Tour Diary

Preparing for Stage Performance

Quite often people ask me about how long I have played guitar, how many hours a day I practice, and things of that nature.

I think the more important issue is “how” and “why” I practice. I’d like to convey to you a painful, but ultimately great – story from my past regarding practice and stage preparation.

Maybe this will resonate within you, and give you some ideas about what you need to be doing, practice wise.

I was 15 years old, and was a classical guitar student at the Bloomingdale House of Music in NYC. Each year, they had an end of year recital. I was an older advanced student, so other’s (and my) expectations of my playing were high.

I had been learning the Courante of Bach’s 3rd cello suite, and could play it pretty well – but only from reading the score.

So…I went out on stage thinking I knew it, and fell on my face. Had to stop playing after 3 bars.

My mind went blank.

My stomach sank.

Lather, rinse, repeat. I tried 2 more times, and fell on my face.

The piece just pooped out after 3 bars. Oh God!!!!

Parents were holding their hands over their faces in horror. It was the ultimate “knot in the stomach from humiliation” moment for everyone in the room. Horrible, thunderous silence. Zero humor.

The director of the school came onstage and put his hands on my shoulders.

“Now everyone,” he said “what do we do when this happens?” Oh great, now he was making an example of me. Was this supposed to make me feel better?

I wanted to die.

I then played a piece I knew “Adelita” by Tarrega…and…shuffled off.

Afterwards, everyone was telling me “No, really you were good. Don’t feel bad, that has happened to us all, and can happen to anyone.” Yeah right. They tried to make me feel better. It sucked – they knew it, and I did too.

This was the worst moment in my life up until that time….but little did I know the fantastic lesson contained therein.

Now, when I practice my arrangements, I repeat, repeat, over over over. I vowed that this would never happen again. And it hasn’t.

Sometimes at home I STILL practice pieces I have played 10,000 times, and I wonder if I am crazy by doing them once more…and then I realize….being “bulletproof” for stage is more important to me than being “creative” on stage. Creativity has a different place, for me.

I still practice “Superstition”, “Billie Jean” and all the songs I could play onstage years ago. Just to keep em in check.

And 2 nights ago I played a 1000 seat theater after a plane ride, car rental, hotel check in and a frozen TV dinner as my meal.

I was exhausted, but the performance was solid, bulletproof and the people loved it.

What do you think served me and the audience on stage?

What served me was the ability to slam dunk 2 bulletproof arrangements. This only comes from repetition, repetition, repetition.

By doing this repetition, the fingers and music are auto pilot – in a sense.

This way you have mental resources to deal with everything else: communication with the audience, nerves, exhaustion, a weird crackle in a patch cable, lights shining in your face and so on.

Now….get to work! 🙂

Music: There’s More Than One Way to Do It

By Adam Rafferty 43 Comments

Greets friends. I am riding the train across Germany on a gorgeous August morning. Now I’m just passing Bonn – Beethoven’s hometown.

This past week I taught a small workshop with 6 attendees. A few of the students were semi-pro players. Over dinner one night, a very interesting discussion arose with the students. [Read more…] about Music: There’s More Than One Way to Do It

Nerves and Gigs: Particles or Waves?

By Adam Rafferty 4 Comments

Greets Gang! I’ve just returned from an uplifting week teaching at the Swannanoa Gathering in Asheville, North Carolina.

It was exhausting, but it feels great to inspire students and be around a large group of people all fired up and excited about music.

The topic of how to deal with nerves in performance up in a few conversations, and somehow I found corollary to quantum physics.

People asked me if I got nervous. Sometimes I do – but these days it’s less and less. I myself wondered, “why am I less nervous than I used to be?”

In quantum physics, there’s a nifty experiment called “the double slit” experiment.

Physicists became awestruck at the fact that when light was shot at photograhic paper one photon particle at a time, it still printed on the paper as if it were a wave, not individual light particles.

[youtube=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1YqgPAtzho”]

What this raised in my mind was the idea that any singular event in our life may look like a “particle” but is really part of a larger “wave.”

If you don’t perform on stage very often, it may feel like a very important singular event (a particle) of your life.

You want everything to be perfect – the sound, your performance, and so on. There’s a lot of pressure there for that one particle of time to be perfect!

When you perform on stage 100 times, you naturally encounter things such as:

the sound wasn’t perfect
the monitors were not loud enough
the guitar was out of tune, the lights blinded me
I botched a few notes

But on the positive side you will experience things like:

wow that was a great performance
they loved it
the soundman did a great job
everything fell into place just right
man it felt really good, etc.
I got offered another gig at this one

I am illustrating the following – that over the course of 100 gigs (or any semi large number) you will experience a host of scenarios, ups, downs, good, bad – and by gig number 101 you feel all the gigs to be a “wave” of events.

Each gig is still important, but now each gig is part of of a whole, and you can actually enjoy yourself more because there is less pressure on any single gig “particle” for everything to be perfect.

The same holds true for anything you do regularly whether it’s practicing your instrument, exercising, meditating, eating right, and so on.

