We had everybody at practice this time, and went over the first two sets (with some adjustments). Sounded good this time. A couple of songs hit that particularly good groove that only happens when everybody gets everything right.
Since we went over most of the same songs as we did for the vocal session, we were able to see whether or not the changes stuck. Results were mixed, to be honest, though I'd say there was improvement overall. I know I messed up a couple of times, getting my part right by the end of songs after making some mistakes first. It's one of those things we're going to have to keep working on.
"The Boys Are Back in Town" continues to shape up, with the guitars tightening up each time. While we were playing a recording of the song for other reasons, I noticed an alteration I need to make to the bass part to make it work better with the drums. Subtle, but it matters.
We'll have seven songs we didn't play in the last show for the next one. Not quite as many as I'd hoped, but it's still enough to let the audience know there will be new material if they come to see us more than once. We touched on "Lights" by Journey again, but it's a toss up as to whether or not it will come together quickly enough for us to play next time. I'm not terribly concerned with that, since if we don't add it this time, that's one more new song for the next time.
Really congested again this time, which didn't help my singing. It's my own fault, since I was feeling good and undermedicated early last week, and I haven't been able to clear up since then.
Andy brought another different guitar, this time one that was never sold in the U.S., just Japan and Europe. When someone who owns that many guitars tells you that this was the best he has ever played, you pay attention. Sounded good to me, though I was paying more attention to what everyone was playing than the tone of one particular instrument. We won't be hearing it on a regular basis, though, because it's also a partiuclarly heavy guitar and hard on the player's back after a few songs. Wish I could remember the brand, but it's slipping my mind at the moment, so I guess I wasn't paying that much attention after all. :-)
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Functioning Clearly
I'm beginning to see why monks cut themselves off from everything as much as possible. I've been on vacation for the last week, and made sure that I did the things that had to get done as early on as possible, then did whatever else had to be done as it came up. Much less mental clutter that way, nothing nattering away in the back my mind, calling for my attention. I didn't manage to sustain the idea at 100%, but did much better than a working week, obviously. I was able to test drive a lot of interesting and useful ideas, and still get a lot done at home.
So I want to see if I can keep some of this in place when I return to work tomorrow. I want to try to take meditation breaks through the day, whether I think I have time or not, as they've helped me before. The idea is to focus on my physical state at the time rather than getting caught up in the events of the day, bringing me back to clarity, so to speak.
I also want to try to approach my to-dos at home in the same spirit, if I can, and see whether or not this helps my day-to-day functioning. I won't know how practical this is until I try it, and I've got to make sure I forgive myself when it slips and keep going, rather than giving up altogether. Here it goes!
So I want to see if I can keep some of this in place when I return to work tomorrow. I want to try to take meditation breaks through the day, whether I think I have time or not, as they've helped me before. The idea is to focus on my physical state at the time rather than getting caught up in the events of the day, bringing me back to clarity, so to speak.
I also want to try to approach my to-dos at home in the same spirit, if I can, and see whether or not this helps my day-to-day functioning. I won't know how practical this is until I try it, and I've got to make sure I forgive myself when it slips and keep going, rather than giving up altogether. Here it goes!
Monday, August 20, 2012
JW - 8/19/2012
No Andy this time, but the other four of us got together. We played through the two Bryan Adams' songs again, but the main idea was to work on vocals. I was particularly glad to be able to do that, since we hadn't really consolidated and retained what we'd done the last time we'd done a vocal session.
We didn't get as far as I would've liked, primarily focusing on the first and second sets, but we did get to spend a lot of time on the Eagles' "Take It Easy", which was the individual song that clearly needed the most work. Several of the songs sounded much better by the time we were done with them. The trick now is to put some practice time into reinforcing the improved harmonies and keep them.
I'm getting very tired of the Bryan Adams' songs, but we've got to do what we've got to do, and I do think they'll go over well. I'll just be very glad when we finally consider these up to standard and can get on with other things.
I arrived a bit early again, so I was able to speak with Dale for a while regarding places to play. I'd been doing some research from other bands' schedules and found a few possibilities. Sounds as though he's already on top of things. The main thing we still haven't addressed is having a decent recording of the current line-up for demo purposes. We've known for some time that that needs to be done, but once we had a show booked, actual work and preparation for it took priority. I'm fine with that. We don't need a lot of places to play, and I'd like to make sure we nail down whichever ones we get before worrying about any new venues.
