Keeping it real...

Jordan-Ravi on stage at Eurovision Australia (photo credit: SBS)

We have just come back from a fantastic few days on the Gold Coast, Australia, where we watched our son Jordan-Ravi perform on stage at Eurovision Australia Decides 2020. Here is his performance on the final night:

As a father, it was a moment of utter pride, but not only because of his stellar performance where he gave it everything he had, but because of so many other things.

During those few days, I hung around with him in the 'green room', so I got to watch him interact with everyone from the back stage audio crew, the make up and wardrobe team, the media contingent always wanting his time, and his fans seeking photos and a short chat with him, and also his fellow artists, who are all at different levels of fame in the industry. In every interaction, I was pleased to see that he always always conducted himself with impeccable manners, courtesy and civility.

I guess all that time my wife and I spent ensuring that he places the feelings and wellbeing of other people at the same level as his own has paid off. I know it will be a bit of a battle to ensure that he remains grounded and 'real' while his star continues to rise in this cut throat industry, but I think he has the foundations there, and the constant open line to us, that will help to ensure he stays on course and doesn't let his ego get the better of him.

I am immensely proud of him, and where he has got to in such a short time. The doors are just opening up for him now, and his goal of releasing his own music upon the world will shortly be a reality. Go check out his work at www.jordanravi.com and please give him a follow on Instagram.

Coding in silence

This Twitter poll I came across today got me to thinking. I know Kelly asked about podcasts here, but I have a lot of friends and colleagues who listen to music while working.

Here is my secret. I can’t.

Those of you who know me are probably saying “But you LOVE music! Heck, you played in several bands, you have a son who is a rising musician, you create and produce music on a regular basis, you tour the world to see bands and musicians in action regularly… How can you not listen to something that is so close to you while you work??”

The honest truth is that I love working in complete silence. Music and talking is a complete distraction for me when I am in a flow state.

I think it is probably the same reason that the poll responders above cannot listen to a podcast while working. To really get the most out of a podcast, you need to actually listen to the words and ideas being put forward by the speaker. It is of no use as just background noise. You might as well be working in a coffee shop if that is what you need (or use a background noise generator).

For me, listening to music is a bit like that. As a former keyboard player and guitarist in a band, I find that when listening to music, I go a bit deeper. I will generally isolate one particular instrument in the mix, even to the extent that I imagine playing that instrument in real time. My musician brain is constantly questioning note choices or picking out interesting chord changes or progressions. My producer brain is thinking about how everything is sitting ‘in the mix’ and listening for reverb and delay tails. There is a whole process of analysis that kicks off in my brain that means the music is a really interactive experience for me, and not just a soothing background lull.

For that reason, I cannot hold a complex programming concept in my brain or wind my way through complex logic problems while listening to music of any sort. It seems the synapses in my brain can only deal with one set of complex universal puzzles at a time.

All luck to those of you who can do both though. My own sons seems to traverse the world these days with earphones in and listening while interacting with other or carrying out day to day tasks. Sometimes I envy them. Often I don’t.

Regaining my timing

Like most musicians, I usually struggled to ‘keep time’ especially when playing solo compositions. But a few years ago, events which resulted in a stress induced condition (which I won’t bore you with here) has resulted in further degradation in my ability to keep time, even in a band situation where there is a drummer doing all the hard work.

I am determined to improve that though, and have been going back to basics and working on scales using a metronome to reduce that neural disconnect between my brain and my fingers. Over the weekend, I decided to challenge myself even further.

I’ve been a fan of The Police for a long time. There was something about their reggae infused punk beats that captured my imagination, and I admire all three musicians for their eclectic ability. I’ve never really played any of their songs on stage (mainly because I’ve never really had the chance to play with a drummer as talented or frenetic as Stewart Copeland), but I found a drum backing track online over the weekend for one of my most favourite songs of theirs and decided to give it a shot.

“Walking On The Moon” - As far as Sting’s bass work, this is actually one of the easiest ones to play, as the bass riff pretty much starts on the first beat of the bar (as opposed to a lot of other songs where the bass starts mid bar (e.g. Roxanne)). The guitar parts though, were the challenge. The chimey, chorus washed bits that come in every second bar is actually on beat four of the bar. It is a huge challenge to sit back and wait for the right timing to hit that Gmajsus4 chord, and then letting the delay slapback echo it for the first beat of the following bar! Even the staccato chord whips later in the verse are on the 2 and 4 - and every music teacher in the world always tells you to emphasise beats 1 and 3, NOT 2 and 4. Yet, this song is made by the choked chords on the 2 and 4. By far, the biggest challenge though, was playing along to Copeland’s frenzied thrashing. I had to keep time outside of his syncopated fills - a further testament to the skill of the original band.

Playing this was a great exercise in freeing up my mind from the usual constraints, and also to reduce those milliseconds of delay that had infused my neural system after that incident all those years ago. Breaking up my usual ‘straight timing’ with offbeat work like this really has seemed to reprogram the synapses in my brain. Time to go learn more Police numbers.

Revisiting keyboards and synth

I have posted many articles on here of my recordings with acoustic and electric guitar, but this month I wanted to go back to my earliest musical experience, which was playing the piano.

Like most kids my age growing up in Malaysia, I was forced into taking piano lessons from a very early age.  I had many teachers over the years, and some were really nice, but there were a couple of awful ones, especially one rather evil lady who used to rap me over the knuckles whenever I played a wrong note.  That experience, more than anything else, made me shun formal music studies and move away from the piano and on to the electronic organ and then eventually guitar.

This month though, I had the urge to dig out my old MIDI keyboard and make an effort at recording a keyboard rich track.  I have always been a fan of David Bowie, but I had never really done anything significant to commemorate his passing recently.  I went through a catalogue of his songs in my mind, but all of a sudden I remembered a song that I really loved that was not written by him, but was the soundtrack of a movie he was in.  The track is "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence" by the movie of the same name, starring Mr. Bowie.  It was written by Ryuichi Sakamoto.

I scoured the net and found some piano scores.  These were... challenging... to say the least.  I forgot about the depth of complexity to the piece.  Nevertheless, I gritted my teeth and dived in.  To disguise my poor playing, I decided to interpret the track as a 'techno' version of the original.

To warm up my fingers, I spent an hour or so recording this simple, yet charming piece by Erik Satie.

Then I spent the whole weekend putting together the main piece.  It was all recorded in Logic X on my iMac, using SampleTank for most of the sampled piano and instrument sounds.  I also used a bit of the Zebra synth from U-He.  Enjoy.