E-Tap report 2005

Reports of E-Tap 2005

The tap-guitar Night , Arts-O-Bases, Brussels, July, 2005.

Concerts given by:
- Karo Trio with Daniel Schell ( tiptar 'Vassilewsky TM', 12 c in fourths-fourths ), Oli Verschueren (Belgrado in fourths-fourths) Carlo Strazzante (tabla).Bupalika and other pieces by Daniel Schell
- Adam Fulara plays standards as Blue Bossa, Impressions and Autumn Leaves with drummer Laurent Mercier.

- Randy Strom plays and sings wonderful jazz standards.
- Dave Bowmer plays a medley of excerpts from a piece he composed for a contemporary dance performance about Picasso, called Therebentin.
The audience is impressed. Several agents are present and want to organise tours for the performers.

A report of the European Tap Guitar Seminar

Students and teachers at E-tap 2005.

Adam Fulara		Wolfgang Daiss - Mathias Sorof
Wolfgang Daiss		E-Tap Team
Kuno Wagner		Randy Strom
Daniel Schell		Jamming with Randy Strom , Purbayan Chatterjee (sitar), Manu Hermia (sax)
Randy Strom		Everbody at the pizzeria
Afternoon Master Classes		Wolfgang Daiss

The pedagogy at E-Tap 05

The pedagogy at E-tap is usually based on two different organisations. The morning classes emphasize on the main topics for a 7 days period. The afternoon classes, on the contrary, offer a variety of topics and practices. Please read the report of Mathias Sorof, hereunder for a detailed description.

I just emphasize shortly on two important subjects this year

Randy Strom on chord progression. I think that Randy is really one of the most accomplished players today in jazz. he has a great experience of singing and entertaining, and his harmonic technique on the tap-guitar is really interesting. therefore we have decided, with his agreement, to reproduce here a chart of a blues with his own voicings and fingerings.

Daniel Schell: The topic this year was 'repeating notes'.

A report on E-Tap 05

by Mathias Sorof, september 2005

The E-Tap 2005 has been an successful event again, even when the number of participants has been smaller. An opportunity for the students to have much time to work and talk very closely with the teachers, to discuss and talk about individual interests and topics. The E-Tap-Seminar , which takes one week is integrated into the "académie international d`été de Wallonie - Libramont/Neufchateau" . This is very interesting, cause the atmosphere is unique and an interdisciplinary exchange beetween different musicians and styles is possible. Concerts and sessions every evening, audience and possibilities to perform gives an attractive environment.

So here some details of the whole put together like thumbnails

Classes: The number of participants allowed to create two classes
1. Beginner/Intermediate: Mark Butler, David Bowmer, Claudio Delavalle, Alexandre Tarabichi
2. Advanced: Adam Fulara, Olivier Verschueren, Mathias Sorof

Teachers

Randy Strom from California, a great player, very kind guy and a good friend now, showed in his lessons some secrets of his way of playing jazz. Randy is one of the best walking-bass specialists anyway and he has a rich musically in jazz-improvisation. For his every-day lessons Randy has choosed the topics:
1. Walking-Bass-Technique and
2. Chord-Progressions.
So the showed things, that he practise several years every weekend live on stage in California by playing individual arrangements of jazz-standards, sometimes while accompaning himself as a singer.

Kuno Wagner from Germany was well prepared for the seminar with special contents of minimal music. In his topics he mixed generally musical contents with the tapping contents:
1. Clapping Music of Steve Reich
2. Polyrhythms on tapping solo and ensemble
3. Electric Counterpoint of Steve Reich

The participants practised rhythmically loops by hand clapping and afterwards the joined together by playing same things by small tapping licks. The first day the rhythm is been easy than the level ascends day by day. So everybody got much new experiences and much new things to think about.

Daniel Schell with topics:
1. Sight reading & Counting-Techniques
2. Repeating-Notes ( he introduced his new chapter "Repeating the Fingers" of his book "My Space")
With "Repeating Notes" he choosed the main emphasis of his lesson contents. A very important chapter of the tapping-technique anyway. He talked about his approach to play repeatings 2, 3 or 4 times on a string or on a fret & a very significant topic for tappers of all levels. We discussed a practised his ideas very particularly.

Masterclasses

Adam Fulara had choosen a general topic of music-theory for his master class. He initiated a discussion about musical energy in improvisation. He talked about the difference between scales and intervals, which are closed harmonic structure and that scales and intervals, which have a strong tension. He called one closed side BLACK and the tensioned side RED, and constructed an theoretical approach to change these colours while improvising. It is some kind of similar to Ramon Rickers theory of using (pentatonic)-scales from "Inside to Outside".

