Changes
Changes… Some of us are scared of them and some can’t live without them. There are people who are soused to routine in their lives, that even a slight deviation could shake their inner balance. On the other hand, there are people who are ready to drop everything and completely transform themselves: they switch jobs, change their style, go traveling for a unknown period of time. As for me, I have always loved changes! Therefore, when I realised that my performances in the format of ‘me and my guitar’ cannot take me any further than local coffee shops and half empty bars in the afternoon, I decided to take action! It was a new challenge and not a defeat.
What was I lacking as an artist that prevented me to go on to a new level in the pursuit of my dreams? Almost half a year passed, and regardless of an increase in the number of gigs I played and creating a small following, it still felt like I was stuck. Promoters kept repeating that: I should start thinking of getting a band, because it would make my sound more full and louder, which would definitely bring more people in. Record-labels kept ignoring my emails, and no representatives with a deal had been sent my way. It was high time to make corrections to my plan!
A band! Do you really need a band to be successful? On one hand, promoters had a point: it is hard to be a headliner if your music is sinking in the noises of the crowd. However, it isn’t enough to get any band. So that the band can function well, you need like-minded people, but they are very hard to be found!
In Bristol there are lots of opportunities to meet someone who is eager to form a band: numerous music organisations, advertising in local shops and on social media groups, good old fashioned word of mouth… These are all few tools that can help you to find what you need. A few times I was invited to join a newly formed funk-band and then later, a falling apart rock-band. But unfortunately, you need to be a very lucky person, to get yourself a really good team! Honestly, you have more chances to meet your one true love than to form a reliable band, full of like-minded musicians with similar goals and compatible egos. Nevertheless, even if I was the luckiest girl on Earth, I knew that getting a band was not what I need at that stage. I wasn’t ready to abandon my old compositions and embark on a creative search journey. Imposing my musical ideas on others wasn’t an option too. I already had some experience in rewriting my songs to suit the ‘band sound’ better, and that experience didn’t bring me any joy. During the joint ‘musical brainstorming’, with a lot of experiments, with solos and other instruments’ scores, the original idea of a song with its own soul slowly vanished. To sum it up, I didn’t wish to experiment from the start and I wasn’t keen on the idea of sharing my already existing music with strangers in hopes that they would feel what I had felt and would get it straight away.
It was at this time, that an idea came to mind: to alter my sound and make it bigger, I wouldn’t really need a full band. I could play a few music instruments myself; therefore, all I needed was something that could fill in the blanks while I would be busy playing a new melody. All I needed was a loop station. I wasn’t really a pioneer in that genre. KT Tunstall and Ed Sheeran had been touring the UK long before I learned my first song on the guitar (which was Sad Beautiful Tragic by Taylor Swift, so you know). However, it wasn’t them, who actually introduced me to the art of playing a loop-station. It was an aspiring multi-instrumentalist from Bristol – Mike Dennis. At one of the showcases, where I played, Mike went on stage right after me. He sat down on a cajón and held a violin in his hands – it was quite a unique sight, even for such a well diverse city as Bristol. Mike showed a wonderful mix of classic melodies, beatboxing, percussion, rap, and a bunch of special effects. He truly owned the crowd and his performance just blew my mind! As a result, the very next day I appeared at the doorstep of my local music store with a long list of questions! I honestly admire the patience and understanding of the PMT Bristol team. After a few long weeks of questioning, researching and testing, I finally bought my very first loop station: the BOSS-RC 30! It wasn’t as big and as expensive as the one that Mike used, but it was functional and did fulfil all the requirements that were important. Since I bought that technical wonder, my music has transformed a lot, and joking aside, my career started going uphill.
After hours of rehearsals, a lot of embarrassments on stage, quite a few technical blunders, and never ending experiments, I finally found my sound. For the first time, I could play my songs exactly how they sounded in my head: I had harmonies, percussion, and different solos. I learned how to play harmonica, and added melodica to my sound. I bought a bunch of shakers and tambourines. Later I purchased a vocal processor and started experimenting with vocal effects. I could use reverb, and distortion; I could sound like a choir – all without anybody’s assistance. My sets turned into actual shows in their own right, because people became so curious, they would silently look at my tricks.
A few months passed before I got used to my new toys, got a sense of stage, learned how to correct mistakes without stopping, and finally managed to avoid smashing my mic stands. However, it was all worth it! People started coming up to me after my performances asking where they could find my music. Promoters started inviting me to their shows without me asking them first. I was even asked to play encore once, which had never happened before! At a relatively small but very popular folk music festival called Priddy Folk Festival 2015, where I wasn’t really a participant and came to play at an open mic, for the first time the crowd didn’t want to let me go. At that moment, a thought crossed my mind, that my crazy idea with looping had worked! And maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t a totally oblivious dreamer disconnected from reality.
In music industry, like any in other business, a lot depends on who you know, and who can vouch for you. Up to a certain point, artists build their little music empires on their own. However, there is a stage, when you feel that moving on by yourself without someone by your side to represent you is too hard of a task. That is what we are going to talk about next time!
Rock Vector N8 (28), 01.03.2016
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