Rostropovich – The Genius of the Cello

So, I was just working on revising our Nursing reports when we lost connectivity to the datacenter in Brooklyn again. Hurricane Sandy has just left, but there’s a Nor’Easter calling. Its starting to snow outside.

Anyway, without the ability to stay connected to work, I’ve decided to take a few minutes to gush about something music-related: Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich. I watched a documentary the other night called Rostropovich – The Genius of the Cello that aired on BBC. It was mindblowing to me. I wasn’t familiar with Rostropovich (called “Slava” by many of his friends and students) before, but after seeing the documentary, I wish I had heard more about him earlier. The passion and articulation that he commands when playing the cello are awe-inspiring. Sadly, he passed in 2007.

Rostropovich: The Genius Of The Cello

Major Scale Pattern 2 vs. Minor Scale Pattern

I’m a daddy. Ella is 8 weeks old as of today… its a little odd, mathematically to me, that we’ll have to wait 5 more days until she’s 2 months though. Anyway…

I was looking at the last few posts that I wrote this AM, in between client calls – Ella is with her grandparents right now, so I actually have a few minutes. When I had last put finger to keyboard (and on my bass) I was going over major triads using the 2nd major scale pattern that I had learned.

I was thinking about this for a minute, and then something clicked: the 2nd major scale pattern that I learned has a lot more in common with the minor scale pattern than the 1st major scale pattern that I learned does. Visualizing them together made me really begin to understand the differences in how each is structured, in relation to the other.

Practice: 8/24/12 – Major Triads a different way

Tonight, after dinner, I sat in the living room and ran major triad exercises similar to what I did two nights ago (yesterday, I didn’t get to practice – but it did let my hands recover after being so rusty). Sometime during that, I started moving the triads in a box pattern. Like, I’d play them with the root on the the E string, 9th fret, then A string, 9th fret, then I’d move to the 7th fret and repeat. I started doing it over 4 strings using E9, E7, A9, A7, D9, D7 and then added in triads going in reverse (moving from the 5th to the 3rd to the root). It was fun trying to do exercises that sounded melodic.

I began to hop around, descending every other fret – like E9, E7, E5 using triads. Then I started trying just the root and 5th instead of triads. I was playing different rhythms while doing this, repeating grooves and making small variations in them. I like varying note lengths and creating short grooves.

Practice: 8/22/12 – Major Triads & Shifting 1 Fret

The nursery is basically done. Carpet tiles came in late today, so I’ll install them tomorrow. I eschewed picking up Rocksmith for a 2nd try at the stuff I was working on yesterday so that I could focus on ramping back up again a little before I give it another shot.

Tonight, I decided to drill major triads back into memory. Only, I mixed it up a little bit, because thanks to Rocksmith, I know that I’m having trouble moving around on the strings. I started just running a major triad pattern in 1st position for a bit, and then began alternating from 1st position to 2nd position (all with the root on the E string). It looked like this:

Rocksmith Bass

Rocksmith, a game which I wrote a little about last year, released its bass upgrade as downloadable content on August 14th. Apparently, this is 2.5 weeks earlier than scheduled. I learned about the upgrade on Friday last week (3 days after the release) and decided not to wait until October for the PC version to come out. I went out and bought a Playstation 3 and the game on Saturday night, after returning from a funeral and following it up with a birthday party. Strange times.

I’ve not been much of a gamer since the late 1990′s. The last console that I played regularly was the original Playstation. Wifey and I have a Wii that we grabbed for Christmas two years ago. We mostly used it to watch Netflix. I’m not too versed on current gaming technology or trends. With this in mind – I’m impressed. The PS3 is a fantastic piece of equipment. I chose it over the Xbox360 because Microsoft charges a monthly fee for gamers to go online, whereas Sony’s online network is free. Rocksmith is equally impressive. The physical interface is ingenius, to me. Its a cord with a USB interface on one end and an audio jack on the other that plugs right into the bass.

So, anyway…

One More Week

Its almost time, but its been an insane ride. I know I’ve not been online and blogging for a while now. Two life-changing events have dominated the past few months of my time: birth and death.

This coming Tuesday (8/28), I’m going to be a daddy, We’ve built a nursery, had a baby shower, and wifey’s complaining that her belly-button is going to pop. Ella Sophia is almost here.