Geography comes into the picture here. The Horseshoe Pub is near our practice space, so that's a natural venue for us. Dale has mentioned playing the Reading area as well, and there are several possibilities on that front. We talked about playing the Lancaster area, and even Harrisburg or Wilmington, DE. I don't know if we need to go that far, but I wouldn't write off anything at this point. We can always drop distant venues in favor of those closer to home if we find we're playing as often as we want to. I like the idea of spreading ourselves around once we've established ourselves in some areas, so we don't burn out the audience for what we do in a given place. I can't see how any band manages to play the same bars (and multiple bars in the same area!) on a monthly basis and can still draw people to see them. I'd love to set it up so we could cycle through three or four geographically dispersed venues over the course of every three months or so, so we'd turn up frequently enough for people to remember us, but rarely enough that they aren't tired of us.
We should have everyone back for the next session. I hope the next couple of practices are especially efficient, being that we don't have that many before the next show.
We didn't get as far as I would've liked, primarily focusing on the first and second sets, but we did get to spend a lot of time on the Eagles' "Take It Easy", which was the individual song that clearly needed the most work. Several of the songs sounded much better by the time we were done with them. The trick now is to put some practice time into reinforcing the improved harmonies and keep them.
I'm getting very tired of the Bryan Adams' songs, but we've got to do what we've got to do, and I do think they'll go over well. I'll just be very glad when we finally consider these up to standard and can get on with other things.
I arrived a bit early again, so I was able to speak with Dale for a while regarding places to play. I'd been doing some research from other bands' schedules and found a few possibilities. Sounds as though he's already on top of things. The main thing we still haven't addressed is having a decent recording of the current line-up for demo purposes. We've known for some time that that needs to be done, but once we had a show booked, actual work and preparation for it took priority. I'm fine with that. We don't need a lot of places to play, and I'd like to make sure we nail down whichever ones we get before worrying about any new venues.
Geography comes into the picture here. The Horseshoe Pub is near our practice space, so that's a natural venue for us. Dale has mentioned playing the Reading area as well, and there are several possibilities on that front. We talked about playing the Lancaster area, and even Harrisburg or Wilmington, DE. I don't know if we need to go that far, but I wouldn't write off anything at this point. We can always drop distant venues in favor of those closer to home if we find we're playing as often as we want to. I like the idea of spreading ourselves around once we've established ourselves in some areas, so we don't burn out the audience for what we do in a given place. I can't see how any band manages to play the same bars (and multiple bars in the same area!) on a monthly basis and can still draw people to see them. I'd love to set it up so we could cycle through three or four geographically dispersed venues over the course of every three months or so, so we'd turn up frequently enough for people to remember us, but rarely enough that they aren't tired of us.
We should have everyone back for the next session. I hope the next couple of practices are especially efficient, being that we don't have that many before the next show.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
The Road from Charisma to Compassion
I've been through an interesting and productive sequence of books lately. Leading up to the first Jefferson Wheelchair show, I was looking for books that might help our showmanship, which led me to one called "Win the Crowd" by Steve Cohen, a professional magician. There were a number of useful techniques in there, but the better ones are going to require some practice. I've put enough of the more straightforward ideas into practice to know that those work. Might have more on that later, after I get to experiment with the more advanced ideas. Useful stuff here for people who present themselves in front of a group in any way. One of the more interesting things I learned was how a stage magician prepares in advance and pays an extraordinary level of attention to audience reactions in order to constantly stay one step ahead of them.
That book led me to "The Charisma Myth" by Olivia Fox Cabane. Her premise is that charisma is not something people just have or don't have; charisma is a skill set that can be developed. She also theorizes that there are actually four distinct types of charisma, each involving a different balance of that skill set. Again, the more basic techniques have shown some promise, and I have some experimenting to do with the more advanced ones. In particular, I've tried slowing my speech and dropping the pitch of my voice at work to convey greater authority, with some success. I've tended to speak rapidly in my work out of necessity, because I have a lot of information to convey and very tight time frames, but I thought it might actually save me time if I came across as someone you didn't argue with. The experiment worked, for the most part. I have some refining to do. A key idea again in this book is mindfulness. A charismatic person is not distracted, and she presents several specific techniques to help you reduce or eliminate distractions from your mind.
From there I moved on to "Self-Compassion" by Kristin Neff. The link here is far less obvious. Losing my temper at work has been an ongoing problem for me, though I've gotten better over the last few years because I've been working so hard on it. It's hard for people who know me elsewhere to imagine me showing anger, never mind having a constant problem with it. All I can say is that there are things in my work environment that really push my buttons, and I'm coping with that as best I can.
