Ben’s Blog

Awhile back I was working on my Fulara audition piece. Although I can play a fair amount of Bach, I decided to choose a piece that I can’t play to work up for the audition, for a challenge and to try to expand my abilities a bit. I chose two-part invention # 15 that I’ve worked on several times in the past but really never gotten far with.

As I was toughing through a practice session awhile back, somehow The Singing Sailor came into my head. The Singing Sailor is one of my favorite BC tunes that we did on the Subs EP. I was surprised when, on the first try, I played the melody and bass line, just about perfectly. With the band, I never played the piece in a two-hand style. I did sing the melody before the first verse though. Anyway, my debate then became, how can I play tune like that (from 15 years ago) just about perfectly in two-hand style when I’ve never played it in that style before? While, a piece that I’ve studied so much with intention (#15) I can’t get through? I grabbed my camera for a quick take two on Singing Sailor, and you can see I had a bit of brain freeze on this take as I pondered a shift. Singing Sailor for two hands

Certainly, Singing Sailor arranged for two-hands is a lot less complicated than # 15, but I think the answer is really about “piece familiarity”. I played Singing Sailor so many times live or in rehearsal that I absorbed the music in a way that I haven’t done with # 15.

I almost think that rather than spend 15 or 20 hours “woodshedding” #15, maybe I should just try to get so familiar with the lines that I could just rattle it off on bass without thinking. I think more practice on piano and on vocals will help with that. Clearly from this, I need to take a different tack! Practicing Invention # 15 on bass, needs a lotta work!

Anyway, here’s The Singing Sailor from Blase Cabaret’s 1993 EP Subs.

Copyright 1993. Blase Cabaret. Music and Lyrics by Jamie O’Neil and Nathan Richardson.

bentorrey :: Jan.30.2008 :: Musical Thoughts, Repertoire :: No Comments »

I had promised myself that I wouldn’t take on lute right now, but I couldn’t resist when one was offered to me. So, I’m renting this 6-course Renaissance lute, and boy is it fun!

I better not put any videos on YouTube until I learn how to play this thing, or at least until I learn how to hold it. LOL, here’s a clip of me banging through the Bourree II from Suite 4 on my lute.

Bourree II from Suite 4 on my lute

I think I’m still good with respect to my “focus on the Bach” New Years-style resolution, I don’t think I could work much harder in prep for that project. But, the musical mind is a bit like a candle, you gotta have some oxygen in there or you’ll burn out.

bentorrey :: Jan.30.2008 :: Instruments, Stocking the Pond, Filling the Well :: No Comments »

A long while back I was driving around and heard some really great recorder music on WGBH. It was Dan Laurin playing a set of variations by Jacob van Eyck. I had tuned in on a John Dowland tune, Comeagain. I bought that tune on iTunes and started to transcribe some of the variations. I like looking at variations a lot these days, from a compositional standpoint, since I’m still working on getting “unstuck” with composition. I decided to get a sheet music edition of the set to save time.

I had a window of time on Saturday one week so I headed to the Von Huene workshop (love that place!). I bought the set of variations and eyed a plastic Yamaha alto, but decided to work on the variations on my sopranos (I have a Yamaha plastic soprano and a decent wooden soprano) and maybe fretless electric. If I could find my USB CF card reader thing I’d post some clips, that’s been fun to practice.

Anyway, while I was there, funny enough, I ran into an old friend of mine from Tufts/NEC, Elaine a great flutist. She was living in New York and playing a lot and things. I was talking to her about my whole Artist Way “artistic recovery” and things, and she mentioned Kenny Werner’s book Effortless Mastery. I hadn’t heard of that. I ordered it a few weeks ago.

I just got it last week, and I know it’s going to be a really helpful book for me. Helpful in attempting to shut down the negative “cross talk” in my mind when I’m playing. I put the CD on in the car and just listen, noticing my resistance to embracing the concepts like “I am a master. I am great”. Geez, I’ll have to try that though!

bentorrey :: Jan.18.2008 :: Books I Enjoy(ed)/Will Enjoy, Musical Thoughts, Repertoire :: No Comments »

Acoustic bliss:

My blind spot:

Although I’m an electric bassist really, I am really not good at and don’t like fooling with amps and EQ and all that junk. It really is my blind spot. In fact, I’m so not into it that I’d like to hire any of my brilliant sound engineer/musician friends to come over and write down settings for all my instruments through my one junky amp so I didn’t ever have to think of it.

