This one was the last performance we had in our first year of university. We meet on the 27th of March and the morning and the first thing we did was to set up all the equipment, followed by the soundcheck. It was the first concert when we used microphones for all the instruments on the stage, thing that gave us a really unique and powerfull sound.

My band performed the last one and we are glad to say that we performed our own piece, song that soon should be released as our first single with the band called Thyram.

This track, called “Fall to the gray”, was wrote in the key of B Minor and we can easily say that we put all of our influences, such as Dream Theater, Opeth, RHCP, Alter Bridge, etc. The structure of the track is really interesting because the first musical phrase that your hear it is expanding into something more complex when the verse should start, but the bad thing is that we performed at this concert without our vocalist and second guitar, Chris.

After the chorus, there is a heavy part, inspired from Pantera, it is a groovy riff, easy to play but it really moves your body.

At the end of the track we had some improvisation. My solo started with some licks in B Minor Harmonic (raised 7th), and it goes into a really fast part where I applied B minor and B minor Flat arppegios.

During this track I used a lot of down picking, this tehnique is creating a really heavy sound out of my guitar and at the solo part I used a lot of alternate picking, tapping combined with legato and sweep picking.

Talking about the collaboration between us, as I said, at the end we did some improvisation to give some space for everyone to have a solo part. I think that, because we are playing a lot together, we can easily know exactly what the other one wants to do, just by our faces. At the end, we stopped playing in the same moment and we decided this during the last riffs.

It was a really good performance, we were a bit nervous during the concert but I really hope you will enjoy listening to our track!

I am so happy to write about one of the best moments I had, the solo performance we had on the 27th of February.

I am glad to say that I performed my own piece, with some improvisation at the beggining and also at the end. As you are going to see, the idea of this piece was to create kind of an infinite sound, that’s why I used more delay that I am usually using. The key signature of this composition is B Minor with some transition into the Ionian Mode, which is D Major. The style I approached is progressive metal, despite the fact that I didn’t use distortion on my guitar, but there are a lot of odd time signatures, like 9/8, 8/4, 12/8 etc.

Talking about my tehnique that I applied when I’ve been playing, I used a lot of two hands tapping as you can see at the beggining and at the end, alternate picking and some strumming.

I really had a good time when I performed this and I hope that you are going to enjoy this as much as I did!

Thank  you!

I am so glad to start writing about the experience I lived at the University of East London when I had the chance to perform with more than 20 people in the same time at this public lunch concert with our guest, Chris Cutler.

The concert was based on a ”music sheet”, but instead of musical notes, they gave us instrunctions regarding the time we have play, what kind of sound we should create and for making our lifes easier, on the wall we had a huge timer so we know exactly when to play and when to stop. To be honest, the hardest thing to do was to stop playing when we had moments of total silence.

The idea of this large ensamble was to create kind of a machine sound for 42 minutes, also there was 2 solo instruments which were allowed to play different things, to create a “voice” for this machine and I am so happy to say that I was one of them, together with a violin player, Dominik.

As I said, the concert dured 42 minutes and before we started we random picked 3 different solo moments, 1 minute each when we were able to play anything we wanted to and stop looking to the instructions.

This concert was called “Conspiracies” because all the participants had the chance to prepare a conspiracy with other musicians of the group and play it on their solo moment. For example, I’ve been part of 3 different conspiracies, all in different styles, jazz, metal, alternative rock. My idea was to play a Christmas Carol and I think it was really interesting.

One of the best thing about this concert I think it was the last part of it when Chris Cutler started to create the idea of a looper and everyone had to play exactly the last musical phrase that we played before he told us to start looping.

I am really happy because I took part of this incredible concept and I hope you are going to enjoy listening to what we did. I strongly recommend you to listen with your eyes closed!

Check this out!

Hello everybody!

It happened! Our very first lunchtime concert of the Improvisation and Collaboration course just took place on 5^th of December and it was a great experience for me and definitely for my band.

This performance was the first time when I played with new people: Thomas (guitar), Roseanne (bass), Mariana (keyboard), Natalie (drums), and this concert turned out to be more complicated than I expected.

First of all, after we created the band, while we had the first rehearsal we decided to create a chord progression and improvise one-by-one on it. We composed just the melodic line, which was in C major. The song started with the drums and with my guitar. After just a few bars, the tempo was changed into a faster one, and step by step all the instruments joined the song. The rhythm was a stable one: 4/4, the only thing that changed was the tempo.

Talking about the song genre, well, here is a long story! All the members are playing in a different style. Everyone has a different one in this band, except me and Thomas, we are playing rock/metal stuff. But this was a good thing because we tried to combine the styles and to create something new. I strongly believe that our improvisation from that day is a piece which is based on different influences, brought by our members.

As you can see in the video that I am going to attach below, because I usually play fast things, I used some alternate picking, sweep picking and my idea on that moment was to create a melodic line in E Minor Hamonic (or Aeolian #7) on the top of the one in C Major. The theory that the beginning of my improvisation is based on is regarding the mods. E is the third note in C Major which means that I was playing a Phyrigian mode, but with a augmented second between 6^th and 7^th degrees and with #F.

In my opinion, the concert wasn’t bad, but for sure we can improve things for the next one. We are thinking about having some “clues” when we should start improvising or when we are about to do big changes during the song.

To sum up, I loved our first group performance. We learnt a lot of things about playing and improvising in a band and also we gained experience when it comes to perform live.

You can have a look on YouTube to enjoy the concert: Click here!

 

Hope you will like it, stay  tuned!

Probably everyone that is reading this had at least one time the sensation of having butterflies in your stomach? Well, since I started to study at the University of East London I feel this every time I am there, especially when I am in the studios. You know, those big or small rooms where for us, musicians, is like a small part of heaven, where our ideas, dreams and emotions finally become reality!

This time, it’s not only about practicing in studios or recording tracks, this time is about performing in front of you, the public, the thing that gives us most of the motivation to continue our path in this endless universe of creation.

So, we have an announcement for you: on 27th of March our improvisation band is going to do their best in front of you at Black Box Studio (US 3.38), University Square Stratford, 1 Salway Road, E15 1NF, at 13:00.

See you there! Free entry for everyone!