Author: Rob

Can you ever be over-rehearsed?

Sooner or later everyone in music is going to put on a performance. I’m not talking about playing for family and friends, but for those who don’t know you and are likely to be somewhat critical. But what constitutes a performance? Strutting your stuff in front of 20,000? Getting on stage in front of a couple of hundred at well known London clubs? Or playing those three pieces in front of that solitary individual known as a Grade Examiner? Yes, all three constitute an audience, and all three expect you to put on the best show you can. The first two expect it because they’re paying money to you, while that last one holds your future in their hands. Whatever your audience, you’re likely to be a bit nervous, and that’s natural. If you ever get to the stage where you’re not nervous before you’ve played the first note then maybe you’re not doing the best you can.

But there are things you can do about those nerves. One is to channel them into the intensity of your performance. Another is to rehearse. Practise! And keep practising. By the time you get up to Grade 5 that should be at least an hour a day, and I don’t mean just give all the pieces a quick run through from start to finish. Pay attention to the awkward bits. You know, the ones that cause you trouble, that your fingers stumble over, that you know you don’t play quite as smoothly as you know you should.

In addition to being a musician I’m also a martial arts instructor (in a style that doesn’t require you to break bricks with your bare hand) and let me tell you, no-one starts out as a black belt. In the style I teach it’s going to be a year to 2 years before you get your first grade and you’re going to spend much of that time on just 5 techniques, each of which has around 4-5 movements. You’re going to do those again, and again and again until you don’t have to think about what you’re doing. Only when you reach that stage are you ready to take the test. But those techniques will form the basis of everything you’ll do thereafter, and you’ll also practise them for the rest of your life.
(Yes the image is of the style I practise).

Ring any bells? That boring Grade 1 piece? Something no more complex that Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. But here’s the point. You don’t have any muscle in your fingers, they’re all in your forearm, and you have to train those up until you can move each finger with ease. At this point I have a challenge to throw out to anyone Grade 6 and above. Go back and pick out a grade 1 piece and play it. Not easy is it? At least, not to the level where you could play it in public. There’s nowhere to hide with a simple piece. Anything less than perfection stinks, and because everyone knows what you’re playing every bum note stands out. Every timing issue, every little place where the phrasing isn’t quite right

But now, you’ve got that performance coming up and you want to know how you can deal with the nerves. So practise. In front of an examiner you’ve only got three pieces to play so there’s no real room for mistakes. In live performances in front of lots of people, especially if you’re in a band, one or two mistakes can be (and probably will be) overlooked – at least until people get to know your set. After all, you could be playing up to twenty pieces, and all from memory. The band I was in would spend an entire 10 hour day before a gig just doing starts and finishes and the hand over from one song to another. In the days before the gig everything gets practised – even the improvisations. Yes, I know it’s a bit of a let down to realise that those long rambling solos Eric Clapton did were practised over the previous couple of months long before they ever got on to stage. And that’s because you have a rigid time slot to fill. If you’re on for an hour, that means you have exactly 60 minutes to fill, and that must include your encore, because either someone’s waiting to come on after you or the lights have to be switched off and the venue locked up.

So you practise, and you keep practising, and then you do it again. Then maybe one day you’ll realise that all you’re really nervous about is getting that first note right, because everything flows right after that, and all that rehearsal? It’s been worth it, because you’ve come off stage knowing you’ve done the best you can, you’ve enjoyed it, and so has everyone else. Everywhere you look there are smiles, and that’s what you play for.

That and the money ?

16/04/2024
Magnetic Pencil Holder

OK, here’s the scene. You’re playing in an orchestra, you’re at rehearsals and the conductor wants to make some changes to your score. You had a pencil on your music stand but the vibrations from the kettle drums has jiggled it off the stand, heading at speed towards the 1st violins and off the edge of the dais stair you’re sat on. You’ve got another one in your bag, but that’s under your chair and not easy to get to. Happened all the time to me. I’ve played with some very noisy outfits.

Well the good folks at Konig and Meyer have got yet another great idea up their sleeve. So long as your stand is made with iron, steel or cobalt (yes really, but I’ve yet to see one made of that material) they’ve got a great little magnetic pencil holder that will save your face from going red either from embarrassment or the effort in trying to retrieve your bag from under your chair where, somehow, its straps have become completely entangled with the legs, looking like some sort of manic, musical Gordian Knot. And you weren’t allowed to bring your sword in because of some arcane Health and Safety rule.

