How do you manage Surfing?
We were recently out at a pond with our daughter/granddaughters… and of course, we started skipping rocks. The delicate approach of first finding a smooth, flat rock, and then throwing it sidearm so it would land nearly parallel with the surface of the water came back to me….. after a few misses 😉 Watching the rock bounce 2, 3… 5… 15 times… was mesmerizing. And the physics are a lot like surfing – simply put, you must have enough force “up” to keep you from sinking. Put differently, so long as you have enough forward momentum, you only need a little upward thrust to keep you moving. And that is the hard part about it… it is balancing – while moving – and relaxing and letting it simply go forward…harnessing the energy vs. trying to fight it…
… another father of Rock/Surf started originally on the East Coast. Born Richard Anthony Mansour, he was raised in and around Boston, of Lebanese and Polish descent. As a small child, he started playing many instruments, picking up piano, trumpet, ukelele, and other instruments by ear. Most importantly, he learned to play the Taranaki drums, an Arab instrument with a unique ability to carry rhythm and lead tones. When he picked up the guitar at 8, he brought that same rhythmic pattern to his guitar playing, thus eliminating the need for drums in his early groups. The guitar served both functions simultaneously as both hands worked the strings with a fever pitch. It all came together when his Dad took a job in El Segundo for Hughes Aircraft as a machinist, and he hit California in 1955….. just as Rockabilly and Jump blues (from Louis Jordan) were merging…
… can you do it goofy-footed?
… and all of those instruments he played…. left-handed... and like Doyle Bramhall (with Clapton), he turned over his guitar to play the notes upside down…. often reaching over the top to play. Back to his drumming techniques, he could move both hands quickly like Eddie Van Halen in the 80s. He started to overcrowd the ice cream shops and other venues and petitioned to rent out the Rendevous Ballroom – which would allow 3000 people for what was called “Stomps.” The country tones that were being played ther normally were being influenced by another Californian – Leo Fender. His guitars all had jangly single-coil pickups that cut through the screaming audiences, but he kept blowing amps up. Partnering with James B. Lansing loudspeaker company, Leo was able to have a single 15-inch speaker and an unheard-of 100 Watt amplifier, which was released as the Fender Showman – with the JBL speaker 😉
One last element remained to put it all together. Leo had pioneered something called a Floating Tremolo – a way to vary the string lengths together – thus making the guitar sound like it was going up and down – like a wave. It is more accurately called “Vibrato,” but his name stuck. The large halls also have enough room for sound to bounce off the walls and come back “later” and out of phase… causing a reverberation not available in a studio – until Leo added a unit into his amps – Reverb. You know the sound of it… but the physics are amazing. The real “spring” reverbs do that – inject the signal at one end of a spring, and pick it up at the other… giving it a wavy, pulsing sound. Vary the spring tension, and you vary the rate of reverb…. and you have Surf Music.
managing Surfing…
To Surf, you need a wave with a lot of energy. Interestingly, the water doesn’t move a few inches forward and then back.. it mainly stays in the same place. The wave goes on – the energy being transmitted from start to finish by the water, which is (mostly) unaffected. The trick is to manage to the same pace as the wave – and then move forward. Stand still, and the wave passes…try to go against it, the energy is deposited on you. But finding a way to harness the energy, get on top of it, and ride it... well, that is the essence of what today’s artist did… and we all need to get better at. What will give you the momentum and support to ride your wave? We have a great soundtrack – you know him probably more by a name given to him in his first Country Band, hiding his Arabic background… and also by his work in Pulp Fiction and a repeat wave of success with Stevie Ray Vaughn with a Best Record in 1987…. Dick Dale…. and his “remake” of the Greek/Turkish/Arabic song – Misirlou.
