Keep the vocal chords warm before performance
One piece of conventional wisdom for singers is that it's very important to keep oneself hydrated before a performance. Dry vocal chords are inefficient, unresponsive and more prone to damage, so would it not make sense to drink a lot of water before going onstage?
As I'd mentioned in an earlier blog, my vocal performance quality over the past many years often seemed to have no rhyme or reason; sometimes I'd hit the stage with no warm-up, no hydration – and feel like I was wearing Superman's vocal chords; other times – something more akin to Batman on a bender, despite thorough hydration in advance. There were even a couple of occasions where my vocal struggles were so obvious to friends in the audience that they'd helpfully send a glass of ice water to the stage. I'd gratefully drink it...and grow worse. At the time, I put it down to subconscious nerves. Mysterious, and frustrating.
At my last couple of gigs, I put a theory to use: what if the temperature of the hydration mattered more than the material? Coffee is usually frowned upon as a vocal chord lubricant, as its diuretic quality ultimately dehydrates a voice over time. Still, it's warm, it's liquid, and the diuretic quality is not immediate. Seemed crazy enough to try – and I rarely say no to coffee anyway.
Wonder of wonders - my voice responded magically. I had all the range and tone I needed, almost effortlessly. Granted, this is hardly a clinical trial – I'll need to keep putting this theory to use before I can claim conclusive proof. Certainly looks promising so far, though, and I'm definitely avoiding ice water from now on!
There are many levels of “knowing” music. Best performances demonstrate the highest level.
Perhaps due to an evolutionary adaptation arising from the need to ration energy, the human animal is a naturally lazy beast. Our first instinct is usually to put no more effort into an endeavor than what is absolutely necessary. In witnessing musical practice – my own and others – the impulse seems to be to practice until we get it right once (or nearly right), and then move onto the next challenge.
This ain't nearly enough.
Granted, it might be just enough to give the performer a better-than-zero chance of executing the passage successfully in front of an audience, and a much better chance than if the player hadn't practised the passage at all. Still, an audience is not usually interested in watching a musician who is focused purely on the technical aspect of a performance. Dullsville. Without emotional expression on display, a typical rock audience is not interested...and it doesn't make for an especially fun performance, either. Without fluency on the instrument and the music to be played, a musician is too preoccupied to connect meaningfully with the audience or with his/her bandmates. In short – you have to play the music as passionately and fluently as if you were speaking from the heart verbally. This can only come from logging time on your instrument and the songs – enough to be able to play it all in your sleep. Or, you can just write music that's so ridiculously simple to play, it's always easy. Can't say that's ever been my forte, for better or worse...
Consider all advertising hype. Use your ears.
As a kid, I was a big fan of a futuristic, English-made sci fi TV series called...'Space: 1999' (yup – the future, as in 14 years ago and counting...seemed like a long time in the future if you lived in 1975). I loved the ultra-modern-looking spacecraft, the moon base interiors that the characters inhabited, the brooding atmosphere, the excitingly dark stories (compared to, say, Star Trek), orchestral scoring and most of the characters. Unfortunately, the first year was not a smash hit, especially in the only market that mattered, the US. Respectable, but not living up to the expectations of the financial backers and ITV, the production studio. The solution? Bring in a producer with a track record in American TV, and revamp the series. I remember all the hype just before the show's second (and final) season: “Bigger! Better! More Exciting Than Ever! The Future Is Fantastic!' The promo trumpeted exciting new characters, sets, costumes, the introduction of more humour, more 'current' music, catchier stories, etc...
It was horrible.
At first, I just thought there was something weird about me for preferring the first year of the show. How could I be right in the face of so much 'official' opinion to the contrary? True, they canned Barry Morse as the kindly professor in favour of an alien woman who could metamorphosize into any space creature she wanted. Wasn't that exciting? Hmm...kinda cheesy – even to an 8-year-old like me...and who can compare with Barry Morse?