But, that leaves me at a pretty serious disadvantage. Different tone in different spots, etc, I just find myself so disinterested in the topic. With a limited amount of time to play now, I’ve got some much music, harmony and instruments to learn, I just don’t want to waste the time on amps and EQ.

I’m reading a really great new book by Wayne Dyer right now. I was struck by one sentence that said something like “Practice being a walking, talking contradiction in terms”. Well, I can check myself off for being just that! An electric bassist that really doesn’t know how to “play” his amp. Not good.

Something I need to revisit and consider having a more constructive attitude about down the road (sounds like New Year’s resolution material).

bentorrey :: Jan.13.2008 :: Musical Thoughts :: No Comments »

I was cleaning out some of my old stuff at my Mom’s awhile back and I happened upon a box of orchestral bass scores. Tons of great stuff. Mahler 2 + 5, Beethoven 9, a whole stack of great music.

For a quick second I was in this fog. “Geez, I don’t remember playing that?” “Did I play all that? Wow, I was a better upright player than I thought.” Now, I was very surprised because as I’ve mentioned, I find that when I play a piece with orchestra I learn it so thoroughly, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget a piece that I’ve played in an orchestra.

All this back and forth thought happened in about half a second, after which I realized, “That’s right! These aren’t my scores!”
They were a box of orchestral bass scores that were my good friend Ben gave me, from a roommate of his who was a bassist.

Anyway, funny. Here’s to building my own box of scores that I do know! I won’t be working on my orchestral audition stuff much until May, but I’m looking forward to working with a teacher then. I’ll be auditioning on Beethoven 7 and the Leonore No 3 Overture.

So, hopefully this time next year I’ll have a start on my own box of scores, on my way to ‘Scores of Scores’ myself.

bentorrey :: Jan.13.2008 :: Stocking the Pond, Filling the Well, Upright :: No Comments »

So, I’ve been blogging for more than 12 months now and I figured maybe time to look back a bit on a year’s worth of stuff and how it’s all going and maybe set some goals for next year.

I think I’ve put a lot of good stuff up here. Arrangement ideas, some transcriptions, notes about good books and recordings, etc. I would have thought I’d have had more traffic and more “success” with the blog. I think maybe that’s it’s a real low traffic type of specialty, classical music on electric bass.

And, that’s another interesting topic. I decided to focus the blog a bit on classical music for electric bass. It seems to me that the best blogs are a bit focused on one topic. I definitely endeavor to play all kinds of music through, from classical to bluegrass, from metal to easy listening. I don’t think it would work for me to 100% focus the blog on my classical arrangements for electric bass. Really though, almost everything else I do does relate back to that prime directive. Whether it’s taking a class on figured bass realization or prepping for an orchestral audition or taking on the gamba, it all helps improve my musicianship in general, and I’m becoming a better electric bass player in the process.

Anyway, so my goals in general are to provide at least one “content oriented” post a week, typically on the weekend. By content oriented, I mean some audio, video, or a PDF of some music. I want to avoid too much “talking about music”, as valuable as that can be, and let the content make the point for at least my main post of the week. I will also continue to post some quick insight type posts, and etc.

I’ve also got to work on two sides of an understanding with the “success” of the blog thing. On the one side, I need to do some more to maybe “promote” or get the word out on my blog. And, on the other hand, I need to be careful with the measure of “success” that I have in my head. My hope was getting lots of comments, emails, and having more than 5 hits a week and things like that. But, I need to be careful to measure the success not in numbers and things like that. Of the 5 people that hit the site last week, maybe they really liked it. Maybe they all bought the Listening Book or something else that I mentioned. Maybe 5 that liked it is better than 200 that just popped in for a moment.

I’ll reflect more on that later.

bentorrey :: Jan.13.2008 :: W.O.T. (Way Off Topic) or is it? :: No Comments »

If you’ve read many of my posts, you can tell I drive around a fair amount and tend to listen to the radio while doing that. I caught two guys on WHRB (which you can stream on the web!) that really blew me away recently.

