There are days when you don’t feel like writing, isn’t it? This is one of those days, or has been, I think, it’s 9:46 PM here. This was until I received a message from my StumbleUpon buddy Corey Koehler who pointed me to one his latest podcast. I must say that it was enough to start listening one of the songs there and everything changed, I think this song turned my happiness hormones on, I don’t know (I’ve heard this on the radio today and stayed in my mynd, so don’t blame me, OK?).

So, just a short post that has not that much with the guitar:

• Today I found myself driving in parallel with a brand new no-top red Ferrari! Damn! It is not like the first time I see one in Romania, just that it is the first time I see one IN MY CITY, BRAND NEW and HALF A METER AWAY from me. I could have just opened the window and touch it. The driver owns a large company here so he can afford it but he didn’t look to me to be the type to own a Ferrari. Just as an observation: Romania is not a poor country, you can see here a lot of the latest and hottest cars, but we still need to work on our roads so this car is not for our roads. Period. If you come to Romania, better take a 4×4. Damn, but it was beautiful!
• While waiting for my wife today in the car, I surprised myself lowering my car seat, with my sun glasses on and with rock music playing loud. What a great feeling! The song was Bon Jovi’s Dead or alive. Man, I love that acoustic guitar! I think it has to do with those hormones of happiness I was speaking earlier.

And to finish my short post about nothing, here’s the song that started me:Firewind, Falling to pieces! Enjoy!

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Yesterday I was invited to a folkloric show at the main theater here. I am not a big fan of folkloric music, not at all, but because we were invited by one of the artists in the show, who has sung at my wedding, I couldn’t refuse the invitation.

I the beginning I thought it is going to be a boring show for me, since every time I see this kind of music on TV for ex, I change the channel. Man, I was wrong! I can tell you that I really enjoyed the show! And you know why? Because I have decided to make the best of it and I focused my attention on music, artists, instruments and I was amused of all the thoughts running through my head during the concert.

So, a few basic lines first: in Romanian folkloric music there are no guitars. Period. Doh! This “band” had a double bass (we call it contrabass here), 9 violins, 1 flute, 3 accordions and one cimbalom (is this the word?) plus one bandleader. Imagine the fact that the artists that are really famous here in Romania are also engaged in a collaboration with local theaters, so on stage were some very famous singers that you see on TV everyday (again, if you listen this music). Imagine Johny Cash or Dolly Parton singing in your city every month at the local theater. I don’t think it stands the comparison but you get my point.

Romanian folkloric music usually is a “returning walk”, to call it this way, you end your passages where you start them. You start the passage in C, you walk around, play, sing and, guess what, you go back to the same C! It is a round thing. Also, songs don’t always have choruses, in many cases, songs are made up by lyrics parts followed by a repetitive theme played on violins. And again, the themes are “round” and come back to the starting point.

So, because I am not a fan of this style, I only like about 2 singers, I tried to focus on something else.
And there the show became interesting:

Double bass player – because the double bass was clearly distinguishing from the rest of the instruments, I could easily follow it’s music. I was surprised to recognize in what that guy was playing some …ROCK AND ROLL FORMULAS!!! A bit altered cause Romanian folkloric music doesn’t follow the same chords progressions but it was fun to listen. Songs are mostly 4/4 in C or G major so it fits fine! The only observation was that in folkloric double bass progressions, this “rock and roll” progressions were altered by very interesting chromatic passages. I could also compare this double bass music to a jazz bass music due to the “walking bass” style, the guy never stayed on the same note and only used his bow to produce short notes, not as in cello playing (as less as I know about cello playing, I think of Apocalyptica and I have a reference point!)

Violins – very interesting, considering that I know one of the players as a VERY good player, he played at my wedding and I met him and the singer that invited us many times starting that moment and we became good acquaintances. The singer is very well seen here on this market of wedding singers. He proposed me at one time to start rehearsing with them to join them for playing at weddings, but as much as I was honored by the fact that he asked me, I politely refused, explained him I love my rock music and I love to play rock, pop and everything related to these styles but wedding music is not my “cup of tea”.

So, again about violins, I liked the way they synchronized (and they were 9!) and I loved some passages where some of the violins played the third of the rest, which I didn’t know it is used in this kind of music, but it gave a great effect!

Flute…nothing to say about him, no solo passages, no nothing, so I know he was there but I let him be, no particular interest there.

