Why Do You Need Live Music? Part I

June 14, 2012 — Shannon

David Ice - Harpist

David Ice (pictured above) is a fabulous Phoenix harpist. He is also an entertaining writer, and gets to the point in a way we can all appreciate. Here is an open letter to a bridal magazine, which he posted in the Harpcolumn (membership required to view forum posts)

As a vendor at the recent Bridal Fashion Debut bridal show in Phoenix, Arizona on June 10, 2012 I was given a copy of your magazine.

What distressed me was an article. In it the author states “if the DJ’s already there for the reception, you just have to adjust the time for the ceremony…..it’s cheaper than bringing a harpist or a guitar player in.”

The advantages of having a live musician—an instrumentalist—for the ceremony are huge, and I feel this has been totally neglected and our contributions ignored. Indeed, with the possible exception of the Phoenix Boy’s Choir, I can find no other ceremony musicians advertising in your magazine. And, given the above statement, I can guess why.

Why do I feel this way? Let me explain, and please, really think about what I’m saying.

Let us assume that a DJ is providing the ceremony music for a wedding ceremony. Now, I’m not picking on DJs at all. This is just the physical reality of how things are.

All it takes is one lost bobby pin and all the timings, rehearsals, and planning go out the window. The ring bearer starts to cry, and simply refuses to go down the aisle. (I see this more often than not!)

The DJ has 73 seconds of recorded processional music. And the kid refuses to budge. What is the DJ going to do? All he can do is hit REPEAT.

A live musician can do much better. For example, I can realize what is happening, and think to myself, “okay, go back to bar 17, play up to bar 26, then vamp on bars 23-26 until the kid starts moving, and then jump to the coda.” Voila….a processional that times out perfectly. If I need an additional 22 seconds of music—or 8—I can make it work. A DJ has no other option than hit REPEAT and fade out. Think about this. Play a CD….hit repeat at the end of a tune, and then fade it out at random. This is exactly what the audience will hear.

Conversely, you can rehearse a processional until you are blue in the face—but at the actual event, people are nervous and can practically run down the aisle. Your 73 seconds of music must now be cut to 42 seconds. A live musician can do it. The DJ has no option but to just fade it out—just like turning down your car radio.


And more often than not—we’ve ALL done it—you hit the wrong button or hit it too many times on your CD player, your iPod, your computer—and the wrong track plays. Another vendor told me about a wedding where the Canon in D didn’t repeat…what came on was the Theme from The Tonight Show. Oops. I’ve personally heard a DJ start the first dance for the bride and groom and hit the wrong button on his computer, and what came out the speakers could only be described in polite company as The F-Bomb Deluxe.

Similarly, having a family member sing to a karoke track can be hysterically awful. People get nervous and emotional, and it’s a rare wedding where something does not go wrong using a pre-recorded track. I was at a wedding on Sunday where the singer (a family friend) got nervous, and was soon 4 or 5 bars out-of-sync with the track. It was truly awful. A live musician can follow and accompany appropriately. But a mechanical recorded track marches on regardless of whatever problems the singer is having!

Another personal story: I had a bride ready to go down the aisle. I got the cue from her, and started Here Comes The Bride. A couple of seconds later, I looked up to see where she was. She was nowhere to be seen!!!

I started adapting and vamping. It was the longest 90 seconds of my life—did she get cold feet? Was she the proverbial “runaway bride”??

She finally reappeared. It seems she forgot her bouquet, and ran off to find it!

Had it been a DJ, he would have had no option than to hit REPEAT several times. And it would have been immediately obvious that something was wrong.

As it was, I was able to vamp a very long Fanfare and Introduction to the classic Wagner processional—while aging about 10 years in the process—praying she would reappear! But in the end it was seamless and nobody knew what had happened.

If a bride is spending huge sums for everything else to be perfect, why gamble on the ceremony music? Would you advise, “don’t worry about shoes, nobody looks at your feet anyway”? Music is the emotional glue that holds the ceremony together! Has there ever been a wedding guest who stated, “Every time I see a pink lisianthus I cry remembering your wedding” or “every time I see a Vera Wang #1729 I think of your wedding”?

But people will say, “Every time I hear that song, I think of your wedding.”
Since the music is so important, isn’t it equally important to make sure it fits, it is in sync, and it is as flawless as possible? DJs can only do so much. A live musician can do so much more.

Sincerely,

David M. Ice

I  mean, which would you rather have – this…

Or this?