In my masterclass I talked about the possibilities of expression on tap-guitar , which are enormous . Tapping can be a very dynamical technique, if you put your right interest on plugging the strings dynamically. So there you can have nearly all possibilities of pianistic thinking, gathered with the quality of the guitar. The potential of different expressive possibilities should not be forgot.

Events

Teachers Concert:

First event has been the teachers concert on Saturday-Evening. The tradition of the "Academie d`été"ask for a teacher's concert on one evening of the week. So every evening there are two concerts of different styles, performed by the teachers: for example: one evening flamenco dance and Hungarian music. So Saturday the second part has been the "Tap-Concert".
Kuno Wagner performed the composition "Electric Counterpoint" of Steve Reich with a great sound while using liverecording-technology perfectly.
Adam Fulara, with a warm tone and Wolfgang Daiss, with instant drive played some virtuoso jazz- standards.
I played two of my compositions, gently accompanied by the great Ramon "El Cispa" on Cajon.
Randy Strom showed his amazing technique and enjoyed us with some tunes by playing and improvising masterly and singing very gently .
Daniel Schnell performed in the first part of this evening-concert by playing Indian music with this trio "Karo".

Publicity Concerts

Randy Strom and Adam Fulara gave a concert on Tuesday evening at the Jazz Seminar Concerts in Libramont. The Jazz Seminar in Libramont is also a part of the "academie d`été". Probably it could be interesting for the future of E-Tap to organise lessons and demonstrations in Libramont too, trying to fill more people with enthusiasm for tap-guitar.

On Tuesday early in the evening it has been my pleasure to give a solo-concert in front of the seminar lodge, open air with best weather, for to show the tap-guitar to more members of the académie. Daniel joined with his mini-marshall-accu-amp and played the theme of "All of me" . Really a hot sound !

Session Concert

A great musical event happened on Wednesday after the Students Concert - with Randy Strom (tap-guitar), Sandip Banerjee(tablas), Purbayan Chatterjee (sitar) and others , who made the crowd crazy with amazing virtuosity and dancing after a very short time. Great feeling of jam-session and great thing to listen too, not usual for every jam..

Students Concert

The tap-student's contribution has been one little piece per group. The first group with Mark Butler, Dave Bowmer, Claudio Delavalle and a young female violinist Delphine Blaise played a composition of Kuno Wagner with a real good sound. Second group with Olivier Verschueren, Adam Fulara together with the same young female violinist performed a short funky exercise.

During all working on tapping there has been time enough for holiday feeling. We had the great luck of real nice summerweather the whole week , not usual for the summer in the Ardennes. So we went three time by car to Daniel's hut in the wood, to take a bath in the great pond beside the hut and to drink one or two beers. Pure romantic !

I think, that next year more people will come to Neufchateau, cause there will be contents for 6-string-guitar-tappers and bass-players, who want to learn basics of tapping, that they can integrate into her playing. I think , the next E-Tap-2006 will have a broader canon of topics , which could be interesting not only for only-tappers. This opportunity to learn relaxed from mastertappers in an one-week-seminar is worlwide unique and really advisable. Here you can get knowledge from the mastertappers, and that's quite interesting for tappers and "regular" guitarists/bassplayers - however.

Last but not least, a very important thing is lodging and food. For a very cheap price you sleep in a single room, not comfortable like a Hilton-Hotel , but acceptable. The food is great, a big breakfast and 2 warm meals per day at lunch and dinner. That's great ! and everything tastes very well. The price for lodging and food this year has been 168 , that's really not expensive.

Fazit

This seminar has been very interesting, but different than last year. We had the time to work, to talk in detail and particularly about the topics, that I described under "Teachers" above. Especially for me this week had the spice of a symposium. So I had much time to discuss with Adam , Daniel, Kuno, Randy and Wolfgang about many theoretical and practical topics. But I really missed my friend Andre Pelat, who has been cancelled as teacher in reason of the small number of participants. But this is only this year, next year will be more , I am sure. It's a real good place with enough space to recognise new friends. Last year I won all the other participants as friends - and this year I won a wonderful new friend , the legendary Randy Strom from California, one of the early tappers. Great !

Thanks

I will say "thank you" to Daniel for his engagement in organising this event, Claudia for her kind support beside and her help in little and bigger daily questions, Claudio Delavalle for professional foto-shooting and technical support, Olivier Verschueren for technical support.

A report of E-Tap 05 by Mathias Sorof , member of the E-Tap Network

Trade marks
ADG is a trade mark of Austin Douglas Guitars USA. Belgrado is a tm of Belgrado Belgium. Megatar is a Trade Mark of Megatar USA. Stick is a trade mark of Stick Enterprises USA.

Last Modified : April 2006