Click here to RSVP to the Facebook Event for this show.

We will be playing as a four-piece for the first time on Friday the 10th of September at The Garden Club.

We have Fuyuko’s Fables opening for us.

We have been rehearsing with Louis Thompson-Munn on keys for a month now and it is sounding fantastic. We’re all really looking forward to playing you our new sound.

Come check it out!

.

.

Related show

• Date: Friday, September 10th 2010
• Time: 9:00pm
• City: Riverblindin Wellington
• Venue: The Garden Club
• Country: NZ
• Admission: $10
• Age restrictions: No minors

I’m sorry if you’re having trouble finding your way around the site, I am currently in the process of re-building the site from scratch right now. I have called in master design Jaap Badlands to do the finishing touches and the new site will be up as soon as possible. So, in the meantime, bear with us and thanks for your patience.

Daniel Simpson Beck

Growing up, music was very much part of my life, but I guess it wasn’t really at the
forefront or an obvious thing to me straight away. My dad’s record collection was what
gave me that first insight into a larger world of music from what I’ve pieced together.
There was usually music playing on the stereo at home and I don’t think it was until my
teenage years when I decided to amble over to the 100+ year old relic of a piano in our
living room to try and place some of the melodies I was hearing. I’ve got a bit of a soft
spot for that piano, even though it’s a semi-tone out of tune and it sounds like a tractor.

I was mostly self taught from when I started in my teens and then I got some lessons from
a jazz pianist out of Newcastle, Australia where I was born and raised. Before then I had
mostly only listened to rock and fusion type music of my dads and popular stuff on the
radio, then I started to get into jazz. By the end of high school I’d wanted to spend some
time in New Zealand which had become a bit of a second home for me growing up with
trips over to see relatives and holiday. I moved to Wellington in late 2006 and have been
studying jazz performance on piano at the New Zealand School of Music. I’ve come
across and had the pleasure of playing with some extremely talented people, chancing my
hand at new styles and writing original material.

On joining Riverblind I’ve found an enjoyment and interest in some challenging original
works and I hope I can bring some equally exciting material to the table. I’m sure I’ll
be nervous as hell at my first outing with the guys…But if I wasn’t I guess there’d be
something wrong.

It’s August 15th, so the day has come to put the price up on the digital downloads of Hour Of The Wolf. You can now download the album for $8USD or for $1USD per track. You can still pay us whatever price you want, just that the figure has to be at least $1 per track.

But wait there’s more!

One more track in fact. If you download the album you will also get a bonus 9th track for your hard earned $8. Or you can download the bonus track by itself for $1.

Pian Xin Ze An revisited.

The bonus track is called Pian Xin Ze An – Zen. It is an extended version of the opening track of the Mind Estate EP from 2007. We recorded it during the Hour Of the Wolf sessions, so this version has Stefan on drums instead of Tim who you hear on the original version. It has a different bass line in the middle section, a different tempo and a completely new section near the end. And the feel is quite different with Stefan on the drums. We hope you enjoy the changes as much as we do.

And as with all of our recordings, you can listen to Pian Xin Ze An – Zen in it’s entirety on bandcamp. In fact, click play here and you can listen to it now.

Oh and I hope you like the plasma effect on the player. Neat yeah?

Stay tuned for more surprises!

To successfully collaborate on anything requires good relationship skills. And the deeper you get into your art, the more important relationship becomes. Art is often about dragging the worst aspects of ourselves into the open and exposing them. This is a very vulnerable state to be in. As a collaborator you must be careful in how you relate to your cohorts. Here are some tips on how to make your polygamous relationship work in your bands and projects.

Think Win/Win

The collaborative process involves countless mutual agreements and group decisions. In order to make them work with everyone involved, all the players must be thinking Win/Win.  Otherwise, someone is going to lose. That inevitably leads to frustration and resentment.