Posted in Arizona Harping, Musings, Phoenix Harping. Tags: , , , . 2 Comments »

The Garden of Your Mind

June 10, 2012 — Shannon

 

I can’t help but think that Fred is out there somewhere, nodding in approval – especially at the little bit of wickedness at 0:26:

 

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Internship Countdown

June 7, 2012 — Shannon

Two hours down, 78 to go! I played for two hours at the Reiki Harmony Centers’s Reiki Share last night. What’s a Reiki Share? It’s when Reiki practitioners and students get together to practice on each other and on anyone who can use a session. At the Center I am playing at, sessions are free for Reiki students, and only $5 for anyone else, so it’s a great way to experience this for yourself. The excitement over having a harpist would have been easy to feel even if it wasn’t a Reiki Center (tee hee!)

There is nothing like first hand experience to help you really, really, really learn what it is you thought you already knew. I thought I knew a lot, and now after putting theory to practice, I’m proud to say I now know even less. Here’s what I learned:

Pay attention to the space that you are playing to, not the space you are in. This was a group session, so the only space available was just outside the doorway. I learned too late that the resonance in the room where the work was being done was not the same as the hallway I was playing in. Fortunately, they were only a fifth apart, and I was playing in consonance with the room, but it would have been better if I had spent a little time in the space first. And watching the events unfold in the room helped to know when to wind each of the 20 minute improvisations down.

Don’t think about what you are doing. Just play.  Isaac Asimov said “Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.” Every time my brain tried to take charge things got complicated – muddy. The music comes on its own, it really does. And it’s not repetitive or boring.

Keep it simple. Where have I heard that one? No matter how simple I made it, it could still have been simpler and more effective.

There are no coincidences. ‘Nuff said.

Overall, it was a good session, and I’m looking forward to the next 78 hours. But I’m really glad that this first one is done.

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Reiki Tonight

June 6, 2012 — Shannon

Tonight I will be playing for the Reiki Harmony Center’s Reiki Share. This is our first collaborative event, do come check it out! Details are in the “events” section of the blog. Thanks!

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The Triviality of Impossiblities

June 5, 2012 — Shannon

Deborah Henson Conant, arguably the most creative harpist alive. She’s working in a new way, touring with Steve Vai this coming fall, and chronicling it in her blog:

I’m so far out of my comfort zone – so far out of my natural-ability-zone. … When I see my students experiencing it, I know it’s just their brain shifting from an old way of knowing music to a new way, and that the deep sense of disorientation and uncoordination is part of making that shift.  I know that the things that seem obvious to me, are often completely invisible to them until the structures finally become clear in their minds.

There is a saying in mathematics: Every problem is impossible until you know how to solve it, and then it’s trivial.  Confusion is a good thing.* When you are confused, that is a clue that there’s more to the what is happening than what meets the eye — you are in a rich situation, and you are on the verge of discovering something completely new, something that no one has ever known before, and you are going to make it yours.

So is confusion an essential part of creativity? Is it even possible to make anything new without feeling groundless? At least for a little bit?

…..

* Thank you, Joe, for this lesson.
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A (Very) Young Composer Gets His Chance At The New York Philharmonic : Deceptive Cadence : NPR

June 2, 2012 — Shannon

A fabulous piece about a NYC program to help kids become composers.

“Some of these kids have trouble locating middle C on a piano,” Deak says. “Does that mean they can’t compose music of depth? No. What do they have to do? They have to hum it for us, sing, whistle, tap the rhythms — even if they can’t notate them — and we get their piece.”

Just because you didn’t have music lessons doesn’t mean you don’t have music.

A (Very) Young Composer Gets His Chance At The New York Philharmonic : Deceptive Cadence : NPR.

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Recording, maybe getting better?

May 30, 2012 — Shannon

It’s amazing  the difference that you can get from throwing away the book. Everything I’ve been reading about sound recording (not much, admittedly) says that you need to set your recording levels as high as possible without introducing clipping. But with the harp –  my harp, at least – that makes everything should like it’s in a cave.

This sample is recorded on my laptop using Audacity with

  • Two pickups – one is a Barcus Berry, made to Alfredo Roland Ortiz’s specs
  • The other is my cheapie clip-on that I use with my tuner (!)
  • The input of the Barcus Berry was EQ’d with a Fish and Chips pedal to reduce the low frequencies (200 hz and below)
  • All fed into a digital interface
  • Input levels set L-O-W
Post processing was minimal – I boosted the level all around and used the envelope tool to reduce one big boom in the left hand (at 35 seconds, can you hear it?)

Not my best playing (you can hear I was distracted by my cat at about 2:30 into it), but a good experiment with sound production. So am I approaching demo quality, with a minimal equipment investment?

I’ve heard of people who produce commercial CD’s on their iPads. What is your setup?

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Recording Frustrations

May 28, 2012 — Shannon

I have been reading more and more about recording harps, trying to get a better sound for my clips. The more I read, the better I get at listening — which is a good thing. But the better my listening gets, the more critical I become.

