I’ve heard many people in the past tell me that they’ve never been able to sing or just haven’t got the voice for it. The fact is, unless you have certain health issues or problems with your throat which make it impossible to do so,  just about anybody can sing  as most of us are born with the tools we need to to the job.

The difference between those who can sing and those who can’t is merely those who can devote large portions of their lives to practicing, developing and taking care of their voice, and those who can’t – do not.

Before I decided to become a singer, I had a terrible voice and couldn’t sing for Adam. When I started putting the time and effort in and made it my goal to add vocals to my guitar skills, my voice improved and after a few months of practicing, it developed into something I could happily project in front of a live audience and actually get a good response.

But unless you take care of your voice, treat your vocal chords well and keep practicing regularly, things  just don’t stay that way. Just like going down the gym, as soon as you give up exercising and stop taking care of yourself, everything goes down the pan.

So if you’ve just started singing or perhaps you’ve been practicing for a while and are starting to sound o.k,  here’s a few tips that will help you on your way and keep your voice sounding great. I’ll also be mentioning a few things to avoid to ensure you don’t croak like a frog throughout your performance.

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Warm Up

First and most importantly, every singer always needs a good vocal warm up before they sing, whether practicing or getting ready to go on stage, a good warm up is vital. Many new or inexperienced artists risk doing permanent damage to their vocal chords because they either couldn’t be bothered, or are unaware of the importance of doing a warm up before they sing.

It’s simple – your vocal chords are muscles and need to be treated with respect to avoid damage. Damaging them can be extremely painful and even a minor injury to your vocal chords may stop you singing for weeks or months at a time, and in bad cases, may stop you singing altogether.

It’s a common problem and one I’ve spoken about in my Singing Success review. Either through laziness or ignorance, many artists, amateurs and professionals spend years performing without an effective warm up routine.  Sooner or later problems start to appear.

After a prolonged period of time, abuse can cause nodules to form on the vocal chords due to the excessive strain of hammering your voice without properly warming up.

If you were an athlete, you wouldn’t consider running a race without warming up first. You might get away with it for a while but sooner or later you are likely to pull a leg muscle or do permanent damage to your ligaments. The same goes for your throat and vocal chords.

As you develop as a singer, you will find your vocal workload greatly increases as you tackle larger sets and more difficult songs. A larger workload, practiced more often, means you risk serious strain by not preparing yourself properly.

You should spend at least ten minutes warming your voice up before any performance. It should be more like fifteen to twenty minutes, but sometimes you just don’t have the opportunity to do this, so just do as much as you can at the time.

Warm up’s can be pretty embarrassing if done in public and you don’t want to be making all those weird noises when you are setting up your equipment before a gig, so if you’re preparing for a public performance, make sure you get your warm up done in private or somewhere more appropriate beforehand.

Don’t Smoke

A lot of people out there who want to be singers smoke, including myself, and for most people quitting is not easy – quitting for good that is.

Years ago we used to be bombarded with images of pop stars on TV and video smoking all the time, and although the impression of smoking being cool has declined somewhat in the last few years with people being more aware of the dangers of smoking, government health drives, bans on advertising and smoking in public, not only does the addiction for those who are hooked remain, but the image implanted in our heads over the last few decades – of the lifestyles that bad ass rockers and pop superstars lead, still makes many of us think it’s possible to smoke like a trooper and be a great singer at the same time.

Perhaps it is possible to smoke like a trooper and still be a great singer, but that depends on what you call a great singer.

A lot of famous pop/rock stars are considered by the general public to be great singers, but actually, many aren’t quite as good as they may seem.

Many successful artists have relatively limited vocal ranges and tend to stay within the same octave or two throughout their careers.

I’m not saying that having a limited vocal range makes you a bad singer. Even with a very limited range you can be an excellent singer as long as you make the very most of what you have and use your voice to it’s full potential – adding character and expression to your performances .

What I’m saying, is that an artist may create good songs and be very successful, but just because they have a few hit records, doesn’t make them great singers.

If the music you sing only encompasses tracks that stay within a limited vocal range, then you may be able to get away with being a big smoker get a good response without having to limit your intake, but if you want to be a versatile singer and start hitting notes all over the place, then you must keep your throat in top condition and the one habit that will massively limit your abilities is smoking.

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I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter how much Liam Gallagher drinks and smokes the night before a gig, it probably doesn’t make the slightest difference to his singing ability as his songs don’t require a huge amount of skill to perform. All he needs is that raw vocal tone he belts down the mic. In fact for his voice, smoking and taking drugs probably helps.

Rappers are also fortunate in what they can get away with as the style of music doesn’t usually require the artist to have a voice like an angel. Apart from a few choice chorus notes, most rap songs involve spoken rhythmic wordage with a bit of a melody thrown in somewhere in the middle, so again you don’t need a 4 octave range to rap.

But if someone like Mariah Carey went out and smoked a pack of fags the night before a gig, without a doubt she’d have no chance at all of hitting the supreme high notes she performs in many of her songs. As a world class singer, her songs require such a high standard of perfection to perform that nothing less than a voice box in perfect condition will do.

Know Your Limits

I have a reasonable awareness of my limits and know that I can give my throat a certain amount of abuse and still get away with performing to a degree. But if I smoke more than a few cigs in an evening and maybe add a few pints on top, I have hell’s own trouble hitting the killer notes in my set the next day. I can still get away with most of the the easy songs, but as soon as something vocally challenging arises, I’m in trouble.

Even the songs I can get away with are much more of a struggle to perform.

You try singing the last few notes of Muse’s Plug in Baby after a heavy night on the cigs… you won’t stand much of a chance.

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We never realise how difficult a song is to sing, or how good the original singer really is, until you try and perform it yourself.

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Stop

It doesn’t matter how good or bad you are, stop smoking and your voice will improve.

Even if you can’t stop or don’t want to, cut down to one or two a day. This can be done over a period of time and soon you will become conscious that every time you have a cigarette, it will affect your voice – making it harder to hit the notes you strive for every time you practice.

Stopping smoking seriously reduces the chances of developing lung cancer, throat cancer, mouth cancer, gum disease, heart attacks, strokes and emphysema. Keeping on top of your addiction will keep you feeling healthier and help you conquer any vocal challenge that arises.

Save yourself from yellow teeth, smelly breath, premature ageing and countless throat infections, colds and flu you might catch throughout the year. It is well known that cigarettes practically nullify all the vitamin C supplies in your body every time you have a fag. How can your body fight infection under these conditions.

Stopping smoking has countless other health benefits as well as well as saving you a shed load of money, but even more importantly, ditching the cigs will stop you from polluting those around you, including your loved ones and children.

It’s also a sad fact that every cig you have takes you one step closer to death.

If you can’t hack it, get nicotine patches, gum or an electronic cigarette, they are pretty good nowadays.

Alcohol

Alcohol is almost as bad as smoking, so the same goes as above. If you can’t give up, then try to cut down.

Often, drinking and smoking will go together, so if you go out and get drunk, you will probably smoke a whole lot more and increase the damage being done to your throat. Even if you don’t smoke when you are out drinking, the strain you put on your voice, shouting over the local band or dance floor to your mates until three in the morning, won’t help your cause.

The chances are, next day you’ll be so hung over you won’t be able to practice singing. Your voice will be knackered and you’ll have a stinking headache, ultimately reducing the time you can spend practicing, lessening your vocal ability.

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You don’t have to ruin your social life completely, but just tone it down a bit. You often hear singers on TV saying they have to behave themselves when preparing for a performance and have to leave parties early to gig the next day. It’s a drag, but the best singers out there keep the partying to a minimum and save everything they’ve got for a great performance. That’s the real prize, getting a buzz out of your performance, not a few beers and a sore head.

Guitarists might get away with having a bender the night before a gig if they can still hold down a good rhythm or tricky solo, but a singer’s voice is not so forgiving.

Look at the state one of our nation’s favourites, Amy Winehouse used to get herself in when she’d go on stage or live TV after a heavy session the night before. She would try and wing it because she had a gruffy voice anyway, but you could hear it straining and croaking under the stress she was putting it through to hit the notes, rendering her unique, God given voice that led her so successfully to fame, sounding awful.

Sadly, because of her personal problems with drugs and alcohol she would often be intoxicated on stage and she used to regularly embarrass herself in front of huge audiences and national TV, doing herself no favours at all.

Mind you…because of her character it was almost expected and she would pretty much get away with it. Some stars just have the popularity and charisma to get away with anything and in her prime she had great success and didn’t give a damn anyway. So perhaps some people can get away with it, but most of us can’t.

If you want a good strong, clear voice and a great vocal range, cut the alcohol and cigarettes. If you want to yell down the mike like a strangled cat, keep partying.

Hydration – Water

One of the most important rules a  singer should adhere to is to keep fully hydrated at all times. The best drink in the world is simply – water.

If you are one of these people who never drink water on it’s own without some sort of squash or cordial involved, then you need to start right now and get into it. People who don’t drink water often comment that it makes their throat ‘bitty’ and I used to think just the same.

