Conan O’Brien’s Mike Merritt Visits LA Music Academy
He performed charts from the show, discussed his gear and various aspects of playing for Conan’s band. The students were thrilled following the class. Visit the video section of LAMA’s official Facebook page to see and hear more: http://facebook.com/LAmusicacademy.Jody Fisher Guitar Video Quick Tip: “Walking Bass”
Jody Fisher grew up studying guitar with his uncle, jazz guitarist Sid Fisher, who had spent many years as an RCA recording artist. Jody has published over twenty instructional books about jazz guitar with Alfred Publishing, Workshop Arts Publications, and Mel Bay Publications. Four of his books have appeared in the Smithsonian Institute’s Folkways Exhibition in Washington, DC. Jody has also written for most of the major guitar magazines, including Guitar Player, Just Jazz Guitar and Finger Style Guitar. Check out www.jodyfisher.com for more information.
In this video, LA Music Academy Guitar Department Chair Jody Fisher offers this quick tip “Walking Bass”:
For more great videos, tips and highlights from LA Music Academy alumni and instructors, subscribe to our YouTube channel here: http://youtube.com/LAmusicacademy
-LAMA Staff
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5 Tips: Find a Music School Community That’s Right For You
These students are thrilled to finish their final projects at L.A. Music Academy College of Music
You’re looking for the right music school and have narrowed down your list. What do you factor into your decision? Location? Tuition? Faculty? What about the community of instrumentalists, producers and instructors you’ll be engaging with daily during your school life? Since your ideal community isn’t as tangible as the gear in your practice room, let’s discuss five ways to gauge the community at your future music school:
1) Take a Tour (duh)
The best way to get a vibe for your future school is to visit the campus. Check out the classrooms, practice labs and studios…where you might hang out in between classes. Watch how the students and teachers interact with each other. How are you greeted by staff? If you can’t visit, see if they have a virtual tour or check out the school’s Facebook page (more on that below).
2) Open House
Open houses are a music school tour on steroids and another great way to get a feel for the community. At the Q&A session, ask a school official about the student community in particular and any events. If they seem caught off guard by the question, you might be suspicious. At a LAMA open house, you hear about social gatherings, faculty and visiting artist performances, concerts and much more!
3) Check out Facebook
We live in a social media world playing a great role in the lives of today’s professional musicians and producers. Check out your potential school’s public social networks. See if the school and students are posting on the wall, photo albums and the events pages. Look for student performances, vocal showcases, drum hangs and themed parties.
4) Lurk on Twitter
Use Twitter to discover more about your future music school’s community. Follow the school and check out the chatter. Look up alumni and see what they’re up to. Gauge the “temperature” of what others have to say. You might be surprised at what you find out but don’t believe everything you hear. That’s why you always need to do some fact-checking
5) Ask a Student
Ever heard the phrase “straight from the horse’s mouth”? It means cut through everything and just go to the most direct source – the students! When you are on an open house, touring or on Twitter and Facebook, ask some students about the school! You should get some pretty honest answers!
What are some other techniques you would use to gauge the community at your future school?
-LAMA
Top 5 Guitar Pedal Demo Videos
If you don’t remember trying to buy guitar pedals in the 80s and 90s (or weren’t even born yet), let’s refresh your memory: First you would grab your favorite guitar magazine and then read about how amazing each new pedal sounded. Next you’d go down to your local music store and hope that they just so happened to carry the particular one you wanted so you could try it out for a few minutes. Golly, such hard times for musicians! Enter YouTube…where anyone can check out virtually any instrument by watching the video demo about it. Guitarists! We’ve gathered a few great guitar pedal demos here…what do you think — make you want to buy one? Have you seen any others we should definitely watch? Let us know in the comments below.
1) Way Huge “Swollen Pickle Fuzz”
3) MXR Carbon Copy Delay pedal demo M-169
4) Real McCoy Custom RMC6 Wheels of Fire Wah
5) Electro Harmonix Micro Synth
-LAMA Staff
Bill Murray Song
Do you “keep it Bill Murray?” Sweatshop Union certainly does!
Happy Friday!
-LAMA Staff
The 5 Best Opening Acts Ever
You got your hands on front row concert tickets. You have your $10+ beer. You have your specially designed ear plugs to withstand the loud noise. You are ready to be blown away and then the opening band comes on. And stays on. And keeps playing and playing and playing. If you haven’t had something like this happen to you – you probably don’t go to many concerts! Opening bands have garnered the reputation of killing the mood of many a concert. However – every blue moon you see an opening act so incredible and so amazing that at times they are even better than the headliner. Recently Ranker, a website that ranks things of all shapes and sizes asked their community to to vote on the best opening acts they had ever seen. Let’s take a look at their Top 5 in descending order:
5. Weezer Opening For No Doubt
No Doubt in itself would be a great night of music – but add in the Blue Album boys!? It turns into an epic night. The band opened for No Doubt in the Spring and Summer of 1997 which was an interesting time for both bands. No Doubt was riding high on the chart-topping success of “Tragic Kingdom” while Weezer had released the now legendary “Pinkerton” record which at the time left their fans confused and unsure but now has legendary status. We wish we would have been smart enough to see this show!
4. Alice In Chains Opening For Van Halen
This is an ironic one because Van Halen infamously opened for Ted Nugent in the 70s and blew him away! Looks like Van Halen got a taste of their own medicine by letting these grunge icons warm up the crowd in 1991 during the “Van Hagar” era. Rumor has it that Van Halen would purposefully pick lackluster bands so that by the time Van Halen took the stage the crowd would be extra excited. Don’t pick Alice In Chains for this task.