Win/Win means that all parties look for a solution to a problem that benefits all parties.This is far more effective than the more common approach of Win/Lose where one person gains an advantage over others. The Win/Win approach takes integrity, maturity and a mentality that believes it is possible for everyone to benefit equally. It takes trust that has to be developed over time and with care. It takes courage and consideration.

When a member of Riverblind brings a musical idea to the rest of the group he exposes himself to the possibility of ridicule and humiliation. Releasing new ideas out onto the world is a difficult and vulnerable process for an artist. But we are able to express new ideas to each other because we have taken the time to nurture an environment of trust. In this environment we understand that everyone has the same principles behind their actions. The principle that the music must be served and not the ego. The principle that it doesn’t matter who wrote something as long as the song is made as rightly as it can be. But we also recognise the principle that what is “right” for one person may not be “right” for another. It is these creative differences that require the most trust and maturity. It is these moments that require courage and consideration to find a solution to a disagreement that becomes an agreement of benefit to all.

What does it mean to benefit everyone?

Everyone benefits when the results lie within everyone’s principles. If you all share the same principles – that the song be served rather than the individual for example – then you can all clearly see when the outcome best serves the principles. Then you can work together to achieve a goal that you all share.

It is possible to make agreements that benefit everyone when you have the emotional maturity to put aside your ego, your drive to be recognised, your desire for attention. You must be humble and realise that the best outcome is not the one that benefits you the most, but the one that benefits everyone equally.

How you can tackle your next difficult agreement:

1. Shared Principles

Start by thinking about the reasons why your project exists. If it is a band, think about the reasons why you are a musician in the first place. Are you here to make great music? Or are you here to attract women? Or are you here to just have fun with some mates on stage? Discuss this with the other members of the unit. Are you all in it for the same reasons? If not, then you have a problem on your hands that needs to be dealt with before you can even hope to collaborate effectively. The solution to this kind of problem is a whole other blog posting, so I hope you’re not in this situation. But if you can all agree on the reason why the band exists then move on to step two.

2. Listen

When you collaborate make sure you listen to everyone very carefully before you speak. When someone presents an idea, listen and really try and understand what they are trying to express before you start to respond. If you don’t understand them then ask for clarification – don’t jump to conclusions! Make sure you really understand where they are coming from before you do anything else.

3. Think before speaking

Once you have understood their idea and position the next step is to think. Not to respond, but to think about your response. This gives your emotional maturity enough time to catch up with your impulsive ego and put it in its proper place. Think about what the idea means to the other person and think about what it means in terms of the principles your group strives for. Then think about how you can best express what it is you have to say about the idea.

4. Communicate clearly

When you express your point of view, express it as clearly and effectively as you can. To do this you have to think about it first (see step 3!). Use small words and short sentences. Not because your band members are too stupid to understand you, but because we all understand things more quickly and effectively when the communication is simple.

5. Form an agreement that benefits everyone

The final step is to make an agreement that puts principles first and leaves your ego at the door. Use your integrity, emotional maturity, courage and consideration to come up with a solution that lets everyone win.

Follow-up

After an agreement is implemented, you and your group need to examine its consequences. Do the results provide the mutual benefit that you all sought? Do the results reflect the principles you are all striving for? If the results fall short, then you need to learn from the mistake and find a new, better solution.

In song-writing, this whole process happens very quickly and repetitively. And there are many failures. It is more common for an idea to fall short of what everyone is after than otherwise. But you must persevere. Don’t give up and just use an idea when it benefits yourself and not others. Likewise, don’t settle on something that you cannot agree with. Come up with a better idea that benefits everyone and serves the principles that you work by. In the long term you will see the difference that this care and consideration makes. Trust grows and ideas flow more freely. Mutual solutions to problems are more easily worked out and benefit the group to an even higher degree than before. The music improves because it is being driven upon one path by a unit working together rather than being run off the road by self-serving individuals.

How well do your collaborative efforts function?

Do you struggle to come to agreements?