When you start drinking plain water, it can have an effect on your throat and may taste very bland for a couple of days, but very quickly your throat will adapt and that sense of ‘bittiness’ will soon disappear. You will really start to appreciate the simplicity of life’s greatest drink and will notice the benefit that being well hydrated has on your singing. Your body will have all the water it needs to keep it’s organs and muscles working well and efficiently. As well as keeping your vocal chords fully lubricated you will find you have a greater sense of well being, general alertness and more energy than before.

Tea – Coffee – Caffeine.

Coffee and tea are diuretics and both contain caffeine. Caffeine has a negative effect on the vocal chords, dehydrates your throat and stimulates the production of phlegm, especially coffee. Try not to drink either just before you sing. If you do, make it a couple of hours before your session.

Better still, avoid these altogether and drink plenty of  herbal teas or decaffeinated tea.

Many singers advocate drinks such as decaf tea with hot lemon and ginger (not too hot to avoid burning the vocal chords), hot lemon and honey, hot water and lemon etc.

Try some combinations out yourself and see which ones work well for you.

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Green Tea

Green tea is amazing stuff, bursting with antioxidants that help fight illness, ageing and cancer, mentioning just a few of it’s many health benefits. Unfortunately most green teas contain caffeine. However, the caffeine in green tea works in a different way than coffee as the tea also contains tannin and L-theanine which together have a calming affect on the body and allow the caffeine to be absorbed more slowly.

The benefits of drinking green tea greatly outweigh any issues regarding the caffeine content and most green teas contain half the caffeine content of coffee anyway, so I would advise drinking green tea regularly but obviously not just before a gig.

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Avoid fizzy drinks such as cola and energy drinks as they are crammed with caffeine and very addictive. You might get a quick buzz out of them but they will drop you like a stone soon after, leaving you feeling low and lethargic, needing more.

Dairy Products & Chocolate

Dairy products like milk and cheese coat your throat and the mucus membrane of your vocal chords, affecting your voice and making it much harder to sing. Make sure you stay away from them for a few hours before you sing.

Chocolate is another no go. Coating your vocal chords in chocolate before a performance is a bad idea and will close your throat, definitely affecting your ability to sing. Try to avoid until after your set.

Spices & Curry

Spicy foods inflame the vocal tract and will screw up your voice. Avoid

Peanuts & Bitty Foods

Try to avoid bitty foods like nuts or oats before practice or performance. They can easily leave remanence, causing irritation from small pieces left in the throat.

Even after brushing your teeth or swilling your mouth out with water, small remanence can easily remain undetected, finding their way down your throat just when you are in full swing, leaving you hacking for breath in the middle of the song.

Avoid Singing Loudly or For Long Periods of Time

Being a busker means I am often forced to elevate my voice so it can be heard over a busy street for long periods of time. Even when I’ve been training well and busking regularly, playing daily street sessions for at least three or four hours a time, even once you achieve a rock solid vocal ability and think you can sing for as long as you like and as loud as you want, I have often returned home with a strained throat thinking ‘ Oh no ! – I’ve over done it, Again !’.

It could be for a number of reasons …because the background noise of the street was too loud, or the cash was rolling in nicely on a good pitch and I wanted to make the most of it, or because I was having a great day and was getting a real buzz out of performing – pushing my vocals too loud and to their limit. Or it maybe simply because I wanted to get my practice done, and get as many songs out as possible.

When you’re having a great time belting out songs and feeling good about your singing, it’s hard to stop and think ‘Hang on, this is fun but am I doing damage to myself ?’. It’s no different than getting down the gym and overdoing it, pulling a muscle or becoming obsessed with playing the guitar and knackering your tendons from too much shredding.

Enough is Enough

You need to know when enough is enough. Save it for tomorrow, rest your voice and allow yourself to keep singing in the long run, rather than over doing it now, and knackering your voice for the next two months.

Take Regular Breaks When Practicing

Taking a 20 minute break every hour or two will give your voice the chance to rest and recuperate. Regular breaks will ultimately allow you to practice for longer, build stamina and lessen the chance of over straining.

When I’m busking, I find it hard to take a break and stop for 20 minutes, but taking time out to relax, adjust, stretch your neck, back, arm and finger muscles and give the set up a tweak will definitely pay off. If you think you can improve your pitch, move to a new one and start a new case. Relaxing and stretching for a bit will ultimately improve your chances of not sustaining an injury in the long term.

You wouldn’t spend two hours down the gym without resting every now and then and allowing your muscles to recuperate, so why hammer your throat muscles for two hours without a break also ?

Regular Exercise

Being fit and healthy will hugely help your ability to be happy and perform. Cardiovascular exercises like running and swimming will improve your lungs and breathing ability, enabling you to sing better. Frank Sinatra was an avid swimmer and used the breath techniques he gained from swimming to perfect his singing.

Vitamin and Mineral Supplements

Supplements provide the body with nutrients and the minerals it needs to have a healthy immune system. Taking the correct supplements, including Vitamin C, will lessen your chances of cold. Make sure you get a good base mineral supplement also.

Stress

Avoid stress. Try not to worry about things which will ultimately put you and your vocal chords under stress. Thinking about nothing but problems in your life will only bring you down. Just be happy you’re alive and keep singing as much as you can.

Consider the fact that half the world’s population live in poverty and millions of those suffer terribly on a daily basis, living in dreadful and dangerous conditions unfit for any human being – you’ll soon realise how lucky you are.

Think about those living in third world, war or disaster zones or those suffering huge loss in their lives.. then look at yourself and see what you really have to complain about.

Be a glass is half full type, not half empty and thank your lucky stars you have a decent life.

Sleep

It is important that everyone gets enough sleep. You need to recharge your batteries and missing out on sleep will eventually wear you out. Keep burning the candle at both ends and sooner or later you’ll go down with exhaustion or illness. Try and get 7 – 8 hours a night.

If you can’t manage to get enough sleep throughout the week, try and hit the sack really early at least one night a week. You’ll feel much better for it.

Water

Try to drink at least two litres of water a day. Although your body gets enough water from the food you eat, keeping yourself well hydrated will help keep your vocal chords in good condition.

Change your Set

Don’t get used to practicing just one set, no matter how difficult it is. Even if you’ve not perfected it yet, give it a break and change to something totally different every once in a while. This will keep you on your toes and give you insight into new music, inspiring new direction and also revealing weaknesses in your voice your usual set may have hidden.

Singing something completely different every now and then will keep you from getting bored and help prevent you getting stuck in that rut.

Keep Adding New Songs

Keep learning new songs. As you progress, the songs you play will undoubtedly change, eventually leading your music to find it’s own way. Make sure you play your own songs aswell. Don’t get stuck playing the same set all year.

Strive to Improve

Always try to better yourself. The more you keep singing, the better you’ll get, until you really will be a great singer.

Oral Hygiene

Clean your teeth 2 – 3 times a day, floss and upkeep them well. Clear but don’t rinse your mouth out after you have brushed your teeth. You will wash away all the protective barriers and fluorine in your toothpaste – tip from a top dentist.

Don’t Bite Your Nails

Biting your nails is a bad habit, give it up. Eating the dirt that has collected under your fingertips is gross. You’re much more likely to get colds and flu if you do this. Everything you touch when you are out, every time you visit the loo, every hand you shake, every germ you come in contact with is likely to reside under your finger tips. So don’t stick it in your mouth and eat it. Ugh !

Get Used to Performing – Nerves

Regularly perform in front of a crowd. This will keep you on your toes and keep you enjoying being a musician. It doesn’t matter where. If you are not ready to gig,  go to ‘come and have a go’ nights, go busking, perform at your mates parties or offer to do a quick set at your local pub. Do anything that is going to get you used to performing and each time you put yourself in the firing line, you’ll get more used to dealing with those nerves.

Stretching and Massage

Give or get your self neck, arm, finger (guitarists) and back massages regularly. This will reduce the tension and stress in all these important muscle groups before and after you gig, helping you relax and prevent injury. Learn to warm up your muscle groups using targeted stretching routines. Warming down after your performance is also just as important.

Warm Towels

Some singers like to wrap a towel around their neck for a few minutes to warm their voice up before they sing. Never tried it myself, but I’ve seen a few vocalists doing this before gigs. It could be that their vocal chords have been previously strained or are inflamed due to a sore throat or the onset of laryngitis and the towel trick is known to help sooth these conditions.

Cold Water

Don’t dowse your vocal chords in freezing cold water when you’re trying to sing. Keep your water bottle at room temperature at least. Athletes don’t take a cold shower right in the middle of their practice sessions, so don’t do this to your vocal chords.

Avoid Colds & Flu –  People – Crowds

Don’t visit people, if you know they have the flu. Use some sense. If you catch it, that’s your singing down the pan for a week at least. Spending time in crowded places for unnecessary reasons hugely increases your chances of catching a cold.

Obviously if you’re gigging in pubs and clubs you can’t avoid certain situations and I’m not suggesting you become a recluse and avoid any public place, but close contact with mates or associates who are coughing and spluttering or spending time with people who are obviously ill or have been under the weather, will not help your cause.

