My Own Music Journey Part4

Wasn't long before two of the guys and I decided that what we really should do is to reform the band and try with our ideas. This time, we had help from a friend of Pablo, the lead guitarist. His friend was a kin guitar player too, so that throw me out of playing the guitar, and seeing that it was very hard to get a decent bass player I decided to change my instrument and aspirations and use my guitar knowledge and techniques in to playing the bass and try to be a less ordinary bass player, and by then I realized that me being the lead singer wasn't the best move, so after auditioning quite a few people we finally found the girl with the right voice... and the right looks, yeah, definitively the right looks, we couldn't agree more... but the important thing was that she did sing great.
My obsession and insistence about getting it right with the bass guitar finally give some positive results, I used to get comments by people after the gigs, and I even got ask "who was my teacher, cos he/she must be awesome"; little they new that I actually learn by my self to play the bass, and listening to people's comments and questions considering what little experience with the instrument I had a the time made me feel really good and got my gears rolling and will for more skill to be even better.
My first bass was a Samick 5 strings through neck, meaning that it had 5 strings instead of 4, making the extra string a fatter and lower note, so instead of having an “E” string as you top string I had a “B” string, looking like “G” as your bottom string, the one that will give you a higher pitch note, followed by a “D”, then up on top you would find the “A” and then the “E” ending on top with a thick “B” string that would give me lower notes, making me sound like an Earthquake if I needed to. This set up is currently used by many bass players, like Fieldy, Korn’s ex-bassist ( who have his own signature bass, the Ibanez K5), or another one who play with an Ibanez, Sam Rivers from Limp Bizkit.
By having an extra string in the neck of a bass guitar I founded that the space between strings was narrower, so for me it was a lot easier to play due to my experience with normal 6 strings guitars. The one think on that Samick that did bother me after a while was that it didn’t had active pickups, and one thing I was getting interested in was “slapping”, and for “bass slapping“ I noticed that I would be better off with a normal 4 string bass with active pickups. Then there came Roberto, my neighbour who turned up to be an experienced bass player and wanted to sale his old trusty Westone Thunder IA and I just happened to have the right money.
It turned out that with this bass I wasn’t so interested in “slapping” but more on the “Clank” chunky sound that I loved in bands like Iron Maiden (Notice that Iron Maiden’s bass player, Steve Harris, was playing with a Fender Precision Bass that sounds and have way more quality than this Westone, and cost ten times more). Because of this I developed a technique that would let me play a note 3 times in a fraction of a second using my fingers instead of a plectrum, inspired by the “Horse galloping” effect that Steve Harris made so popular in the Iron Maiden song “The Trooper”. After some time of playing in the band I started to write songs, and as it is to expect, the bass in this songs was one of the main features, so I used this “Horse galloping” technique in one song and turned to be one of our coolest songs.
Now that I had a pair of bass guitars that where very different from each other and would give me a wide choice of stiles things turned out to go wrong between some of the band members again, being the drum player the main cause of the argument, eventually we split and never got back together because while this was going on with my beloved band my life started to head to the wrong direction, and after doing some really bad wrongs I had to move on and sort of started from scratch in a new place with a new life.

White version of my Westone Thunder IA. Picture taken from "The Westone bass and guitar resource site"

My own Music Journey Part 3

Time came for me to go back home to daddy and mammy, but the past year had done something to me that would really help, made me grow up. Now I was looking forward to work, to earn some money... and to party hard.
My first job was in a book distribution warehouse, and there you would find many, many, maaaaany books, from little calligraphy booklets, to heavy pounders that you could only carry something like two at the time, three if you had muscles like a body builder from Austria.
There, I found my self singing on the solitude of the immenseness of that warehouse, with a team of only nine workers, and a place as big as “Nou Camp”, it was easy to drift away mentally and end up singing on full voice, something that is nice if you have a good voice, and in my case I thought that I was a rock star, so imagine, I did got a lot of practice.
I never thought that I was a good singer, but one day, on a night out we ended up in a karaoke and I ended up singing, and to my surprise it sounded quite cool, so when one of my mates from my hood ask me to go and see his band practicing he didn’t needed to ask me twice. Once there I realized that they didn’t had a singer, and then after some drinks and a few smokes I got ask to have a go at singing, and then I became the lead singer. By then, I already got my self an electric guitar and an amp, and I didn’t just sing, I was also playing the guitar, so I was well happy.
We only had two gigs when the lead guitarist and the drummer had a massive argument, and because they where both a pair of idiots we ended up splitting, plus the fact that the guitarist was the owner of the practice room had a lot to do to.
By then, my musical influence was quite rich and varied and because of it I could maintain a decent conversation with any estranger, because one thing we all have in common is that we like some kind of music, and many of us like to talk about it.

