I'm reading Stephen King's book, On Writing, right now. I'm reading it in hopes that it will inspire me to write more. It has. But it also has inspired me to practice playing more as well. In the book King says to make a goal for yourself. He suggests writing locking yourself in your office and writing 1,000 words a day, six days a week. And do not open the door until you're finished.
I've been thinking about this when it comes to practicing my fiddle. Let's face it. No one wants to practice. We all just want to play like Natalie MacMaster (or write like Stephen King) or whoever your musical hero is. But nothing good comes easy. So I'm taking King's advice both with my writing and with my practicing.
I once had a teacher that said if you practice just 15 minutes a day you will see an improvement on your playing. I'm still to this day not sure if she was kidding or not. Anyone who plays the fiddle know it takes more than 15 minutes just to open your case, rosin your bow and tune your strings. I think what she was trying to do was make me commit to doing it. Once the case is open, the bow is rosined and the fiddle is tuned, it's impossible not to want to play it. And let's face it, who can play for just 15 minutes? For me, 15 minutes turns into 1/2 hour which then turns into an hour and so on depending on how much time I have during day.
My point is: Just as King and my teacher suggested, make a commitment and follow through.
Happy practicing!
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Creating a band name
I'm not sure why but creating a band name couldn't be more difficult. Trying to come up with something that describes your music, your personality and is easy to remember can seem close to impossible.
A band called Trinity was the first real band I was ever in and the band already had it's name, so that was easy. I left Trinity to start my own band and the band went through a variety of different names. The first was called Salamanca. You see we were a Celtic groove band complete with fiddles, congas, guitar and banjo. There is a famous fiddle tune called The Salamanca so we thought it was perfect. However, the name sounded too much like Latin music so it seemed a bit misleading since we played traditional Irish music. And unless you are a regular session goer, you wouldn't know the history of the tune The Salamanca.
The next name for the same band was called Down to the Wire. I thought it was a great name because it seemed like we were always "down to the wire" when it came to practicing for gigs. But the band eventually broke up. (Keeping a band together is another blog entry for another day).
I'm in two bands now. One is a spin off of Down to the Wire in that it's my guitar player and me and we are playing some of the same tunes though we have strayed from Celtic groove music to more folky, Americana type music with some Irish fiddle tunes thrown in. I'm not sure just how you would classify our music, which is why it is so hard to come up with a band name. I welcome any suggestions.
The other band I'm in plays traditional Irish music. We call ourselves Muddy Boots. We began with the same problem in that we couldn't come up with a name. So Andrew, our guitar player, decided that we should cut up some paper and write down as many nouns and adjectives that we can think of. We threw the nouns in one hat, the adjectives in another and then spent the better part of an hour pulling them out of the hat and putting them together to come up with Muddy Boots. Though it doesn't say much about traditional Irish music, most Vermonters can at least relate to having muddy boots.
A band called Trinity was the first real band I was ever in and the band already had it's name, so that was easy. I left Trinity to start my own band and the band went through a variety of different names. The first was called Salamanca. You see we were a Celtic groove band complete with fiddles, congas, guitar and banjo. There is a famous fiddle tune called The Salamanca so we thought it was perfect. However, the name sounded too much like Latin music so it seemed a bit misleading since we played traditional Irish music. And unless you are a regular session goer, you wouldn't know the history of the tune The Salamanca.
The next name for the same band was called Down to the Wire. I thought it was a great name because it seemed like we were always "down to the wire" when it came to practicing for gigs. But the band eventually broke up. (Keeping a band together is another blog entry for another day).
I'm in two bands now. One is a spin off of Down to the Wire in that it's my guitar player and me and we are playing some of the same tunes though we have strayed from Celtic groove music to more folky, Americana type music with some Irish fiddle tunes thrown in. I'm not sure just how you would classify our music, which is why it is so hard to come up with a band name. I welcome any suggestions.
The other band I'm in plays traditional Irish music. We call ourselves Muddy Boots. We began with the same problem in that we couldn't come up with a name. So Andrew, our guitar player, decided that we should cut up some paper and write down as many nouns and adjectives that we can think of. We threw the nouns in one hat, the adjectives in another and then spent the better part of an hour pulling them out of the hat and putting them together to come up with Muddy Boots. Though it doesn't say much about traditional Irish music, most Vermonters can at least relate to having muddy boots.
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