Having kids really brings it home, and the colds, sickness bugs and other crap they bring home from school and nursery certainly raise your awareness of the way viruses spread and affect everyone around you.

Don’t get paranoid, but just think about cuddling that baby with a drooling nose, standing next to that bloke who’s sneezing over everyone or visiting that mate who’s dying of the plague.

Sharing

Younger generations have a greater tendency to share things like drink, cigarettes, food, drugs etc. with each other and years ago I didn’t used to care about things like that either. You know what you’re doing, but you don’t give a damn and dealing with illness or colds and flu was not a problem. Give it a few years when your income or career depends on it, you’ll soon realise a bit of caution can make a big difference to your health and wealth.

Sharing is a wonderful thing and brings people closer, but having a ‘bite of that’ or going ‘two’s up’ on that fag or having a sip on your mates pint is a nice thought, but you don’t see grown adults doing it as they generally have more sense and care about their own well being a little more.

Wash Your Hands – Take Off Your Shoes

Taking off your shoes and washing your hands when you enter your house will effectively kill 90% of the germs you’ve picked up throughout the day and prevent you bringing them into your home. Why tread the dirt from the street through your home and across your living room carpet.

They say a cash machine has more germs on it than a toilet seat. What about door handles, push buttons, cash, public handle rails etc. Imagine how many public things you touch each day and how many other people with flu’s, colds and infections have been touching. A large number of the population don’t even bother washing their hands after going to the loo.

Don’t get paranoid about germs, but use your common sense when you are out and about. Alcohol hand gels are handy and help kill bacteria, but can be addictive so use them, but don’t become obsessed with them.

Allergies – Deal with Them

Make sure you deal with any allergies you may have, i.e. hay fever, smoke, cats etc.. If you’re not on top of these, your voice has no chance. A simple anti histamine tablet combined with nasal spray will usually do the trick, but if you suspect you may have an allergy, see your doctor for advice.

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So there’s just a few things you should be aware of if you want to keep your voice in good nick.

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If you have any other tips, feel free to post them in the comments below.

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Other Posts of Interest

Complete Vocal Workout
Vocal Warm Up Techniques
Vocal Warm Up Scales
Vocal Products
The Importance of Vitamins & Minerals in our Daily Lives

Back Home

Some bands use a number of vehicles to get their equipment to venues, pulling favours from friends, family and anyone else willing to help, but most somewhere along the line employ the use of a van.

I’m a solo musician, but due to my ‘go one better’ reasoning of having to buy way more equipment than I really need to play pint sized backstreet pubs, I have a shed load of equipment to get to my gigs and with all the crap I’ve got there’s no way a normal car would suffice, unless I made at least two trips – which I used to have to before I got myself a decent set of wheels.

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I can remember years ago when I’d just got going and started playing a few gigs round town, it was just too much hassle getting your mates to stand around making sure your stuff didn’t get nicked while you went back for the second load.

After a few gigs I got fed up with slogging my guts out back and forth, knackering myself out even before I’d even started and one day I just thought ‘sod this ! I need to get a van’.

I was immediately faced with two problems. 1. How much cash am I going to need and 2. What sort of van am I going to go for.

A trip to the bank of Dad with promises of high earnings, fame whilst touring around England and embedding the idea in his head that ‘with a van I could clear the crap out of the loft in one fell swoop’ got me a few hundred pounds to play with and without doing too much searching around I ended up with a blue LDV from the local ‘guy who sells vans but isn’t really a van dealer’ bloke.

It wasn’t a big thing and had been sprayed blue and looked in pretty good nick, and for a bloke who’s been used to driving cars around most of his life, it was a pretty big deal to now have this huge (even though it was actually quite small) vehicle now belonging to me and being totally responsible for it.

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It was great to start with and getting my shit to gigs and back in one trip was worth a million Peugeots. After spending a few Summer days carpeting the floors, walls and ceilings, getting covers for the windows, adding lights, a stereo, and a big trunk racked down with chains to hold the stuff you didn’t want nicked, it was just like driving around with a hotel room in the back.

You could go anywhere you like and chill out in the back, crash out, hold dodgy parties in it and get fifteen people home from the barbecue.

Because a £600 van is basically a piece of crap that is never going to look great on the outside whatever you do to it, it never really mattered what happened to it – so you could flog it to death, lend it out, hire it to someone or get your (sober) mates to drive it back from the club without a care in the world (on their insurance, of course) while the rest of you sit back and enjoy the party.

Add a mattress and some cooking equipment and away you go with busking trips round the coast. Heading down to Newquay to rake in the earnings from the bank holiday crowds. There’s no better stage practice than having to deal with hoards of stag and hen do’s that mob you every 5 minutes when you are trying to play ‘Karma Police’ in a war zone.

It was cool cause you’d finish your session with a case full of cash, head back to the van, ditch the guitar and head off to the clubs for the rest of the night. Waking up in a state wondering how you got back to the vehicle and wondering what happened to that bird you met at the foam party that you were obviously too pissed to pull.

It was also a great asset when I met my ‘wife to be’ and could take her out clubbing anywhere we liked without worrying how we were getting home or where we were going to crash. Oh look, there just happens to be a bed in here also…what luck !

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Scrap Metal

It couldn’t last long though, within a couple of years the thing slowly fell to pieces and bit by bit became the biggest piece of crap on the road. It was never a fast machine and would practically melt doing 60mph down the motorway.

By the time I’d finished with it, the only person who could drive it was me. The gears were so knackered it had to be driven in a certain way, the ignition was a screwdriver sel-o-taped to the bare steering column (still passed it’s M.O.T with a screwdriver starter mind) and it even got nicked twice.

The last time, I found it parked 200 yards down the road from where I left it, it had been abandoned by the thieves cause it was in such a state they couldn’t drive it. It was hilarious, it was such a piece of crap, no one could even nick it.

Sad to say, it’s last days were a sorry sight and like all my vehicles it never made it passed my ownership and ended up at the scrappies. Sniff.

So fast forward a few years – after taking a break from the music to have a kid, screw my back up and do a few other things, I get a brucie bonus from a long lost relative kind enough to leave me some cash. You can’t get luckier than that. I’ll tell you what, that saved my arse big time and I’m still unbelievably grateful now.

I’d got back into the music and had been building my repertoire whilst injured. I had a shed load of new tracks to gig with and suddenly – out of the blue – I’ve got three grand to get my self a decent van. Unbelievable.

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I wasn’t going to get a turkey and waste 3 grand on something that was going to fall apart the moment I bought it, so the next few weeks was spent trawling the internet, sucking all the information I could get from van sites and van forums, reading magazines, grilling mechanics and local garages, visiting auctions, hassling passing van drivers and van hire companies, staring at vehicles like a weirdo obsessed with rusting metal.

I can honestly say that by the time I was ready to part with my cash, I knew just about everything there was to know about buying a van, where to go, what to look for, what to avoid, what to grill the owners on, how much to pay etc. etc. and I’d also sussed out what type of van I wanted and had learned to gain the patience to find it.

Turned out my ideal van was going to be a long wheel based, semi high top, turbo diesel Ford Transit. Wicked.

So I went on the hunt up and down the country for the next couple of months, viewing clapped out vehicles in London, Essex, Dorset and Hampshire, grilling the owners like a CIA agent, kicking tyres, checking paperwork, under the vehicle, in the bonnet, photographing everything, even coming across a battered armoured police transit being sold by one of the guys out of the famous 70’s band ‘Mud’. It was the drummer I think.

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Riot Van

It was a riot van and had been converted to a tour bus with seats and a back compartment for equipment, armoured windows the lot. It was a real cool van and just what I wanted, but I’ll tell you what – it was in a right state.

The one thing I learned about buying a transit was ‘watch the turbo’, cause if it goes wrong – you’ve had it.

So we took it for a spin to test it out, and with the dashboard lights flashing and the drummer from Mud telling me ‘it’s o.k. it’s just the turbo playing up a bit’, then seeing it held together with tape as he fiddled with it under the bonnet, I thought ‘cool van mate, but for two and a half grand, I’ll give it a miss thanks’. He must’ve been having a laugh, £400 maybe…at a push.

A few weeks later, I ended up with a van I’d bought in the suburbs of London for £2000, in great nick with one previous owner, that being the Ford company itself. Tidy van, good seats, clean engine, boarded out, minimal rust, turbo’s alright, original stereo, built in heavy duty rear step bumper thingy etc….with a little dent down the side (you can’t win them all !)

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Took it to the garage to get the cam belt changed – as you do with a new van – cause if that goes you are screwed, and the mechanic tells me I’ve got a great deal. Perfect. There was one in my home town, exactly the same mileage, condition and everything, going for £3995 + vat, so I knew I was on a winner.

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I couldn’t have been happier, this thing was twice the size of my last van and with a little work could have been like the Hilton in the back. I reckon I could have got Pink Floyd’s entire set up from ‘Pulse’ in there and still had room for a party.

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Compared to my last LDV which would start to melt at 55, this thing was wicked, not a hot rod or anything, but with enough guts to hit it’s restricted top speed of 86mph without a problem and climb hills at 70 fully loaded, and comfortable too.

