Back to The Bassics

So Brazil Duo is having a gig tomorrow night which will be fully enjoyed as a sort of my return to playing bass onstage, after a few years playing my beloved instrument by myself, in quiet corners, and more recently, in our garage. Last time I went onstage for playing the bass was in Washington, DC, and that happened as a guest musician for the South American Jazz project Cantare, and also as the bassist in a Brazilian Jazz duo with French-American guitarist Alex Martin.

After dusting the cobwebs off the old bass gear, I figured it would be OK for this So Brazil performance tomorrow to use the little Peavey amp rigged onto a 12 inch external speaker. The combination sounded pretty forte with a six-string SDGR bass and the welcome mediation of an Alesis nano compressor.

Our idea is to play a first set with me playing the guitar, Juliana cantando and one of our guests for the night, Rick Goncalves, playing mostly percussion, and also his main instrument, the cavaquinho. We'll be starting a second set featuring other guest musician, Mike Boase, drummer and percussionist who created his own samba school in Perth, Beleza. Mike would bring in a smallish kit, so I heard, plus other Brazilian percussion bits.

I look forward to that second half of the gig, where I would count on Mike and Rick, so that I can finally be back to bassics.

High on Technology

Tech highness, is this thing that keeps us up in the wrong hours of the night, for the right reasons, or not so much, or for no reason at all. How much relativistic truth is there in being able to access high tech, to dress high tech around our naked minds? So that we feel so close to Utopia States of Awareness, Nirvana sensations, and then, when we close our eyes, perhaps some sense of mortality again hits us, hopefully at that stage when the dreams start kicking in.

That said: I love technology. In music, I thrive in being able to use a laptop and a high definition audio interface, plus some type of semi-professional HD recording software with all those tracks and cool effects, to record at anytime, anywhere, music that sounds as good as the latest CD from any good'ol recording label.

Quoting an old song from an early rock band I had in the 80’s, called Libido, I just wish the day had 48h.

How we miss our pandeiro friend...

The pandeiro is one of the lightest (weight-wise) percussion instruments, but one of the heaviest in presence and importance to many Brazilian music. A direct translation of pandeiro to English would result in "tambourine", that circular percussion instrument with some small metallic jingles on the rim, widely used in all sorts of songs. Such translation, however, does not fully represent what "pandeiro" really means.

More than a few anatomic differences to a tambourine (as well described here), the Brazilian pandeiro is the soul and central leverage point of many more traditional to contemporary Brazilian musical styles related to the their African roots. Such is the case of not only the more well-known styles such as samba or bossa nova, but also chorinho, and even folkloric rhythms from many parts of the Brazilian territory North to South, and East to West, even reaching far beyond the country's borders.

In Brazil, the pandeiro is a connecting point balancing the cadence of many different musical styles, rising from different ethnic origins. Have a look and a listen to these quick examples of how important a pandeiro is, when one is attempting to play Brazilian music with soul:

• Hamilton de Hollanda, Andre Vasconcellos e Marcos Suzano
• Lenine e Suzano
• Roda de choro (with Deon Rian's son Bruno on focus, and the pandeiro the second loudest instrument)
• Dueling pandeiros
• Pandeiro Solo
• Marisa Monte e Epoca de Ouro
• Epoca de ouro
  

Oh, much fun it is to surf youtube looking for examples of how important a pandeiro is to Brazilian music. It just makes me wonder, better, dream about how well a pandeiro would add to the bossa-nova/samba bits of the work I've been developing alongside So Brazil Duo.

However, as portable and simple as the pandeiro is, finding a pandeirista in Perth has been the hardest part of our work so far. Incredibly, Perth has a strong Brazilian community, brought here due to the surplus of qualified job offers in the mining and oil & gas industries, sectors in which Brazil has had a strong impact in both local production, technology and human resources. But we have not yet been able to find a pandeirista here!

In the duo, I have been able to incorporate a little of the pandeirista feel in my rhythmic guitar grooves. So that we now have a big Brazilian heart, a lot of soul, but we know that all this would grow to deeper dimensions in the hands of a good percussionist, with good knowledge of our good old pandeiro of course.

The pandeiro is one of the lightest instruments, but it has been a heavy duty to find a pandeirista around. If you know of a talented pandeirista who may be hiding behind a desk in Perth, please let us know, urgently!

