Jazz Disasters
Hi folks,
Ok, this starts kind of geeky, but, trust me, stick with it, it’s just a couple of paragraphs.
This week, I’ve been working on a black metal project with my friend Bertrand. He’s making a series of videos to showcase his abilities as a specialist extreme metal drummer.
Drums are by far my favourite thing to record and these sessions were particularly fun because we didn’t have budget constraints requiring us to keep an eye on the clock. That meant we could spend a couple of days trying out different mics and mic positions.
One of the mics that played an important role in the sessions was the new K-23R from Kerwax. This is a smallish, high end ribbon mic that is useful in all the same places as a Royer would be.
I used the K-23R as a mono overhead and it captured the snare drum in a way that was somehow both natural and powerful. After recording the songs for the session, Bertrand and I decided to build a sample pack of this kit to give away to subscribers and this mic is going to form a huge part of the snare sound.
I’ll be closing the live room of the studio for a few weeks in October to do some building work (the control room will still be open for mixing and mastering projects). Winter is coming and I need to finish the insulation. The insulation is mainly to prevent heat escaping, as noise is a negligible issue where we live most of the year. Harvest time can get a little more active, but it’s still nothing like a town or even village. Once the insulation is finished, I want to focus on integrating the new recording console into my existing system.
Often when folks find out that I’ve done a lot of the building of the studio myself, they say things like, “Oh, I don’t know how to do anything like that”, or “Where did you learn how to do that?”.
The truth is I actually don’t know how to do these things. I’ve never done any of them before either. True, all my family were tradesmen and my dad taught me how to weld, saw a piece of wood and swing a sledgehammer, before I was eight years old (I’m sure all culpability will be denied now), but almost all the tasks I do in my current building role, I’ve taught myself to do.
Well, sort of. The truth is the internet is a wonderful resource and with a bit of responsible searching on Youtube you can find a genuine expert sharing their skills with the world. The way I work is I do a lot of research (books, videos etc.), sort of internalise it and then improvise the building work.
I jokingly call myself the Jazz Woodworker, as I approach building like I approached playing jazz. Force feed myself way too much knowledge (scales, chords etc.) and then hit the stage and see what fell out of my brain. Some nights it rocked and others it sucked, but that’s the fun/danger of improvisation.
Fortunately, I’ve had fewer disasters in woodworking than in jazz.
Hmm, someone I knew wanted to form a group called Jazz Disasters, but I can’t quite remember who…
I wish things had been so easy when I started playing guitar.
I was about 15 when I got my first guitar (already way past it, or so I thought), which was a purple Hondo Explorer copy. This guitar was made of plywood and weighed more than a dwarf star. My dad had played guitar in the ‘60s (like almost everyone in Liverpool in that era) and taught me what he knew; basic open chords, F-shape bar chords, House of the Rising Sun, Day Tripper etc. After that, I was on my own.
There used to be a mythology in rock music that one had to be self-taught to be authentic, so that was the way I went… initially.
One way to learn to play was to find an ad in the back of Kerrang! for tuition cassettes. These would normally be a slow play through of a solo, accompanied by a photocopy of the tablature. I learnt the solos to Van Halen’s Running With the Devil, Rainbow’s Since You’ve Been Gone and AC/DC’s You Shook Me All Night Long like this, but crashed and burned trying to learn VH’s Eruption.
Eventually, I decided to cheat and find a guitar teacher. Back then, at least in Wigan, learning metal guitar was pretty much like Billy Connolly’s experience learning banjo in Glasgow.
Now I see where I got saying “anyhoo” from. I probably need to come back to the Big Yin at some time in a future edition.
Anyhoo, I called up the local music shop, who had a guitar teacher on site, to try and book a lesson. However, that teacher couldn’t fit me in, so he passed me on to one of his students, who was now teaching. I don’t remember this guy’s name, but I’ve a feeling it was Steve. Steve is a good guess, as everyone seemed to be called Steve in those days.
So, Steve taught me how to play a minor pentatonic scale and Killers by Iron Maiden (incorrectly, I might add) and then quickly sent me off to form a teaching practice of my own. So, at the tender age of 16 I became a guitar teacher, without really having a clue what I was doing. It certainly beat flipping burgers, which was how I had been funding my guitar lessons up to that point.
Soon after, around 17 or 18, I joined my first band, which wasn’t just me and Sizemore trying to play the riff to Motorbreath. It was a hardcore punk crossover band called Decline and, armed with a Boss HM-2, a Marshall Superbass and a harmonic minor scale from a Vinnie Moore video, I got to play shows with Extreme Noise Terror, Slapshot, etc.
If you’re wondering what the Vinnie Moore reference was, back in the day, if you were rich, you could pay an extortionate amount to buy a video of a lesson with a famous guitarist. I had a pirate version of this video.
Some of these videos got very niche, especially the Allan Holdsworth one, which you need a PhD in Holdsworthian philosophy to understand.
I’m pretty sure this is the video that Matt Berry is parodying in this clip from Snuff Box.
Praise be!
Anyhoo, before I even knew how to play rock guitar properly, I rushed off to become a jazz guitarist and, this time, I was fortunate enough to have a string of really excellent teachers, Max Vitali, Gary Boyle, Trefor Owen and Mike Walker.
I should write an edition about Gary at some point. What a life! Here’s him playing with Soft Machine before Holdsworth joined.
I’m not sure I ever became a good jazz guitarist, but I did acquire a taste for the “wrong notes”, which spills out into my rock and blues solos all the time.
Right, I’d better sign off. This dog won’t walk herself and I’ve got to track some guitar solos this afternoon. There’ll be lots of “wrong notes”, I promise.
Until next time!
Stay noisey!
Steve