A Hard Day's Night

Salutations. I just wanted to jot down some notes about a good open mic I played last night. I performed with my friend Jason Thomas. He's an excellent alto saxophonist player. The night started early for us. We got to the Sugar Mill Saloon bar around 10 pm. We ended up waiting until nearly 1am to perform. We had beer.

There were a lot of performers. Most of them were comedians. Terrible comedians. But there was one fat comedian who kept making jokes about how he's bisexual. Things got pretty awkward. However, he was the funniest comedian so I give that guy props. 

Eric Shaffer played a terrific set on his shiny Stratocaster guitar. He does improv with loops and pedals. He makes beats by drumming on his guitar and sliding his hands on the strings. He's quite good at it. He even wears a suit coat.

We ended up going on around 1am. There was still a decent amount of people. How the heck does this bar bring 15-20 people on a Tuesday night? Even staying till nearly one in the morning? I guess the open mic is getting popular. I used my Hagstrom Super Swede Les Paul and a bass amp. However, my guitar tone was super clean, too clean, because I plugged in my guitar in the low input jack. A female friend of mine who's also a good musician said my guitar tone needed more bite. Should've brought a distortion pedal she said, lol. Clearly, she's clueless? Lol.

In terms of my guitar tone, I thought it was good for what we were doing. Which was straight-ahead jazz. We played Footprints by Wayne Shorter and Freddie Freeloader by Miles Davis. 

Jason's tone was good per usual. You can hear him on my recordings from Soundcloud. However, a good musician friend of mine said that when he was soloing and I was comping, that it seemed like we were just getting into it when I returned back to the theme and ended the tune. It's good criticism but we also had a time limit. I was limiting the songs to about ten minutes each. We played for a considerable time. Considering.

Are you supposed to feel great after a performance? I usually feel really great after playing an open mic, and then the next couple days after. It's the one outlet I have to perform music in front of an audience. I really need to be playing in a band but I've not the organizational ability to form a band nor the time to really invest in a serious gigging band. One day soon I hope to play in a band. That's really all I need. I have the talent already.  

A lot of times after performing I critique my playing pretty hardcore. I would say that my friend Jason is a better musician than I am, certainly a better jazz musician. But I also think that because of his conservatory training, sometimes when he performs live, especially with new people for the first time, he comes across kind of stiff. But that's okay. At least our set sounded great. We've only been rehearsing for a year together, lol. 

After the bar shenanigans, a bunch of us went to an after-party at a friends' house. I usually get home safe and sound through a friend of mine. But she was in a rush to get home so I ended up sleeping over and taking off in the morning. I live a few blocks away but carrying my amplifier and wearing my guitar on my back was rough walking home today in the hot afternoon sun. I tried to get my friend to call a lyft ride for me but he claimed his phone was dead. You don't get to party all night long hard without facing some repercussions. So I guess the moral of the story is that when your lady friend checks out for the night, you should always go with her. 

And that's all she wrote.

May 15 Jam Tracks

Ahoy shipmates and welcome aboard. Here I'd like to share some recordings from last week's open mic at Petie's Place, a local pub in the Valley, located on Reseda and Oxnard. 

I've played there over 40 times. Its become my de facto performance space. With a house drummer and bassist, it's very easy to just get up there and play with no strings attached. 

I did a two-song set that consisted of saxophonist Wayne Shorter's Footprints and Jimi Hendrix's' Hey Joe, tunes I've been playing for a while now. Been really working on my tone for the vocals. I've been practicing singing for a long time. I'm no Jack Bruce but I try. Petie's Place got a much better tube amp Line 6 full-stack amp so my tone has improved a lot. Enjoy! 

https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/footprints-live-at-peties-1 
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/hey-joe 

Guitar, Vocals-Orlando Figueroa
Drums-Jim X
Bass-Art 
Harmonica-Dave
Tambourine-Ken 

Guitar/Harmonica Jazz Quintet Performance

Greetings everyone! I'd like to share some tracks from last week's open mic I played at Petie's Place. I'm a regular performer there as I've played there over 40 times, over almost two years now. This was an unusual performance in the sense that I basically did a jazz set [other than Hey Joe-Hendrix] with a harmonica player. He asked to sit in with us and it turned out to be a great idea. The sound of the harmonica is like a human voice, very soulful, very human. I think my solos are becoming more melodic and thematic in a way. I'm getting a lot more confident about playing jazz. It's a rock and roll bar but its also cool being the one guy who can jazz up the joint, feel me? I wish I gave more solo room for the harmonica player, he sounded great. When he took solos I stopped playing and layed out like a true jazz performance :D
Enjoy the music.

https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/footprints-live-at-peties
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/mr-pc-live-at-peties
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/hey-joe-live-at-peties

Jim-Drums
Art-Bass
Dave-Harmonica
Orlando-Guitar
Ken-Tambourine, Shaker

Purple Haze [Live]

Here's a live rendition of Purple Haze, played and sung by yours truly. With the Petie's Place open mic house band. Petie's Place is a bar in Tarzana, CA that hosts open mic sessions every Wednesday night. This is the first time I've ever done Purple Haze live. Enjoy!

