I just had my first two weeks at the music and theater school. It was so much fun. The first week was an introduction week and we did some games and had lessons in all the main lines (dance, theater and music). The first week ended with an party where Julia and me were the DJ’s.

Now the real work has started.The big event in the first real week is a musical which we have to make called The Snow Queen. All the students at the school were split into four groups and each group has to take care of a 1/4 part of the musical. That included writing  music, stage and lighting. Together with some other students I am playing the music for our part.

I’m playing the drums because we have two bassists and no drummer. Its a challenge because I never played drum before and we have until next Friday to practice. So I will have to learn drumming within  one week. We’re playing 3 songs, A Walsh, a Pink Floyd psychedelic song and a funk song. I’m going to practice tonight.

Besides the musical I had music class where we played 2 songs (Dictee- If This Is Cool, Incubus - Anti Gravity). We are going to practice 3 songs for music line in total, which we will play live in October. Next to the main study lines there are elective classes you can attend. I picked Theater, Show Dance, Danish language, Radio Theater and solo lessons in singing and Piano.

Today I had a school day, so no internship and more free time. Which I spend practicing Bass. It went pretty well, and I can now play along Hysteria from Muse.

I still need a lot of practice improving my tone & rythym a bit but at least now I can keep up with it and play it through. Some other bass player at the popschool saw my practicing before the lessons started and gave me a tip:
I should keep the fingers of my right hand more steady, because now they draw some unneeded energy.

Singing went good aswel, I sang The Time Is Now . I need to work more on my breathing and take some vitamins for getting rid of my chronic cold.
The next song I am going to practice is Sunburn by Muse . The teacher said I could reach it, but its a challenge and I need to learn some new techniques.

Muse

We got together again this Sunday. Tom had to do some work on his appartment, so he didn’t join us until the evening. Jelle and I got jamming again and came up with a few riffs. For now on defined as;

- Ska groove (offbeats)
- Groove riff (with the slide)
- Bass Rhythm riff with no fancy name
- Ghost haunting thingy

Tom joined us in the evening and we came up with rhythm patterns for the ska groove and groove riff.
4 riffs in 1 day: <no named band> is on a speeding train and someone stole our brakes :p.

That was yesterday, Today I had my bass lessons. Because the ska groove had a Slap thing to it I asked my teacher to teach me some slap grooves. And its very good. I got the idea pretty quick, I just need to practice this more. But the ska groove sounds very good with slapping.

Last Sunday we had the first real bandmeeting. Real in the sense of that this time we knew each other a little better, we discussed real band things and finally did some jamming.
Meeting the band was great, after some talking we agreed that Toxicity (the song we settled on would be our first practice song) was not working for us instrument and mostly tuning wise.

The evening started off with Jelle and me jamming a bit over some blues riffs. I’m finding it hard to come up with some interesting bass lines on the spot. Tom joined us later because he forgot the meeting -.- do’h!
After he showed us some of his metal guitar playing we discussed some band things, like what kind of music we want to play and how cool it is we get along (something that keeps coming up in our conversations) :p We decided to tune to drop D and practice Stinkfist by Tool and work on along the watchowers if we got spare time.

My apartment has been promoted to offical <no named band>’s practice area. Now comes equiped with a keyboard and will be later joined with a extra amp.
We closed the evening with Tom and Jelle both playing a riff which could very well end-up in an awesome song. I just need to come up with a bassline to rock on ! \m/

Next bandmeeting/ practice day is sunday 24 august.

Our current bandmembers are:
Jelle - Lead guitar (blues), vocals
Tom - Rythm guitar (metal)
Jess - Bass (rock/indy), vocals
!! we need drummer !!

Jess out.

Logbook notes:

Need to work on:
- Scales for bassline construction.
- Organised vocal practice.
- Pick up danish again.

*note of thought, going to write my name as Jess for now to prevent confusion with Jelle’s name. (And it refers to jazz music, which makes it artistic and hip. I’m cool :p

Finally an update again (for the few people that ever visited this site :p).

Anyways I haven’t thought of anything to put here so I kind of forgot I had the blog. I was thinking about how to revamp this into something I might actually keep regularly updated. And I found something! From now on I’m going to use this blog as a diary or log thing for my musical development. Starting now!

