly mainstream church-music related stuff, nothing to out-there.

The drum half of the weekend was being handled by Terl Bryant, an amazing musician, who I’ve been a fan of for many years, and even played on albums with while never having actually played together. So that was an incentive.

After getting lost on the way there… well, not actually lost, just missing my turning off the M5, got there Friday night to find out that Terl was massively snarled up in traffic and ended up not making it there til Saturday morning. Which meant that our introductory improv sesh became a stevie-solo-gig. No problem there then. :o)

Overall, it was a really enjoyable weekend. ‘Twas slightly odd being back in an environment that I’ve not really inhabited for a while – St Luke’s isn’t really a part of the mainstream church culture in the UK – not that it’s consciously excluded, just that the people there haven’t really bought into the language and sub-culture that Lee Abbey is a part of. But as well as being odd, it was rather fun being back in that space again – it’s not somewhere I’d want to live – horses for courses ‘n’ all that, but the people were lovely, and teaching the bassists (many of whom I knew anyway) was a joy, as was playing two gigs and a bit in the Sunday morning service. I’m looking forward to going back there – apart from anything else, I didn’t get out of the building, and it’s set in some of most beautiful countryside in the UK…

this week is a week of teaching and tidying – we’ve got house-guests next weekend, so I’ve got a lot of work to do to get the house ship-shape. TSP did a load over the weekend, so I need to pull my weight… and with that, I’m off to clean up the hallway…

Soundtrack – Iona, ‘Beyond These Shores’; Imogen Heap, ‘Speak For Yourself’.

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Petersfield gig

just back in from the gig in Petersfield with Theo – wow, what a great evening!

To start with, playing with Theo is about as easy as a gig can get – there’s no worrying that he’s ever going to play anything less than marvellous, he’s great fun, and we always have a great time on gigs. Add to that some fine Thai food (the venue doubles as a Thai restaurant), a nice big audience (full room), and some stellar improvs, and you’ve got yourself a damned fine night’s gigging.

We recorded it to minidisc, and the record quality is great except the points where it peaks. A few of the tracks will be editable to get rid of the peaks, a couple won’t be useable, but it does give us a reference point for the general sound quality coming off the desk, so if we drop the record level a bit, we’ll be fine.

Next stop, The Vortex tonight – don’t miss it!

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Postcard from SF Airport

I’m officially on my way home, sat in San Francisco airport, waiting for my flight.

The last few days have been fantastic – catching up with friends around the bay area, and then Saturday’s masterclass and gig.

Friday night was spent firstly having dinner with Rick Turner and with two lovely new friends from Third World Guitars in the Dominican Republic. I also got to try out Rick’s brand new 6 string Renaissance bass, which was just as fantastic as you’d imagine (John Lester is going to be wanting one of these, for sure…)

Then it was out to see another friend’s band play – a rock/metal covers band called Mr Meanor – great players, who’ve clearly put a heck of a lot of time, energy and skill into what they do – it’s great to see a bar band that plays with such conviction. The weird thing was how few of the songs I knew – the US and UK rock charts in the 70s and 80s were clearly very different!

Onto Saturday – It’s the third time I’ve taught a masterclass here, and the biggest so far – I set a limit of 20 people and we had 20 people, which was good – two long sessions of almost three hours each with an hour off for lunch and trying eachother’s basses etc. it was, as is my usual teaching approach, a lot more about the mental approach to playing than it was about ‘licks to play over a D minor chord’ – I probably only played for about 15 minutes total in the class, but spent most of the time answering questions, and dealing with a lot of the misconceptions that we’ve all grown up with about the music making process. the feedback thus far from the people who came along has been great, and hopefully the discussions will continue on the forum.

From the masterclass, we headed over to the espresso garden – this was my fifth gig at the Espresso Garden, and possibly, sadly, my last, as the venue is being sold, but doesn’t have a buyer as yet. It’s a great venue that has hosted gigs by some of my favourite musicians – John Lester, Kris Delmhorst, Muriel Anderson, Martyn Joseph – a great listening room for acoustic music. It’s the fourth time that Michael and I had played there together, and the second time that we filled it, which felt good. We also had Jeff Schmidt along with us, who played a lovely opening set, and joined us for a cool improv at the end of the gig.

I think the most startling thing about the gig was Michael’s sound – due to the logistics of the gig, he had Mark Wright from Accugroove bring him a couple of speakers to use, which meant that all three of us were going through Accugroove stereo rigs – I’ve NEVER heard Michael’s bass sound that clear or focussed. It was incredible.

It was also a lot of fun for me to be using the Looperlative on a solo gig – it’s the first time I’ve done it, and it sounded great – I even tried a version of ‘Despite My Worst Intentions’, which I’ve never played with that box (and it has some pretty complex looping stuff going on with it) and it worked a treat, it made sense, and felt good.

All in, a marvellous day!

Yesterday was another magical day – the morning spent with Mark Wright, the afternoon with Michael Manring, the early evening teaching a great bassist called Arianne Cap, then dinner with Arianne, her husband Wolfgang, and with Jeff Schmidt and his wife Valerie, followed by late evening with Anderson Page from Modulus and his wife Laura – a day chock full of encounters with fantastic inspiring lovely friends. California is like that for me – I get to see so many great people, who energise me, inspire me musically, politically, spiritually… I really don’t think I could ever live out here (maybe that’ll change), but some of my favourite people in the whole world are here. Thanks to all of you for what you feed into my life.

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