3. Pixies Opening For U2
The Pixies are generally known as a band that got more popular 10 years after they broke up than they were at their prime. Leave it to U2 to be aware of new and cutting edge music to allow them to offer their opening slot to The Pixies on the Zoo TV tour. While audiences probably didn’t appreciate the quartet from Boston — these same fans are now kicking themselves that they didn’t get there early to hear The Pixies at their best! Although they did break up soon after this tour so maybe it wasn’t meant to be…
2. Foo Fighters Opening For Red Hot Chilli Peppers
What seems like decades ago, the Foo Fighters opened for Red Hot Chilli Peppers on their Californication tour. Um… wow! Two alternative rock legends sharing the same stage? If you were a fan of Alt-Rock you pretty much just needed to see this show and you were good for the year. We even remember the foreshadowing as we watch both of these acts grace the same stage at the Tibetan Freedom Concert in San Francisco — in 1996!
1. Jimi Hendrix Opening For The Monkees
This is the grandaddy of all opening act stories. We have heard this story in so many incarnations and so long we just wish video existed of the event. 60s Teen Pop sensation The Monkees were reportedly huge Jimi Hendrix fans. Yes, THE Jimi Hendrix. They were such big fans that they asked him to open up for them. Lets just say their fan base wasn’t ready for what came next. A cacophony of sound and vision and – just utter amazingness. There were boos, walkouts, and angry parents! We can’t even imagine what that would have been like to witness.
So what is the moral of the story concert fans? It is probably worth it to put up with hundreds of bad opening acts just for the chance to see one that blows you away. The easiest way to deal with a bad opening act is to bring your earplugs or to go out and get a beverage of choice in the lobby. Musicians! Use it as an opportunity to learn, what are they doing RIGHT, what are they doing WRONG! Critiquing leads to learning. And if you see a Jimi Hendrix opening for you don’t be on the wrong side of history and boo him! Always keep an open mind
-LAMA Staff
Support Record Store Day – April 21!
We know, we know, you love your iPods, flash drives, and MP3s. However – there used to be a simpler time when you would walk down to your local record store and pick out the newest CD, LP, or cassette tape. It is hard to believe just about 10 years ago we were paying full retail price for CDs at the local Tower Records. Now there isn’t even a Tower Records to visit! However, there are tons of local independent record stores still carrying on the tradition of selling physical format products.
The original idea for Record Store Day was conceived by Chris Brown, and was founded in 2007 by Eric Levin, Michael Kurtz, Carrie Colliton, Amy Dorfman, Don Van Cleave and Brian Poehner as a celebration of the unique culture surrounding over 700 independently owned record stores in the USA, and hundreds of similar stores internationally. Thousands of bands and labels have started participating and now print up special exclusive “Record Store Day” merchandise that is often free just by showing up to the store! If you want to see the best offerings from last year check out this Rolling Stone pictorial here.
LAMA students! These fine Pasadena stores below will be participating on April 21st! Get there early and get your gear and for more info go to the official Record Store Day website.
-LAMA Staff
| Canterbury Records | 1.8 mi. | Pasadena, CA | VISIT WEBSITE |
| Permanent Records LA | 2.2 mi. | Los Angeles, CA | VISIT WEBSITE |
| Penny Lane Records | 2.8 mi. | Pasadena, CA | VISIT WEBSITE |
| A Dark Philosophy Records | 3.7 mi. | Los Angeles, CA | VISIT WEBSITE |
| Poobah Records | 3.9 mi. | Pasadena, CA |
Get Your Summer Music Learning On!
Warm weather, trips to the beach, hiking outdoors… While summer is a the time for all those things, it’s a great opportunity to polish your musical chops. Prestigious music schools and colleges often offer summer music programs and camps that are open to musicians of all ages and skill levels. Music schools also have more advanced programs for experienced musicians. For the beginner it can be a great way to mingle with music royalty — while at the same time, you’ll get a taste of what day to day life is like at a music college. For the experienced student, a Summer music program can keep you fresh! Nothing would be worse than forgetting what you learned because of too much fun in the sun!
At LA Music Academy’s Summer Program, students write an original song, play in Ensemble Workshops, record, see their instructors performing daily, and much more. As with all programs at the Academy, the small, friendly environment and personal attention combined with daily playing/singing gives the student the most focused style-specific musical training possible in one week. LAMA is currently taking admission submissions now so what are you waiting for? Sign up here .
Guitarists and bassists must possess basic tablature reading skills. Placement evaluations will be held after orientation on the first day. Most students are teens and adults, but children as young as 9 are welcome.
Look for the info about summer music camps on music college websites, like LA Music Academy’s Third Annual Drummers Reality Camp. You may remember the DRC camp from the first two years, which featured some of the top drummers in the world. Taking place June 27th-30th, 2012 #DRC is brought to you by Drum Channel, Guitar Center, and LA Music Academy College of Music. Here you’ll have a chance to hang with and learn from the best drummers on the planet! The 2012 lineup includes Neil Peart, Doane Perry, Jim Keltner, Gil Sharone, Marco Minneman, Ralph Humphrey, Joe Porcaro, Tony Inzalaco, Gary Ferguson, and Uli Frost!
Just because admission requirements for the camp are open to more people doesn’t mean experienced musicians shouldn’t take part as well. In fact some of LAMA’s best students will be sitting front row – who wouldn’t want to hear awesome stories and insight from Rush’s Neil Peart?! For more info on DRC visit the official website. We’ll see you in June!
SO! Don’t fall prey to the summer slack off that some musicians do. You don’t have to ditch the beach and relaxation, but keep sharp and sign up for a summer music experience of some kind!
-LAMA Staff
We ♥ Music.
A picture is worth a thousand words:
(via http://bit.ly/JamN0f)
-LAMA Staff
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