• Guitar and Mandolin - Phrasing and Strokes

    Mandolin 23.03.2009 Comments Off

    While the beginning and end of a phrase can always be more clearly defined when the tremolo is used, yet it is possible to indicate slurs on guitar and mandolin with the down and up strokes. This method is best adapted to the two note slur, and requires a slight accent on the first of the two notes (down stroke), while the last note of mandolin slur is made with a very light up stroke. This up stroke must be perceptibly weaker than the down stroke and the desired effect will be better obtained if but one of the pair of strings is touched. This method of slurring or obtaining the slurred effect is occasionally met with particularly mandolin music, but its use and effectiveness are somewhat limited. Those studies should be carefully practiced, however, so that the effect may be used whenever there is an opportunity.

  • Tama Or DW Drums

    Talking about Drums 19.03.2009 Comments Off

    Hey I often hear the same question : should I go with Tama Drums or Dw Drums or Mapex, Pearl, etc. well the answer is really simple!

    It does not really matter! - Get what ever you like and GET ON WITH YOUR DRUMMING! - That is the most important aspect for any drummer our there, and in my opinion of course, it does not matter if you will rock on Tama or DW or Pearl drum set. - If you rock, you rock on any drum set out there!

    Till next time, take care of your music, drumming and dont spend too much time thinking if Tama can make a better drummer from you - It actually cant!

  • Drum Pedals

    Talking about Drums 11.12.2008 Comments Off

    Today I wanted to talk about the drum pedals I used for the recording of Hyper Dance.

    As you may already know I used semi rhythmic techniques to perform an underlying rhythm and simultaneously a solo on top of it, - The rhythm was played with my feet and the solos were played on toms utilizing my arms.

     

    That may sound complicated, but in reality it is not VERY complex… - Hey a lot of drummers were using the same techniques for a while now, but that is a whole new topic, this week I wanted to concentrate on my double…. or should I say Sextuple drum pedals.

     

    Ok, ok there is no Sextuple drum pedals on the market, for any drum out there, and that is why I had to build one my self! - Here is what I did:

    I measured the “floor” I needed to fit all of my pedals, which are 2 double bass drum pedals, 2 snare drum pedals, one hi hat pedal and one cowbell drum pedal, than I marked a shape around them and brought the “shape” to my local shop to cut the desired shape from a piece of metal (I used a diamond cut aluminum).

     

    That gave me the Board on which I assembled all of my pedals using my drill and a few screws! - I needed that to make my pedals none movable on the floor during performance so that the distance between the pedals would always stay the same.

     

    Everything else is self explanatory except my snare drum pedals, which are made of a standard double pedal and a single one. - The problem is that I needed the pedals to be near the bass drum pedals but the snare drum is located between the bass drums and so I had to run 2 double bass drum pedal extensions to the pedals to reach the desired position, and that worked out beautifully.

     

    So there you have it! - Not that complicated at all, isn’t it? - One metal plate on which you screw all your desired pedals after which you run the needed extensions to reach the desired drum positions.

    After that it is all fun performing!

     

    Cheers and till next week, when I will talk more about my drum setup and the custom build hardware I am using.

    Pasha

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  • Welcome to Pure Fire!

    Pure Fire 11.12.2008 Comments Off

    What happen to the Pure Fire? And where did the old website go?

    OK lets see… So we were recording the drum tracks (which took me quite a bit of time cause we simply were not ready to record anything of that caliber technically) we needed drum mics, stands, EQ and compressions. And we needed a lot of them! Luckily I had a good paying day job at the time, so I was able to save up some money and get back to business.

     

    Pure Fire announced that all of the needed drum tracks were recorder in December 6, 2006 in THIS NEWS FLASH and the next highly anticipated step in the life of the Pure Fire was to record the solo parts which Michael (in my opinion) had quite some time to prepare.

     

    Well it turned out that he actually did not prepare anything and the material that he send me as a quick demo to the future solos was… Not astonishing to say the least. So we decided to simply move on and record the vocals first!

     

    As per our agreement (and the most logical way to go about it actually) Michael was responsible for finding the right singer, which he did a few years later. But than again for some unknown to me reasons it took a couple month before the singer appeared in the studio to try it out, (that was the first time I actually heard her).

     

    The session went fine, she was a good singer, but personally I did not like the outcome (I actually realized that during the second session which took place around a month later). The problem was that the singer was simply a bad match for Pure Fire, - we needed something completely different.

     

    So I tried to communicate that to Michael and that is where the big problems have started! The thing is, around a week after Michael initially told me that he actually found THE singer, he announced that he “fell in love” and guess with who? - THE SINGER HE FOUND FOR PURE FIRE!!!

     

    Call it a love story or not, but as soon as I heard it, I told Michael “Good for you! - Now find us a singer to actually work with!!” After which we had a short (around 2 - 3 hour) conversation about the whole thing in which Michael was able to convince me to “try her out anyway” and that his personal relationship with her would never cross our musical business! - I guess I was stupid enough to believe that! I thought “a history of more that a decade of working together, will be a stronger side compared to a two week relationship with a woman” - Again, stupid me!!

     

    Getting back to the subject, so I tried to tell Michael that the singer is not a good fit for us and he simply did not take no for an answer! As Michael said it: “things can not be the same as they were before, because I am not alone anymore and I have to consider her opinion about it all”…

     

    You can guess the rest! - Well almost! Michael decided to quit, and it is actually up to him, but that does not mean that the project has died. Personally I turned out to be the lucky one, cause I have actually wend to a lawyer back in 2006 to copyright all of the 8 songs that we were working at that time (6 of them made to our “final version”Wink). I also revisited the lawyer last week and we filed the papers for the versions with drums (although he said that it was unnecessary since the only thing that changed was the addition of the drums, but I wanted to do it just in case).

     

    So all in all it turned out not that bad Wink ! Although the time that it took for the band to get to this point is simply ridiculous, but since I am the only person that is holding all rights to the Pure Fire songs, I can promise you that I will restart the Pure Fire, and although I don’t know when exactly will that happen, but I can assure you that when I will, I will get a bunch of professional musicians that will be able to learn and release the songs in a matter of a couple month.

     

    Hey we have everything ready, just need to replace the distortion violin with a guitar and we are ready to ROCK! And as far as the old Pure Fire website goes, - it is still there (some of us will never quit Laugh ) and you are welcome to browse it here.

     

    Till next time, - PASHA

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