Well, the guy with the cimbalom (again, is there such word, right?!!). He is, along with the double bass player, the rhythmic section of the band and man, what rhythm he has!! I still wonder how he manages to hit those strings with his sticks. The funny part was that the women lead singers, after receiving flowers, always put them on his cimbalom, on one side. He always looked a bit intrigued: hey, WTF are you doing, hey, can’t you see I need those strings there?!! Damn, woman!! That made me think of a local expression used when you want to cover up a particular situation: “to put the handkerchief on the cimbalom”. I think I understand better now!!

Singers – here it was a very interesting situation. As in any style, there are singers and there are ENTERTAINERS! This last group were always in close contact with the public. I admired the fact that, some of them, for ex, after like 30 years in professional singing, were so sure of themselves and were practically ruling the scene! They were the master of the scene, feeling very secure and this transmitted a good feeling to the audience!

These ENTERTAINERS, of course, had the biggest success, the public kept on clapping and applauding at the end, asking for an other one. I admired them being so secure on stage, proving they know how to handle the crowd (of course, a very targeted public – beside myself).

I also watched the bandleader during the show: there were a couple of singers that were new or had not that much experience and I watched how the band leader stayed close to them, communicating to them, signaling to the band more difficult moments, as in free measures where everything must be “felt” by the band considering the performance of the singer. And then, I watched the bandleader totally relaxing when very experienced singers came on stage, the band leader started to smile, joking with them, and even left the stage for a few moments when one of those artists was singing. It was a proof of confidence and trust, because, anyway, after so much experience everything works by itself in such cases!

I have listen to the voice of the singers: there were 2 that I didn’t hear well, compared to the others. I asked myself if this is a matter of vocal technique or frequencies in their voices against the microphone frequency response. They were both males, one was with less experience, and I have immediately thought about vocal emissions, not being able to project the sound to where he should. But I also ask myself if it wasn’t about frequencies that were not distinguished from the rest of the band.

Anyway, most of the artists there, given his music style, are also wedding musicians. I remember joking with my wife about the cimbalom and double bass players going to a wedding: man, I am no taking this guy into my car?!! Hey, take the damn box out of my car, I have no room anymore!!

After the show we went to a restaurant with Romanian specific, to eat something, cause we were all hungry after the show. Me and my wife also invited my parents in law to this show and to the restaurant so we picked this Romanian specific restaurant so they feel comfortable there. What do you know!? The restaurant is owned by one of the artists in the show and she came after the show to sing in her own restaurant, as it seems she does once a week to keep it successful. So we couldn’t escape it there either!

But after a bottle of wine, everything was fine!

Looking back I consider this a very pleasant musical experience that I recommend to all of you. Listening to an other musical style was a refreshing thing, making me think more of my guitar playing and rock music!

By the way, I was telling you I only like about 2 Romanian folkloric singers. I want to point you here to the greatest Romanian folkloric singer, Maria Tanase. She does not live anymore but her musical talent, in my opinion wasn’t yet equaled by anyone. Here’s a couple of songs that are representative for her music. The first one is kind of a slow curse, “Who loves and leaves, may God give him punishment…”

See also a French version of the same song. She has a record in French, I think.

An other one here:

And also this one, in French, I don’t have anything in English but it may help a bit to catch the spirit.

Enjoy!

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These days I have been away but now I am back to my computer, so, I will try to catch up a bit with everything that happened while I was away.

I took a short 3 days holiday with my wife and a couple of good friends and we headed for a well known resort in Romania, called Lacul Rosu (Red Lake). We managed to see in only 3 days, a lot of places and came back with a lot of photos.

I have decided to only put here a few of them, because this is not the subject of this blog, but because a few days ago I have decided to add a new category called Romania, I think it will fit just fine. So, here it is:

Red Lake was formed around 1837 where it used to be a forest and now you can see tree parts coming out of the water, kind of spooky. We rented a boat and sailed to a couple of them, to see for ourselves how they look like!

This is an area where the concentration of people of Hungarian origin is high so every sign there was AT LEAST in 2 languages: Romanian and Hungarian. Plus German, English, French sometimes… Just as an observation, there are tensions born by historical events and by the fact that Hungarian people there, even if living in Romania, don’t speak Romanian well and sometimes, with just a bit of bad will, it is told they don’t want to.

