Admin Rudolf Wagner
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Hi Tomás,
Yes, you are spot on like always.
Mona played drums and Papa Rudi played the bass.
When we cover a song we mainly listen to the original. When there is something we cannot hear properly we also look for instrument covers online like you do to find out what has been played. Sometimes they are helpful but often they are just a rough approximation of the real thing.
Luckily, on most Beatles tracks you have this extreme stereo image where instruments are either hard panned to the right or to the left. That makes it pretty easy to isolate an instrument by just listening to one side of the stereo signal.
I asked Dad about the little improvisation towards the end of the song, and he said he was playing along and accidentally stumbled across that little phrase that sounded very good but was different from the original. He liked it so much that he sneaked it into the last refrain and thought nobody would notice it anyway. Well he didn’t reckon with you … 😉
I very much agree that the value of a good rhythm section cannot be overestimated, and I’m equally thankful that this is nothing I have to worry about. Mona and Dad always do a great job so I can sprinkle some fancy toppings on a solid base.
Thank you for listening so carefully and for discovering all our easter eggs 😉
Lisa
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Hello Angelo,
I think that’s a shadow of an angry pac-man about to attack an innocent audience member.
Or it’s my evil soul being summoned through my guitar playing.
I am not sure but whenever I don’t look the Maton starts making funny buzzing noises …
Lisa
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Hi Rick,
We haven’t signed the colourful wall behind the front stage but our signatures are somewhere in the dressing room 🙂 Nearly every inch of space has got someone’s name on it as thousands of bands have now played that Club.
The stage background aren’t really signatures but they are more painted on and a replica of the original backdrop from the 60’s. It’s mainly the names of the big acts from the 60s that have performed there when it all started:
And you’re right, there are two stages/rooms. One is the smaller but iconic stage, like the one you’ve seen in all the old recordings. The sweaty, crowded room everyone associates with the Cavern 🙂
Then they also have a bigger, more modern room in the back – the “Live Lounge”. It’s got a more convenient set up in terms of backstage area, bar etc. that they normally use when they book bigger one-off acts or private parties. It hasn’t got the rough Club atmosphere of the front room, where we used to play most of the time (with the occasional “Live Lounge” show thrown in). If you want to, you can look up their different rooms on their website: https://www.cavernclub.com
Hope you’re doing great!
Lisa -
Hi Steve!
That was quite the journey of how you ended up here but we couldn’t be happier to welcome you to the Club and are glad you made it! 😉
We thoroughly enjoy reading things like that, it gives us an idea of what happens way before people ever decide to click “send” on a message or buy one of our albums. The fun real-life details!
As much as we love covering our favourite music, writing songs is what it truly comes down to for us (and what you’ll get to hear much more of next year) so we extra appreciate your words about those. ♥
Thanks for helping us make beautiful things by joining the MLT Club!
Stay groovy,
Mona & Lisa -
Oh wow, Tomás!!! We’ve only just caught up with this thread but this is cute beyond words. Thank you so much for sharing the story and for posting the little video of your niece playing the “Wide, Wide Land”.
Especially considering she hasn’t been playing for that long, she did a marvelous job! Fingerpicking and singing at the same time is never easy and if she keeps it up she’ll be rocking Australia’s stages in no time 😉
Please keep us posted on her musical journey and send her and her sister our love ♥
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Hi Angelo! Yes, I’m sure 🙂
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Thanks for noticing and letting us know, we just updated the video. We are always thankful for reports like that!
Have a good day!
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Hi David,
That made our day, thank you for taking the time and saying hi (and your reply to the birthday post!)! Once the Christmas albums are sent out and the new release has calmed down, we’ll immediately take up working on ORANGE 2.0 again (that’s not actually the title, but we don’t have one yet ;-)) so we are as excited about the new record as you are.
To know that others across the world are going about their day, listening to our music is an incredibly rewarding feeling ♥
Lots of peace & love to Arizona,
Mona & Lisa -
Haha that would be a very poor listening experience. Our stepmum Michaela plays sax (you can see her play on some of our earliest YouTube videos) so I have had a go at it before. But the few times I tried it, I could hardly get a tone out of that thing.
Of course, it’d be fun to try it a bit more, and I love the sound of it. But I can’t sing while playing it which is a bit of a bummer …
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Hi Paul,
I use 10s on most of my Electric guitars (Gretsch Duo Jet, Strat, Ephiphone). For me it’s the best compromise of tone and playability. If I’m feeling a little lazy I might put 9s on whatever guitar I use for mindless noodling that I don’t use for recording.
