Building Your Band

A better conversation about music, with David Loftis and Peter Bulanow

Dan Cuomo | Something’s Wrong With That Click Track

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Dan Cuomo joins the show to share his thoughts, wisdom and experience playing rock drums, getting signed to a major label (40 Records) and touring Europe, and then deciding what’s next. Today you will find Dan playing modern worship drums in churches all over the DC/MD/VA area. I hold Dan up as an example of exactly the kind of drummer you should see in your local church. By Dan’s own admission, he isn’t a technical drummer – which is precisely the point: you don’t need a technically trained jazz fusion drummer with intricate grooves and insane chops to sound great. Rarely do I see a situation where I think a musician needs more skills / more chops for the band or song to sound better. Rather, I often think a musician needs to better understand the essentials of what needs to be played, and needs to understand their role with respect to keeping time and creating space. Dan is your encouragement that you don’t need better players, you just need to find folks willing to play less and listen more in order to serve the song.

He must become greater; I must become less. John 3:30

For more of Dan Cuomo, find him on Facebook & Twitter, and pick up Steph Cuomo’s latest project on iTunes. Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher and support the show by rating us five stars and leaving a comment. Please leave your questions and comments below!

The Five Stages of Musical Proficiency

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BYBStagesXSomething that I think would have been helpful to me in my musical journey, was some sort of validation of where I’ve been, where I am, and a hint of what is ahead of me. This handy chart that I created is one way to break things out, and it’s the way I hear many folks describe their musical journey. The First Stage is really the beginner stage- when you first pick up your instrument and don’t know a thing about a scale or a chord or a time signature. It’s about acquiring those basics. The Second Stage is the “doing your homework” phase of musical progression, where you put in your time – maybe even most of your 10,000 hours – to gain proficiency on your instrument. If you don’t love your instrument by this point you get out. The Third Stage represents a paradigm shift. It’s the first time you start focussing not on what you’re playing, but on what you’re not playing. It’s about creating space for others and responding to what is going on. If you’re copying the record at this point, that’s where your eyes get opened up to what session players are actually doing. They’re not the busy little doodlers we are when we play by ourselves. There is an economy to what they play. This is when we get knocked back by the significance of The Edge when he says:
Notes actually do mean something. They have power. I think of notes as being expensive. You don’t just throw them around. I find the ones that do the best job and that’s what I use. I suppose I’m a minimalist instinctively. I don’t like to be inefficient if I can get away with it. Like on the end of “With or Without You”. My instinct was to go with something very simple. Everyone else said, “Nah, you can’t do that.” I won the argument and I still think it’s sort of brave, because the end of “With or Without You” could have been so much bigger, so much more of a climax, but there’s this power to it which I think is even more potent because it’s held back… ultimately I’m interested in music. I’m a musician. I’m not a gunslinger. That’s the difference between what I do and what a lot of guitar heroes do. —The Edge (1991)
The Fourth Stage is when you’ve moved past trying to copy your influences and you prefer your own voice. This is when you can apply your sound to original material without second guessing yourself. This is also when you might listen to the record, but you don’t need to, because you understand how to serve the song. This level represents the true expert, the specialist in music. The Fifth Stage is reserved for the very few who are willing to be extremely brave and vulnerable and who continue to distill their voice and find something so new as to be thought of as original. Very often this occurs across genres or it is art that transcends genres.  This stage of musicianship is reserved for those who change the way we hear music, and we’re never the same after that. Once we move forward, we still may step backwards at times so that we can again move forward with a different vocabulary or improved skill set. I think of Rush’s Drummer Neil Peart, already a world class drummer with 14 Albums under his belt, using a traditional rock style of hitting the snare (clearly at the Fifth Stage), who decided in 1994 to back up (to the Second Stage) and learn the looser jazz style traditional grip of playing to find some fresh inspiration, the result of which can first be heard on Test For Echo. What do you think? Do these stages help you think about where you are in your own musical journey? Are they helpful as you think about the musicians you play with, produce, or direct?