My own Music Journey part 2

Living in Badia was an adventure, nearly every day something happened, and many times it was way too close home, maybe was something to do with having at the time 25.000 people living there, with tower blocks everywhere, this population was all living on the same square kilometre, so chances are that one would have a lot of friends, and a lot of enemies, so one usually learn to walk around with one eye scanning one half of the street and the other eye scanning the other half..
By studying in Badia’s college I earn some medals, I made some very good friends that later on would prove to be very good sources of fun and music idealism sharing. Some of this people could play an instrument, and some others could sing very well, so some times we would end up trying to play music with our Spanish guitars and harmonicas, but nothing really amazing ever happened.
I was nearly 18 years old by then, and I was doing very well in college, but because I was nearly 18 years old and in Spain if you were a Spanish 18 years old male, you would have to fulfil your duty with your country and do 12 months (AKA year) in the National Service. I could of get away from doing it for another 3 years because of my studies going so well, but I just wanted to get over with it, and I have to confess that I was a bit excited about it.
By then I had grown my hair quite a bit through the years, and the idea of having a skinhead didn’t really appeal to me, but I knew it had to be done and there was no point in worrying about it, specially after all of your friends that were doing the National Service or have already gone through would tell you a bunch of crazy tales about it.
At first I though that I would eventually get killed by some crazy maniac in a base full of them, and then I was certain that that would be the best thing that could happen. Seeing that I didn’t had a driving license and I was on the mountaineers section of logistics, my near future was looking pretty dark and smelly, and I wasn’t looking forward to climb mountains pulling from a mule loaded with supplies to the possible front lines. Then, when my name was called out to be told where and what I would be doing I couldn’t believe my luck, they decided that in 1990 they would try out a new sections for that company of “Transporters”, a few of us where told to form the brand new section in our company that would be dedicated to escort the convoys wherever they were vehicles or mules, so we were responsible for the MG’s, the German made automatic machine guns of a 7.62X51 calibre very similar if not the same as the ones used by the machine gun teams from the German army of WW2.
So, we had teams of 3 men, one gunner, one loader, and one supplier, and the three of us had to know how to use all this kit... I had a lot of fun in the firing range.
When I was there, I got a lot of musical influence from a lot of the boys, I discovered “Death Metal”, and “Rock Radical” witch is a form of rock that was produced by mostly independent labels and that would have strong and direct messages, normally would be a way to show your problems your middle finger.
Within a month of me starting the “National Service” I got my guitar to the base, and I was a bit concerned about its safety, but it turned up to be an excellent ice breaker and in many situations it became an argument stopper, people would argue and then notice my guitar on my bed or hanging about somewhere else in the company’s room and some one would smile and say something stupid and somebody would start having a go at playing the guitar, specially the flamenco lovers.
The day I left I felt like a big load was taken from my back, but at the same time I felt like some sort of brotherhood was left to very rarely find back. Even today I feel like I belong to Huesca’s “Brigada De Cazadores De Alta Montaña”, and the places and adventures that went on through that year will never be forgotten.

My own Music Journey Part1

Music has been my life since I can remember, I remember my sisters being interested in Rock & Roll, listening to Elvis, Eddie Cochran, Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, etc, and that was in the eighties!!
The 20th of November of 1975, the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco died. This was a changing event in the Spanish music history, because until then, Franco's regime didn't really promote Rock & Roll at all, and music in Spain was mostly folk or classical music, but with Franco out of the picture, Spain became a democratic nation and within a few years Rock & Roll, Punk, Metal, and any other kind of modern music made it into Spain. By then, the fashions that came with this music styles suddenly became something of a conflict between the youth, and it wasn’t long before the mix of music tribes became to dislike each other for whatever reason that could be.
My personal music journey became by listening to what any other kid there in Spain at the time would listen, young groups like "Parchis", o "Enrique y Ana" became very popular with the children from around my neck of the woods, music that was very catchy and innocent, and made purposely for the younger generations. Then, I’m not sure when, but couldn’t be too long when I started to listen to what my sisters were listening. I couldn’t understand a word of what them men and women where singing about because it was mostly in English, and when I was little I didn’t speak a word of it, but the sounds of them crazy guitars and the rhythms did really open my interest for more complicated music; without knowing, I became part of a minority in the Spanish tribes world, the rockabilly, well, not really, because I didn’t dress like them, and many other reasons, but the music was the main thing to me.
When I turn 14 years old I started to study in La Escuela Industrial, a skills college where one would carry his studies at the same time you would learn a job, I choose carpentry, and with carpentry came a bunch of new friends, people with other music tastes that may end up conflicting with my own taste of music, but this never happened, instead I actually did what I’ve been doing ever since, I grabbed what I liked and enjoyed then learnt about it, who was who in what band, where they were from, what albums they had, how can I get that, etc.
I started to listen to heavy metal, at the same time I was still listening to Rock & Roll, of course, the problem is that by listening to Heavy Metal I felt like if I was betraying my sisters and I tried to keep it a bit quiet, I always thought that what everybody else thought about what you are listening was very important.
Times changed very fast, my eyes and ears where scanning for more and more interesting music and I wasn't scared of the style. Then after failing the carpentry course because of my lack of interest in maths, science and literature and with the summer over, I had another go in a different college and on a different career, this time I tried car mechanic, but the distraction was way too good to ignore, specially after realising that there was way more pretty girls in this college than on the previous one, and they where all willing to be very friendly, I definitely felt much better there.
The one thing that changed everything was something that lasted half an hour once a week, and it was free; guitar lessons for complete beginners. I didn't know then, but this thing that was playing the guitar would become my longest and more frustrating love affair ever, ever, ever.
At the same time I was getting mixed with a bunch of great people that became my friends, and told me a lot about music. Their music preference was so varied and different that I was totally engrossed when the subject of music would pop out in a conversation, and was my concentration for maths, science and literature ever been so little, so there went my year again, lost another course in the name of joy.
After that I spent a year doing nothing much, had a course on plaster boarding, that I never took any advantage of, and I nearly ruined my parents because I didn't want to work or study, but I wanted to have fun, well, in my defence I have to say that I was a normal teen.
The following year I decided to have a final go at studying, and I was in luck, because a brand new college was open 300 yards from my home, and this time I meant business. Electrician would be then.
There I was again, this time I was wiling to learn, and I had some tricks up my sleeve ready to impress the ladies, basically my guitar strumming.