March 21, 2012
Dear Musicians,
When you’re at sea, it can be days or weeks before you arrive in a port with a music store close by.
It is thus really important to make sure that your instruments are in good shape and that you have some basic maintenance tools with you.
Here are some malfunctions that keep coming up: more info
March 11, 2010
Dear Musicians,
One way in which gigs on cruise ships are different from gigs on land is that you’ll have to travel far with your gear. If you take lots of it, you will almost certainly be charged big bucks by the airlines and you’ll run the risk that they’ll damage it. Regardless of the charges and the risks involved, you’ll also have to carry your gear and set it up. Who wants to break hauling gear around? Cruise lines do ask you to play in various lounges around the ship, so moving your gear happens quite often.
So, it goes without saying that taking as little gear as possible will save trouble and cash. more info
January 19, 2010
Dear musicians,
I’m always on the lookout for gear that either makes it easier or more fun to perform on the road, and I’ve come across a gadget that definitely delivers. TC Electronics has introduced it’s new guitar and bass tuner “PolyTune“. It’s called that because it let’s you strum all of your strings at once and it tells you which ones are out of tune. This is a huge time saver over the older tuners that made you tune the strings one by one. All you do is strum all of your strings at once and the device will display in green the strings that are in tune and in red the strings that needs to be tuned.
You may remember TC Electronics from a previous post on this blog about their Harmony G, a box that adds harmonies based on your voice. This company is coming out with really high quality products that enable you to keep your performances fresh and, now with the PolyTune, makes your life easier.
Check out the video below.
August 14, 2009
This is making me wanna learn a new instrument…
March 18, 2009
Playing in time is one of the fundamental aspects of musical technique. When playing with others in a group, having a great sense of time is even more critical, especially if you are laying down the foundation of a band’s groove on the bass or the drums. Bands playing in certain genres with strict, regimented rhythms might actually even use a metronome while practicing in order to make sure that no one falls behind or gets too far ahead of themselves. more info
November 5, 2008
It’s happened to almost any professional musician – you plug in at a new venue and are treated to a wall of noise and hum from your amps and speakers. It’s frustrating, and of course the sound engineers on site are rarely willing to admit that their building is feeding you dirty power, no matter how often you tell them that this never occurs at home.
In fact, at smaller gigs the organizers might not be music professionals themselves, and might have the attitude that any power is good power. You never know whether your gear is sharing an electrical source with other equipment in the building like air conditioning, fans or kitchen appliances which not only interfere with the cleanliness of the power, but which could also cause spikes that put your equipment at risk of being damaged.
It doesn’t have to be this way. more info
October 27, 2008
Hardware effects have ruled the guitar universe for a very long time. Since the late 60’s, guitarists have been experimenting with devices that promise to alter the signal coming from their instrument into something wonderful and unique – or at least, loud and obnoxious. This has lead to an entire industry devoted to producing stomp boxes, rack units and pedal boards which can slice, dice and re-assemble a musician’s tone into a variety of reverbs, delays, distortions and just plain bizarre sounds. more info
October 20, 2008
Anyone who has every performed a live gig knows how much of a beating equipment can take, especially if you are playing night after night. Most musicians consider their instruments to be precious extensions of their own bodies, and treat them almost like children – wiping them down after use, wrapping them in soft cloth and protecting them in velvet-lined hard protective cases. However, in the heat of the moment on-stage, many instruments suffer from superficial and sometimes more serious damage from accidental drops, bumping into other equipment, or the actions of those who might be more wrapped up in the music than in what their bodies are doing.
Input and output jacks are particularly at risk. A quarter-inch patch cable is usually snapped in pretty tight, sometimes even wrapped around the guitar strap or taped to the top of the amp. This means that should that cable get caught on something, or should the singer or another musician step or trip on it while you are playing, the cable could be wrenched out of the jack at an awkward angle. This can seriously damage not only the jack itself, both internally and externally, but also in extreme cases crack the wood of the instrument or amplifier, not to mention your eardrum that suffers from the loud pop that can result from this accident.
Belkin has developed a neat little gadget that is designed to prevent this scenario from ever happening again. Called the BreakFree connector, it consists of a socket and plug in the same shape as a quarter-inch TRS plug.
However, while the socket does snap into your instrument or amp, the plug itself slides into the socket almost silently and is held by a strong magnetic force. This means that if for whatever reason the cable is tugged hard in any direction, the plug will detach without any dramatic snapping or tearing.
Not only does this help to protect equipment from becoming damaged, but the nifty gadget also facilitates quick and quiet instrument changes, since the cable can be detached without the standard crack or pop that forces players to zero out their amps before making the switch. At a price of around $20, the BreakFree connector is cheap insurance for the gigging musician.
September 25, 2008
Us musicians work hard at acquiring the necessary tools we need to be able to express ourselves properly through music. Once we acquire these tools it would be a shame to lose them.
This is where my beloved friend the iPhone comes in (again). The iPhone lets you download applications from the “appstore” that add functionality to the device. One of the apps that is real useful to musicians is called “Karajan” and it is a really fun ear training program.
You can challenge yourself by recognizing intervals, chords, scales, pitch, tempo and key signatures.
Once you chose intervals from a pull down menu, for example, the device will play random intervals for you to recognize. The device will remember your results so that you can come back later and see how well you did.
Here’s a video demo:
You several settings such as the instrument sound that’s playing back the quiz, you can chose to have the examples played legato, staccato, arpeggio or polyphon…
There is a free version that lets you play at the beginner level only, the paid version, which costs $14.99 will let you play at three additional levels.
All in all this is a fantastic way to kill time and do something useful at the same time. Any musician that already owns an iPhone should at least get the free version and check how well their ears are doing.
Have fun.
February 23, 2008
Dear Musicians,
You’ve passed an audition and got a job on a cruise line and now you’re faced with the problem of getting your instruments to the ship. Now, in most cases this is not very problematic, but for saxophone players this can be quite tricky. more info