I loved that van, and still do. In fact, the size of it meant I could use it to make extra cash by doing removals and odd jobs, lugging stuff around for people. It took off pretty well and there was such a demand for it that I started a Man With Van business on top of my import business and it’s still going today.

The problem is, for a bloke with serious back problems, being a one man removal company is really not a good thing for me. In fact, it’s bloody stupid. It’s messing me up big time and is one of the reasons I’m constantly munching painkillers, have screwed up my strumming arm this year and on occasion, hobble about with a bad knee.

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2 years Later. Bit rusty round the wheel arches, still in good nick.

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So I’ve still got my long wheel base semi hightop transit and although it now resembles more of a friesian cow than a road vehicle, covered in red oxide paint to stop the ever growing onslaught of rust that affects all Fords (the one thing they are renown for). It still goes like hell and is a strong work horse, slogging it up and down the country full to the brim with people’s stuff, getting them from A to B at half the price of anyone else.

In fact, I even picked a client up from Buckingham Palace a few months ago. That was hilarious.

I’m surprised they even let me through the gates considering the state it was in, looks more like a terrorist bomb than a removal van. To be honest, if anyone knew the state of the van that is going to turn up when they book me, they probably have a laugh, but it has never let me down yet and touch wood, I don’t think it ever will.

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4 Years Later – What a State ! Still Goes Like Hell.

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The good thing about having a van that looks like a piece of crap but goes like shit off a shovel, is it doesn’t matter if anyone scratches it, or you hit a lamp post or someone kicks the wing mirror off – it just adds to the character, bit like an old muso’s guitar that’s been kicked around the stage for twenty years. It just gets better and better. I’m going to paint it soon, a pot of gloss and it’ll look good as new.

I’m gutted I never got to kit it out and tour the country though, but I’ve got a wife and kid now so that’s me screwed for a few years and by the time I get my chance to tour the world and can take my family with me, I bet it will be still going strong.

Transits are bloody marvelous, the only thing that will eventually kill it is the rust. Man, do transits rust. I recently spent a fortune on getting it welded and the only way to beat it is to get a welder and do it yourself, so that’s going to be the next thing on my books…should be fun.

The fact is you can’t beat a big van, and the bigger van you get the more you can do with it. If I had the choice, I’d probably get a truck next time.

Some people opt for estates or people carriers which are a damn site more comfy and will probably take a good deal of gear too, but for me, the only way to get your shit to the gig is in a transit.

… a mark 5, long wheel based, semi high top, turbo diesel, 12 year old, Ford Transit.

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Epilogue

5 Years and a couple of cans of white Hammerite later.

Awesome !

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So what do you use ? Let us know and tell us what you think of your van.

Is it a clapped out piece of trash like mine, or a spanking new tour bus with a built in bar ?

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Coments below.

The Importance of Professional Vocal Tuition

If you are considering singing as a full time occupation or intend to be singing as a hobby over a long period of your life time, it is vital you learn how to do things the right way. You need to ensure you don’t pick up the usual bad vocal habits that many singers develop early on in their careers.

A prolonged period of singing using bad vocal technique could result in serious damage to your vocal chords and ultimately, completely ruin your chances of success in the long term future.

One of the main things I was concerned about when I started out singing, was that I did not want to be one of these people you hear about who ruin their voices without even realising. I’ve heard stories like this many times before from friends and acquaintances in the local music scene.

Many years ago I was enquiring about singing lessons and was speaking to the guy who’s been running the local music shop for the last twenty years. He was explaining to me how important it is to get proper training and started telling me about the lead singer of a popular local band who had a great voice and sang for years with no trouble at all. One day he went to a gig and his voice just completely caved in. He was croaking like a horse, had severe throat pain and had to jack in the gig.

After a trip to the doctor and a throat specialist, it turns out his throat had been seriously damaged due to years of bad technique and negligence. Over time, nodules had developed on his vocal chords, he was unable to sing and barely able to speak. He said the poor guy had to have three throat operations, still has trouble speaking and will never sing again.

I was pretty shocked when I heard this but have since heard quite a few more accounts of similar things happening to singers in the local community and also famous singers in the public eye.

It’s not just amateur vocalists, there are many famous people who’s lives and careers have been turned upside down by serious vocal problems that have arisen due to vocal negligence and bad technique.

Singing injuries and other problems like developing throat nodules are common issues that can affect any singer and have a devastating effect on the lives of those who do not take precautions to avoid them.

Damaged vocal muscles and nodes on vocal chords often need operations to correct them and it is generally the case that singers who have these operations take months or even years to recover. Although some people do make full recoveries and return to singing, unfortunately many do not. In many instances the voices of those who do recover never rarely sound the same.

This was always one of my main fears when it came to singing. As a performer, I knew that anything I purposefully did to my body because of my lifestyle such as drinking or smoking etc. would be my own doing, so any damage I did to myself because of this would be my own fault and no one else’s.

That’s fair enough, but what I couldn’t deal with is knowing that simply by singing and using wrong or bad techniques, I could easily end my own career purely through bad judgment and ignorance.

If I was to use or develop my own warm up and vocal techniques and use them for the rest of my life, then if those techniques were wrong or flawed, a few years down the line they could ruin me for good.

For this reason, I chose to give Singing Success a go.

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My View on Singing Success

I had read about it and been told about it by a couple of other singers in my community, so along with various other singing tutorial courses, I decided to check out the Singing Success web site and took a look at the testimonials by various famous singers and recording artists.

The course had a lot of good reviews which I carefully read, but I think what did it for me was the recommendation by Keith Urban. I thought if it’s good enough for him, then it’s good enough for me.

Another deciding factor that helped me take the plunge was the money back guarantee offered by the program.

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The site states :

‘Sing Any Song You Want, in Any Key You Like by Adding a Full Octave to Your Range – GUARANTEED or Your Money Back! We will give you 6 months to try this Amazing Program.
If it doesn’t give you at least an extra octave and the results you’re looking for, send it back and we will refund your full purchase, NO QUESTIONS ASKED!’

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That sounded like a pretty good guarantee.

The course is $200 which is quite a lot of money, I thought if it doesn’t work, they can have it back. What’s to loose !

Finally, I thought spending a bit of money now, could save me a lifetime of grief. So I gave it a try.

SingingSuccess.Com

I’ve been using his tutorial cd’s for over two years now and originally before I tried the course, I thought I was a reasonably good singer. As soon as I began the tuition, I realised how much I needed to learn and just how bad my vocal technique really was.

I won’t kid you. It’s hard at first. You just start on the first cd and take it slowly one at a time.

Mastering fundamental techniques such as lip trills and tongue drills while going through all the exercises with Brett and accompanying students is pretty tough at first, but once you start to get the hang of it and learn to relax and go with your voice instead of fight against it, you’ll start to see results pretty quickly.

Within two or three weeks, my vocal range had increased 5 semi tones (almost half an octave) and the whole underlying core of my technique and singing ability had become more solid and stable. There is no doubt about it, you will start to feel more confident in yourself as your voice starts to connect right the way up through your vocal range. Your singing voice develops new richer qualities and matures in a style that you would not achieve without proper vocal training. I’m pretty certain you will be quite impressed with the results.

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Singing Technique

A singer who is not used to this sort of training will feel the techniques are a bit weird when first beginning the course. As you get to grips with the exercises you’ll soon realise the importance of the training as you start to develop and learn to sing in a professional manner.

As you become familiar with the teaching method you will also spot exactly the same techniques being used by other professionals in the media and on television.

I often see techniques being taught by top professional coaches to students on programs such as The X Factor, Fame Academy, Pop Idol etc. and you’ll immediately be familiar with the techniques they are teaching. You will understand how they do it and where they learned their skills because you’ve been doing exactly the same thing at home.

I remember years ago, watching Beyonce on a television program when she was just starting out. She was asked which one important piece of advice she would give to young singers out there wanting to improve their singing techniques and help them become stars.

She started doing this funny blubbering thing with her mouth. I couldn’t work out what she was doing at the time, but many years later after discovering Singing Success, I realised she was simply doing these weird and wonderful lip trills that form the foundations of every great singer’s ability. At first these techniques seem bizarre, but they play a huge role in a singers vocal training and turn normal people into incredible vocalists. Nowadays you’ll see professionals and students doing this sort of thing on TV all the time.

Since taking on the course, apart from massively increasing my range and improving my vocal power and ability, the main thing that makes me feel good about my singing is that I now have the confidence to perform and practice safe in the knowledge that I am not damaging my voice, throat or vocal chords through ignorance and bad singing habits. I know that as long as I continue to employ the techniques I’ve learned using Singing Success, that my future career as a vocalist is pretty much guaranteed.

I really believe that the choice I made to invest in my future has given me piece of mind and allows me to look forward to an injury free career.

All I’ve got to do now is keep singing.

My advice is give it a try. You’ve got a six month ‘No Questions Asked’ guarantee, and if you don’t like it, send it back.

There’s nothing to loose and everything to gain.

If you would like to have a look at Brett Manning’s web site and get some free stuff, videos and tips, then click the link below to check out the Singing Success web site.