To be honest, I don’t mind if I use nickel or steel strings or any of the popular combinations. I never found one or the other to be necessarily better or worse, and I always tweak my amp and guitar tone to fit whatever I want to play or record at the time.
We love the Pyramid brand but they are sometimes hard to get a hold of and are a little pricey. I don’t think you can go wrong with a set of D’addario or Ernie Ball.
Mona likes to use flat wounds a lot (as opposed to round-wound strings). On both her Rickenbacker and even some acoustic guitars. I have to admit, they do sound great for certain things. Especially rhythmic playing. Very old school, round and smooth.
And we definitely ALWAYS use flatwounds on bass. By now we can’t even imagine using regular round-wounds. Especially on the Hofner they sound fantastic and give you even more of that smooth, almost double bass sounding “smack”. 🙂
Hope that helps! -
Hi Rick,
That’s some good questions …
1) The little blue squares on the Mona’s drums skins are called “Moon Gel” and are basically just little damper pads made out of some sort of squishy jelly gel. You put them on the drums to take away some of the overtones of when you hit a drum, making them sound less “boomy” and more dry. In most cases that’s a preferred sound for drums.
Most drummers use some sort of dampening. Ringo for example often put his wallet, John’s Harmonica case or a cigarette pack on his snare drum or tea towels over his toms. Some people tape down napkins on their drum skins to “flatten” out the sound.
2) The boxes facing the musicians on stage are called monitors or “floor wedges”. As you said, they are there to allow the musicians on stage to hear whatever they need to hear to perform. If you’re on a big stage and the PA (the big speakers) is facing the audience you actually hear very little nuance of everything that’s going on on stage. Especially if you are playing loud music, with a loud drummer and have all the amps on stage. You will hardly hear yourself sing for example which can cause you to be out of tune. That’s why good stage sound and a great sound tech can make or break a show.
Normally each musician has their own speaker facing themselves where the sound guy will “feed” them whatever they need to hear most in order to perform best. Normally that’s mainly your own instrument + voice and the right balance of the other instruments being played on stage.
3) That could be one of two things. Especially in loud, crammed venues some musicians simply put in protective earbuds to look after their ears on stage. If you are standing an inch from the drummer hitting his cymbals with full force every night, you’ll soon damage your hearing, so over time it’s important to protect your ears.
However, most of the time it’s an “in ear monitor” system which does more than simply filter the sound. It’s used instead (or sometimes on top) of monitor speakers. So instead of having a monitor speaker facing you, you get your stage sound through earbuds. So you can for example hear your own voice and guitar playing amplified in the ear phones while it simultaneously filters out the loud frequencies of the drums or bass you might be standing in front of.
It’s a great way to reduce the overall volume on stage and can give you a much more precise mix. Some people (me included) don’t like that this can sometimes take away from the atmosphere as it blocks out some of the crowd noise. So I generally prefer floor wedges over in-ear monitoring.
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Thanks, Mike!
We actually transpose quite a lot of covers to a different key. Especially if we play songs that were sung by men originally, which is the majority of the tunes we pick.
With Beatles it’s kind of funny … they had such a huge range and were comfortable singing in so many different keys that some of their songs suit our voices perfectly while others don’t work at all.
So we often have to change them until they are comfortable for us.
There isn’t really “one” key that always works for sure, it always depends on the melody.I hope you’re having a groovy day! 🙂
Mona -
Great question! It was definitely one of the songs where the melody came before anything else. It was super “hummable” and had this old fashioned, swingy flair about it. That in turn inspired the lyrics, which then inspired the minimalist, jazzy Club flair old-school arrangement.
I remember when Dad and I discussed how great a Jazz guitar would sound with it. My first reaction was “Well, I can’t play Jazz, so we got to find someone who can for the record.” I had no idea where to even start but Dad convinced me to give it a try myself and some hours and plenty of YouTube guitar tutorials later we recorded my guitar track. If you don’t push your own boundaries you don’t learn 🙂
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That would probably have been one of the Steve Harley gigs. I think the biggest show we played with him must have been the Glastonbury show or one of the other open-air festivals like the Wickham festival, with thousands of people attending and watching. We don’t really have an exact number but our estimation is “lots” 🙂
We’re looking forward to Halloween, too! With all the Christmas album business going on, we probably won’t have time to do anything crazy this year, but we’ll think of some spooky pics to post.
After all, it’s still one of our favourite holidays of the year! 😉
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That is so sweet. Of course you can sing one of our songs, and it’s really kind that you ask. We’ve seen the little clip of your performance you sent us and are very happy for you that you found the courage to sing with your friend! We know how nerve wrecking your first open mics can be! Trust us, we’ve been there 😉
