Category: What’s New

Make Music Matter

Great night last night at the Make Music Matter charity event!  Met lots of nice people, had a terrific time playing with Sixteen Different Minds and… got to play in the band backing Dan Hill on “Sometimes When We Touch”!  All in all — a good time!

Make Music Matter

Sixteen Different Minds will be performing at a benefit concert for the charity Make Music Matter this coming Monday (July 30 – 8:30 doors) at Hugh’s Room in Toronto.  To learn more about Make Music Matter and about the event, please check out the press release attached below.

—————————————

On Monday July 30, 2012 at 8:30pm, the Event Production and Management class T-316 at Metalworks Institute is hosting a benefit concert. The concert will be taking place at Hugh’s Room in Toronto and is in support of the charity Make Music Matter (formerly Song for Africa).

Make Music Matter’s current goal’s deal with the hardships and devastation brought to the children of Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, and other African countries. They work with HIV/AIDS orphans, child soldiers, and women and children who are survivors of sexual violence. Make Music Matter brings music and education into the lives of these people as well as joy and hope for a brighter, safer future.

There will be many different musical artists playing at the event featuring Grammy & Juno award winning singer/songwriter Dan Hill, Tim Edwards of Crash Parallel, Luke McMaster, the band Menage, Jesse Labelle, Odario Williams of Grand Analog, Julie C, Mark Christiano and Sixteen Different Minds and the host for the evening, Canada’s Queen of hip-hop, Michie Mee.

Tickets are $25 advance and $30 at the door. To reserve your tickets, go to the Hugh’s Room website http://hughsroom.com/reservations/?performance=Metalworks+Institute+presents+A+Night+to+Make+Music+Matter&pdate=July+30%2C+2012

There will also be a silent auction at the event as well. If you have an item or a service you can donate, please contact us by email at: mwieventsteam@gmail.com.

You can support the event by buying tickets for you and your friends or donating something to the silent auction. This is a excellent opportunity to attend a great night of entertainment, while helping out a great cause at the same time.

You can also help by sharing the event on social media. Visit the events Facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/events/259987297447341/  and invite your friends!

Reminder that Hugh’s Room serves an amazing dinner so plan to come early and enjoy the evening.

Aurora Relay for Life

Sixteen Different Minds will be performing at the Aurora Relay for Life this coming Friday (June 8, 7:50 PM). Please come out and help support this great cause!

http://www.reverbnation.com/show/7740844

Acoustic Pedalboard (2012)

I don’t think I’ve ever met a guitarist who wasn’t on some kind of a gear quest — on that never ending torturous yet joyous search for a particular piece of gear that you absolutely know will present the perfect tone. Or feel. Or really anything good.  And you will finally be able to calm the dark voices in your head.

Those voices do stop — for a few minutes, maybe an hour or if you’re really lucky a day, but the inevitable rears its ugly head.  You actually do truly without a doubt need the next piece of gear. It matters. Cue the quest redux.

When I talk about those on the quest, I’m not talking about the “others”.  I’m marching right along with everyone else.  Ask my wife about my affliction and she’ll tell it’s in no way a subtle thing.

But I do recognize that too much “stuff” gets in my way — artistically speaking.  Smarter people than myself have labelled it option anxiety and I think that’s a pretty good term.  I started noticing a few years ago that having more plugins (synths, compressors, delays, etc.) wasn’t helping me to write better or more efficiently.  It was slowing me down and sometimes to a crawl.  So I started looking at what really mattered to me, chose the plugins that resonated with me and focused strictly on those.

A little while later, I started applying the same philosophy to my guitar gear.  What didn’t work was out.  Didn’t matter how much I thought a piece of gear was really really cool. What mattered was — does it work for what I do.  How will this new guitar or effect pedal help me to get to the core of my music in a more elegant manner.

So this leads me to my current acoustic pedalboard. It’s a simple affair in my opinion: a Fishman Spectrum into a Tech 21 Boost D.L.A into a Tech 21 R.V.B.  Yes, it’s not an acoustic straight into a nice mic, but for my kind of music that’s not really possible in a live setting.  And I absolutely love playing with delay and reverb. The last piece in this pedalboard puzzle was the Voodoo Labs Pedal Power 2 Plus I added about a week ago.  I suppose it’s weird to buy a pedal to take away sound, but that’s exactly what it did — it took away the noise issues I was having.  Everything sounds a lot cleaner now and for lack of a better term “nicer”.

I’m truly happy with this board and I think it’s going to stay like this for a long while.  It has to — I have no more space for any pedals! Of course, I could always get another board…

Slashie No More

It seems like I’ve been a slashie my entire career. You know, one of those artists whose style is defined as this/that/and-the-other without seeming to commit to something. I suppose that’s to be expected when you’re inspired by so many genres when writing and playing your music, but it makes it awfully difficult to describe what it is that you do. Really, your elevator pitch better take place in a VERY tall building!

So here I sit, working away on my seventh solo release and thinking once again that my music is some kind of hybrid and wondering how best to describe it. There’s the New Age sensibility, there’s Jazz harmonies, Classical melodies, some Pop, some World, a little Folk and a whole lot of acoustic guitar — pretty much the same mix as I’ve done since my self-titled debut album Jamie Bonk came out in ’98. [That is, other than my electronic-based album, Side B, that I put out a year or so ago. Yes, I know Side B was quite a course change, but I loved making that record, and I like to think it’s okay for artists to occasionally dip their toes in other stylistic waters.]