The common link with the other books is an emphasis on mindfulness, on observing what is going on in your own head before it becomes a problem. Without getting too far into the psychology behind it, when I start feeling overwhelmed in the workplace, there's a lot of vicious self-talk in my head that sends me into a fight-or-flight response. Not good, because it actually restricts blood flow in the brain and makes it harder to think, just when you really need presence of mind. One possible solution is to use mindfulness to become aware of it before it gets out of control, and ease up on myself internally before I actually lose my temper at an external target. I haven't had enough pressure at work in the last week or so to test this any more than superficially, but it shows promise. It also dovetails nicely with my meditation and spiritual practice, as well as some of the charisma techniques from the first two books. I may be learning these techniques with different goals in mind, but why not put it all to work across the board to make my life better?
That book led me to "The Charisma Myth" by Olivia Fox Cabane. Her premise is that charisma is not something people just have or don't have; charisma is a skill set that can be developed. She also theorizes that there are actually four distinct types of charisma, each involving a different balance of that skill set. Again, the more basic techniques have shown some promise, and I have some experimenting to do with the more advanced ones. In particular, I've tried slowing my speech and dropping the pitch of my voice at work to convey greater authority, with some success. I've tended to speak rapidly in my work out of necessity, because I have a lot of information to convey and very tight time frames, but I thought it might actually save me time if I came across as someone you didn't argue with. The experiment worked, for the most part. I have some refining to do. A key idea again in this book is mindfulness. A charismatic person is not distracted, and she presents several specific techniques to help you reduce or eliminate distractions from your mind.
From there I moved on to "Self-Compassion" by Kristin Neff. The link here is far less obvious. Losing my temper at work has been an ongoing problem for me, though I've gotten better over the last few years because I've been working so hard on it. It's hard for people who know me elsewhere to imagine me showing anger, never mind having a constant problem with it. All I can say is that there are things in my work environment that really push my buttons, and I'm coping with that as best I can.
The common link with the other books is an emphasis on mindfulness, on observing what is going on in your own head before it becomes a problem. Without getting too far into the psychology behind it, when I start feeling overwhelmed in the workplace, there's a lot of vicious self-talk in my head that sends me into a fight-or-flight response. Not good, because it actually restricts blood flow in the brain and makes it harder to think, just when you really need presence of mind. One possible solution is to use mindfulness to become aware of it before it gets out of control, and ease up on myself internally before I actually lose my temper at an external target. I haven't had enough pressure at work in the last week or so to test this any more than superficially, but it shows promise. It also dovetails nicely with my meditation and spiritual practice, as well as some of the charisma techniques from the first two books. I may be learning these techniques with different goals in mind, but why not put it all to work across the board to make my life better?
Sunday, August 12, 2012
JW - 8/11/2012
No Bill again this time, but the other four of us got together. The focus was on continuing to bring together "The Boys are Back in Town" and the two Bryan Adams songs. We played a few other odds and ends, but that was the main focus.
Keith and I did substitute lead vocal duty again. I was smarter this time in one respect and had at least thought to print out the words for all three, since I was fairly sure Bill didn't have any of them on paper. However, I wasn't so smart in that I didn't practice singing and playing at the same time for any of them, even though I knew Bill wasn't going to be there. The result was very much what you would expect, very hit or miss, mostly miss because I'm simply not that familiar with singing any of them, and splitting my concentration tended to cause both the singing and the bass playing to suffer to varying degrees.
I thought about this a lot on the way home. I considered going so far as to learn how to sing and play all of the JW song list in case it was ever necessary, but that's a lot of work for something I'll probably never need to do, and Keith's voice suits a lot of the material better than mine in any case, if it comes to that. A more sensible approach is to learn to sing whatever we're likely to work on when I know Bill isn't going to be there, and that's far more viable.
"Boys" is coming together, if slowly, and it's a good addition to the list in that I can see it going over and it's a song not every band can pull off.
Looks as though we're not going to have as much new material for the next show as I'd hoped, but I think we'll have enough. Andy observed that if we play the material from the original last two sets during the first two sets and vice versa, most of the audience will hear songs they didn't hear the first time. Quite correct, I think.