Or have you got the emotional maturity to make your polygamous relationship work for everyone?

If you want to learn more about the Win/Win strategy then I suggest you read Stephen Covey‘s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Right now Riverblind is in a writing phase. It has been a year since we released a record and it will be another year before we are likely to release another one. We are smack bang in the middle of a serious writing phase. This is a time to focus on Process rather than Product. Anything goes during this stage, outlandish ideas are welcome – even if ultimately we decide to reject them.

Having said that, we are “finishing” songs all the time. We want to play any new song we can at gigs so we decide on when a song is finished enough to gig. But this almost never means the writing process has actually ended for the song. We are constantly tweaking material right up until we record. And then with some songs we even continue to change them after they have been recorded.

So, the Process never really ends. Riverblind is a laboratory within which we experiment and invent new sound art. And we continually adapt the sounds as we evolve as people. Every new sound we make exists because our collective sub-conscious demanded that it be created. And every song that we finish is open to be changed because our minds evolve and demand that our creations change too. Put simply: we are expressing ourselves and our expression changes as we change.

Sometimes songs die and don’t get played again. Usually we explain this as us being no longer satisfied with them. We say that we don’t like the song anymore. But I think it is more a case of our sub-conscious moving too far from the song for us to even want to re-write the material. Instead we just leave it behind and start new songs. It has lost its meaning for us. Or sometimes old songs do have some connection left, but we have to change them in a major way to be properly connected to them again.

This happened with Pian Xin Ze An, the opening track of our 2007 EP Mind Estate. The song had a very certain feel and structure for years – until all of a sudden it had to change. Now, the song is longer and has a different feel than the recording on Mind Estate. Different enough, we decided, to record it again. So we did. While we were recording Hour Of The Wolf we used the opportunity to get a recording of the new version of Pian Xin Ze An. We’ve had the recording floating around ever since. We do intend on releasing it one day, but I cannot tell you when that will be.

It goes on to mention that Japanese people tend to keep to themselves in public. They don’t make eye contact and elevators are an intense experience for a westerner. Apparently the majority of the population who use social networking sites use a fake name and a photograph of someone else. So if conversation and physical interaction are being replaced by fiber-optics, where does that leave live music? Will it die and be replaced by virtual jams and broadcast shows? Well, I don’t think so.

One of the beautiful things about music is that you can communicate a sensation or an emotion without having to give away the context. You could be communicating the frustration of losing a job or an argument with a friend. The sadness of a love dissolved or a pet lost. Even the joy when you lose a tooth only to find some money under your pillow in the morning. The reason for this frustration, sadness or elation isn’t important and with the language barrier separating cultures, deciphering the lyrics is a whole lot more difficult.

To truly get a sense of what someone is communicating (whether they intend to or not) you must be in their space. You must see them live. The mediums of recorded sound and motion picture only communicate two elements. It’s pretty obvious to me that these two elements are only a part of the whole experience and we as humans communicate things through means that A) we can’t convert to a frozen medium and B) we don’t understand. I don’t particularly want to understand these things either because if you analyse them too much, I think they will lose their magic.

It has been mentioned to me by several of my music teachers and visiting touring soloists over the years that some kind of neurological connection happens when you watch a great player live that helps you improve. Only part of this gets through when you hear a recording or watch them on youtube. This just convinces me even more about the power of live performance and interaction. How many times have you heard people say ‘Their CD is ok but they’re way better live’? Seems like a silly statement to me, unless you’re dealing with some less than savory musicians who have been quantized, auto-tuned and sound-replaced to the point that they are un-recognisable! (Sorry Nickleback fans, but they fall into this category for me! No wait. Their CDs are terrible too…)

This feels like it’s going to get into a big rant about quantum particles and the effect of our minds on our surroundings, but lets leave that for another midnight ‘post inspiring gig blog’. (Allen Vizzutti with the Rodger Fox band for anyone interested!)

Night all.

