[Rudolf Wagner]

That’s an interesting question and I can see why opinions on the topic would differ.
We have above-average long fingers (it was the first thing the midwife noticed when we were born 🙂 ) and while I think it helps with certain aspects of guitar playing I really don’t think it’s necessary to become a decent guitarist.

Take Django Reinhardt as you probably know … he played the fastest, grooviest Gypsy Jazz there ever was with only 3 functioning fingers. Joni Mitchell had polio as a child and couldn’t bend her fingers properly so she delved into the world of open tunings. One of the first live concerts we ever went to as young teenagers was James Brown, and we remember noticing the big funk guitarist with him who had really short fat fingers. 🙂 He was incredible! We were thinking “If he can play like THAT with those hands, surely we could master an F chord soon”.

I think every hand shape and size has its advantages and disadvantages, but these guys prove that you can make them all work for you. Due to my finger shape I still really struggle with strings on certain barre shapes not ringing out properly where I know people with stubbier, thicker fingers have an easier time with that. But I have a great reach which comes in handy for most lead playing.

I would say, find what playing style suits you best and work from there. Maybe skip the crazy chord shapes for now and improve your picking, speed and scales through regular practise. The more comfortable you become on the guitar overall, the easier it will get to unlock other techniques.

I hope that helped a little bit 🙂

[Rudolf Wagner]

We shoot with one fixed camera while Dad moves around with a second one, capturing the close-up shots. While they look pretty close they are shot from quite a distance to avoid appearing in the field of view of the main camera.

We normally run through the songs a few times and then choose our favourite take but we’re sometimes able to use close-up shots from different takes, too.

That’s for the Duo Session, for our “proper” music videos we normally just use one camera (Our Sony A7 iii) and do lots of different takes.

[Rudolf Wagner]

Josh, this means more to us than we can express in words.

To know that our music can lift some darkness and bring a bit of light for those that need it is one of the most fulfilling reasons we’re doing what we’re doing. Thank you for sharing this with us ♥ We are thinking of your patients and send them our love and strength.

Many Thanks,
Mona & Lisa

[Rudolf Wagner]

Since we have been living in the UK for more than 5 years we should be covered, as long as the annoying paperwork can be done successfully. We’re regularly keeping an eye on new developments but for now we’re OK, thanks 😉

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hello and welcome Kennedy, thanks for being here 🙂

It’s exciting for us to meet Giveaway winners here in the Club and we hope you’re having a good time! We love this place to connect with and learn more about the people that listen to our music, so thanks for popping in.

Stay groovy!

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Gary, At the beginning of the year we mapped out the year, working out a timeplan for everything we’d like to accomplish in 2020. Touring once again got the short end of the stick in order for us to focus on all the other projects we are absolutely stoked about.
If we play any one-off shows, we’ll of course let everyone know well ahead of time 🙂

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Rick,

Yes, I do! It’s a stuffed baby tiger toy. And it’s creatively called “Tigerbaby” (= German for baby tiger) and similar to Lisa’s lamb I’ve had it since I was a baby.

It can’t do anything special nor is it particularly cute or anything but I love it to death 🙂

I just googled that hand puppet … holy moly, that looks terrifying, haha! It’s amazing that it has lasted so long.

Thanks and have a great week too,
Mona

[Rudolf Wagner]

If I had all the time in the world, I’d learn to play the harp! Oh and the piano of course! Oh and lap steel guitar! Oh and the sitar! Oh and the hurdy gurdy looks pretty fun to play  😉

Anything I can play while singing really would be interesting. But at the same time there are a gazillion things on the guitar that I haven’t explored or mastered yet. Thankfully, certain skills translate somewhat well to other instruments. The Cello didn’t feel TOO weird though I can still only hardly make it work for me.

But whenever I have time I mainly focus my energy on incorporating new guitar techniques and styles into my playing which, when you first get into new territory, very much feels like learning a new instrument 🙂

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi John,

It was one of the tunes we wrote during our stay in Lanzarote and I remember Dad sitting in one room with his little travel keyboard, Mona pondering over lyrics in another and me sitting in the garden with an iPad and piano app installed on it, tinkling around.

