Best Batch Yet

 The Deserters  Comments Off
Jun 192007
 
Captain Beefheart

Something I’ve never come across before for some reason is Captain Beefheart’s “10 Commandments for Guitarists”. I found this at the ever-informative Music Thing, though it appears on a few sites around the web. The annotations in italics are mine.

LISTEN TO THE BIRDS
That’s where all the music comes from. Birds know everything about how it should sound and where that sound should come from. And watch hummingbirds. They fly really fast, but a lot of times they aren’t going anywhere.
Which reminds me that I once wrote a piece of music on the old CX5m that was based on dozens of transcribed birdsongs – what the hell happened to that?


YOUR GUITAR IS NOT REALLY A GUITAR

Your guitar is a divining rod. Use it to find spirits in the other world and bring them over. A guitar is also a fishing rod. If you’re good, you’ll land a big one.


PRACTICE IN FRONT OF A BUSH

Wait until the moon is out, then go outside, eat a multi-grained bread and play your guitar to a bush. If the bush doesn’t shake, eat another piece of bread.
Strangely enough, I have done this, apart from the bit about the bread. Next time…


WALK WITH THE DEVIL

Old delta blues players referred to amplifiers as the “devil box.” And they were right. You have to be an equal opportunity employer in terms of who you’re bringing over from the other side. Electricity attracts demons and devils. Other instruments attract other spirits. An acoustic guitar attracts Casper. A mandolin attracts Wendy. But an electric guitar attracts Beelzebub.
So what does a yobstick attract? Nearly Headless Nick?


IF YOU’RE GUILTY OF THINKING, YOU’RE OUT

If your brain is part of the process, you’re missing it. You should play like a drowning man, struggling to reach shore. If you can trap that feeling, then you have something that is fur bearing.


NEVER POINT YOUR GUITAR AT ANYONE

Your instrument has more power than lightning. Just hit a big chord, then run outside to hear it. But make sure you are not standing in an open field.


ALWAYS CARRY YOUR CHURCH KEY

You must carry your key and use it when called upon. That’s your part of the bargain. Like One String Sam. He was a Detroit street musician in the fifties who played a homemade instrument. His song “I Need A Hundred Dollars” is warm pie. Another church key holder is Hubert Sumlin, Howlin’ Wolf’s guitar player. He just stands there like the Statue of Liberty making you want to look up her dress to see how he’s doing it.
I never leave home without mine.


DON’T WIPE THE SWEAT OFF YOUR INSTRUMENT

You need that stink on there. Then you have to get that stink onto your music.


KEEP YOUR GUITAR IN A DARK PLACE

When you’re not playing your guitar, cover it and keep it in a dark place. If you don’t play your guitar for more than a day, be sure to put a saucer of water in with it.
Mine does live in a cool, dark place, but usually gets left a half-cup of cold, black coffee – maybe water would be a better bet.


YOU GOTTA HAVE A HOOD FOR YOUR ENGINE

Wear a hat when you play and keep that hat on. A hat is a pressure cooker. If you have a roof on your house the hot air can’t escape. Even a lima bean has to have a wet paper towel around it to make it grow.
Well now, I used to have a hat – the “Silly-bugger-time hat” as it was known (actually a tweed deerstalker). I refuse to wear a baseball cap as a matter of principle, but may need to invest in something with a modicum of style to meet this rule.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ,

An Ancient and Distinguished Instrument

 The Deserters  Comments Off
May 312007
 

I came across a Yahoo group yesterday that I thought might be of interest (Novelty Music), and this morning heard back from founder member Paul Moore. Paul has a one-man-band and plays the ‘Zob Stick’ which, upon further investigation, turns out the be one of many names for what we know as the Yobstick.

Whilst I have heard of others playing similar stick-based instruments every so often, I had never heard of the name. I suspect the name ‘Yobstick’ may just be due to a mispronunciation of ‘Zob Stick’, but the instrument has also been called the ‘Monkey Stick’, ‘Lagerphone’, ‘Freedom Boot’ and many other names from around the world. In fact it has a history going back to asian shamans, and possibly beyond, where it was used as a symbol of power. I’ve stuck some more details about this up on the Deserters site, along with links to some related sites.