The more you do it, the easier it gets because the behavior becomes a “wave” of activity in your life rather than a singular “particle.”

The Pinky Finger and the Sistine Chapel

By Adam Rafferty 2 Comments

If you’ve ever recorded in a studio, either solo or a band you probably know that you get to know every nook, cranny and mistakes of your own recordings better than anyone else.

It’s the audio version of when people look in the mirror and see every fault, pimple, and anything that looks different from a Hollywood actor. Some of the most beautiful men and women in the world always feel like they are falling short – looks wise…crazy, huh?

A very close friend of mine who is a fine painter told me once that she’d see aspiring artists in the Sistine Chapel in Rome doing painting studies of Michaelangelo’s works…and missing the point. They’d have an angel’s pinky finger perfectly copied, but miss the fullness of the body of the angel, and miss the entire composition that the angel was part of – the Sistine Chapel!

So attention to detail is very important…but it has to be met and balanced with attention to the big picture…in visual art maybe it’s stepping away from the canvas (or ceiling) and looking at the whole. As a jazz player it’s about forgetting the cool licks and lines and listening for sound and groove (music)…and as a studio musician and producer – it’s about NOT listening to your recording 24 hours a day so that you can actually hear it with fresh ears!!!

The other night a good friend, Joel Martin (genius pianist & composer IMHO) came over and I played him the Michael Jackson solo guitar tribute CD I have been working on. I had not listened for a few weeks, in order to give my ears a rest.

Magically – everything that sounded like a “blemish” or imperfection to me when I listened to it over and over in the studio – vanished and what was “front and center” was melody, groove and tone. With fresh ears, I got to enjoy the big picture. What’s really nice, is that if I like it, I have confidence that others will too! 🙂

During the recording process, I had my trusted team listening to my MJ takes – 3 musicians and 2 engineers. All of them have great ears and recording experience, giving me their input on which takes grooved best, which takes had “life” and even advised on the order of the songs. They helped see the big picture in case I was focused on details like quieting clicks and scrapes! 🙂

If you are recording yourself, or even preparing for a show – find someone whose opinion you truly trust, and let them give you input on how to improve. They may give you some very interesting advice. You may be looking at the detail of the “pinky finger “, and they’ll gently remind you of the big picture – “the Sistine Chapel.”

The Bandstand is Sacred

By Adam Rafferty 4 Comments

Last night I played one of my venues in Austria that I first played 14 years ago…it’s a modest place….just a schnitzel, beer and good time music spot for touring acts.

It’s insane to think I stepped in that same room 14 years ago on my first European tour!

In preparation for last night’s gig, I made a list in the hotel of a bunch of tunes I either have not played recently, have not played yet, or new ones I wanted to try out.

My attitude for a moment, was that since this wasn’t a “serious” concert hall gig I could try things out and experiment.

But wait – there’s a flaw in that kind of thought…because that’s like saying “these people” in the audience don’t matter as much as “other people” in a concert hall.

Basically that’s like saying “you don’t matter”. What if you were one of the people at last night’s show, and what if I took that attitude?

As the place filled up, I saw longtime fans and friends in the room and knew they came for a great show. My adrenaline started pumping. I often think of the Billy Joel lyric to Piano Man – “he (the bartender) knows that it’s me they’ve been coming to see, to forget about life for a while.”

Like a bull that sees a red cape waving, when I see an audience, I know there is no holding back, there are no more excuses, there is nothing short of giving 10,000%! Life is not a rehearsal. Bullshit walks. Excuse my French.

The stage is the final destination for which all the sacrifices, hard work and practice hours have been put in. To squander it on “trying something” instead of really “doing something” is a waste IMHO. This is where the world class performance goes down. Not sometime in the future – but RIGHT NOW.

By the 3rd tune in to my first set, the sweat was dripping, I was soaked. I saw people out there grooving. I pulled out all the stops…humor, beatbox, chops, beauty of sound and a blues feel from hell. Of course I played the heaviest and sweatiest groove I could muster up.

I take no prisoners…I play as if it’s my last gig on planet earth, and I give thanks each and every time for the opportunity to have this blessed life of playing music. When I finish the gig and take bows, I give thanks to God, The Universe, my musical fathers and the audience again and again.

Slam dunks baby – in your face! 🙂 That’s the attitude.

What a night it was…it felt so good, so right to give give give to the audience, to bring these people joy, and it was a magical night.

And then I thought back to my mentor, Mike Longo and all the other jazz mentors…and they always said that “The Bandstand is Sacred”. Now I understand even more what he meant.

Being on the bandstand means it is time to “hit” – not to try things, not to experiment, not to give anything short of 100%, ever.

Every gig counts.
Every time you play music it counts.
Every one who listens to you counts – the most!

Music is as “serious as a heart attack”. If you are not serious about it, move over – because I am, and I’ll run you over.

The Bandstand is Sacred

I’m glad it was taught to me, over and over – and I am glad I remembered that last night.