Whenever we work on songs it is a collaborative process where we bounce ideas off one another, pass passages we’re stuck on to someone else and always ask for feedback.

It’s normally not a straightforward “chords first, then melody, then lyrics” type of scenario but rather something that evolves on multiple fronts at the same time. If the lyrics don’t fit, the melody changes, if we want to change the feel of one part, we go back and tweak the chords etc.

Dad writes really well on keys so he did the heavy lifting on this one.

Greetings to Australia 🙂

[Rudolf Wagner]

It’s such a melancholic, hauntingly beautiful song. Like so many of theirs. Short, sweet but it stays with you long after it stopped playing. Always one of our favourite S&G songs. We’ll add it to the long list of potential cover songs 🙂

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Howard!

Thanks for that question! Over the years we have written songs in just about every constellation there is between the three of us.

As you mentioned with the Beatles, more often than not it is the case that whoever “births” the song also finishes most of the work or makes the most basic decisions about the feel and tempo of a song but it’s always a collaborative process to some extent until we get the final “thumbs up” from everyone at the end before we start recording.

🙂

[Rudolf Wagner]

I’m gonna be a bit cliché here and start off with the two most obvious ones … Ringo Starr and Keith Moon.

Ringo because he was the perfect song drummer, innovative, extremely musical and just as groovy as you can be. I think it goes without saying that he has been a huge influence on everything we do. His effortlessness and understanding of what makes a song groove have me in awe every time I put on a Beatles record.

And Keith … well … because it’s Keith bloody Moon. His playing was as crazy as he was, and I love that.

I would take a musical but slightly sloppy drummer over a technically perfect one with no soul any day. So my favourite musicians (and bands for that matter) always tend to be the ones that focus the most on conveying the feeling behind the music and the song rather than technical perfection or show-off.

I love Steve Gadd, Ginger Baker and of course Hal Blaine! When Hal was too busy in the studio he would always recommend Jim Gordon who I have only learned about and studied more carefully very recently. His drumming is incredible and exactly what I love in a musician!

He might have one of the most tragic and sad stories in music history. If it wasn’t for him developing schizophrenia and serious mental health problems that led to his imprisonment I’m sure he would be a household name amongst musicians these days. A bizarre story, I suggest reading up on him if you haven’t already.

Stay groovy (quite literally this time)

Mona

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Sergio!

Funny you should say that … we might possibly have a Pink Floyd cover coming out in the Club soon 😉 The song choice will stay a secret for now though!

We’ve been wanting to cover some Pink Floyd for years! In 2013 we were lucky enough to see Roger Water’s redo of “The Wall” in Vienna and it was unreal. Now we’re on the lookout for a David Gilmour live show in the UK  😉

Anyway, stay tuned and thanks for the question!

[Rudolf Wagner]

Lots of bruises on the right upper arm from Mona hitting me with her guitar’s headstock on tiny stages, sore feet from playing in boots all night (I guess that one’s on us), heat strokes (Cavern! ;-)), singing through colds and sore throats (you gotta do what you gotta do), achy blistery fingers (ah well), sweaty, painful hugs from drunken crowd members, nearly poking your eyeball out when changing guitar strings …

… but really, there are a lot more “physically” demanding or dangerous jobs than being a musician 🙂  So far we managed to dodge the carpal tunnel thing which is good … touch wood!

[Rudolf Wagner]

Josh is great, a fantastic musician! We haven’t had the chance to meet/catch him live but it’s fun following his musical journey.
Same goes for Julia Nunes. She was probably one of the first musicians we ever watched on YouTube. More than 10 years ago, old-school YouTube 🙂 Great to know she’s still out there doing her thing!

At the moment we have so much on our plates that we’re not scheduling in any concerts but we’re sure we’ll get back to that eventually. At the moment we’re all about the new album, new videos and a few other projects we’ll talk more about as the year progresses.

Thanks for the more outside-the-box song suggestions. The list of cover song wishes is looong but we’ll just add them to it 🙂