I can say that we were a bit tensioned in that area at first because you could hear Hungarian speakers all around you, in the very heart of Romania, making us feel like we were in an other country, but beside that, I can say that we haven’t had any problem and people were OK even if in some cases we found it a bit difficult to communicate in Romanian, but with a bit of effort on both sides, we went along fine!

In the above picture, my wife is on the left of the picture, the other 2 people are my friends that joined us for this trip. Of course, I was taking pictures.

We traveled to the other side of the country, crossing an invisible historical border, totally changing the accent. My mother in law is from that side of the country so I am a bit used to the accent. We have found a telecabin where we least expected, especially because we couldn’t understand why is it there. We presumed it will serve a hotel that is currently under construction, but for the moment I can’t see the point… But well, it seems to have clients, at least we took a ride…

We have visited a few historic locations.

On our way back we visited a newly launched salt mine. Newly launched(2 days ago) for tourists, cause it was old and not used, anymore, of course. However, very impressive. I felt like in Jules Verne’s Trip to the center of the Earth. People were playing a lot of games there, buying stuff, etc. We played cards waiting for our return bus.

We took a trip to an old and beautiful medieval city, one of the most famous of Romania, from this point of view, Sighisoara. And just for the fans of this kind of stories, believe it or not, historically speaking we have seen the house where Vlad Tepes’s father lived and where Vlad Tepes was born (Vlad Tepes, the historical personality that is the root of Dracula’s story, ruler of Romania’s lower grounds, which almost all the time is identified with Bram Stoker’s Dracula).

Loved the girl speaking on the phone dressed like “old time” people.

Finally, we took a trip to Sibiu, which was the Cultural Capital of Europe in 2007. Sibiu is a beautiful city that worths every minute spent there. It reminds of German cities because there are a lot of German people living there, a community that blends perfectly with Romanian spirit.

It was a demanding trip and I was very tired when I got home, but I must admit, it was a beautiful trip. I didn’t take my guitar this time cause I knew there is no time, in the evening we were all tired so the only thing we wanted to do is hit the sack!

But now I’m back and ready to blog and play the guitar! Yeah!

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Starting today I have decided to start a new category, named Romania. The reason is that we promoted our country (we as in politicians, media people, etc) in a bad way.

You see, Romania has always been seen from outside as a poor country in need. While I don’t argue that there are areas where we still need time to reach a certain level of development, I totally disagree with those showing bad things about Romania just to get economical help of some sort from outside. There are economic programs to support infrastructure development and I totally salute this, but in a positive way, as a helping hand from a friend (country) to another friend (country), not as saviors helping the poor little country that can not save herself in any way. NO!

So, to get to the point, this girl here, Linda Teodosiu is Romanian, established in Germany. Well, her mother is German, her father Romanian. She is currently enrolled in the German show DSDS (“Germany seeks the superstar”) and SHE RULES IT!

Not related to guitars, but to music in general. Don’t you dare to miss this, OK?!

And let me hear you!

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One of the rules of blogging says that after a good traffic spike you need to post good content so your returning visitors read something interesting and come back for more.

Well, this is the theory. In my case I could just not apply this since I needed to leave the city on a long time planned WE holiday in the mountains. So, even if I felt I could have done more to my blog on Saturday morning after the 3587 visits I had on Friday, I had to pack my clothes, take my acoustic guitar and together with my wife and best friends, we headed for the snowy mountains.

I could only say it was beautiful. A warm hotel in the middle of the mountains, cold and clean air, grill at below zero degrees (Celsius that is ) a lot of beer and best friends. What more could you ask for?

Well, in the middle of the night a blizzard suddenly started and we decided to go out for a snow fight, even if the snow stopped us from seeing clearly, while the wind was blowing us away.

(that’s me on the left)

After the snow fight we went to play some pool, drink some wine upstairs and play a bit of guitar. In one word? Fun!

Coming back was not as easy as we were expecting since the snow made the road almost unusable, as you see in the above picture (even if the hotel administration cleared it this very morning), but we made it. And it was fun cause I’ve sung and played the guitar all the way back (of course, it was not me behind the wheel). We came home with our batteries full and eager to go again. Actually, our wives have already proposed an other one 2 months from now. Well, why not?

But until then, back to blogging to reach 5000 visitors per day, right?!!

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