There are two good things about recording. First of all, you really get to hear how  you sound in a different way than when you are simply playing. By listening to my recordings, I’m learning that simpler really is better! The second best thing about recording is that you can really hear progress when you are working on new techniques. Now that I am through with making my sample recordings for IHTP, I have redone a few from the beginning of the program, and I am so pleased to hear the difference in how I play and sound. I always tell my students to keep their best paper from every class to go back and see their progress, but it is so rare that I take my own advice.

antiques,audio equipment,Fotolia,jukeboxes,music,nostalgia,old,record players,songs,sounds,tunes,vintages

I started recording for the IHTP by simply sticking my phone in front of the harp, and I’ve been slowly moving up; the operative word here is S-L-O-W-L-Y. Currently, I am using two pickups, to get a little richer sound. My harp has one pickup, and the second one is the little clip on pickup I use with my tuner, believe it or not!

I run both of these into a cheapie audio interface, into my latptop, where I record using Audacity. So far, I haven’t done a lot of work with those raw files. I remove the noise, and fade in and out, and sometimes do a little compressing.

Until about a month ago, I thought I was the cat’s pajamas, but now I’m at a road block, and trying to figure out how to move forward. There’s a big ol’ resonance right around A5. You’ve probably heard it if you have tried out my recordings – just be glad I didn’t put the worst ones on the site. I’ve tried a high pass filter and EQ’ing the low A out, but have only managed to make it sound more and more processed, without managing to remove the ring.

Now it’s time to listen to the voice of experience. Steven Vardy, is not only the husband of the amazing Canadian harpist Allison Vardy, he  is also her amazing sound guy – and says this:

The harp will have a dominant resonant frequency where the whole instrument will resonate in the presence of the same frequency. Celtic harps are natural microphones. Rooms also have resonant frequencies and will amplify those resonances when present as well. If the resonance of the room and the harp match then you may have problems. 

When amplified, a harp may put a frequency (say 400 Hz) thru the sound system out in to the room, which resonates at an even more amplified/ louder 400hz, which makes the harp resonates more strongly as well, which puts an even stronger 400hz from the harp back into the sound system and around and around the signal goes until the system becomes unstable and you have feedback. … EQ if you can.

I’ll keep you all posted about how it goes.

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Reiki Share

May 24, 2012 — Shannon

OK, the last time I checked, I wasn’t from Missouri, but as a card-carrying  ISTJ, I’ve got to see it to believe it. So what is it with this Reiki thing? Well, it looks like it is going to be a long story.

Part of the self-care portion of the IHTP curriculum includes a basic introduction to reiki. During our training, we got a short attunement from our instructor Judith Hitt, who is a Reiki Master. And I”ll be darned if I couldn’t pick up the resonant tone of everything around me after that — the room, people’s voices,birdsong, the air conditioner…  Before that session, I was humming high and low, trying to match what I heard, and never quite sure that I was getting it.

So back to the ISTJ-ness that is me. True to form, I found the Reiki Harmony Center here in Phoenix, and found out that reiki practitioners really do practice — on each other. So for $5, I got another attunement, along with an introduction to the actual practice of reiki. So far so good, I can still hear. 🙂

For the record, I don’t know what ki is — maybe it’s a god, maybe it’s some universal electromagnetic energy, maybe it’s something else. I am leaning toward  thinking of it as something hard-wired in our brains – some way we have evolved to be able to recognize, in some form, the bigger picture of things, and put our own selves into perspective. But even if it’s just a giant placebo in the sky, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, then we are doing well to provide it with a pond to swim in.

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More on Resonance: Standing Waves

May 23, 2012 — Shannon

M ore on resonant frequency. When you find resonance, you are making standing waves. Here is a video that shows what standing waves are for a vibrating string:

The important thing to see here is that a single shake of the rope makes a single wave that travels down the rope, bounces, and comes back. If many of these shakes happen, there will be lots of little waves, moving back and forth along the rope simultaneously – a real mess.

That is, it’s a real mess until you time the shakes just right. As soon as that happens, the waves start lining up with each other. What you are doing is matching the resonant frequency of the rope, and you’ll get what is called a standing wave. If you shake the rope twice as fast, you’ll see two smaller standing waves (the octave pitch), shake it three times as fast, and you’ll get the next harmonic, and so forth.

If the rope is shorter, then the waves have less distance to travel, and so they make the trip quicker. You have to shake the rope more rapidly to get those standing waves. This is why shorter strings vibrate at higher frequencies, and result in higher pitches. Waves travel  more slowly through thicker ropes, so thicker strings give lower frequencies, and so forth.

Posted in Science of Sound. Leave a Comment »
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