https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/purple-haze

Orlando Figueroa-guitar, vocals
Art-bass
Jim X-drums 
?-keyboard

Jazz Duo Project

Here I'd like to share some of my recent music projects. I've been doing a jazz duo, myself on guitar and Jason Thomas on alto saxophone. We're doing standards but we're also doing a lot of free form improvisational stuff. Check out some of our music. 

https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/all-blues-2 
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/all-blues 
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/st-thomas 
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/improv-1 
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/funky-improv-1 
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/freedie-freeloader 
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/blue-bossa 
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/jazz-duo-metal-jam 
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/body-and-soul 

Also, we performed last week at an open mic at Petie's Place, a bar in Tarzana, CA. 
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/footprints-live-at-open-mic
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/all-blues-1
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/blues-jam-dminamaj7-vamp

I actually thought the live open mic recordings weren't so hot when I played it. However, when I look back at it I see that there was a lot of inspired playing there. My guitar tone was especially good during Footprints, that greasy chorus-infused synthetic sound adds a lot of flavor to the modern jazz guitar sensibility. Likewise, the alto saxophone sound is unique, clean, but full of all kinds of permutations. We played especially well on the improvisational blues jam vamp, where there was an extended alto saxophone solo. The drum solo really adds a lot of momentum to the jam. It was here rather than in the two jazz standards that this impromptu band started to sound like magic.

Open Mic 12/5

Here's five tunes I played at last week's open jam at Petie's Place. I played Sunshine of Your Love, Hey Joe, Electric Funeral, and two extra jams of improvisation. It was a good night. Enjoy the music. 

https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/sunshine-of-your-love-125 
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/hey-joe-125 
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/electric-funeral-no-vocal-125 
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/four-on-six 
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/satriani-style-jam-125 

Open Mic Night 11/28

Here's three tunes I performed last week at my local open mic on 11/28/18.
We did three songs
Electric Funeral by Black Sabbath
Hey Joe by Hendrix
Spirits of the Dead (original tune)

It was an interesting night because I had a full band, a trio with my friend Martin on drums and his friend on bass. During Hey Joe the friend got off, and another guest bass player quickly plugged in.

It was a fun night. Not very often that I have a full band. Enjoy!

https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/spirits-of-the-dead-1128-full-band-arrangement-trio
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/hey-joe-1128-full-band-arrangement-trio
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/electric-funeral-1128-full-band-arrangement-trio

New Jam tracks (9/5/18)

So I happened to be off work last week so my drummer and I went out and played an open jam, our only real performance space other than practicing at the studio with occasional friends spectating, sometimes even performing too. 

We start the jam off with an instrumental tune, Buckethead's Soothsayer. Then we play Electric Funeral by Black Sabbath, and end the mini-gig with my original death metal tune called Spirits of the Dead. 

Enjoy! 

https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/soothsayer918
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/electric-funeral-95
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/spirits-of-the-dead-95


Good news is that although my singing and death metal screams aren't "good" they are at least decent enough to pass, and I have improved a lot in my general singing and screams. Back to the shed for practice! 

Open Mic Tracks from 5/16

Hello, here are my recordings from last week's open mic. We played Electric Funeral and Poachers as a guitar, drums duo with myself on vocals. 

I think we did an excellent job on the Sabbath tune considering we didn't have a bass player. It sounds pretty bad ass. Although its not perfect metric (timing)-wise I still think its pretty cool. I can do metal too, haha. Check out the tune here https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/electric-funeral-guitar-drum-duo

And the other tune is Poachers, a tune written by new music composer Frank Abbinanti. Here I play it with my friend Martin on drums. I was following the score and he improvised music based on what I was playing. Upon hearing it after I think we could use more practice with this one. However, Martin's drumming wasn't bad. He does pretty well when we improvise. I also like the yelling from the audience. Makes it feel like a rock concert! Check it out here https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/poachers-martin-on-drums

Lastly, I have something different, a jazz/blues in c featuring Jim Xaiver on drums, Mike Mitchell on distorted electric guitar, Ken on tambourine, Art on bass, and myself on clean guitar. Check that out here https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/jazzblues-in-c
I like this one a lot because its jazz, which I love!  

Enjoy! 

Poachers Live With Percussion

Hello everybody! Just wanted to share this new track from last week's open mic at Petie's Place. 

https://youtu.be/D-rHftwnEW8 

This is Poachers live, a piece written for me by new music composer Frank Abbinanti. It's quite avant-garde, it has its moments of melody and makes use of what I'd call "noise chords", real noisy chords. 

We played this piece last week and at the time it was quite nerve-wracking because I'd never played the piece live in front of anyone other than just by dad when I was practicing it. However, the nervousness comes out in a good way. I hit a few bum notes in the beginning but nothing that sets the piece off balance. 

Jim's drumming was quite remarkable. His fills, while keeping time in between is quite good. He played it like a real jazz drummer. My favorite band I've seen him perform with is a jazz-rock fusion guitar trio. He's the best musician I get to play with at these open mics, and its great making music with the guy. 

I do think the piece would've been cooler if that guy didn't yell "Yeah!" at the end but even some of the best classical performances are cluttered with coughing. 

Anyways, enjoy the tune!

Personel
Orlando Figueroa Guitar
Jim X Drums
Frank Abbinanti Composer