Take a look at Singing Success.

It’s about time I posted another competition here on Street Musician – so this time instead of giving away free beer money, I thought I’d go a bit more upmarket and give away one of these.

Aymara Jacaranda Quena Flute

This is a genuine Andean quena flute made of Bolivian Jacaranda wood and is one of my best selling instruments on my Bolivian website.

Yeah, I know this is supposed to be a guitar blog, but I’ve not yet got the cash to start throwing guitars at my viewers, so maybe next year.

These flutes are amazing things and you can’t get any more genuine than this one.

Sourced from the hands of the maker ‘Mr Mamani’ himself –  high in the mountains of the Andes, this flute has already travelled over 6,000 miles to get here and could be travelling another few thousand to any one of my readers across the globe who enter this competition.

This flute is one of the best makes you can get and comes with a free woven quena cover of your choice. I’ll post some pics of those in a day or two.

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It is worth at least £25 £32 not including shipping costs and that’s from my own web shop, it should be worth a lot more. Many of my customers who buy these Aymara Jacaranda quenas end up coming back for more, and they’ll often also buy one of my Wayacan wood quenas to try out the difference in sounds produced by these wonderful South American hardwoods.

Being a guitarist, I never thought playing one of these would interest me, but once you give it a go you’ll find they are completely addictive. The main challenge is just trying to get a note out of the thing in the first place, never mind the three octaves they produce.

They say the Andean quena is one of the hardest flutes in the world to play and for a beginner you’ll probably find that is completely right. For the first few days you’ll probably spin out a few times and get major head rushes while you struggle to get the angles and air flow to split just right over the mouthpiece, but once you’ve got the hang of it, you’ll find it gets easier every time you pick it up and it’s really good fun just to mess about with.

How to Enter

Entering the competition is easy, just use the comment form below to post a few words on why you want one of these Andean quenas, and who ever I judge to have posted the best comment wins.

I’ll be posting the winning entry later this month on 29th June (my birthday in fact), so who ever wins we should both have a great day…or two as in my case.

My last competition only had one entry and that was me, so I got to win my own cash back. Let’s see if we do a bit better this time.

Just so I get a crack at it, incase no one else does – I’ll post my comment first.

Cheers.

Competition Update

After marketing these things at ridiculous knockdown prices for months, I’ve just introduced a long overdue price rise across my entire range of flutes ( can’t keep selling all my stuff for peanuts you know ! ) making this amazing quena even more valuable and an even better prize.

…not only that, but instead of the beautiful woven cover that I was going to include with this prize, I’m now upgrading it to one of my special ‘deluxe’ woven covers, providing extra thickness and added protection for your quena. These deluxe covers have been made especially for Original Artisan by our luthier’s own wife…how cool is that.

…aren’t I good to you ! Eh ?

Birthday Winner Announcement

Right, I was going to announce the winner this afternoon, but I’m being dragged out for a birthday celebration…so the chances are I won’t be in a fit state to judge in a few hours time.

I’m going to keep the competition open till 12 midnight so you can get the last of your entries in and tomorrow when I’ve sobered up a bit, I’ll announce the winner.

Stay tuned cause someone’s going to have a very lucky day.

Happy Birthday people.

Kier

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Ok…So thanks to everyone who entered and special thanks to Sarssipius from who gave my competition a huge boost by announcing it on his excellent competition site G.A.S. a Gogo. All your comments were so good I couldn’t decide which one deserved to win so I thought I’d choose another method to select the winner.

Check out my vid below to see how I chose the winner, and yes… I am a bad shot and no, I didn’t know the horse – I think it was just hungry…and yes, I did have a birthday hangover.

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That crazy horse wouldn’t stop hassling me as I was packing up and was chewing everything in sight, we made friends in the end. I don’t know why but I seem to get hassled just about everywhere I go nowadays. If it’s not buy some nutty tramp, it’s some crazy animal.

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So ‘Congratulations’ to our well deserved competition winner Cédric Lechevrel, your Jacaranda quena and deluxe cover will be on it’s way to you as soon as you mail me your shipping address and tell me what colour cover you would like me to send with your flute, red, green or blue.

Fate decided who kept the prize this time but stick around cause there’s going to be loads more competitions to win more cool stuff like this here on Street Musician over the next few months, (if I can afford it that is). If any of you guys or girls who entered the competition would like one of my Andean quenas, just for entering you get %15 of any of my Andean quenas from my shop Original Artisan, just drop me a line and I’ll give you a discount code.

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Thanks to everyone who entered, your comments did crack me up and the fact that so many of you entered just made my day.

Take it easy and keep an eye out for more competitions coming soon.

Cheers.

K

]]> http://www.streetmusician.co.uk/win-anandean-aymara-quena-flute/feed/ 48 http://www.streetmusician.co.uk/cheap-dental-treatment/ http://www.streetmusician.co.uk/cheap-dental-treatment/#comments Sat, 22 May 2010 00:44:37 +0000 http://www.streetmusician.co.uk/?p=2411 Continue reading Get Your Teeth Fixed]]> Here’s a quick post about something I learned form my dentist after I visited him a while ago which might be useful for anyone needing excessive dental treatment or procedures that usually cost a bomb – like crowns, bridges, special teeth whitening treatments or dental veneers.

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One thing many singers are paranoid about is the state of their teeth (unless of course you’re referring to guys like Shane MacGowan of the Pogues who’s rotten teeth have been his life long trade mark) and the condition of your teeth and gums can often impact on your self confidence as a performer, especially singers who spend most of their time with their mouth open.

When you’re young, you can drink, smoke and party as much as you like and still keep a perfect set of gnashers, but as you get older the years of abuse eventually start to take their toll and that’s when most people start to think about getting them fixed up.

Shane’s teeth weren’t exactly the perfect set in the first place but he didn’t do his smile any favours by falling over a wall and smashing his teeth in on a pile of bricks whilst on an all day bender in Ireland.

So far my teeth have survived intact and still look alright, so I’ve never really considered engaging in cosmetic dental procedures to brighten my smile, but if I had the cash to waste or perhaps the treatments weren’t so costly, then maybe I would think about it.

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Save Money on Dental Work

The good news is, if you do have an expensive problem with your teeth and are willing to travel a few miles to get things done, or you happen to live near one of the sixteen dental colleges around the U.K. then you can get all these sort of treatments at greatly reduced rates by having them done at the dental training schools as part of the training program for final year students.

My dentist was telling me that they do it in many colleges around the U.K and the particular one he was referring to was the Bristol Dental College.

All the treatments are supervised by qualified dentists and cost much less than they would at a private or NHS dentist.

I thought that was a pretty good bit of advice, so in a few years when I’m really looking in a state and need a bit of a lift, I’ll go and get myself a nice set of gold teeth on the cheap.

Nice !

Here’s a list of the 16 dental colleges around the U.K

Barts and The London, School of Medicine and Dentistry – Queen Mary, University of London
School of Dentistry – Birmingham
Bristol Dental School – Bristol
School of Dentistry, University of Central Lancashire – University of Central Lancashire
Guy’s, King’s & St Thomas’s Dental Institute – King’s College London
Leeds School of Dentistry – Leeds
Liverpool Dental School – Liverpool
Manchester Dental School – Manchester
Newcastle University Dental School – Newcastle
Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry – Exeter
Plymouth
Sheffield School of Clinical Dentistry – Sheffield
University of Aberdeen School of Dentistry – Aberdeen
University of Dundee Dental School – Dundee
Glasgow Dental School – Glasgow
Cardiff University Dental School – Cardiff
Queen’s University Belfast School of Dentistry – Queen’s University Belfast

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Give them a call and see what they can do for you.

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Incidentally, last year Shane finally got round to having his teeth fixed.

I can’t believe it !

The promo gives everyone the opportunity to try out the On Demand Program which uses the excellent MOD Machine Media System to allow users to directly download full length programs and lessons from the likes of legendary guitar heroes such as Alex Skolnick from Testament, Alexi Laiho ‘Children of Bodom’, Rob Arnold ‘Chimera’ and loads more.

The Rock House Method’s instruction programs, dvd’s and interactive lessons, cover just about every music genre and style you’ll ever need and is one of the world’s most widely used instruction systems featuring some of the world’s best known musicians as instructors.

With blues, metal, rock, bass, acoustic, drums, keyboards and vocal tuition from beginner to advanced, there is something there for everyone.

Rock House On Demand Promotion Code

I’ll be reviewing the On Demand program in the coming weeks but right now you can save $10 off the purchase of any Rock House product by using the code below.

ROCK10OFF

Just enter the code when you make your purchase.

They are also throwing in an additional $5 coupon code for a further purchase of any product from the Rock house On Demand library.

The second savings coupon code will be included on your receipt after you make your purchase using the ROCK10OFF coupon code.

Check out the video below to find out more and download the setup program for free. Take a look at their video catalogue with no obligation to buy. There’s some great stuff and a lessons package to try out for free.

Make sure you’ve got the latest version of Quicktime installed to make things run smoothly.