Bass progress & Popschool

The bass guitar lessons are going great. Currently I’m still working on getting ‘Toto - Georgy Porgy’ clean and groovy when I play to the songtrack on my pc. The parts where I have to play 3 16th notes in a bar still don’t come out very well. But I’m working on it. Lola and me started on transcripting ‘Kane - Rain down on me’ and I’ve almost finished it already. Transcripting the bass bridge and writing it out on paper still have to be done. After that its practice time

Yesterday I visited the Popschool in Dordrecht. Its a music school where people after sign up are put in a band and given band and instrument lessons. I’ve been looking for a band to speed up my progress with the bass guitar, but I didn’t find anything until now. So after a conversation I had with one of the teachers I signed up for next year.  Which starts in September. I’m quite happy with Lola’s lessons so I entered as a bassist and took classes for singing. The intake is 8 July so I hope I will be placed in a cool band.

Videos
Toto - Georgy Porgy

Kane - Rain down on me

ATM in listening to
Bloc Party - Helicopter

Leaf - Motherfucker

We slept until somewhere around 1. We had the famous Jesse brand chocolate cruesli (it’s really populair amoung my friends). We started our day really slow: had coffee, took a shower, checked some music and movies on internet. Around 4 we left for the Anouk concert which was held at the Geldredome in Arnhem. After asking advice from one of the NS worker at the trainstation we bought a NS Lentetoer (spring tour), this ment we could travel for 40 euro everywhere until 4.am and we could sit first class.

Waiting in the train is very very boring however. So we started to get weird. Lucky for me Line also is a singer and she sang about half of the time, it’s something like Jukebox. Traveling first class does seem to have its advantages

Finally we got at the concert, Lot of lines, but we got in fairly fast. (maybe because we were a wee bit late). But the concert hadn’t started yet and we could get pretty close to the stage. The preshow was Postman (the husband of Anouk) and after a long wait again Anouk started. Im personally not a huge fan of Anouk. I like the rockier songs but the ballads I like less. However I surprised about the sounds and mood of the concert. I was very good and I really enjoyed it as did Line. A bit of a drawback was that Line is small compared to the dutch so she had to stretch to see everything.

After the concert going back home was proving to be more an ass that it was going to the Geldredome. It us 5 bloody hours to get back home. The concert ended at 11 and we went to bed at 5 (the clock jumped an hour due to DST).

To sum it up it was a long day of waiting, but we had an awesome concert

Friday started off with the fact that the teacher was sick on Friday so I had my Friday off. Not that it really mattered since I wasn’t planning on going to school anyways as my friend Line from Denmark was arriving for a concert of Anouk. So no school but I still had to get up early since Line was arriving at 9.45. I took the train in Dordrecht around 8. Finally at the airport where I arrived a little bit early, I had to wait which is pretty annoying (like waiting for a delayed train or bus) as you don’t know when the person you need to pick up comes out of the slider doors.

Well I endured and met Line who had to wait longer for her bag. After all that we went to my place in Dordrecht to have a quick drink and drop off Line’s bags and then go to Rotterdam where I wanted to show her around and buy myself some new shoes. After we completed the mission for the shoes we had a look around one of the biggest bookstores in the Netherland. They have a lot of music books just the place to take a singer . We got some stuff which included a songbook for Line and a little notebook for me. I’ve been wanting to go to a little coffee shop (it sells Coffee not weed!) in Rotterdam called ‘Cappuccino’. The coffee there is top quality so I decided to take Line there. We both had a big cup with cream and cinnamon sticks. After that we went to my parents places where we watched an Anouk dvd and had dinner with my mom.

In the evening my friend Robin’s band Schraapstaal was performing in a small metal café Texmex. Its was a fun concert although the pitting 15 yr olds were a bit silly. Just another proof that Spijkenisse sucks when it comes to going out. :p After Schraapstaal we went to Rotterdam where we were wanted to go pooling, but it too busy so we just sat down in a bar and had beer and chatters.We went home back to Dordrecht around 3 or something and went straight to bed.