On the flip-side of this, last week, after several years of mounting the most courageous defense I’ve ever seen, my boss – who was like a 2nd mother to me – has passed from melanoma. I really wish that she could have seen Ella before she passed. She told me, some time ago, that she looked forward to being an aunt again, and this is the first child for both my wife and myself.

So, anyway, enough with the personal updates for now. I might write about each of these a little more in the future, because one hangs very heavily on my heart, and the other is arriving just in time to lift it.

On to bass.

Jeff Berlin Bass Lessons on Youtube

Its been a long time since I’ve practiced (again). Looking at my calendar, I see that I haven’t created a new post in 2 months. We’ve gotten a bit done at the house though, with a new roof and carpetting the upstairs done, right now we’re working on a nursery for the upcoming baby. I think that the main work on that will be done this weekend – we’ve started demo already and this weekend we’ll insulate, redirect air conditioning, put up drywall, paint and do whatever else needs doing to make it a bedroom/nursery. We’re having a baby shower on July 21st.

So, last night, instead of working in the wee hours or vegetating on the computer with Age of Empires II (yeah, I know that dates me) or Magic Online (I was feeling nostalgic and tried it last month, after not playing the card game in 19 years – which made me think about how fast time goes by), I hopped onto Talkbass and read for a bit. That led to my taking 15 mins earlier today to dig out a bass and mess around, but it also led to the main reason for this post: sharing some videos from Jeff Berlin that I discovered via Talkbass.

This is the thread that led me to the videos:

• Talkbass: Jeff Berlin Bass Lesson Series

Mother Man exercise

I’ve not been practicing as much as I need to recently… that a trend that’s lasted about 4 1/2 months. Last night, while wifey was at class (she’s juggling our first pregnancy, a new job and her 2nd master’s at the same time – yesterday I had to cook for myself and find my own socks!), I decided that if I’m not going through the IIB stuff regularly, or any other material, I’d at least do something short and get some exercise out of it.

Well, over the last year, I’ve found that Roger Patterson (RIP) from Atheist is fast becoming my favorite bassist. I’m a huge fan of Alex Webster, Steve DiGiorgio and Jeroen Thesseling, but Patterson has been quietly and posthumously climbing past them. I’ve been driving with the remastered Unquestionable Presence (among some other CDs) since at least last summer and still can’t stop playing it. His fingerstyle playing just blows me away. Its such a tragedy to the bass world that he died so young. I read somewhere that someone basically said that he was the extreme metal equivalent of Cliff Burton, and I’m inclined to agree with that assessment. He has so much feeling in his playing, yet makes it fit into a metal context. Its been about 20 years since he was killed in an accident, and I’ve only now begun to grasp at his proficiency and really hear what he was playing. I love his style.

Syncopation on bass – videos

Yesterday, I posted an entry about syncopation, after reading a thread about it on TalkBass. Afterward, I checked Youtube for some video examples and found a few interesting ones, including explanations and exercises on the subject.

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Here’s a syncopation exercise from a British bassist named Yolanda Charles. She uses counting to show how mixing up what beat a note is played on can be used to determine if a rhythm is syncopated.

Yolanda Charles and Phil Gould: Bass Syncopation Exercise

Here’s a blurb about Yolanda from her Myspace site:
I am a musician who has worked as a bass player in the music industry since my 1st ‘session’ for Jimmy Sommerville back in 1989. I then went on to work for Artists such as Marcella Detriot, KD Lang, Paul Weller, Roddy Frame, Carleen Anderson, Robbie Williams, Dave Stewart, Mick Jagger and BB King. I’m working as a songwriter most of the time these days.

Syncopation on bass

So, wifey and I went for the anmiocentesis on Thursday last week. Its a girl! We’re not doing pink. My baby is going to be scarier than that. Today’s wifey’s first day at her new job as well. She’s at Columbia University now. If time and energy permit, I’m curious about music classes there… but that’s something for the future. I still need to work through all of the IIB lessons still.

Anyhow. I was between client calls and emails, so I snuck off and grabbed some food. Breakfast is a novelty to me. While I ate, I read a post on Talkbass about syncopation. I found it really interesting, especially two posts. One explains syncopation in terms of the downbeat and the space between downbeats (or upbeat). The other offers an exercise with some information about what you’re gaining through unconscious cognition and how it translates to rhythmic fluency.