]]> http://www.streetmusician.co.uk/rock-house-on-demand-promotion/feed/ 0 http://www.streetmusician.co.uk/how-to-care-for-your-wooden-quena-quenacho-traverse-transverse-flute/ http://www.streetmusician.co.uk/how-to-care-for-your-wooden-quena-quenacho-traverse-transverse-flute/#comments Sat, 15 May 2010 09:04:19 +0000 http://www.streetmusician.co.uk/?p=2217 Continue reading How to Care for Your Wooden Quena – Quenacho & Traverse (Transverse) Flute]]> I sell quite a few Andean flutes here on Street Musician and go to great lengths to make sure my customers get the best quality quena flutes, quenachos and traverse flutes that I can source from the skilled Bolivian luthiers of La Paz, via my family in Boliva.

Each flute I sell makes an incredible journey to reach my customers, covering over 6 000 miles (10 000 km) across the North Atlantic Ocean from Bolivia to the U.K. and then from my shop on to many destinations around the world to finally end up in the hands of my clients.

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Quick Guide

Many Andean flute players around the world already have a good level of knowledge and experience in caring for wooden flutes and understand the importance of treating them in the correct way, but for those of you who’ve never owned one before or perhaps are thinking of buying one in the future, I’ve put together a quick guide to help you get the most out of your wooden flute and keep it in good nic.

Follow the guide below and ensure you complete the first few stages until your flute is nicely played in, from then on you can relax and enjoy the sounds of your Andean quena, quenacho or traverse flute, safe in the knowledge you’re caring for it in the best way possible.

So to ensure you get the very best from your woodwind instrument and to maintain it’s beautiful sound and tonal qualities for years to come, please ensure you carefully follow the instructions below.

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Andean flutes are beautiful, but fragile instruments and need to be cared for correctly, especially in their first few days of play when conditioning to their new environment is vital. Failure to do so will invalidate your guarantee and could result in cracking or split wood due to uneven moisture retention in the instrument.

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Flute Care

Caring for your flute in the correct way will minimise the risk of damage, improve it’s tonal qualities and make the instrument much more robust in the future. A well cared for flute can last hundreds of years.

It is essential for all new wooden flutes to be oiled and then ‘played in’ very gently over a period of time until the moisture content in the wood stabilises, having spread evenly throughout the instrument.

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Oil For Your Flute

When you first receive your flute and before playing it for the first time, it must be thoroughly oiled inside and out. This can be done using a wide variety of oils including almond oil, walnut oil, peanut oil, grape seed oil, mustard seed oil, commercial mineral oil, bore oil, high grade virgin olive oil, a good quality baby oil and raw linseed oil (not boiled).

Many luthiers prefer the use of almond oil due to it’s light nature and pleasant smell. Lighter oils must be used at a greater frequency than their heavier counterparts. Raw linseed oil is much heavier and can be used less often, although it’s smell is not quite so appealing.

Almond oil with vitamin E included is readily available and contains antioxidants which aid stability and help prevent rancidity occurring over time. Commercial mineral oil is also formulated to prevent this happening and is an excellent candidate. Bore oil (purified mineral oil) for woodwind instruments can be found in music shops and is available online. Good quality baby oil is also a viable option as it is simply mineral oil, fragranced with a pleasant smell.

For those in the U.K mineral oil is known as ‘liquid paraffin b.p’ and can be obtained from chemists under special order. Please ensure you only purchase ‘food grade’ quality liquid paraffin for oral use.

Many artisans, flute makers and players have different views on which is best. Don’t fret too much when making your decision but one should use the same type of oil on each occasion when maintaining your flute.

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Oiling Your Flute

This can be done using an oil soaked, lint free cloth or perhaps a sponge passed gently over the outside of the flute. Then using a thin wooden rod (can be purchased from any D.I.Y. store), carefully pass the sponge or cloth through the inside of the instrument ensuring a good coating on the inner surface.

Be sure to oil the holes, mouthpiece and each end of the flute, achieving an even coating throughout.

Once you have oiled your flute leave to dry for a few hours.

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Playing In Your Flute

The process of ‘playing in’ your flute, is to allow it to adjust gradually to it’s new conditions over a number of days, allowing the moisture absorbed from the breath and surrounding environment to spread evenly throughout, stabilising over time and minimising the risk of cracking or warping.

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Conditioning Your Flute

Day 1 – When your flute is dry you can now play the flute gently for 5 minutes only on it’s first session. You may then play it on two more occasions throughout the first day, preferably leaving equal gaps of a few hours between each session.

After each session, be sure to dry out excess moisture from inside the flute and around the mouthpiece with a lint free cloth to prevent excess moisture absorption.

Day 2 – On the second day you may play your flute on three further occasions, increasing your playing time by 5 minutes per session, again leaving a good time limit between each play.  This will result in a maximum of 3 x 10 minute sessions evenly spaced throughout the day.

There after you should increase your playing time for each session by 5 minutes each day over the next two weeks i.e

Day 3 – 3 x 15 minutes

Day 4 – 3 x 20 minutes

Day 5 – 3 x 25 minutes

…and so on, until the flute can be played at your leisure.

Be sure to wipe excess moisture from the mouthpiece and inside of the flute after each session. If you play for extended periods of time, remove excess moisture from the flute on occasion throughout the duration of your practice.

Ideally the flute should be oiled after every 5 – 10 hours of playing. Good practice would be to oil the flute every couple of days for the first two weeks until it appears the wood can no longer absorb any more oil, and there after every once in a while throughout the duration of the flute’s lifetime.

The frequency at which you do this depends on how much you play and the type of oil used. As we mentioned before, lighter oils must be used more often, heavier oils less frequently.

Some players choose to oil their flutes regularly every few weeks, some less frequently every 3 to 4 months. Over time, as you familiarise yourself with your flute and begin to understand it’s needs, you will learn to care for it in the manner most favourable to you. Be sure to use good quality oils and not low grade industrial oils.

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Storage

When your flute is not in use, always store it in it’s protective case to shelter it from temperature and humidity changes in the surrounding environment. Never expose your flute to direct sunlight or a heat source such as a radiator or excessive lighting.

Be careful when passing from one environment to another and if conditions vary considerably, allow a reasonable amount of time, say 1 – 2 hours for your flute to adjust to it’s new surroundings before removing it from it’s case and playing.

Sudden changes in temperature and humidity will cause the wood to expand or contract very quickly and may easily result in cracking. Excessively dry conditions should also be avoided.

If your flute is to be left for longer periods without playing, it should be stored in it’s protective case and placed inside a plastic bag to help prevent drying whilst in storage. When reviving your instrument, be sure to gradually play your flute in again over time as if it were new, as the moisture content in the wood will have undoubtedly dropped over extended periods.

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Above All – Have Fun

A well cared for flute will last a lifetime and a little common sense will go a long way in ensuring it’s longevity, but try not to become too obsessed with moisture levels, oiling and temperature issues once you have successfully ‘played in’ your flute as this could become detrimental to your enjoyment of the instrument. As long as you treat it well over the first few weeks of ownership and take the basic precautions described above, your flute should last you very well and provide many years of enjoyment.

If you are thinking of buying an Andean flute, take a look at my flute page here on street musician or even better check out my Woodwind Instruments section on my Andean website Original Artisan where you will find a good range of Andean flutes of all types.

I’m in the process of expanding my collection to include native flutes, tunable flutes and all sorts of weird and wonderful instruments to ensure we have one of the best collections in Europe, so keep checking back to see what’s new.

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Take a look at my extra special bone concert quenas.

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Thanks a lot.

Kier

I’ve promised to do another charity busk to promote Niemann Pick Type – C, sometimes known as childhood dementia, but this time I’m going to try and do something for the U.K branch.

Since my last attempt, the weather has got much better as Summer draws nearer and I’m hoping to do a little better this time.

Want to Help Out ?

What would be good is if I had someone else with me on the day, either to help collect and hand out information for a few hours or maybe if there are any other musicians out there in the Dorset area, perhaps to take turns while one collects and the other busks, take a few photo’s or maybe even get some sort of jam going to make things more interesting.

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Anyone willing to help in some way, whether you are a musician or not would definitely add a bit of colour to the session and hopefully make it more successful.

I’m not going to book it yet, I’ll give it a while before I plan a date just to see if anyone’s interested.

If no one shows up, I’ll be doing it myself anyway, but if you think you might like to help out in some way for 3 or 4 hours at some point over the next month or so, send me a message and we can sort out what we’re going to do and where we are going to do it.

Should be fun.

K

Like a lot of p.c users, my laptop is seriously crammed full of stuff, with just about every program you could possibly imagine having been installed at some point over the last two years.

I try and keep it as clean as possible and run it through the usual maintenance routines every couple of weeks, and although it’s also got it’s fair share of dodgy programs hacked from all corners of the internet, I have never once had a serious problem and as yet haven’t been plagued with any nasty viruses or trojans that wipe out years worth of work in seconds.

I spend a fair bit of time fixing mates’ computers aswell and most of the time, although my cheap, bog standard 2 gig Acer is practically bursting at the seems, struggling to cope with hordes of massive programs I cram into its tiny hard drives, apart from the odd ‘Blue Screen of Death’, the over heating and the death rattle of the over stressed fan constantly ‘whirring’, it’s pretty damn reliable and has never failed me.

