Archive for January, 2011

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Wedding Gigs Can Change Your Life

January 30, 2011
by The Brehms Blogger

Growing up with a musical grandmother, and with parents that often discussed the power of positive thinking, one of the greatest challenges for me was learning to visualize the music industry without rose colored glasses. Too often I would walk through our house, reading the trade magazines, dreaming of playing on stage with my guitar heroes, and imagining our musical kinship as if it were really true.

Unfortunately the industry and the people around me in my adult life did little to reinforce this way of thinking. In fact every time I began to believe in myself through little accomplishments along the way, my positive perspective was shattered by the negative ramblings of some jaded music veteran or a distant family member offering the staggering statistics against monetary success in the music industry. Difficult school situations, coupled with a late start learning my instrument of choice, worked to destroy my courage and protract my musical growth.

One morning I was especially down. It just seemed I would never reach the benchmark of professional musician. Sipping cold coffee, playing George Benson licks on the roof of my house, I got a call from a drummer I was working with at the time. He said there was a wedding gig coming our way, but only if we hired a vocalist (at the bride’s request) and play songs from the American Songbook. Now at this point I was only interested in instrumental music and our band’s set list reflected this.

But all of a sudden, things began to change. Our band took the wedding gig and we started learning vocal tunes. Before long we had married a thought to an action and were sounding better than ever before.

I was stunned by what was happening. I realized that by trying a different approach my guitar skills had responded for the positive, but the weirder part was when my visualizations started to become reality. Gigs became shows, and our new vocalist and I started writing our own original material. At the same time our band started playing regularly and now we are working on our second album in as many years. Life is completely different.

The music industry is still not the fairest, most equitable business system anyone can ever experience. There are plenty of reasons I could offer not to pursue a life in music, and now that I have become conscious enough to fully comprehend the good, the bad, and the ugly of the industry there is still the occasional doubt. That being said, I know that whatever lies ahead will be better than what lies behind. The best part is when I wake up and realize I am glad I took the leap and never looked back.

The Brehms Blogger
staffwriter@bluelogicentertainment.com

: health, Inspiration
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Kiss Your Rut Goodbye

January 28, 2011
by The Brehms Blogger

Sometimes, it’s hard to get a new music project started. Other times, it’s hard to finish one. Yet, other times, our creative muse can suffer from sagging counterparts. It’s also difficult to break out of a rut, to find time to create, to think outside the box, or bring our music to a place it’s never been before.

Maybe we need a new creative solution? Have you been to a jam session lately? In nearly every situation, to be able to coordinate the collaborative efforts among successful and talented musicians, is a wondrous thing. Since we live in a digital age, why not try to send a musical sample to ten of your favorite musicians and encourage each player to add something unique to the sample?

There are more than a few ways to use this concept as a fun improvisational exercise with your musical circle of friends. To lay the groundwork, you can have members of the group discuss and agree on a specific musical genre, instrumentation, rhythm, and key. Or, you can write down all the necessary components on slips of paper and have each musician draw one or two from a bowl. You can do the same when assigning specific elements to the song structure, such as verse, chorus, bridge, etc.
Setting a deadline is important, but be cognizant that different people work at different pacing. You want each musician to feel challenged to go places they’ve never gone before. Follow one another’s lead, and strive to write outside the box. We could all use this type of challenge: to step outside our safety zones and be the best musicians we can be. Make it happen!

The Brehms Blogger

staffwriter@bluelogicentertainment.com

: Inspiration
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My Amp is Better Than Your Amp

January 5, 2011
by The Brehms Blogger

The band audition is just around the corner. You need the right equipment to land the job. Should you choose the always reliable tube amp, or the sleek and efficient solid-state amp?

First, Lets start with a discussion of the functions and applications of preamps and power amps. A preamp is the first thing your guitar signal meets when plugged into any kind of amp. Its first task is to boost the relatively weak signal of your guitar (about .0025 volts) up to something more substantial (about 1 volt). This is usually referred to as the gain circuit. Next up is the processing circuit, where the signal is shaped via the tone controls. Additionally, effects such as reverb and chorus may be added at this point, along with “line out” and “line in” points for the user to add outboard effects. Preamps may consist of several gain and processing circuits to create the overdrive guitarists live for, but remember that the signal is still too weak to drive a speaker.

So, how to jiggle the speaker? Enter the power amp, or output circuit. Its sole function is to bulk up the preamp’s signal to 8 volts or more and add the appropriate wattage to jiggle the speaker.

Both preamps and power amps can be tube or solid-state, but with technology advancing all the time, why doesn’t solid-state circuitry make tube circuitry obsolete? C’mon, tube amps are heavier and more fragile than their solid-state counterparts, tubes are expensive to replace, and any engineer will tell you that solid-state amplification is far cleaner and more efficient. But the complex distortion and compression generated by tube circuits (even in their cleanest modes) create “something special” which has made even the very best solid-state amps seem hard, brittle, or harsh in comparison.

However, the past decade brought about some fascinating developments in integrated chip circuitry, most particularly employing “modeling technology” where the complexities of dozens of tube circuits can be cloned and put into a single, small unit. Plug one of these modeling preamps into a good solid-state power amp and a pair of speakers, and you can be sure to turn the heads of even the most skeptical engineers.

In the studio, there is no denying the ridiculous flexibility of a premium multi-effects processor packaged with a cavalcade of unique preamp models, while at the same time, many professional players still believe tubes, and tube amps’ combination of ease of use and unique musical response cannot be denied.

So is one amp really better than the other, or is it just a matter of preference from one musician to another? I believe the answer is YES. No, not the band, but the idea that as a consumer you work with whatever you can afford and utilize gear that ultimately meets your needs.
Personally, I like the idea of a cost effective studio solution with an array of options at my disposal, such as Digidesign’s Eleven Rack, but at the same time if you called me right now to do a live gig, you might be surprised to see me lugging a giant Fender Hot Rod Deville behind me.

The Brehms Blogger

staffwriter@bluelogicentertainment.com

: Gear
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