Dave

(Riverblind will be hitting you south islanders in September, confirmed! Details to come.)

Shoki Kamishima 1984-2010

Today, as I was practicing a new song, I realised that key sections of the bass part only existed because of a young Japanese bassist named Shoki Kamishima. Tragically, Shoki died last month at the age of 25.

I had only met him once at a gig in 2008 when he was still playing for Cripple Mr Onion. I watched the band play after opening for them with Riverblind. I was fixated on Shoki’s hands the whole set. I was particularly interested in how he was using finger tapping because it sounded amazing.

He would tap three-note chords with his right hand while playing a bass line with his left. I had previously heard recordings of other players tapping chords on bass, but I’d never seen anyone do it live and in a context where it inspired me to do it myself. When I got home that night I tried to do similar things to what Shoki had played. I found it quite hard but managed to stumble through the basics. Since then I have worked the technique into several Riverblind songs including the end section of Unsettled Scenes. That bass line and others simply wouldn’t have existed had I not seen Shoki play that night two years ago.

Rest in peace Shoki Kamishima, I met you only once, but your inspiration has helped me evolve as a player and I thank you sincerely for that.

Daniel Simpson Beck

I recently finished a paper at the NZSM about Jazz Rock Fusion, who was involved and how it developed. The question “is Jazz Rock Jazz?” or “is Jazz Rock Rock?”

Erich Fromm, a psychotherapist who was active around the 1920s and 30s listed eight basic human needs that we require in order to be balanced. One of which is a frame of orientation; “we need to understand the world and our place in it.” The separation of musical sounds into categories is an example of the human need for orientation. We know what we like and we need a simple way of defining it.

Sound is sound. When you take an overview of all the music in the world and its importance to the culture (or cultures in this case) that create and perform it, then each individual genre loses its superiority over the others. We so often put western classical music on a pedestal above the rest. It’s performed to an audience who are silent. It is performed in large, extravagant, purpose built concert halls. The musicians and audience are dressed up for the occasion. I’m not going to bag western art music for a moment because it is a magnificent thing, but the attitude and historical, social and financial context has placed it somewhere separate.

Jazz has been separated in a similar way but the time it took to develop was like the development of western classical on fast forward. Major developments were evident over ten years that would have taken a hundred or more in the classical world. People were so attached to Jazz as an entity that every time someone did something new, there was a large proportion of the listening population questioning whether it was Jazz anymore. Jazz-Rock Fusion is a hotly debated genre in terms of what it is. Certain neo-classicist performers and writers would tell you that Jazz finished in the early 1970’s. In fact, when Bebop (which is what the mainstream population would define as Jazz) came around in the 1950’s, some reviewers were saying that wasn’t Jazz. It was too far away from the big bands of the swing era for their liking.

So who gives a shit?

I mean really, there is a planet full of these creative sound artists. They draw inspiration from other sound sources for sure, but they are ultimately a manifestation of every Christmas, Chanukka, broken finger, argument with their mother, new relationship, relationship end, bad hair cut and every other experience their perception has ever perceived. We are all unique in what we do, even if we try and make it the same as something else.

Someone does something musically that moves people. People take the sounds from that move them from that, and with that material as a canvas they paint themselves. The process is then repeated for as long as humans exist. The music has to change over time. It’s evolution.

Genres are just photographs of music in time. It’s a way for us to differentiate between one thing and another and be able to communicate what something is to another without actually playing them the material. You’ve got to think though, what if you took those snapshots at slightly different times? Would our perception of music historically be much different? Would it alter how music sounds now? I think it would, at least on the mainstream level.

Much of this came about from people asking “what kind of music does Riverblind play?” I can explain that it’s a mish-mash of everything we like, but when it comes to a press release or a website selling our music, we need a genre label. I hate this. I play sounds that I like, regardless of their origin. I suppose our instrumentation is that of a rock band. Our harmony is heavily Jazz influenced, and my singing is hardly either of those genres. What do we sound like to you?