Until last Wednesday.

Like most musician/computer/blogger type ecommerce heads, I have some seriously heavy duty apps on my laptop and sometimes I’ve got so much going on a once, I’m surprised the thing hasn’t melted. But what was the cause of Wednesday’s melt down ?… a 20 gig installation of Adobe’s Master Collection ?.. a Cubase and Reason multitrack rewire recording with simultaneous webcam application ?..no, just a simple Canon camera disk.

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I bought this thing on EBay and I swear it’s jinxed. First I got it with the factory fitted memory card missing so I couldn’t even use it, then when my SD card came through, all my rechargeable batteries were so knackered none of them would power the thing, so I had to buy some more and wait for them to charge.. then after I installed the camera’s software and everything looked o.k, all of a sudden my P.C critically fails to a black screen without warning, not even so much as a nice blue screen of death. That was it, my computer was totally f~@*$d.

Nothing would get it running again, I spent all day trying to fix it, I couldn’t get into safe mode, couldn’t restore anything, couldn’t use the repair modules, nothing… it would even take hours getting into the dos.

I’m reasonably good with computers but not an expert and after trying every possible thing I could think of and scanning the net on my Mrs’ spare for more solutions, I realised the only thing I could do was boot my recovery disk from the hard drive and start again.

At this point I thanked God for me bothering to create a recovery disk when I first got the laptop, and even more for buying another external hard drive a few months ago after my previous one failed. I’m not one for religiously backing my files up all the time but I knew that I’d done a quick system back up a week or so ago, so whatever I’d lost and however much of a pain it was, it could have been much, much worse.

Recovery

After booting up my recovery disks I got the laptop running again and was greeted by a nice clean install of Vista. I dragged my external hard drive out and restored the rest of my files.

The problem was although all of my files were restored, the hundreds of essential programs I need to run my life were no longer present and although my program files were there, the installs were not, so the next day and a half was spent trawling through old, badly labelled disks and downloading applications needed to get it back up to scratch.

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Through the computer related carnage that ensued, trying to get things back to normal as fast as possible, about 4 am Friday night the whole thing went tits up again. This time it was my fault as I was trying to do too many things at once and not taking proper care. Programs were conflicting with each other and basic applications were working but pulling up errors, this led to another fatal crash that I couldn’t recover properly from and eventually I just thought ‘sod it’ and started again from scratch using the recovery discs.

What annoyed me was that I was intent on saving everything I possibly needed to get back on track on a few emergency disks when I’d returned my P.C to normal, but after screwing the task up on Friday night, I lost them all again before I had a chance to save them.

Even the first task of downloading and installing the Vista service pack takes about three hours on my broadband connection, so having to do everything again for the second time was another lesson learned.

This time I took it easy and instead of recovering everything at once, I restored them slowly, saving all new executable apps on external drives as soon as I’d downloaded them and labelling all my old disks properly. I made sure everything worked correctly before moving onto the next mission.

After a massive clean up as well as trawling through loads of badly recorded videos containing old chord progressions and riffs that one day I might actually get round to turning into real songs, I’ve finally been left with a well organised laptop, void from the clutter that’s been draining my soul for months. I was pretty hacked off about it all, but now I feel pretty good.

I’ve lost 3 or 4 work days doing the job and am still missing about a weeks worth of notes and emails, but luckily most of the work I had done up until the crash was web based and so the damage was kept to a minimum.

The thing is, I was just about to overhaul my entire accounts which was going to take days, and if I had done that before the crash had happened I would have been in a real mess and wasted loads of important files.

It was only pure chance I had backed my files up a week before and sometimes I’d leave it weeks or even months before doing so. I know it’s bad practice but I risk it purely because I couldn’t be bothered to rig up my external drive and push a few buttons. How lazy is that.

Hard Drive Saved My Life

The moral of this story is that I have put my system through some real hell over the years and what ever I’ve thrown at it, I’ve never had a major problem that couldn’t be corrected without needing a new install. I thought it would only happen if I was careless and contracted a virus or pushed it to critical limits, but the one thing that finally knackered my laptop was a simple camera install.

My life, business, music and career are on my computer, and if I hadn’t backed it up on a hard drive I’d have lost everything. It would have taken years to replace and I’d probably top myself.

The fact is, you never know when it’s going to happen, and it could happen to you in 5 minutes time…so for your own sake, go and back your files up right now. It is easily done in one click through the ‘Back Up & Restore Center’ in your control Panel. All you need is an external hard drive.

I only wasted a weeks work, but even that was sloppy. From now on I’m backing my stuff up every two days.

Years ago, external hard drives were expensive, now you can get a 500 gig hard drive for about £50 so there’s no excuse.

Take my advice and do it now – before it’s too late.

I forgot to mention there are also some great tools you can get that copy the entire contents of your P.C, including all your drives, operating systems, installed applications, settings and everything else, so you can restore everything in one fell swoop without having to screw about for days on end.

These apps will save you one massive headache.

Check out some of the comments below for some good suggestions.

I’m now using Acronis True Image Home – Cheers John.

I’d been strumming in the garden and paid a couple of visits to my busking tree to say ‘hello’ and play it a couple of songs.

It’s still looking a bit bare but the fields around it are looking much better now. It’s a great spot to make some noise and not get on people’s nerves trying to pull off difficult vocals that were a lot easier before I took a break from playing.

I set my Ebay shop on vacation settings and slapped an away note on my Artisan site which gave me some time to play instead of worrying about posting, promoting and dealing with customers for a week or two.

The sun had been shining for a few days and I thought it’s time to start getting out there and earn some cash busking in the local towns around where we were staying.

On the Friday afternoon I headed into Chelmsford to see what was happening, hoping to grab a good spot and make the most of the last few days of the Easter holidays. Town would be packed out and good crowds would hopefully mean I could earn a few quid for a couple of hours playing.

As it happens, town was totally packed along with the usual market and a music event going on. There was a few bands and singers playing with a proper set up in the middle of town so you could hear it over most of the central streets. It wasn’t too loud but making enough noise to dowse any chance of getting a spot within a couple of hundred yards.

There were also Fire engines and charity collections going on in other parts of town and another girl busker who was pretty good, set up towards one end.

I wandered about for a bit thinking there was no chance this is going to happen today, but after spending £4 on a parking ticket for 3 hours and knowing that if I went home I’d have wasted my whole afternoon when I could have been playing at home, I thought what the hell, I’ll just set up out the way and play for a couple of hours to get my practice in, without worrying about making any decent cash.

I walked right up one end of town near the banks where it was pretty much deserted – apart from a slow trickle of people wandering by, heading into the main areas.

…

Busking in these sort of places can be quite good as there’s not many people around to drown you out and you can relax and just get on with playing without thinking about it too much.

I set up and started playing. When you are literally the only one around and there’s not much background noise going on, people can see and hear you from quite a distance and often throw you some cash when perhaps they might not have if you’d been set up amongst the crowds in town.

Hassle the Busker

I played for about 45 minutes and racked up about £5 – 6 pounds with a few good comments in the meantime. When it’s quiet you always get one or two Pink Floyd fans strolling past hearing ‘Wish You Were Here’ and slinging you some cash with a smile.

Just as I’m getting in my stride, I see this scruffy figure, looking in a bit of a state, wandering slowly down the middle of the street, swigging from a can.

You know when you’re out busking, you are a complete target for anyone looking for someone to hassle and as he spotted me from 30 yards away I thought ‘Oh Yeah, here we go again !’

He wandered up to me, taking another swig out of his can and put it back in his coat pocket with it still slopping around. You could tell he had serious alcohol problems and was in a real mess.

In my past I’ve known many troubled people from different walks of life and I’ve seen some pretty bad states in my time. I’ve got a lot of empathy for people whose lives are in a mess, whether it’s alcohol, drugs or for a million other reasons and I never try to judge or treat anyone disrespectfully.

This guy, who ever he was, could have been someones father, son or husband and you never know what sort of life situations had put him there in the first place.

…

I was actually quite concerned because he was covered in this stuff which looked like dried blood, all over his nose and chin and it looked like he might of just had a beating or been involved in an accident of some sort. You can’t see it from the photo’s but he was covered in it. It was all over his shirt and his hands and nails were black and had about half a centimetre of grime under each nail. It looked like he had blood or dirt all over his coat aswell and I really wasn’t sure what had happened to him.

I kept on singing and with him only a couple of metres away and getting closer, he was shouting and motioning to me, sticking his hand out touching my guitar. Within a few moments I had no choice but to stop in mid song.

‘Alright mate ! How’s it going ?’ I gave my usual smile and happy greeting.

‘Nghot you flaying ffat *&!@# thrubbish for ?’ he grunted back in a slurry drunken fashion. Ng’ny *.@#.. and started churning out inaudible names of groups I’d never heard before.

I was like, ‘Err ! No mate, Sorry I don’t know that one, or that one….or that one..’