The first example was a really pretty tune, great upright tone and beautiful piano. I couldn’t identify the player, but loved the tone, the tune, the feel. Everything, just great stuff! I waited until the announcement : Avishai Cohen! I remember thinking, “yeah, I’ve heard about that guy”, but I had never heard him play! Wow! The tune that I jumped in on was Remembering, from his latest release “As Is, Live at the Blue Note”, which is also out on DVD. I bought the record on iTunes and spent some time working out the vamp in Remembering on electric bass- that was fun, and I learned the tune on upright too, great upright workout for me. What a great player is Avishai Cohen.

The second example was a great tune with upright and piano, soprano sax, with kind of an African vibe to it. Beautiful tune, great brushes with the drums. Again, couldn’t place any of it. The next few tunes had an amazing kora player. I waited for about 30 minutes (they were playing the whole album), before I found out who it was. Ben Allison, album Peace Pipe. I had come in on the tune Peace Pipe. What a great tune! I had to work that out on upright. What a great workout. The whole album is great and features Mamadou Diabete on kora. I hadn’t heard of Ben Allison, but have to definitely get all his recordings, phenomenal player!! Check this guy out!!! This album is on iTunes too.

Anyway, that’s a long segue to my real point of this post and that’s to say that it’s great to be a listener again. When I stopped playing music in 1997, I also stopped LISTENING. I couldn’t listen, it was like a painful reminder that I hadn’t “made it” or hadn’t “gotten anywhere”. So, I stopped listening. Cold turkey man. I listened to sports radio, or to nothing at all. Glenn Kurtz makes the same point in his book, as he did the same thing.

I guess I needed to go through that period. Now that I’m back with a much healthier outlook on stuff, I can listen again with the same excitement I did when I was a kid, which is great!

bentorrey :: Jan.06.2008 :: Musical Thoughts, Stocking the Pond, Filling the Well, Upright :: No Comments »

I really enjoyed Passionate Practice: The Musician’s Guide to Learning, Memorizing, and Performing by Margret Elson. A lot of very helpful ideas there.

It’s largely based on the idea of prepping for a big performance though, and I think I need to simply just do a LOT MORE PERFORMING to improve my skills, rather than spending time at home in the “woodshed” working toward a big performance. Sort of what runners call “miles in the bank” when working toward a long run.

To that end, I’m thinking of finding a place where I can get a weekly gig and just work out some repertoire in a background music type setting. I think I could find a low key place to do that. Maybe on a Monday night at a local restaurant or something. Definitely stuff I’ll work on after my April quest is completed.

I think after a few months of doing a weekly gig like that I’d be a lot more ready to read Passionate Practice again and take it to the next level.

bentorrey :: Jan.06.2008 :: Books I Enjoy(ed)/Will Enjoy, Musical Thoughts :: No Comments »

I was reading “Walking In This World” a few months ago when a paragraph on page 102 stopped me in my tracks and was exactly what I was looking for:
“A sustained creative career requires discipline-the courage to evict what does not serve the goal of excellence. That is what it means to have character.”

Discipline musically has never really been my strong suit, I’ll admit that. I’ve always been a bit more of a multi-tasker. But, I’m going to have to work on that focus.

I’m really excited to announce an upcoming project. In the end of April 2008, I’ll be recording the Bach 2 and 3 part inventions with master composer/guitarist/transcriber Peter Lidstrom. I met Peter in late 2004 and we’ve talked about doing several projects together, deciding to start with the 2 part inventions and 3 part sinfonias. I’m really looking forward to that. More on that later.

And so, to make sure I’m ready for the April recording, here’s a list of a few musical projects that I will put on hold until after the recording:

1. Getting a rental lute
2. Getting an Ergo electric upright bass
3. Getting upright chops orchestra ready for fall community orchestra auditions
4. Playing with the Tufts EME if it involves learning a new instrument
5. Work on gamba repertoire, gamba playing altogether
6. Any significant work on other electric bass repertoire
7. Work on finding a weekly “background” music gig
8. Lessons with Fulara
9. Finishing Bach Cello # 6 on electric

And, I should probably add to that my blog “habit”. I will certainly need to minimize that over the coming months, although I may post interesting bits of the 2 and 3’s as I’m working them up. Stay tuned.

bentorrey :: Jan.04.2008 :: Musical Thoughts :: No Comments »