For me the most interesting of these is The Groanbox Boys – a London band who I had already heard about in the last couple of days as they just happen to feature Michael Ward-Bergman. He plays some superb accordian (yes, perhaps it seems like a contradiction of terms, but it is really VERY good) on Judge Smith’s album, “The Full English“.

The New Yobstick

 The Deserters  Comments Off
May 202007
 

At last, I finally got around to finishing the new yobstick. It’s quite a departure from previous efforts – lots of natural wood and more emphasis on playability instead of durability. I’ve only played it for a short time tonight, but it feels great and sounds lovely (far better than a stick with a welly at one end and a load of bottle tops at the other should do!)

I’ll stick some audio clips up once I’ve worked out how to mic the damn thing up. Imagine a drum kit that moves… I may need to get contact mics for it to work, but it is in effect three linked sound sources, so a single mic won’t do it justice, and certainly wouldn’t make it easy to be heard over electric instruments.

This picture of it makes it look somewhat scrawny, but looks aren’t everything. I’ve set out the process I used to put it together over on the Deserters’ page, under Instrumentography, so you can get a flavour for what is required to build one, and find out really interesting facts like “who makes the best bottletops for a yobstick?”

I’ve also been experimenting with some software called “SooperLooper”, which turns a standard Linux PC into a long controllable delay loop. I’ve worked out how to get some control over it with my guitar effects pedal, to the extent of being able to play a series of chords, then bass, then solo over the top. Once I’m more familiar with it I’m hoping to be able to set up a rhythm with the yobstick and guitar, then play theremin over the top. Early days, but if I can get it working together and hit the timing spot on, then it could sound pretty good.

Next, please

 The Lunacy Board  Comments Off
Mar 232007
 

First of all, “Xenochronous Requiem For A Head Laying In A Field In Butler” was used to open this week’s Spellbound show, with host David Vesel commenting on the unlikelihood of chart success if Casey Kasem can’t even pronounce the title. That’s a relief, then.

I’ve finished mixing all the music from our last session. Most of it is just for our own use as demo reference for future practices, but there were also some new instrumental pieces for use in the Stockholm soundtrack. One of them is available for download over at The Lunacy Board site. It is based around a simple evolving, echoing guitar riff, with synth textures, found sound samples (including some yobstick) and a meandering rhythm backing.

The big one

We’re working towards a new extended piece to fit in with the repetoire we’ve already built up. Since we first started this project, we’ve been throwing ideas around towards a longer song which touches on a few topics we feel are linked around the area of evolution, mankind’s journey and definitions of good and evil. I’ve recently come up with an idea to link these topics within a narrative setting that has the potential to be our ‘big number’.

It’s still in the early stages, so I can’t give too much away, but the aim is to have a piece that both covers the topics of interest and also lets us demonstrate all the aspects of what we are as a band. It will have an evolving instrumentation, so we’ll start off with two instruments at the start of the piece and swap around between guitar, bass, drums, keyboard, theremin and whatever else we come up with. The sections of the song will deal with different characters and reflect that in the instruments chosen and the style of the section. This will let us cover everything from ambient soundscapes and avant garde rock to upbeat pop or country and western – anything is fair game. It’s going to take a while to put together and get it working fluidly, but we’ll start on it at the next session and hopefully will have a clip or two to post on the web site in the not-too-distant future.

Nee Naw

 The Deserters  Comments Off
Mar 072006
 

Track of the Week

Fire Engine Disco Remix (part 2)

George the Bedford Fire Engine

George the Bedford Fire Engine

Week 6 of the grand mp3 download extravaganza.

Time for a little light relief. This one goes way back to 1985 and our first album. It features the whole band playing a minimalistic theme repeatedly on the range of instruments we were playing at the time. The tune should be recognisable to anyone over the age of about 10 from the UK. It is that lovely lilting melody which used to be played by fire engines (big surprise, there) as they sped to save the day – before they replaced the sound with that dreadful banshee wail that seems designed to replace your laxative of choice.

Anyway, the theme goes ‘Nee Naw Nee Naw Nee Naw’ and is repeated by the following instruments; piano, Farfisa organ, Slydee (see earlier post for details), Castrol Can (a large oil can fitted with a trumpet mouthpiece), VL Tone, Yobstick (see another earlier post for details), Yodeller (a large water tank fitted with a trumpet mouthpiece, voice and finally our friendly Bedford Fire Engine, George.