Anyway – fast forward to the year 1999, and the show has a convention/reunion in LA. Lo and behold – everyone to a man (including the actors and writers) feels as I did about the second year, with the exception of the American producer himself (who bravely attended and spoke). The second year, officially now, sucked, and in part because the budget and rehearsal times had been dramatically cut. Didn't stop them from talking big, but the show suffered terminally.
Yes, I've wandered away from music a little here, but I've seen the same thing – albeit less obviously – happen with artists, instruments and equipment. Where there's huge hype (including some critical reviews), approach with caution. Like brass hardware, dense body wood on guitars, and digital amps, fashion often conflicts with sound, and sound always wins the test of time. Use your ears, be as objective as you can be, and never abdicate your own judgement for someone else's...even if you do feel temporarily More Exciting Than Ever!
Mic placement – use your ears Part Deux.
Placing microphones for a recording session is a bit of a black art, and there are a few engineers of note out there who take rather unorthodox approaches. Drum kits, for example, tended to sound small, boxy and sterile in recording until Jimmy Page started distancing the mics from the source in 1969, allowing the natural ambiance and resonance to come through on tape (culminating in the famous stairwell session for “When the Levee Breaks”. If memory serves, it was Daniel Lanois who espoused literally using your ear to place mics; if (as in my own experience) the snare drum sounds best to you when your ear is point blank at the shell, put the mic head there. Convention be damned.
Wonder of wonders – he's absolutely right! This has produced a few strange visual results, but consistently stellar aural results for me. Pointing a Shure SM57 directly at the snare shell is a good case in point. I've had other engineers shake their heads at that one, but the sounds has spoken for itself – and Curtis has witnessed the likes of Jojo Mayer using such placement live, which is all the vindication I would ever need. As Jimmy Page likes to say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
Composing by jamming vs. Writing alone: the results are different. Do both.
Back in the glory days when band rehearsal time was not at such a premium, I was in the habit of starting rehearsals by playing some musical idea that had just occurred to me on the spot, or improvising an accompaniment to something one of my bandmates was noodling around on at that moment. Usually everyone present would join in, and voila – we'd have a jam going. One of the reasons I'm still playing with Curtis after so many years is that most of the stuff we came up with is a pleasant surprise; jamming with him brings out a part of my imagination that I don't normally have such easy access to. A couple of years ago, Curtis and I jammed together with Shaun Verreault of Wide Mouth Mason, and the amazing Issah Contractor on bass. We took a couple of hours to just play whatever fresh ideas popped into our heads, and follow the ideas wherever they might lead. Our conversation at the end went something like:
Curtis: Too bad be weren't recording tonight.
Shaun: Yeah, we let a lot of good ideas get away.
Mike: Guess it was sort of a musical “catch-and-release”. (all laugh)
Shaun: Well, we let a lot of big ones go tonight.
Jam music tends to have a different vibe, perhaps a greater vitality, than a lot of the material I originate on my own, and I'd love to be generating more of it on a regular basis. It's also way more fun to create that way. The ideal MLB album would have equal parts of both. Vitality and reflection.
A little extra effort can go a very long way
Once again, the efficiently lazy human beast rations energy and therefore dictates: if it appears the energy expenditure would likely be too little too late, don't bother.
This is generally sound reasoning, but the issue arises when it comes to determining what is too little and/or too late. Case in point: it's nearing the end of a performance, and I'm a little fatigued. My body's telling me there's not much energy left to burn, and I'd be wise to just play the remaining stuff well enough. Extra effort toward a more energetic performance, e.g. pronounced physical gestures, sustained vocal phrases, 'go-for-the-throat' performance as opposed to 'get-to-the-end', is instinctively rejected...unless overridden by better judgement. Like that Hail Mary dive you take to return a tennis shot, it's always worth the effort – despite the energy expenditure, you feel invigorated by the save. 'Oh, whatever' is a phrase that never seems to pay off in performance.
Even worse than 'More Exciting Than Ever!'