But back to the slashie problem because New Age/Jazz/Classical/Pop/Acoustic, or any other slashie hybrid isn’t cutting it for me anymore. I feel a little like Derek Zoolander right now when he asks: “Who am I”? and then answers himself. But here it goes: I’m a New Age Jazz Guitarist. That’s it. No slashies! Sonya, my wife, came up with that off-the-cuff so maybe the Zoolander analogy doesn’t exactly work, but I think the description is a good fit for what I do. New Age Jazz Guitarist. Not one OR the other, but both, which encompass all the other musical elements.  I know there may be all kinds of pluses and minuses to committing to this or any other descriptor and I know occasionally that I’m still going to need a long elevator ride to explain what it is that I do. And it’s also true that I’ve now just traded being a slashie for being a compound phraser, but that’s okay because now I feel like I can finally own a label: New Age Jazz Guitarist.

Bright Night, Big Dreams

I will be performing at the upcoming Sunshine Foundation of Canada “Bright Night, Big Dreams” fundraiser on Tuesday, March 20th (6:30-8:30 PM). The event takes place here in Toronto at the Miller Tavern (3885 Yonge Street) and you can purchase tickets online here.

The Sunshine Foundation is the only national Canadian charity to provide individual dreams to children with severe physical disabilities (such as spina bifida or cerebral palsy) as well as life-threatening illnesses. This year, Sunshine is celebrating its 25th Anniversary. Before this year is out, Sunshine will have fulfilled dreams for more than 7,000 children with severe physical disabilities and life-threatening illnesses.

Hope to see you at “Bright Night, Big Dreams”!

Thanks,
Jamie

The New Record

I’ve started working on my seventh solo album! Over the last year or so, I wrote 25-30 tunes intended for this new record — some complete pieces, some just sketches — and I’ve picked out what I feel are the best 14 tunes for the album. Probably 10-12 of those tracks will make it on the final record — or at least that’s the sort of thing that’s happened in the past. There always seems to be a couple tracks that either don’t turn out the way I’d like or they simply don’t “fit” with the other tunes.

To be honest, I’m never exactly sure of the overall sound of an album before I start recording, but I’m fairly certain that this is going to be a very guitar oriented record. Lots of guitar. And lots of my new love, mandolin. Also, I’ve been playing quite a bit of electric guitar lately, so there’s going to be electric all over the album too.

I’ve been listen to a huge amount of seventies music recently and I think I’d like that sort of vibe to be the core sound of the album. A very dry rhythm section sound (think Jackson Browne or Fleetwood Mac) and not a ton of pads or ambient textures is pretty much what I’m hearing.

And that’s about it at this point! There’s no release date for the record, but things are moving along nicely!

Hope everyone is having a great summer!

Thanks and best wishes,
Jamie

Yes, it’s my one year mandoversary — I’ve been playing the mandolin for one year! Well, to be completely accurate it’s been slightly longer than one year, but I didn’t have the time to write this post until today.

A little over a year ago Sonya, my wife, suggested I get a mandolin. She thought it would be a great “challenge” for me. She was right.

To be honest, I wasn’t all that keen on taking up the mandolin. I already had a lot on my plate with guitar, composition, production, engineering and the wall of business stuff I have to do each day. Yes I loved the sound of the instrument, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to make the time investment into the mando (BTW, that’s the short form for the mandolin). So I decided I would first rent a mando from a local music store. The instrument was, to be kind, horrible. Think of a cardboard box with old dead strings on it. That would have sounded better than the rented mando. But something resonated with me and don’t know exactly what it was. I suppose the short answer is I was bitten by the mando bug.

So I made the leap and bought a fairly nice instrument — an Eastman MD515. Here’s a picture of me on the day I brought the mando home:

And then I started down, what has been (and will continue to be) a very long path of trying to learn the mandolin. It’s a great path to be on — man I love the mando!

For those of you thinking to pick up the mandolin or add it as a second (or third or fourth) instrument, here’s what I’ve learned over the last year:

Time Matters

There really is no substitute for time. You really do have to practice. And practice a lot. My teachers all told me that consistent, sustained practice was the key to progressing on an instrument. And they were right.

I have a certain amount of facility on the guitar and I think that made me think that picking up the mando would be easier than it has been. I feel like my playing has leapt up on the mando over the last few months, but it was definitely frustrating in the beginning. The fact that I play every day for at least an hour has, in my mind, been the most important factor in my progress.

Practice Right

Of course, there’s no one way to learn an instrument, but for me, taking a traditional approach to learning has worked very well. I work on scales, chords and sight reading in addition to learning pieces by Bach, traditional Celtic tunes and improv every day.

Get A Good Instrument and Have It Set Up Properly

The subheading pretty much says it all. A good mandolin, set up nicely plays like butter. To me, it seems like a good set up is more critical on the mando than on the guitar.

Pick The Right Pick

The type of pick you choose to play on the mando is extremely critical. The material and shape of the pick will have a profound affect on the tone you produce. I went through a whole bunch of different picks and found that the Blue Chip TP-1R 40 works best for me.
Well that’s about it! I’m sure I’ve learned more than I’ve written in this post, but I have to get back to practicing!