Gavin Morris | Never Really Said Anything

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Gavin MorrisAs the frontman and lead songwriter of Break The Fall, Gavin walks us through the process of creating their latest EP “The Wanderers“. From the preproduction writing, to choosing a producer, to packing up a van and driving eight hours to Nashville to record, it’s fantastic to hear the intentionality behind their creation. Break The Fall: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Reverb Nation | Youtube | iTunes | Amazon Produced by Lester Estelle II Website | Facebook | Twitter | Wikipedia Mixed and Mastered by Robert Venable: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Wikipedia Brandon‘s Cassette Preview/Teaser:
Song writers, musicians, band leaders, worship team members etc. . . Look at what instruments you have to work with on your team. Your guitar player doesn’t always have to play all the time, every song, start to finish. There doesn’t always have to be a lead guitar player noodling lead lines and melody riffs. Learn to tell them to lay out a section (Guitarists-learn to be ok with not playing and being told to lay out from time to time, it will make what you DO play sound more important.) Use every instrument on stage to build some diversity in your songs. And start finding new instruments to use to freshen things up. You have options; start experimenting on how to utilize your team members and not just one instrument. Also, dynamics still matter. Learn how soft and full you can really play and actually utilize it when the show/service/performance starts. Retention matters. Posted by Gavin Morris
Kings Kaleidoscope (iTunes | Amazon) has Trombone in it! For King and Country (iTunes | Amazon) ha Horn Players! Who else should we know about who uses non-traditional instruments? Please post in the comments!

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Season 1 Remix | Kaleidoscope Edition

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While recording and editing the first 18 episodes of the podcast, I began to notice some of the content commented on some of the other content. I began to think how awesome it might be to hear these ideas back-to-back, remixed into a super-episode, which would demonstrate both the importance of the ideas, as well as some of the different ways they’re approached. When my amazing wife suggested I do a “kaleidoscope” edition, I poured through all 18 episodes, finding clips to put together, resulting in this fascinating overview of Season 1.  Special thanks to all my guests who shared their quality content. If you missed Season 1 of the Building Your Band podcast, this is a great way to catch up! It is also an invitation to go back and revisit specific episodes. I would love to hear your comments right in the Soundcloud stream or below in the comments section. For all the episodes past and future, subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher! Season 2 will be coming soon! Please contact me if you would like to be featured! “Almighty“- Produced, Mixed & Mastered by Peter Bulanow | http://meltingearth.com Featuring: Taylor Carson | http://taylorcarson.com Additional Vocals:  Eileen Graham | http://eileengrahammusic.com Cello: Michael Thomas | facebook.com/CelloMT Bass: Aron “Teo” Lee | facebook.com/teo.lee Special thanks to all the musicians for their collaboration, and to Dan Rebeiz (http://danieljackproductions.com) for his advice and mentorship.

Aaro Keipi, ‘Keyboardists Agreeing’

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"The Composer" by Aarography

“The Composer” by Aarography

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Aaro Keipi and I agree for about an hour on playing classical, worship, and funk keyboard, the preeminence of pads, improvising, composition, language, and communication. The difference between us being, Aaro is actually educated on the topic, as informed by his Masters’ Thesis. This is our first international podcast from Finland. Connect with Aaro: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Soundcloud Links: MainStage Great Pianists on Piano Playing Christ Collat Band Espoir by Aaro Keipi

