Guitar Player Post

I am just packing to travel to Obama’s land, so I am gonna leave here one of the posts which have been released by Guitar Player magazine. This is na old one and talks about Tarja’s tour. You can find the previous posts looking at the whole page. Happy 2009!


TOURING WITH TARJA TURUNEN

I will keep telling about being on tour with Tarja Turunen (ex-Nightwish), aside Mike Terrana (Drums), Doug Wimbish (Bass), Maria Ilmoniemi (keyboards) and Max Lilja (Cello). After the getting process which I mentioned last month, the time had come to prove
That everything was 100% and I would fit the group without any kind of problems.
We usually play at the home using playbacks or along with the original recording. This is pretty important, but this relaxed situation of playing seated on chair and focused is not like
Reality.When you play with other musicians, surprises may show up.


When you play along with a recording, your mistake will not stop the whole process. But when it comes to reality, a huge mistake can make all the other people involved to get lost.
A good way of practicing is playing alone, with no playback (metronome is a good choice!), picturing the other instruments. Try to memorize the rhythms and solos. If possible, play on your get with the effect pedals you are going to use the whol concert. Only by doing this, you ‘ll be really ready. Remember: When it comes about a concert, technical problems, audience distraction, other musicians mistakes and other stuff can get your attention and ruin your pefomance, in case you are not ready.


We had some rehearsals in Monterrey, México, for two days and we did out first concert there. After it was “well-rehearsalled” , the main focus is to keep the focus exclusively on the song. As usual, the first concert was better than the second one. Since in the first concert everything turned out to be fine, the big confidence disturbed on the second one. Getting focused in what you are playing is pretty importante, until when you find the point which you take part in it and it sounds natural.


After Monterrey, we travelled to Cidade do México and Guadalajara. We have already gotten along with the airport’s coffee salesmen due to the quantity of time we went there during the whole thing.



By the way, for those who study guitar to become a professional musical shall be ready to wait at airport and to travel a lot. Musician’s life is, basicly, to wait and to get transported. Since concerts take two hours, the proportion compared to the “stand by” time is pretty big. To travel to Mexico, I left home at 05:00 A.M. and I got in the hotel after midnight – including taxi, van, check-in lines, passport, flight, immigration lines, van, hotel and etc... all that mess to peform just for two hours.

Not mentioning what can happen during the trips!When we were travelling from México to colômbia, after one hour o flight, one of the air plane’s turbine stopped working. Besides getting scared, we were obligated to get back to México and say another “hello” to our friends from the airport coffee.We stayed one more day at that country to take the same flight during the dawn. Nevertheless, after some bizarre sounds and some lights on and down in a weird way, more of the half passenger quit taking that plane. We decided to face the challenge and we went to Colombia, after all, we had a booked concert.


We had also a Nice trip from Fortaleza to Belo Horizonte, in a dawn flight. We did seat close to a couple with 5 twins. That’s it: FIVE! Detail: all of them were crying during the four hours of flight! Unbelivable!