08/04/2024
Konig & Meyer Adjustable Music Stand

One thing that a lot of people make a mistake about are music stands. There are two types: cheap ones and more expensive ones. The main difference is you’ll buy a lot more cheap ones than dear ones because the cheap ones will fail quickly, often when it’s least convenient, while the dear ones will give you 4 or 5 years of reliable service. Why is this reliability important? Well, you don’t want to be giving a performance somewhere and watch your music sink to the level of your ankles. It’s not just embarrassing, it makes the music hard to play as well.

These Konig and Meyers are some of the best stands you can get and, not surprisingly are also best sellers. Your Reviewer has worked in music retail for decades and can count the number of returns for this product, the K&M 101, on one hand. The actual number of sales exceeds the number of fingers on your Reviewers hands by quite a large margin. Polydactyly is not involved. The 3-piece design folds down into a neat, portable box and at around 1kg in weight, it isn’t too heavy. Think of a litre of milk. Doesn’t come with a bag, but you can’t have everything! However, for a price….. Available in black or nickel , or you can have the stand and a matching bag. At the time of writing the stands cost under £25, the bags 7 or 8 quid.

Think of it as an investment in face-saving.

The Stand In Black

The Stand In Nickel

The Stand with Matching Bag

The Bag

08/04/2024
My First Classical Book

Aimed at introducing young children to classical music with information about the composers and their works as well as instruments of the orchestra. Shame it only comes with a CD rather than audio access. Nonetheless with music ranging from Mozarts’ Magic Flute to Williams’ Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone there’s a range of music worth listening to even if you’re a kid of 40. Learn about the different instrument groups and how the play together – nicely for the most part.

08/04/2024
Story Orchestra

A great way of introducing your children to classical music. A range of well known favourites that we at The Music Realm listened to ourselves when we were young…which was, admittedly many years ago, but they are timeless classics for a reason!

In this series you’ll find Prokofievs’ Peter and the Wolf, Holsts’ Planets Suite, Tchaikovskys’ The Nutcracker, Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty, Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals, Vivaldis’ Four Seasons, The Hall of the Mountain King by Grieg, Mozarts’ The Magic Flute, A Mid-Summers Night Dream by Mendelssohn and you can even learn to play some of the music yourself.

We also listened to Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Jimi Hendrix, but that’s for another post.

These are some of the most popular pieces of classical music ever written. Listen to them and you’ll understand why. Add to that an interactive book where you press (it apparently requires some pressure) on the page to hear excerpts from the music.

Naturally this doesn’t require an Internet connection, but I’d be wary of using it on public transport. There are some strange people out there who just don’t appreciate good music.

08/04/2024
Vox Pathfinder Amps

I was thinking recently that surely running around in South America is an animal called an Illo. After all if there is an Armoured Illo there must be one without armour, otherwise how could you tell the difference? Well one is definitely armoured so the other one must not be. And thus it is with the Vox Pathfinder Amp. There are at least two, the ordinary Guitar amp and the Bass Guitar amp. The problem is they’re superficially identical.

They even have the same number of knobs and sockets. They sound slightly different and are designed for the different guitars. While you can plug an ordinary guitar into a bass amp it’s always considered to be bad form to plug a Bass into a guitar amp. I was always told it’s because the lower bass frequencies don’t do the guitar amp speakers any good. I don’t know if that’s true, I’m not an acoustic engineer.

At 38x14x17cm they don’t take up a massive amount of space and make great practice amps.

The top of the box has 2 sockets at either end so you input at one end, tailor the sound to what you want, and it comes out the other end from the headphones/lineout socket. They’re both 4,5mm so you might need an mono to stereo to 3.5mm adapter for headphones. If your headphones have 4.5mm and are mono then you won’t need adapters. Obviously.

Start with a knob marked ‘Drive’ then there’s a push button marked ‘Bright’ and knobs labelled Treble, Bass and Volume. None of these go all the way up to 11, they actually stop at 10! But then it’s only a practice amp so that should be OK, yes? I mean, you do have neighbours don’t you? But then, if you don’t have neighbours you probably won’t need a practice amp and can just plug in to your stage amp.

You can take this from a decent bright enough sound to play some funk or dial the treble down to something almost exactly unlike an acoustic bass if you’re playing a bass guitar, with the obvious caveat; unless you’re using an acoustic bass.