A new guitar and So Brazil's concert

So Brazil, the duo I've created with Brazilian singer Juliana Areias, has had a great debut last Saturday (25/7/09) at a newish venue in downtown Perth, called Canton Lounge Bar. We had a great time during the gig, and so did the public, at nearly the venue's full capacity (they could fit up to 120 people, and we had a 110-strong public).

My main concern was to be able to make a nylon string guitar have as much presence as possible. To that end, I did get a new guitar (a Jose Ortega CE Lina Australian/Chinese design/make , which was fit to better action/playability by master Luthier Graham Hawkes), and a new acoustic amp (a cute Laney LA20C). For the concert, I put a Shure mic in front of the amp, and pulled a cable from the amp's DI output, both onto the sound board. The two signals were panned full to L and R. I also used a Zoom guitar effects pedal to get the guitar through some compression, a little reverb, and delay and flanger (!) in a couple of songs.

To my delight, all worked well, it was incredible to see that people were getting up and dancing to the rhythmic sounds coming out of the guitar (the presence of the instrument did fool them to think I was a band! :) ).

I'll soon post in So Brazil's Myspace site some samples of how it all sounded like during the gig.

The only disappointment after the concert was to find out that a JVC Everio HD camera we had filming the open plan of our gig was a lemon for filming indoor environs, with dim lighting. The video came out of focus so that our facial features were not very clear. But it did provide us means of checking our stage positiong etc. What saved the day was having a little Olympus digital still camera, which has a 640x480 video recording capability at 30fps, sitting beside the stage. The video from that camera came out really well, which means we might be able to post at least one songs' video to our web site soon.

On the radio, twenty years later...

Twenty years later, there I was, sitting in a comfortable couch inside a radio station, Australia's ABC (720AM Perth), for an interview about a new gig I am doing with a Brazilian singer/friend next Saturday. We were both a little nervous with the whole thing, but then, unlike 20 years ago when I'd get all fired up and tense like a wire during a live appearance, I started looking around, and just feeling lucky to be there once again. The views of leafless trees from the large studio windows, and how nice all people from production, technicians and the presenter, Geraldine Mellet, were being with us, all provided me a perfect setting to neutralize the hand-freezing effects of being there, live on the radio, twenty years later. Good to see time changes us for better in a few things, so I was just able to appreciate, and play as best as possible, and just feel good about it.

We played two songs from the repertoire of 15 we'll be playing on Saturday - Meu Erro (Paralamas do Sucesso) and Every Breath You Take (ThePolice). Both songs are from the rock/pop stream of music, but we reworked them onto a samba/bossa nova arrangement that sounds simply delicious for a voice and guitar duo. As a bass player, taking the classical guitar for this project has allowed me to focus on the rhythmic textures, taking advantage of the larger range of possibilities to throw in harmonic structures alongside the rhythmic thing. Of course, the singer loves it, as it gives her all the freedom and backing to float away in the melodic space that becomes all hers.

We are calling ourselves "So Brazil Duo", and everything has been fantastic about this experience.

The Music Prism - Sadness, Life and Being Happy

I’ve written, some time ago, on how music was an important door for enhancing the opportunities of communication with our autistic son. Music is actually a two-way chance door, with pros and cons moving in both directions, like any other connection in close relationships. Sometimes our older son is deeply connected with music, his curious eyes getting closer to whoever is singing, or to the instrument that is producing those amazing sounds. Sometimes he is distracted and disruptive, and his loud expression breaks any attempt to create a coherent or harmonic music structure, into sheer chaos.

This state of things unfolds from our music interactions to all other aspects of life. Sometimes dinner is peaceful and full of opportunities for learning new words, new foods, new sounds and new interactions. Sometimes it’s difficult. Sometimes when we visit friends, the interaction is almost musical. Sometimes it can become incredibly dissonant.

And by living this way, our family has fewer friends than other families. But what we lose in quantity, we gain in quality, as a central requirement for friends that want us to be their friends, is that they are as loving as we are, as able as we are to cope with changes, as compassionate as we have learned to be, and as tolerant and patient as we have joyfully become.

More than often, however, we bump into misunderstandings, which usually degenerate onto a situation where people are initially intolerant. Luckily enough, in most cases, when opportunity is given for talking about the way we live, what we expect from life, and what life allows us to expect from it, intolerance turns into acts of embracing, recognition, and those few but great friendships are born. Other times, we become unable to reciprocate some more demanding types of expectations. In such cases, intolerance breaks down further into lack of compassion towards us, and the blob of prejudice leads to a situation where there is not much we can do. In such cases, our family as a whole mimics our older son’s disability, as it becomes impossible to communicate who we are or what we feel to those who do not want to understand. Such occasions, which thankfully have become less and less frequent, still make us very sad.

