Thought I’d post a few images from an eclectic little place we played a few weeks back - Tango del Rey in Pacific Beach. The four piece band has been a fun gig for me, mixing jazz, bossa nova, flamenco, and some original compositions.

My friend Chris of Taylor Design and Photo came out and was kind enough to capture some of the action. A couple of us stayed back and enjoyed their jazz jam session. Met some good players in the process.

The decor in this place is pretty wild. They have a cavernous space and the acoustics are very nice. This would have been the perfect evening had my Jeep not gotten absolutely creamed on the I-5 on the way home. No injuries though, and the Jeep is now back to normal- maybe even a bit better than its “pre body shop” life.

Look for a three piece incarnation of this group in the coming weeks at Le Papagayo. (see the calendar link).

Images by Taylor Design and Photography .

Sometimes squaring away the details is more important than all the long hours in the wood shed. Such was the case last weekend when I was asked to accompany a vocalist on “The Prayer” at a wedding.

As guitarists, we seldom get guitar-specific arrangements from clients (if they even exist for the specific title). For most accompaniment jobs, I am sent some other incarnation of the sheet music to learn (piano arrangement, lead sheet or other) and I am asked to play from there. For “The Prayer” I got “PVG” which means I’d be reading the chord symbols and pulling bits of the melody on the fly from the piano notes below. If it wasn’t for those little melodic cues (and the lyrics) I probably would have hacked out my own lead sheet and narrowed it to two pages.

But in all likeliehood, I will play this tune once or twice and put it in the archives after my wedding job. Plus, if the singer forgot her chart and needed to check something, I’d have the lyrics and melody on hand. So, this became a “cut and paste” job for me.

1.) Trim the width of all 5 pages with a paper cutter to save some prescious music stand space.

2.) Trim the height of each page, being careful to keep the page numbers in tact.

3.) Tape all the pages together in order so there’s no mistakes on the day of the wedding and I can fold the whole thing “accordian style”.

4.) Put some “Stand Outs” on the music stand so it can handle 5 pages.

Voila! Is it pretty? No. Will it get me through a day of playing a Celine Dion song that I am probably going to forget next week? Yes. Having a sense of security and confidence at a gig is a real boost to your performance skills. Don’t forget to bring along some clothespins or binder clips in case of wind, and have a great gig!

Congrats to Damion and Celeste Gastelum on a beautiful wedding day- and thanks to Sara for doing a wonderful job on the vocals.

I have so many thoughts about this. Lately my practicing style has changed immensely and I have decided to start writing a bit of an online practicing and learning manual. But I can leave you guitarists with a few tips to start with before I have a more polished article.

1. Record yourself. This is one of the most powerful ways to practice music and is often overlooked. Getting outside your own playing and hearing yourself will improve you almost instantly.

2. Practice frequently. Practicing for shorter time periods on a very regular (daily) basis is far better than cramming 8 hours in, then skipping a day.

3. Know the difference between playing and practicing. Practicing has specific goals in mind besides the grand goal of just “getting good” or “getting better”. Set mini-goals in your daily practice and lay out a daily plan to take steps toward achieving them.

Thanks for checking in! I hope to post some longer articles next week which will apply to the classical and flamenco guitar as well as other instruments.

Updated because we are playing again this week!–

Come join Rob and Flamenco Nova this Thursday, February 5, at Friars Folly in San Marcos, CA, 7-9:30 pm!

Hi race fans! This is the band I have been jamming along with for quite some time now. My bud Chris was kind enough to do a quick photo shoot for us at our last Friar’s Folly gig. Left to right you’ll see Carlos Rull (drums), Jeff Olsen (bass), Myself and Nathan Mills (trumpet).

Been a while since we have played out but we have  wedding gig on the 15th and I hope to start building the schedule a little more. Weird how the climate and other external factors can affect your work. We’d like to negotiate a regular restaurant/bar/hotel type gig in the North County San Diego area in the coming months, in addition to pursuing some private parties, etc.

Nate here is a very serious trumpet player with ties to local band Big Daddy Orchestra and formerly with national touring act Big Time Operator. Although he has a strong jazz background, Nate is great at improvising fiery flamenco melodies and giving our sound a hint of Cuban Salsa along with the natural Spanish influence.

Jeff is a very natural “by ear” type of bassist and often learns tunes that I throw at him on the fly! I have to thank him publicly for putting up with all my “Here, try this one!” and putting him in the hot seat.

The rock solid foundation of our band is pro drummer Carlos Rull who has also played with Big Daddy Orchestra and other important touring groups. Carlos plays percussion and keyboard in addition to playing the full kit and he is a strong improviser.

This is the full band playing live and is a good example of what we sound like in terms of style:

Guitar Section

Blue Bossa

Samba Pa Ti (Santana)

Original Tune

Trumpet Section

For booking call today: Rob 760-815-6131. Or shoot me an email. Thanks for looking!

Thanks for checking in guitar fans. Some of you may know that I do a bit of web design and photography and recently started moving all my sites to a new server. Feels good to say goodbye to windows. Also feels good to have a free optional wordpress blog for classical guitar related babble.

I will be posting some news about the flamenco band, gigs, releases, etc.. Thanks for checking in and please add your bookmarks!

Best,

Rob