Taking care of your most important instrument, your hands.

Part 85

Picture by www.music-shoots.com You can find him also on Facebook:http://www.facebook.com/MusicShoots

   Bit over 15 years a go I was playing Bouzouki in a folk/trad band called Tre. This was my first band that actually turned in to a full time job. It was also the first time I found my self playing live at least four days a week, every week. I am sure if you take your music seriously, you practice most days of the week, but there is something completely different about playing live two hour gigs. It does put lot of stress on your hands (and legs if you're a drummer). Back in those days, I was young and eager. I didn't pay too much attention on things like how relaxed my muscles where in my hands and arms, shoulders, neck and even lower back. Thinking back now, I'd say they were pretty stiff :-D. After the bands quick success, we all went our separate ways. I joined Sliotar and swapped over to guitar. As a result I got lots of session work in the Dublin trad scene. This was great, I was playing most days of the week. But eventually I found my self playing between four and six hours a day, six days a week. At this point I had to become more aware of taking care of my body as part of my tools. Most of the sessions, musicians would sit down while playing tunes. For a guitar player this can be a bit of a problem, without most of us even noticing it. It did took me a while to realize that when ever possible I'd be better standing while playing. Sitting down playing acoustic guitar you end up hunching over the instrument, and definitely put your back in a very unnatural position. Of course playing classical guitar is completely different story, where the players are seated in a position with a foot rest that wont put as much pressure on your back and wrists, but for me standing up is still the best position. Now in the past three years, I have concentrated more playing with Sliotar and JPKALLIO.COM. Over the years I have had few times pains in my wrists and occasional shooting pain in my left hand fingers. I must say I have calluses in the fingers that by now go quite deep, and what I think causes the shooting pain is actually the underside of the callus pressing nerve, not fun... But one thing I have learned, if you have pain, take a break! Now I don't mean actual muscle pain in your fingers from practicing, this is bit like having sore muscles after a session in a gym, and is only sign of your fingers getting an exercise. But if you get any sharp pains in your fingers, joints, wrists or along your arms, take a break. Maybe even for a few days, until the pain goes a way. If it does not, or keeps coming back regularly, go to doctor! Your hands are your instruments, you need to take care of them! Never play through pain, this is a sure way to early retirement. Also you might think practicing a difficult piece some times does hurt. The fact is, if you get a sharp pains, that is your body's way of saying something is wrong. And another thing, this can really escalate, if you have a pain lets say in your wrist and you keep on playing, there are other muscles that will try to compensate for this, and they will get stiff and sore, which in turn slows down your development as a player. Playing through pain does not prove you're a man, it proves you are an idiot who does not care about their most important part of their playing, your hands! The most fanciest instrument can't make your hands play better if they are in pain, but healthy hands can make even cheap instrument sing.

  So here are few practical tricks. Play in front of a mirror, or video your self playing. Pay attention on how you sit, how tensed your muscles are. If you play guitar, you don't need to press the strings down with crazy amount of force, that puts pressure on your fingers, hands, wrists and arms. Figure out how little it takes to get a clean note and pay attention to this while you practice. For drummers holding on to a stick is bit of a same thing, you don't need to squeeze them to death, just enough to hold on to them:-) Also gently shake your hands between songs, this will help them relax. Warming up is essential for avoiding injuries. Stretch your shoulders, back and neck. I am not going to give you a lecture on how to live your life, but some exercise does help to loosen those tensed up back muscles. Swimming is one of the best things you can do. When we are on a tour with Sliotar, we are always on a look out for a pool:-)

  OK, that's that. Now back to other updates. JPKALLIO.COM have quite few concerts coming up in the next few weeks. First we are in Adelaide bar in Sligo this Friday, the 13^th of April, next week we are in the Submarine bar in Crumlin on Thursday the 19^th, and in the Slaughtered lamb in Swords on Friday the 20^th. The following week we are in the Sweeneys on Wednesday the 25^th and in the Pint on 26^th. Then in May we are organizing an album fundraiser concert in the Thomas House on Friday the 4^th of May, but more on that later. For now, have a great week!

   J.P.

And then there was four.

Part 83

  Our first concert of 2012 is nearly here. Upstairs in Sweeney's bar on Dame street on Tuesday the 3rd of April. This will also be our first concert with our new member Patryk Graczyk on guitar, so come along and give him a warm welcome to the band:-). Two weeks a go we did a photo shoot with www.music-shoots.com. Above you can see an example of the results. As I have mentioned before, your bands image is an important part, even though some of us like to think that it is lame to think that way... But it is important, and a good quality photos are important part of your press kit. I have been lost in the world of no internet thanks once again to UPC, who is really making it hard for me to stick with them at the moment... But that's another story;-). But we are working on our new website at the moment, which has temporarily slowed down due to lack of broadband, but when I get everything back working, we will have some of the photos from the photo shoot available for a download as screen savers on the site. But more on that later. We actually have quite few concerts coming up at the moment:-) You can check the detail on our website www.jpkallio.com and of course all the info will be on our Facebook page as well. So we really hope to see many of you in the next month or so at one of the shows.

  And now on to something completely different. Quite long while back we did briefly talk about mastering. A project I have been recording in the paste few months brought this subject to my mind again. It still surprises me a bit how many musicians don't really understand all the aspects of recording process. I think if you are thinking of making a career out of music, you should really spend some time learning about recording. I don't mean you need to become sound engineer or anything like that, but you should understand how the process works. We all know about going to studio and recording songs, and most of us know about mixing. This really is something to keep in mind while many of us end up using some of those studio days you might have won on a battle of the bands, or payed for with your hard earned cash. A very good sound engineer once told me you should spend as much time mixing as you do recording. I know things are much faster now with computers as you can save mixes. But still, serious album will take long time to mix. So if you do have one day in studio, and you want to finish tracks, you need to allow time for mixing. This is where you set the levels of all instruments, clean up tracks, compress what need to be compressed, EQ, add effects, etc. This is part of the recording process that requires quite lot of knowledge and experience from the engineer, but also becomes part of the creative process in the hands of a good studio engineer. When this is done, you will have nice sounding tracks, but to bring them up to the broadcast level you need to master the tracks. This is an art form of its own. Here you have just a stereo track of your mixes, that you worked very hard on, and you run them through multi-band compressors and sometimes an EQ as well. Here is where you get rid of any peaks in the signal and level everything in to a nice tight sound file, that you can then boost to maximum level without it distorting. This sounds simple, but it is very skillful art and requires very detailed high end studio speakers and an engineer with very good and experienced ears. There are studios, like the Trackmix studio that have the facilities to do mastering in-house. And there are studios that specialize in mastering. But lets just say this, don't just expect your tracks to come out of your Pro Tools, or Cubase at the level you hear most commercial tracks. You need to spend some money in good quality mastering to get to that level. And you will be amazed what a great mastering engineer does to your tracks. You will find much more detail and clarity, but still containing the warmth.

  So next time you are planning to spend money on studio, I would consider the mastering as well. Give your tracks a chance to stand up to their full potential.

   J.P.