Value for money? At the time of writing you’ll pay around £87 to £99 (bass) for a 10W amp where you probably won’t, if you’re just doing this in your bedroom or at home, crank it up beyond 4. Or you could go for 40W competitors that’ll set you back £230, and not get beyond 2 before you get people banging on your door or walls screaming at you to turn the noise down, and you are a considerate people person aren’t you?

06/04/2024
Roland Cube 10Gx

The Roland Cube amplifier

I’ve been using mine for over 10 years now and in that time a lot has changed in the world. I’m no longer out on the road playing gigs, hadn’t been for some time, and I wouldn’t have used this for my bass guitar anyway. Just too small and not enough power. I’d just moved in to a new flat and needed something in keeping; small, punchy but not loud enough to disturb the neighbours and with a headphone socket in case I wanted to crank it up to 11. The Cube amp had been selling for 10 years when I bought the GX, nearly 10 years to the day writing this review so I thought I’d do a comparison looking at the 10Gx. I’m a little disappointed. It’s still got the punch, still got the size but…

The most obvious thing when I looked at the 10Gx was No Battery Compartment! You mean I can’t take this new model down to the beach and plug in my Telecaster? Indeed, this isn’t a portable despite being portable. Still, they’ve left the Cube Link port, or Aux-In, as it’s labelled, so you can, provided you buy the appropriate adapter for your phone (USB-C to 3.5mm audio for most modern phones), plug your phone into it and play a track from that though the amp. You can get some from Roland but basically if it’s on your phone you can play it through the Cube. great if you have a track-1 recording.

On to the rest of the top panel. It’s a lot less busy, which is just another way of saying it’s got a lot less knobs on it. Lets look at what we had in the past. On the lower row you have an instrument input (4.5mm) Gain, Volume and Tone controls with a master volume knob. And a power button. Above that there’s the afore mentioned Aux-In, a push switch labelled Memory (saves your set up) and 3 rotary knobs labelled Amp type (eight of them), EFX (3 areas: chorus, flanger, phaser) and Delay/Reverb (3 areas again, tremolo, delay, reverb) and a push button to turn the chromatic tuner on or off. It won’t tell which note your playing, just indicates if your note is sharp flat or actually a note. And now to this bright future. You’re down to 6 knobs and a selector switch split in to 3 sections. from right to left you have the power switch, the Equaliser section of treble, middle and bass knobs, and the Amplifier section of volume and gain knobs and a selector switch for 3 amp types – Clean, Crunch and Lead, and the Input socket. What? You wanted to try the Brit Combo or Classic Stack amps of the GX? All is not lost! You can download an app for your phone then upload the appropriate amp profile to your amp. The Aux-In has moved to the rear, alongside the Rec/Phones and power socket.

On both amps if you plug something into the Rec socket it mutes the speaker. Now this is a minor point, but basically when I’m recording something like a guitar I reserve a lot of channels for it in my DAW. I use a splitter cable to divide the signal from the guitar and take one lead to the amp and another straight to the input interface for the DAW, with an input from the amp. Preferably two leads from the amp. Take a DI from the amp and stick a mic in front of the speaker for another. Yes, you do get a different sound using the mic because the room you’re in shapes the sound – unless you’re in an anechoic chamber of course. Doing it that way gives you a clean signal from the guitar, a clean, although shaped, sound from the amp and something probably very dirty from the mic. That’s a good set of mixing options, with no overdubs and timing issues, and remember, you don’t have to use them all or you might choose to use some, or combinations, at various points. But I’d like to have that option. a Mute Speaker push button would be great, if only so’s you could take that phone call from the record company. Ok, we all have our dreams 🙂

Prices:

The GX cost £108 back in 2014. At the time of writing in 2024, Amazon are doing the 10Gx for £129 (RRP £155}.

Summary:

If all you want is a practise amp for your bedroom or (as in my case) my living room then the Cube is a good amp. Good sound flexibility, good practice options, and easy to connect to to your chosen DAW, although you will probably need a 3.5mm to 4.5mm or XLA converter. Unless you mic it up. You can’t take it busking unless you can rig up some external power supply, which is a shame, but then it’s only 10W so you might want to look elsewhere anyway.

Value for money? Not bad given I also use it when recording my mandolin and various acoustic guitars.

07/08/2023