Poetry and Musical Improvisation

“A Cena do Ódio” (The Scene of Hatred), written by Almada Negreiros, gave birth to a meeting between improvised music and declamation, in the beautiful city of Peniche.
The text was divided in several sections which provided some guidelines for improvisation. It was a great pleasure for me to be part of this project – PREC (Projecto Ressonante Experimental Criativo)- which stands for (something like) Creative Experimental Resonant Project.

This concert also served as a promotion of the upcoming MIA 2011 (improvised music encounters) in the nearby village of Atouguia da Baleia, a festival that I had the honour of participating in its first edition, last year, having then posted some videos from it here and here.

Thank you to all these wonderful friend-musicians who invited me for this performance:

Paulo Ramos: declamation
Paulo Chagas: flute, oboe and alto sax
Fernando Simões: trombone
Paulo Duarte: guitar
João Pedro Viegas: clarinet and bass clarinet

Excerpt from the show:

Inteview on Billy-News

An inteview with me, about the recent concert with Émasfoi-se, a band from Coimbra from 20 years ago.
The site is a blog focusing on the Portuguese Punk scene. Although Émasfoi-se wasn’t exactly “Punk”, there were many references and sometimes parodies which included Punk.

(All content is in Portuguese Language)

Concert with Émasfoi-se

From my early years as a musician in a band, “Émasfoi-se” was one of the best bands I took part in, certainly the funniest, combining energetic concerts with stage performances. Musically, it was a bit of everything: a lot of punk mixed with folklore, kitsch, metal and many stolen references, often thrown in with nonsense. This band is still regarded as one of the most creative of that era of the then so-called “música moderna portuguesa”, in the late 80’s/early 90’s. Twenty years later we decided to have a one-off concert at our home city. It was for all of us a great time, to be together on stage and to rediscover on rehearsals how on earth we came up with that music!

New (old) transcriptions added!

Hello everyone and happy new belated 2011!

I added the pdf files for Tempus Fugit, Heart of the Sunrise, Siberian Khatru and In the Presence of.

Just click on the links and you will be directed to the original post, now updated with the respective files.

Thank you!

Miguel

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

Healthy blog!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

Featured image

A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 8,600 times in 2010. That’s about 21 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 19 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 47 posts. There were 3 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 7mb.

The busiest day of the year was November 12th with 97 views. The most popular post that day was About me.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were youtube.com, talkbass.com, en.wordpress.com, bossarea.com, and rickresource.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for miguelbass, miguel bass, miguelbass.com, miguel falcao, and miguel falcão.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

About me July 2009

2

FAQ #2 – How do I get my bass sound February 2010
9 comments

3

FAQ October 2009

4

Suggestions July 2009
17 comments

5

Email September 2009
1 comment

Merry Christmas from Miguel

These are my wishes of Merry Christmas for all of you visiting my music.
May the Music be with you always!
Miguel

Practice Versus Perfect

This is an original song I made over the last weeks that I would like to share with you. Hope you enjoy. Thanks for sticking around! Miguel

The idea started while trying to make another (yet unfinished) song. I thought it was getting too complicated and took on some accidental playing on my guitar. I found the riff ok and thought it could be the base for something simpler where I could work out an arrangement with all instruments, as to prepare myself for finishing the first song.
Anyway ideas started flowing and it ended up a bit more extended than I initially wanted. The basslines (intro and pre and post solo) were made up a bit after, while I was having fun experimenting with a demo of the Ampeg SVX plugin.

Then the drums – I wanted to find something that would make it sound simple (in spite of having to deal with some odd meter – a blend of 7/8 with 4/4) – and anyway, something I would be able to play by myself. Then the middle sections came about while I was inspired to write some lyrics.

The choral section is a four-part harmony (2 tracks for each voice) that starts – intentionally – very “Bulgarian” and ends up a bit more CS&N (that’s a nice combination :) as to make a passage to the acoustic guitar section and the main poem that I wrote with my dad’s old Ramirez – still sounds incredible. Some more arrangements were made by then, especially the double-bass parts.

Finally the second harmony part, probably the most difficult bit, because my idea was to link to the finale that was already made. Again a four-part harmony but a different one, that finally melts with the kind of repetitions towards the end. The bass solo was the last thing to be thought of.

Well that’s part of my memory description for this song. Most important is that it’s ready now and I can present it to you!
Thanks for watching!

Miguel

September Gurls

Perhaps my favourite Michael Steele bassline, but there are many… This was one that I started playing bass with, back in the days I bought the album in ’86 and I got my first bass on the following year. What strikes me the most about this bassline are the subtle passages on chord transitions, which are so good taste, very discrete and make the whole song flow. Listening carefully to Michael’s playing here, I can guess that she did the whole song in one take, for many of the passages here are really thought of “on-the-fly”, as she never repeats the exact same pattern on similar passages. She must have had the song so present that, along with her abilities, was able to let herself go with the groove. This bassline is a study on how you can make several great sounding basslines on a simple chord structure, and doing “your thing” without imposing your playing. By the way, Michael definitely wouldn’t need it as the is shining with her voice. September Gurls was written by Alex Chilton in 1974 and covered by The Bangles on the “Different Light” album, from 1986.