Ben’s Blog

Geez, me and my Craiglist search alert RSS feed have gotten me into “trouble” once again. I had an RSS search feed on Craiglist Boston for fretless going, and was surprised when I saw a Carvin LB76 fretless for $400. Wow. I expected it to sell right away, but when it didn’t after 2 months, I just had to get it! I love it.

The instrument definitely needs some work (I don’t think it would have been $400 otherwise). The pickups make a loud, weird popping sound that started just after the cut point on the clip above. Too bad as I got a really good take of suite # 2 prelude, start to finish. (Practice and repertoire segue: that is interesting because I haven’t run Suite # 2 in some time.)

I will get the pickups fixed, and for now put some flatwounds on it (although I don’t like the sound) so I don’t hurt the beautiful ebony fingerboard. Long term plans include getting the neck coated by HG Thor who does unbelievable work, so I can get back to roundwounds and probably tune E-F (the B string thing interests me less and less these days).

Also, this post goes with a loud shout out to my good friend Josh Goldman composer and guitarist, who years ago when we were at NEC mentioned I should do all 6 Bach Cello Suites on a fretless. I’ve tried that really quite a lot since then, most of the time with a 4-string tuned tenor. In 2005 I did buy a REALLY CHEAP 6FL, but I just couldn’t play the instrument. It just had no tone at all. So, I’m very excited to now have a quality instrument to explore this idea with.

bentorrey :: Nov.29.2007 :: Instruments :: 1 Comment »

I try to go to as many shows as my budget and commitments will allow. This may seem a very obvious point to a musician, but in the years that I got far away from music I wasn’t going to shows regularly at all. Maybe I needed that separation for a time; seeing live music reminded me that I hadn’t “made it” (I didn’t realize then that there’s no such thing). What brought me back to live music was the Artist’s Way concept of Artist Dates. Brilliant stuff that. Just as we need inspiration from shows, live music is a life force that needs supporting. We do that by showing up and spreading the word.

Anyway, I went to see Steven Lin play a week ago Friday at the 3rd Life Studios in Somerville. He gave a really great performance. I was especially moved by his rendition of Barrios’ beautiful Una Limosna por el Amor de Dios. Steven told the beautiful story of the composition before playing it. Really nice for anyone in the audience who hadn’t heard that story. It’s a great one. I’d like to learn this piece for a bass and vocals duet, just kind of humming the tremolo line with the bass line below. I would also like to learn the tremolo line on my gamba, as that would make a fun guitar and gamba duet, as would beautiful Barrios’ C Minor Prelude. Two other little projects to try! Fun.

Anyway, the weekend before last there was so much live music that I can’t even see it all–I’m so lucky to be living in such a major music hub as Boston. Chris Henriksen played Friday night with Duo Marisienne, but I couldn’t go. Edwin Barker was playing Saturday night, but I also couldn’t go to that. Steven was playing again that Sunday afternoon.

I did see Steven again that Sunday, and he played Antonio Lauro’s El Negrito beautifully. I had worked on that piece for bass years ago, but never quite got it. But, I was inspired to give it another go by Steven’s concert. I think tuning E-F helps on this one. Here’s a quick video snippet that I threw up on Youtube. The key move is doing that first double stop with the right hand, and then trying to make something happen musically with dynamics, expression and timing although the piece presents such a technical challenge on bass. Victor’s “try easy” (instead of try hard) comes to mind as a helpful thing to think about when practicing this.

Also, Steven has just released an album of Barrios and Lauro pieces. You can get it on Amazon.com and should be available on iTunes pretty soon. Highly recommend this recording. Excellent.

bentorrey :: Nov.28.2007 :: Musical Thoughts, Stocking the Pond, Filling the Well :: 1 Comment »

I worked on La Catedral for bass pretty intensely years ago. I recently took another pass at the Allegro Solemne, and thought I’d share some of my approach although the arrangement is far from ready. Here’s the video:

And, here’s an arrangement for a high-C bass 5 or 6: (click for larger view). Note that I’ve written the left hand fingerings above the notes and the right hand fingerings below the notes.