I haven’t got the greatest knowledge of musical history, but I seriously didn’t know any of them..I said, ‘Er.. How about Led Zeppelin, or Bob Dylan… is that any good ?.’

With that he started reeling of a drunken version of something I couldn’t recognise under the slurring, until he reached the chorus and with a little more clarity blurted out the end lines to Bob Dylan’s ‘Blowing in the Wind’. Within a few seconds he was pointing to my guitar and started trying to grab the fretboard, motioning to give it here so he could have a go.

‘Sorry mate,  can’t let you have a go’, I said holding on to my guitar, ‘I don’t let anyone play this …  it’s my only guitar..’  etc. etc.

He looked shocked and couldn’t believe I’d said ‘No’. Totally ignoring what I’d just said, he still kept on going for it, grabbing for the thing and getting really hacked off.

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Now, it’s bad enough when someone who’s a bit drunk tries to grab your guitar, but this guy was totally smashed and covered in dirt. I’m not joking. I’ve had lots of drunks try it on in the past, and even when it’s some friendly happy chap who’s had one too many grabs your guitar when you’re off guard, you are guaranteed the strings are going to get a bad hammering or the strap will come off and there’ll be some sort of accident.

If someone who’s out of their head gets hold of your guitar, you’ve got a real problem and you’ll be lucky to get it back in one piece.

You don’t want to be kicking off, especially with an expensive guitar hanging round your neck and the poor guy probably didn’t know what he was doing anyway, so you have to keep the situation calm and get him to chill out.

I held onto it without getting aggressive but with a firm ‘No chance mate’… and with that he pushed himself right into me and squeezed into the gap between me and the guitar… so all of a sudden I’m like, practically hugging this guy while he’s squashed up in front of me trying to strum the thing like we are some sort of duet on Britain’s Got Talent.

I can handle many things, but this was pretty awful, and with the overpowering smell of alcohol and nicotine emanating from his clothes against my body, the black congealed blood like stuff all over his hands fingering chords and those long dirt ingrained fingernails strumming the strings… I was like  ‘WTF !..how did I manage to get in this position ?’.

I was thinking ‘What the hell is this stuff ? – I hope it’s not something nasty’.

…

After about 30 seconds still holding my breath from the fumes, I managed to get out of this bizarre embrace and get a bit of space between us.

He then started mumbling about how he’s got loads of guitars at home and used to be in a band years ago, but within a few moments was grabbing for my guitar again like he wanted another go.

By now I had the guitar secured behind me, holding it with one hand pointing it down at the ground, but he was still going for it and I was having to defend my position, pushing against him to stop him forcing his way in.

The people in the shops over the road and cafes up the street had started to take notice and see if this was going to kick off.

I was still being as friendly as I could be and trying to divert his attention away from the guitar back to himself and his past days as a musician.

He kept saying the same things over and over again every few minutes. One moment being happy and reminiscing over his past musical days, the next bursting into choruses of ‘Blowing in The Wind’ which would ultimately lead back to him wanting to play the song and him trying to grab the guitar again. I was constantly being forced to deflect his actions in a firm but nice way. This would then lead to him getting aggressive and shaking his fist up to my face before switching again to some other erratic subject.

He was insistent he could make me loads of money if I would just give him my guitar… and that he’d give me loads of money if I’d let him have a go..then he’d search his pockets and find nothing, take another swig out of his can and start the scene all over again, saying he had loads of guitars and didn’t want mine.

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I kept saying to him ‘Why don’t you go and get your guitar and come out here and make some cash for yourself ?’, to which he would shake his head, dismiss the whole idea and go for my guitar again.

This scene went on… and on …and on… and eventually I had to get  more serious and say ‘Look mate ! If you are a musician you should respect my wishes, and my guitar…you’ve already had a go so just leave it now, alright !’

I wasn’t getting aggressive, but just showing him I wasn’t going to put up with his bad behaviour much longer.

It did the trick for a few moments and as I backed him off a few feet saying ‘Give me a bit of space here will you’. He then started feeling my arms, going on about me being a bodybuilder or something (which I seriously don’t look anything like, trust me).

I was like, ‘No mate, I’m just tall’ which again led him into shaking another fist in my face in a manner you couldn’t tell was threatening or drunken silliness.

On a few occasions I tried to start playing again and within a few seconds just kept getting interrupted, but after about twenty minutes of hassle and trying to keep the situation happy, I said ‘Look mate, give us a break, I’ve got to get on with this and try and make some money, how about I sing you a song, Eh ?’ I thought if I can get on with some busking, he might get bored and wander off.

No chance.

So I started playing for about the fifth time, this time choosing ‘Wonderwall’ thinking whatever he does this time, I’m not stopping for anything.

I think he got the message this time, but instead of moving on, he stood there in front of me, swigging his can and and growling at people with his hand out, trying to get money out of passers by.

A busker’s worse nightmare is someone out of their head making a scene in front of them and I thought surely no one is going to give him anything.

Just then about half way through the song, a lady and her little girl of about 4 years old streamed out of the shop opposite, with a coin in her child’s hand looking all excited to have been given some money to stick in my case.

They obviously had been oblivious to this guy’s actions while they were in the shop as with that she walked straight into the tramp’s path and he took off his hat and lowered it to the little girl, who’s face dropped like a stone. There wasn’t really much else she could do but nervously drop the coin in his hat and scurry away quickly. I just thought ‘Oh no, that’s going to put her off buskers for life’ and as he gleered at the pound coin she had put in his hat I thought, ‘o.k, let’s see what you do with it’.

…

He played with it for a while, taunting my case with this coin while I was still singing the song, and although I didn’t expect he would maliciously steal it, I did think he would probably forget what he was doing and just stick it in his pocket.

By the end of the song, he was still taunting my case with it so I said ‘Go on then, stick it in’ with which he regrettably threw it in, finishing his fun for the moment with another shake of his fist.

A couple of passers by who had been witnessing the scene from the coffee shop wandered by shouting ‘Oi Noel, I thought you’d sacked Liam’ which was quite amusing , but I didn’t play another song after that. It just wasn’t worth it. I didn’t want him freaking anymore kids out and I have a little girl around that age so I know how things like that can affect them.

Although the whole scene being made wasn’t really ‘nasty’ as such, it was still quite unnerving for me and for passers by, and having to be on guard while his mood constantly changed, wondering what he’s going to do next or if it was going to turn nasty wasn’t doing any favours for my busking abilities.

Snuff

As we stood there, with him still acting somewhat erratically, he pulled out a tin from one of his pockets and opened it up to reveal a large pot of dark brown snuff.

He dipped his fingers in it and pulled out a huge pinch, offering me a dose.

I said ‘Thanks, but I’ll give it a miss’ and he raised it to his nostril and took a huge clumsy sniff, with half of it coating his nose and chin and the rest pouring down onto his coat, leaving his fingers and clothes covered in snuff. He then took another swig of his can without a care of the mess he’d thrown all over himself.

I could see then what all this stuff was he was covered in, and I was quite pleased that it wasn’t congealed blood or something worse as I’d first thought.

The antics continued for about another twenty minutes and by that time we had been there for about three quarters of an hour. I could tell that there was no way I was going shake this and the only thing I could do without getting physical or being mean was to pack up and go home. I thought of setting up further down the road but knew I’d probably be followed and the whole process would start again.

I packed up, still humouring him as pleasantly as I could and once I’d got my stuff together I said ‘See You Mate’ and started to wander off.

Once he realised I was actually going, he seemed to get quite offended and started growling more stuff at me, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying.

Tolerance

I came away from that busking session feeling pretty disheartened and although he’d ruined my session, I wasn’t annoyed, I felt more disturbed about the whole thing and quite sorry for the guy more than anything else.

I couldn’t help thinking about the situations that lead to him getting into a state like that, and it reminded me of a program I saw a while ago called ‘Saving Ed Mitchell‘ about the I.T.N news presenter who had sunk from being a successful television journalist with everything going for him, to a homeless alcoholic down and out living on the streets.

The outcome of a person’s life can be determined by many things, and even successful business men, sports heroes and legendary musician’s lives can be destroyed by making a few wrong decisions in life.

Whether a person’s downfall comes about for reasons beyond their control or are self inflicted due to addictions to substances like alcohol and drugs, none of us really know what’s around the corner and unless we keep checking ourselves and keeping our lives on the right course, we could easily find ourselves in the same situation a few years down the road.

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I’m often exposed to weird situations when I’m in the street and sometimes the easiest option would be to threaten or whack someone who’s giving you attitude or hassle. But that’s not the way we do things, and one of the rules I live by is never to strike someone unless it’s in self defense and absolutely necessary, and even then, only if that person is a genuine threat and not just someone who’s had a few too many drinks or just winding you up.

You don’t have to back down or let people abuse you, but just be firm but also tolerant of people in these sorts of situations. Understand that being exposed to the general public will undoubtedly lead you into some weird scenarios and you should only ever resort to ‘kicking off’ when it’s the very last option available to you and you literally have no other choice.

Being tolerant of the general public is something all musicians have to get used to and whether it is in the street, in the pub or on stage, it’s all part of the process.