Mark Robinson’s Guitar Diaries

Hello to all and welcome to a column dissecting the day to day life of a working musician from the Portsmouth region of the UK - so if any of you are taking the plunge and 'going pro' read on! As you'll soon see it's not all glamour and partying: in fact you'll need a lot of skills that some of you might more associate with 'real' everyday jobs in order to stand a chance of making a living out of the axe...  

My name is Mark Robinson and I’m a lessons editor here at alloutguitar.com. I am a 'professional musician', and in these series of features I shall share my experinces of what that much used term actually means! Primaily, of course it simply means that my job involves making money from things related to music - and playing the guitar in particular. Lets have a look at a typical week at the end of 2007...

26/11/07

Crazy day today! We’re in the process of setting up a new function band to go out specifically midweek. I already play in a disco/funk outfit called Phat Medallion. The cheesier, the name the more gigs you get in this genre. Check out www.phatmedallion.co.uk, its a temporary website with a lot of old material and a demo that doesn't feature many of the current musicians (thats not me playing guitar!) but you'll get the idea. I think that demo was done around five years ago when the band were fairly new and it was a stick them in the studio, play the songs through and off you go type thing. Legend has it the guitar was recorded direct into the desk through a pedal for the solos! I'm currently working with drummer Ian Fellows on a new one so stay tuned! That band typically does weekends up and down the country, but I was approached by bass player Ali Martin (www.alimartin.com) who I used to play with years ago - and also does the disco thing in his own outfit! (called Saturday Night Beaver!) - about putting something together for those quiet nights midweek.

Seemed like a good idea - and any extra cash always comes in handy for us musicians! The band is called 'Electric Mayhem' and we play modern indie/rock covers from the last ten years or so. Our target market is student nights - primarily 'Jumping Jacks' and 'Chicago Rock Café' type venues. We have our promotions channels and photographs sorted out as we pulled in a favour to play a fairly sizeable gig after only two rehearsals! So all we need now is the music, a decent demo and a website.

We’ve been having regular six hour rehearsals every Monday, although we had to cut this one short as myself and Ian Fellows (the drummer in every band I play in!) had to be teaching in Alton by 5 p.m. Rehearsal went well: we did 'Ruby' by Kaiser Chiefs, 'Somebody Told Me' a Killers song with crazy arrangements, 'Empire' by Kasabien and several others of this ilk. We’re a four piece, and so its my job to fill out the whole mid range - which can be a real challenge when the originals have so much production going on! Still, a four piece band equals more money for us, and a more attractive proposition for clients. So if it takes more work, so be it!

After all that Indie it was back to familar rock mayhem in my guitar teaching with some good old Guns 'n' Roses - some things don't change!

27/11/07

One of the things that many wannabe musos don't realise is that, this being a job like any other, you will spend a lot of time doing accounts and paperwork - and today was one of those... Also spent a lot of time working on the paperwork for a brand new music school that I’ve been setting up with the drummer from the function bands. See www.rocksteadymusicgroup.com for details - and look for a feature on this in the near future. Taught a lesson in the evening - the topic of choice today was the first guitar solo from Dream Theater's 1994 instrumental shredfest 'Erotomania'. All keeps ya chops up!

28/11/07

Today was spent recording vocals for Electric Mayhems demo. The singer James Hollins came round and did most of them in one take. We did some more just to be safe but they weren’t really needed. Top stuff!

29/11/07

Had busy day today! In between dealing with advertisers, harassing newspapers and the like, we taught a band workshop at Alton where we went through some Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave stuff with the students - hope they all like Tom Morello! The students then had to come up with some stuff of their own based on the compositional techniques used. Had some great results and so everyone cama way well pleased! I then stayed on for a jam night, and jammed with a few of the students which was fun. Some incredibly mature improvisation for twelve year olds tonight...

30/11/07

Recorded some guitar parts for a new demo the disco band are doing and then got to work typing up notes/transcribing for a workshop we are running on Saturday.

1/12/07

Taught a five hour band workshop to fifteen students at a school in Portsmouth. We chose 'Purple Haze' as the example track, and whilst some struggled getting together the breaks in the band format, everyone was definitely getting somewhere by the end of the day. The drummer (Ian) then came back to mine to record his backing vocals for the Electric Mayhem demo.

2/12/07

Even us hard working muso's have the occasional day off!

3/12/07

Another rehearsal and teaching day. I learned todays new songs literally for about 10 minutes before rehearsal - and it probably showed - but we got through somehow! Wasn’t on top form for this one - basically all down to preperation - or lack of... At this point in time we have around 75% of the required 2X45mins sets down. As soon as we'd finished, dashed up to Alton again for some more teaching.

4/12/07

Back in the studio - and spent most of today re-recording guitar parts for the disco demo as the timings were out of sync with the master recording at the drummers house: must remember to line the tempo up correctly in future..! The bass player from Electric Mayhem came around to record and do his vocal parts. Now I have one big mixing job ahead of me to finish this thing off...

Did one lesson in the evening: this time going over some Radiohead at the students request, and this turned out to be a great cross string picking exercise. One to remember...

5/12/07

Since yesterday was spent doing real musical stuff, today had to be spent on business. Its not glamorous and its not as sexy as being a hired gun for some big name artist: but very, very, few people get the chance to do that . The rest of us we need to keep on top of this sort of thing. In between putting out proposals, chasing people up and doing accounts I designed a 'what if?' calculator in excel to look at possible finances over the next eight months. This is a great idea for anybody thinking of making the change to being a musician full time - or even anybody already doing it.

Music is an insecure business at the best of times, so doing this allows me to say “what if I get seven students at this school” and it spits out figures at me. If I change it to ten it’ll spit something different back. What if we raise our band fee by 6%, what effect does that have on each member and my particular tax situation? All these questions are now answerable with the click of a button. It’s a good idea people!

I also managed to get in half an hours much needed practice: 'Ruby' by the Kaiser Chiefs straight through for fifteen minutes, followed up by fifteen minutes of that four bar loop from 'This Love' by Maroon Five - all to a click with me focusing very intensely on timing. We’re going to be taking this stuff to the stage in January and I want it to be as tight as can be.

Listening wise, I’ve mostly had The Mars Volta’s first album on in the car. Brilliantly arranged with some wonderful textures and very creative playing. Being in tune - or even in time! - doesn’t seem to particularly bother these guys but its clear that these things are not necessary to what they’re trying to do. Don’t try applying this philosophy to your pub gig though… it probably won’t work in quite the same way!

Got a busy week ahead of me, mostly mixing, chasing people down and paper work but its all part of the fun. You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do…

In a couple of weeks I'll let you know how the live gigs have gone, keep you posted as to how my teaching is going and fill you all in on what it takes to start your own music school...

See ya!

Mark