There’s a few mistakes in this, and they are interesting (to me anyway). I did this transcription while waiting at the doctor’s office. It’s always a long wait there, so I printed out a sheet of blank sheet music (love that BlankSheetMusic.net site) ahead of time. So, took me about 20 minutes while waiting to see the doctor. I had to imagine which fingers I’m using for what without my instrument handy, and there’s a few mistakes in this. Best sustain is when you use the left hand first finger for the low note, then left hand 2 and 4 for the highest notes, middle voice always with the right hand. That doesn’t work in the first bar though, and best bet is to play the low B with the left hand pinky and sustain as long as you can.

That’s pretty good time utilization though, and I try to do as much of that as I can to make the free bits of time in my day useful. For example, driving back and forth to work is my important listening time. Nothing works better than traffic to extend that time out, lol. So, by refocusing what I’m “accomplishing” in driving to work, I’ve gone from “Traffic was terrible this morning” to “boy, I love that Lauro piece, I can now hum it all the way through. Can’t wait to try it on bass.”

bentorrey :: Nov.21.2007 :: Musical Thoughts, Stocking the Pond, Filling the Well, W.O.T. (Way Off Topic) or is it? :: No Comments »

I happened upon Jason Heath’s blogs a few months back after doing a search for a bass stool. What fantastic resource sites are both his DoubleBass Blog and Contrabass Conversations sites. I’ve added a link in my Blogroll for both.

Here’s three great recent posts that I really enjoyed:
1. Renaud Garcia-Fons . Good god, this guy is UNBELIEVABLE!!! I had never heard of him. Spent 1 hour watching all his videos on YouTube. Amazing, amazing stuff. His playing a 5-string takes me back to one of my first impressions of the Nanny book as a young kid, and that was “how the heck do I get a 5-string upright?” Lol.

2. Virtual Lessons category on Contrabass Conversations. These are awesome, really enjoyed the Hans Sturm lessons on Rabbath technique.

3. Orchestral Excerpts, I really enjoyed this post about famous orchestral audition excerpts with John Grillo.

Jason is my ‘blog hero’ if you will in that he is creating an amazing amount of very high quality material that is so valuable. I hope to eventually do the same for the electric bass community in my blog.

I also want to mention that blog work THIS GOOD is absolutely worth supporting, and as such I just made a donation to his blog. I think I’ve got more out of Jason’s blog in the last 4 weeks than I’ve got in the last year out of my subscription to Bass Player magazine.

Thanks Jason!

bentorrey :: Nov.20.2007 :: Stocking the Pond, Filling the Well, Upright :: No Comments »

I’m an electric bass player, no doubt about that. I don’t identify at all as an upright player. But, the time I spend with upright helps my electric bass playing so much in so many ways. I’m so limited on upright that I have to take a step back and play more simply. It’s very humbling. Typically I enjoy upright only very privately at home, when nobody is listening!!! I’ll put on a Norah Jones album and play along, or transcribe some great Paul Chambers lines, or work through some orchestral excerpts for that community orchestra I want to join when I get my chops back in shape.

A few months back, I posted a pretty bad video on my electric that I recorded downstairs. I quipped that the best thing about the video was the view to the left (my upright). Someone asked me when they’d finally hear my upright, so I recorded a quick blip of an arrangement of Third Stone from the Sun for upright.

Also, my experiences playing with a full orchestra are without a doubt some of the greatest musical experiences I’ve ever had. I really need to clear some time to get my bowing chops back up and join a good community orchestra. Back to my original point though, one thing that’s amazing about playing with an orchestra is that you learn the music you are playing so thoroughly because you’re involved in the complete assembly of the work, not just listening to the final results of the practice. It’s like viewing a building that you helped construct, you’ll understand it that much more when viewing the results.

I was thinking about that the other day. I love all of Beethoven’s symphonies, but I was thinking, why is it that the only excerpts I can play on my electric bass are from # 7? And that happens to be the only one I’ve ever playing in an orchestra. That’s interesting, and a great reason to be playing great works in a good orchestra. Here’s a 1 minute cut of about a 10 minute jam on #7’s great 2nd movement.

bentorrey :: Nov.17.2007 :: Musical Thoughts, Upright :: No Comments »

I think most people have read this great book by W.A. Mathieu, but just in case you haven’t heard of it and have stumbled upon my blog, and since I have a category for Books I Enjoy(ed)/Will Enjoy, I have to mention The Listening Book.