This was all recorded (apart from the fire engine) in our tiny Greenshed Studio on a wonderfully low tech mono cassette recorder, so don’t expect miracles with this little historical (hysterical) gem. All very silly and a lot of fun.

The whole album, All It Took Was One Night In The Back Of A Fire Engine… is now available for download. Pay whatever you think it is worth to you!

Change of Direction

 The Lunacy Board  Comments Off
Jan 252006
 

We had another jam/recording session at the weekend, and things took an interesting (for me, at least) turn following a bit of between-track banter. We’d been working on a song that just wasn’t quite coming together in the way expected – it kept turning into a ballad without being asked. Some chat later, we came across the discovery that we both have a deep love of Can‘s music, which changed things in a significant fashion.

So now we’re going to focus on longer improvisational pieces, which may be overlaid with spoken word or singing depending on the music. We recorded a number of improvised snippets with just bass and synth, with fairly mixed results. Mostly it sounded like a part of a larger piece, lacking percussion and a lead instrument or voice, whilst some bits just sounded painful, like when we changed key to different keys, but time and practice should sort those things out, or at least address how to recover quickly. There were a few parts where the sounds and the lines we were playing meshed together really well, giving a hint of how good it could be with work.

What I particularly like about this direction is that it will allow us to swap between instruments and make use of our whole sonic arsenal, which means I’ll get to put the theremin and yobstick (when completed) into use.

Hopefully we’ll have another session within the next week or two, and more progress can be made…

Got me dem ole Yobstick Blues

 The Deserters  2 Responses »
Sep 132005
 

Okay, so I saw my favourite Yobstick builder at the weekend and have been mulling over various designs in the back of my head for most of the day. There’s too much other stuff to be doing at the moment to do anything practical about it, but it’s just one of several things floating around in my mind shouting at me “Hurry up and free some time so you can get on with me!” It hasn’t helped that my morning read of Music Thing with my coffee led me off down a path to the very wonderful Oddmusic site, where there is a gallery including sound clips of dozens of ancient, ethnic and newly-invented musical instruments. Inspiration I surely didn’t need.

There are 2 things I want to do with the next yobstick – one is to make it an electric yobstick. Not quite sure how practical that is, but it would be great to trigger samples with the welly end, or stick the string through a distortion and delay line. The other thing is to make the string more playable, i.e. instead of it being a single note I want to be able to play simple bass lines on it. Again, not terribly sure about how to do this, as one hand holds the stick and the other plucks the string – either some sort of tensioning lever (like a whammy bar) or a sliding bridge.

I just know I’m going to be dreaming about yobstick construction tonight.

Hmmmm.

Reborn….?

 The Deserters  1 Response »
Aug 252005
 

Way back in the mists of time we had a concept for a video for the Deserters’ “Renaissance” period which we considered, at the time, to be a turning point for the band. The song was to be called “Reborn” and was to feature a video of the band doing various things in time to the music, but backwards – jumping off walls, dropping things, etc. All very Monkees, had it ever come to pass. Now it’s my turn…

The last 3 years of my life have been a bit of a musical desert. I’ve hardly touched an instrument, and most of my music gear has spent its time in boxes. It’s been annoying and difficult, but a necessary evil due to various things going on in my work life – i.e. the stuff that pays to keep the wolf from the door, the children fed and the electricity flowing. Well, the time in the wilderness is coming to an end – 2 months to go and I should be back to living a more normal life where I can actually spend some quality time with family instead of having to schedule them in, I can get on with some of the projects that have peaked my interest over the last 3 years and I can live the music once more.

So – what’s new?

I’m refreshing all the Deserters material that I have transferred to PC, and will finally be editing and sticking it onto CDs.

I’ve dug out my bass from storage and am getting back into the swing (I think) – starting to work on some nice new callouses. Next will come the trusty old DX7 and finally I’ll fish out the guitar.

I’m getting together with some local musos to do some jam sessions, which may or may not lead to something better – I hope to report on this next week.

I’ve also got a couple of experimental music things I want to put together – I’ll probably start this in the new year – quite a bit of programming will be involved on the ST (old faithful music computer), which I’ve not really done much of in the past.

Finally, I want to build a new Yobstick – the last one disappeared during a house-move, and I feel somehow incomplete without it. Perhaps I can encourage my yob-luthier to return to the trade!

Exciting times ahead for me – here’s hoping we all enjoy the ride!