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The Bulba & El Deborita
Rock Harp Diaries On Tour with Steve Vai’s “Story of Light” tour Tour dates are HERE Fri. Aug. 10, 2012 It’s 1:30 AM I just got back to the hotel. Rehearsal ended around 12:45, then I stopped at a 24-hour Ralphs and bought more food than will fit in my fridge … but...
Finding the Ladies’
Rock Harp Diaries On Tour with Steve Vai’s “Story of Light” tour Tour dates are HERE Thu. Aug. 9, 2012 It’s Day 3 of the final week of rehearsals with Steve Vai for his upcoming Story of Light tour , only 2 more days of rehearsal after this one. Today we had a lot of...
Day 1 – Rehearsals
Rock Harp Diaries (On Tour with Steve Vai’s “Story of Light” tour) Tue. Aug. 7. 2012 Day 1 – Rehearsals It’s the first day of final rehearsals for Steve Vai’s “Story of Light” tour. Our first set of rehearsals was last June, and since then I’ve been at home...
On Beyond Zebra
It’s the eve of the last week of rehearsals before tour with Steve Vai. I’ve spent the last six weeks working on the music in a kind of frenzied preparation, rapids between islands of intense focus. It’s all still so new, some of the techniques are...
Deborah Henson-Conant – Tour Bio 2012
Here’s a preview of my new bio for the Steve Vai STORY OF LIGHT program book: When Deborah Henson-Conant (aka ‘DHC’) slings her signature carbon fibre electric harp, she defies definition and shatters convention. She’s a multi-talented GRAMMY®-Nominated...
The Shape of Music
I just started teaching my first online course and found myself writing to a student to explain what I meant, in our first module, by the ‘shape’ of the music. Here’s what I wrote her (with a few changes): I often think of what would a deaf person...
I am the Ghost in the Machine
As I prepare for touring as the electric harpist in Steve Vai’s “Story of Light” tour, I’m in a time machine. One minute I’m back at U.C. Berkeley, throwing myself on the floor during a practice session and sobbing “Why do I always have to work twice...
Where the heck are we???
Two things stick with me from Mark Twain’s “Diary of Adam and Eve”: that God created death to cure Adam’s existential depression and that Eve’s job was to name the animals. One of the biggest challenges in my rehearsals with Steve Vai is not knowing the names of the...
Field of Musical Landmines
Rehearsal started late today, which gave me a chance to work on some of my parts in the hotel. I still only have playable parts for a few of the tunes, but the list is growing. The way this works, Steve’s figuring out what I’ll play as we go along, I try to...