I'm beginning to see why a band that has been together this long doesn't have more established material. All concerned learn quickly enough; it's just that some of the songs get lost, in a way. Dale wants to make sure we have four strong sets, down solid, but inevitably we seem to have bits of songs that go awry because one person or another forgets something. So we keep practicing songs that we have down for the most part, going back to nail down bits and pieces individuals have forgotten, trying to reach that 100% confidence level. I don't have any better suggestion than to keep playing them until they stick. And so the sidelined songs stay on the sideline. Still, we're going to need to shake things up more if we start playing out more often. I think we can do that by working some of the sidelined material back into the practice regimen, and we should need to play the basic four sets less often at practice as we play those sets more in public. I'll have to think about a method of approaching this and suggest it to Dale.
Andy will not be making it to the next practice, and the plan is to have another vocally oriented session. Keith agreed with me that it would probably be more constructive to just focus on vocals for one or two songs each time, but a full vocal session is still a good idea. I plan to take notes this time. The first session sounded great, but then we didn't retain everything we'd worked out.
I won't be guesting with Splunge this weekend, as I'd thought I might. JW got together to practice (meaning my wife was less willing to lose me for an additional music session), and Splunge drummer Jason wasn't able to make it this weekend anyway. I'll do it at some point anyway; there's no rush.
Keith and I did substitute lead vocal duty again. I was smarter this time in one respect and had at least thought to print out the words for all three, since I was fairly sure Bill didn't have any of them on paper. However, I wasn't so smart in that I didn't practice singing and playing at the same time for any of them, even though I knew Bill wasn't going to be there. The result was very much what you would expect, very hit or miss, mostly miss because I'm simply not that familiar with singing any of them, and splitting my concentration tended to cause both the singing and the bass playing to suffer to varying degrees.
I thought about this a lot on the way home. I considered going so far as to learn how to sing and play all of the JW song list in case it was ever necessary, but that's a lot of work for something I'll probably never need to do, and Keith's voice suits a lot of the material better than mine in any case, if it comes to that. A more sensible approach is to learn to sing whatever we're likely to work on when I know Bill isn't going to be there, and that's far more viable.
"Boys" is coming together, if slowly, and it's a good addition to the list in that I can see it going over and it's a song not every band can pull off.
Looks as though we're not going to have as much new material for the next show as I'd hoped, but I think we'll have enough. Andy observed that if we play the material from the original last two sets during the first two sets and vice versa, most of the audience will hear songs they didn't hear the first time. Quite correct, I think.
I'm beginning to see why a band that has been together this long doesn't have more established material. All concerned learn quickly enough; it's just that some of the songs get lost, in a way. Dale wants to make sure we have four strong sets, down solid, but inevitably we seem to have bits of songs that go awry because one person or another forgets something. So we keep practicing songs that we have down for the most part, going back to nail down bits and pieces individuals have forgotten, trying to reach that 100% confidence level. I don't have any better suggestion than to keep playing them until they stick. And so the sidelined songs stay on the sideline. Still, we're going to need to shake things up more if we start playing out more often. I think we can do that by working some of the sidelined material back into the practice regimen, and we should need to play the basic four sets less often at practice as we play those sets more in public. I'll have to think about a method of approaching this and suggest it to Dale.
Andy will not be making it to the next practice, and the plan is to have another vocally oriented session. Keith agreed with me that it would probably be more constructive to just focus on vocals for one or two songs each time, but a full vocal session is still a good idea. I plan to take notes this time. The first session sounded great, but then we didn't retain everything we'd worked out.
I won't be guesting with Splunge this weekend, as I'd thought I might. JW got together to practice (meaning my wife was less willing to lose me for an additional music session), and Splunge drummer Jason wasn't able to make it this weekend anyway. I'll do it at some point anyway; there's no rush.
Sunday, August 05, 2012
JW - 8/4/2012
Everybody on board again. Played through the fourth and first sets (most of 'em, anyway), plus the two Bryan Adams' songs, "The Boys are Back in Town", brought back ZZ Top's "Sharp Dressed Man", and tried Journey's "Lights" for the first time. We're now officially on to return to the Horseshoe Pub 9/29.
We weren't as "on" as the last time, but we did get through a lot. The harmonies on some established songs still need some work that we're not doing because the idea is that we'll do a vocally focused session later. I'd rather address this as we get to those songs, with everything else, but that's not the consensus of the group.
"Boys" continues to improve, though it's not truly ready yet. I'll be surprised if it's not ready for the next show, though. I'm sure the Bryan Adams songs will be in. "Lights" is simple enough. We had to drop the key quite a bit, and need to work out the harmonies, but we made a decent start on it.