Interesting it is to see how sadness pushes us into those states of deep reflection. Also interesting is the fact that I have, recently, found again in music a deep, wide channel where the long-keeled boat of reflection can make its slow, large maneuvers. This is a consequence of my recent opportunity to take up playing the classical guitar, for rehearsing in a duo project centered in Brazilian popular music. Since I was a youngster, I have found the acoustic guitar was the perfect vessel for my most reflective moments. And I was, since such early days, surprised to see how music, made from my playing the guitar, acted as a prism to clearly separate what I was feeling.

The prism of music allows me to distill my frustration during those moments where my family is misunderstood, or is seen by the eyes of prejudice, as I mentioned above, and gives me a chance to understand that my sadness in such situations comes from realizing how desolate those people can be in their own inner worlds, and hidden lives. On the other hand, the reflective music prism can distill my own sadness, even the strongest ones, so that I can see them from the larger perspective of life, and the many chances for happiness life provides. One such chance is having in my family a disabled son, who gives us the opportunity of fully exercising our love, of recongnizing our failures, and, in the end, of becoming better persons each day.

Music: magical window to the autistic soul

In the last few years, I've discovered still another magical side of music, through the relationship with my 8-year old autistic son. While practicing the bass, I could notice how his attention would shift from whatever he would be doing, drawn by my plucking of the strings, and the simultaneous sound this would produce through the speakers of my little practice amplifier. I'd then lay the bass on the bed, so that he could explore the sounds, plucking gently the strings, showing some surprise with the connection between his touching the strings, and a matching sound being produced. Throughout the years, he has consistently shown a higher level of interest in our musical exploration sessions than he would typically demonstrate in other activities.

More recently, I started rehearsing Brazilian jazz and popular music with a singer. Once a week we go through a repertoire spanning many different aspects of the sounds of Brazil. The coupling of her sweet voice and the markedly rhythmic guitar arrangements that I have been putting together, have again cast a spell on Ricky. Most times, when he is in the living room with us, he finds in our practice sessions a soothing time where he quiets down, observing attentively, showing sometimes awe, sometimes puzzlement, on how we can make match the textures of the rhythmic guitar chords with sung melodies in such a sweet way.

These experiences have made me more attentive to the fact that, always, when at bedtime myself or my wife, we sing songs or variations of songs that he has heard a few times before, say, a Brazilian nursery rhyme or child's song, he quiets down to listen, looking deeply into our eyes, and sometimes singing along a few scattered words. We have enjoyed these moments together, providing him a sense of safeness and connection that has also been very rewarding to ourselves. Slowly, through the years, we've been able to develop with him a repertoire of a handful of songs which he can actually sing most of the words, either prompted with the first two or three words of the song, or with the first word or two of each verse. He now can sing along a small number of songs, mostly in Portuguese, and gradually more in English, as well.

Based on our experience, it was not surprising to find out that results published this year from a recent study conducted by Dr. Ami Klin, of the Yale Child Study Center, have confirmed that the synchronous nature of sound and movement captures consistently the attention of autistic children, more than any other form of interaction with objects or people (such as eye contact, touch, or movement and sounds in isolation). In a recent interview, Klin said:

"I and colleagues looked at a way [...] 2-year-olds with autism would look at adult care givers, [...] and those children spend less time looking at people's eyes and more time looking at people's mouth [...] And that was puzzling because the eyes are really the window for the soul, they are the way that we experience people, their emotions and their intentions. And so we are puzzled by the fact that they showed increased attention to the mouth. With [...] the new insights, we raised the hypothesis that the reason why they were looking at mouth is because the mouth is the part of the face that contains the greatest audio-visual synchrony, lip movements and speech sounds co-occurring."

Our experience with music, which is a generalization of this synchronicity between movement and sound, provides, in our minds, a further confirmation of the results published by Dr. Ami Klin and his colleagues at Yale. His new insights provide further, scientific proof, to why music therapy programs, such as the few we have contacted here in Australia to strengthen the basis of our daily interactions with our son, are so successful, providing not eyes, but music as a window to the souls of autistic children.