The price of a note

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Notes actually do mean something. They have power. I think of notes as being expensive. You don’t just throw them around. I find the ones that do the best job and that’s what I use. I suppose I’m a minimalist instinctively. I don’t like to be inefficient if I can get away with it. Like on the end of “With or Without You“. My instinct was to go with something very simple. Everyone else said, “Nah, you can’t do that.” I won the argument and I still think it’s sort of brave, because the end of “With or Without You” could have been so much bigger, so much more of a climax, but there’s this power to it which I think is even more potent because it’s held back… ultimately I’m interested in music. I’m a musician. I’m not a gunslinger. That’s the difference between what I do and what a lot of guitar heroes do.
U2’s guitarist pontificates about things so central to what we have been talking about here at BYB that what he says here is really worth contemplating. In keyboard-land, there is a mythical figure in the progressive rock scene, well more than one, but since I’m not talking about Keith Emerson, I must be talking about Rick Wakeman. Rick, who by all estimates has a philosophy roughly opposite of the one described above, arguably considers notes much less expensive, and is often accused of lacking feel. Even though Rick’s playing doesn’t resonate with me personally, I bring him up because he has a storied career as an artist. So even if you think differently than me, you can still find much success. Ha! But the point I want to make is that this kind of Wakeman-like-proficiency may not serve the song as well as simple playing can. So that’s the good news, especially if you’re starting out. Yes, do work your way through a basic curriculum of getting all the chords and all the keys under your fingers. But once you do that, it’s probably more about what you take out than what you put in.

How to sound like a garage band (the classic blunder!)

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You fell victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is: “Never get involved in a land war in Asia”. But only slightly less well-known is this: “Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha…”

– Vizzini, the Princess Bride

Back before Apple’s software co-opted the term, a Garage Band was a group of kids who decided to start a band, and the only place they could go to rehearse was someone’s garage. The acoustics of the space didn’t help – everything was echo-ey, and hearing yourself was difficult. Since this was everyone’s first time in a band, typically everyone would play all the time at full volume trying to show their friends how awesome they sounded, creating a veritable wall of sound devoid of any real dynamics. Of course we would never do that in church. 😉 Yet there seems to be a negative pressure sucking people into doing precisely this. If they are on stage, they feel like they should be doing something, specifically making sound. Very few people feel comfortable not playing during a tune. There may even be a sense for a paid musician that they are getting paid by the note, so the flowerier they play, or the more notes they can fit in, the better. But what if it became your job not to play? Part of the job of the producer is to push back on the natural disorganization (decrease the entropy) that is naturally occurring. One way I’ve pushed back on this, is to make it each musician’s job to not play one section of each song. That could be the second verse, the bridge, the chorus after the bridge, the first verse – something! When this happens, dynamics begin to emerge. People begin to think about how the way in which they are playing (or not playing) really serves the song instead of what serves their rock star image. This is the perspective of the producer. Of course, as the producer you are free to dictate, “Hey guitar, why don’t you drop out the second verse and let it be a piano thing with bass and drums, and then come back in on the chorus?” Not only will this provide a wonderful relief to the naturally occurring wall of sound, the guitar will sound a-w-e-s-o-m-e when it comes back in. This “subtracting not adding” is an idea that reoccurs in music time and again. We see it with the sound engineer applying parametric EQ, “cut, don’t boost”. We see it in the idea of a crescendo, as the secret to a crescendo really is to start quietly. The longer I live the more I’ve come to trust that less really is more.  

A bigger band means playing less

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If you took piano lessons, you learned that the piano is the whole orchestra. Your teacher made you play legato until it was sweet as strings. You hammered counterpoints out as bright as trumpets. You laid down the bass while adding percussive elements as well. You may have even learned how to voice individual instruments within a hand, so that the melody would sing out above the accompaniment. So what happens when you start playing with other instruments? Hopefully you are adjusting your groove. Hopefully you’re not playing the same way you did before. Because if you are, there isn’t any room left! You are the whole orchestra when playing solo, however, when playing with a bassist, you really shouldn’t double his parts. He is going to be a lot better at laying down that low end and voicing it with respect to what you are playing than you will ever be. And that bassist is going to be able to groove against what you are playing in time, creating a more compelling momentum. When playing with an acoustic guitarist, you really shouldn’t be doubling the rhythm. You’re never going to get a feel as good as he will get, partially because you don’t really have upstrokes/downstrokes the way he has strumming. Likewise, when playing with a string section, or playing with a percussion section, or playing with a guitar, or playing with a choir… each new element that is introduced means you need to play less – or it just becomes a big mess. Not doing this is how you get the “Wall of Sound” that is the bane of every sound tech’s existence. “You must unlearn what you have learned.”