We're planning on adding Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls", after we played around with it at practice. Doesn't sound that difficult, apart from working on the harmonies.
We haven't been playing "I'm a Man" the last couple of practices, but I think it's because Dale wants to work more on the percussion parts. Should be easy once he gets that down.
I've learned the bass parts for Bruce Springsteen's "Fire" (a song the band used to do) and Ozzy Osborne's "Crazy Train" on my own. "Fire" was just for myself, and I'm not sure I should suggest bringing back a song so heavily associated with the band's original bassist, but I do like it. "Crazy Train" is primarily because Keith was playing around with it at the previous practice, and I like it. I'll also teach myself to sing lead on both of them, just for practice purposes.
Sounds as though we'll have plenty of new material for that next show. Very happy about that! I'd like to start working some of the other sidelined songs back into the mix, but I don't think Dale is comfortable enough yet that we have the core list down as well as we should. There are several songs where I agree with him, though I'd focus more on some of the harmony issues if it were up to me. We'll be okay with the harmonies; it's just more important to me than to most of the others.
We're almost certainly going to not have practice next week due to scheduling issues with multiple band members on vacation. I'd like to sit it with the Splunge guys next weekend if that's the case, just for a bit of practice (especially singing lead) and to enjoy their company again. They still haven't replaced me, and have made clear that I'm welcome to drop in, though they know there is no way I'm coming back permanently.
We weren't as "on" as the last time, but we did get through a lot. The harmonies on some established songs still need some work that we're not doing because the idea is that we'll do a vocally focused session later. I'd rather address this as we get to those songs, with everything else, but that's not the consensus of the group.
"Boys" continues to improve, though it's not truly ready yet. I'll be surprised if it's not ready for the next show, though. I'm sure the Bryan Adams songs will be in. "Lights" is simple enough. We had to drop the key quite a bit, and need to work out the harmonies, but we made a decent start on it.
We're planning on adding Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls", after we played around with it at practice. Doesn't sound that difficult, apart from working on the harmonies.
We haven't been playing "I'm a Man" the last couple of practices, but I think it's because Dale wants to work more on the percussion parts. Should be easy once he gets that down.
I've learned the bass parts for Bruce Springsteen's "Fire" (a song the band used to do) and Ozzy Osborne's "Crazy Train" on my own. "Fire" was just for myself, and I'm not sure I should suggest bringing back a song so heavily associated with the band's original bassist, but I do like it. "Crazy Train" is primarily because Keith was playing around with it at the previous practice, and I like it. I'll also teach myself to sing lead on both of them, just for practice purposes.
Sounds as though we'll have plenty of new material for that next show. Very happy about that! I'd like to start working some of the other sidelined songs back into the mix, but I don't think Dale is comfortable enough yet that we have the core list down as well as we should. There are several songs where I agree with him, though I'd focus more on some of the harmony issues if it were up to me. We'll be okay with the harmonies; it's just more important to me than to most of the others.
We're almost certainly going to not have practice next week due to scheduling issues with multiple band members on vacation. I'd like to sit it with the Splunge guys next weekend if that's the case, just for a bit of practice (especially singing lead) and to enjoy their company again. They still haven't replaced me, and have made clear that I'm welcome to drop in, though they know there is no way I'm coming back permanently.
Thursday, August 02, 2012
JW Practice - 7/29/12
Bill was back on board this time, resulting in a much more satisfying practice. We also gained some benefit from the practice he missed, in that "The Boys Are Back in Town" is starting to come together nicely.
We worked on the usual third set, plus the two Bryan Adams songs we haven't played out yet and "Boys". Between the songs we didn't use at the first show and a few we've added since, we'll have at least a few songs that'll be fresh for any returning audience members at the next show, and it's not as though they've heard the existing list that many times yet.
We're still focused on the same core set list, at least partially because we lost some momentum after the show, and all agree that we want to get those songs down solidly before expanding the list too far.
We worked on the usual third set, plus the two Bryan Adams songs we haven't played out yet and "Boys". Between the songs we didn't use at the first show and a few we've added since, we'll have at least a few songs that'll be fresh for any returning audience members at the next show, and it's not as though they've heard the existing list that many times yet.
We're still focused on the same core set list, at least partially because we lost some momentum after the show, and all agree that we want to get those songs down solidly before expanding the list too far.
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