I think this is one of the greatest books written about music. I first got The Listening Book around ‘93 or ‘94, and read and re-read it frequently between ‘94 and ‘97. I don’t think my 1996 recording would have come out as nicely as it did if I hadn’t really dug into this book.

I’ve since owned at least 10 copies. The last copy I bought I’m going to keep for myself. In fact, I’m due for another re-read - the expanding treasures of this book are limitless.

bentorrey :: Nov.14.2007 :: Books I Enjoy(ed)/Will Enjoy :: No Comments »

This is kind of a interesting example of how when I was “going for it” as an attempted professional musician years ago I think I missed the boat on a few things.

Firstly, proof is in the audio. I had done my 1996 recording already. Why didn’t I mention that in this article?

That’s a really nice version of this piece. Especially as an unknown guy given the opportunity to present in Bass Frontiers, what I should have done is:
a) mention the recording
b) taken out an ad for the recording (would have been a nice thing to support the magazine)

But, I didn’t have that “marketing mind” on my stuff at that point, I also didn’t have the bread to do anything like that, and I also wanted my columns to be kind of purely content-based and not be promotional in any way.

Anyway, rather than worry about that, since I’ve decided to “reissue” Music for the 6-String Bass, I’ll just do all that this time around. That’s right, from a purchasable version on iTunes to a t-shirt on Cafe Press to some ads on Bass Player online, I’m going to take the Music for the 6-String Bass reissue all the way just to say I did it.

So, here’s a PDF of the original Bass Frontiers article with the Carulli Moderato transcription. Also, here’s the source comments document which had a few other ideas for embellishments and variations that didn’t make it on the one page redux. And, the source transcription document.

bentorrey :: Nov.09.2007 :: Bass Frontiers Articles, Music for the 6-String Bass, Repertoire :: No Comments »

Lately I’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the instruments I’m working on. Between a steep ramp-up on bass gamba (since I only have the instrument until 12/5), digging into some renaissance guitar music for my EAB, and the seemingly never-ending bid to get my upright chops back into good enough shape to join a community orchestra, there’s been little time to focus on completing Suite 6 on my 6-string fretted electric.

But, as direct a path as I’d like to feel I’m taking (toward in particular doing a fantastic recording of # 6 on 12/14), I really do believe that all the work on other instruments and other music somehow pays dividends in my musicianship in general. I call that “Chicken Soup for the Multi-Instrumentalist’s Soul”.

All that being said, I could use a bit of focus and there are times when you need to focus like a laser beam on one project, and that’s not been my strong suit. I need to work on that.

In fact, I did practice a Weiss lute piece (Sonata # 38’s Sarabande) for about an hour this morning, because I listened to it in the car yesterday, and just had to give it a go on bass. I think this piece might work nicely on bass eventually.

Weiss Sarabande from Sonata # 38 snippet on bass

bentorrey :: Nov.08.2007 :: Musical Thoughts, Project Barto :: 1 Comment »

I learned this one a really long time ago. It’s a Carlos Barbosa-Lima arrangement of a Jobim tune called Amparo (thanks to newthings158 for helping me remember the composer/tune, I had thought it was a Villa-Lobos tune). If you haven’t checked out Carlos Barbosa-Lima, definitely do that, he’s great. You can see a lot of stuff on YouTube, and he’s got a few records and books out.

Anyway, years ago I was trying to learn his arrangement of this great tune on bass, and I couldn’t for the life of me get the melody into the mix. Finally it occurred to me to just sing the melody. Duh! After that I was thinking about a whole set of tunes arranged for voice and bass accompaniment. That would be fun to try at some point.

It seems to naturally segue into Diary. Here’s a first take that isn’t so good. I could probably tidy this up for a nice addition to my repertoire. Singing the harmonies that happen over the main Diary riff would sound really nice.

bentorrey :: Nov.03.2007 :: Musical Thoughts :: No Comments »