Brad Spurgeon's Blog

A world of music, auto racing, travel, literature, chess, wining, dining and other crazy thoughts….

A Dualo Night at the Baroc Open Mic in Paris

April 22, 2015
bradspurgeon

Jules with his Dualo

Jules with his Dualo

PARIS – Arrived back in Paris on Monday night from Bahrain, totally wasted tired. But it just took one night’s sleep to lift myself out of my torpor and go on over to the Baroc open mic, to get right back into the groove. Groove would be a word that the night would reveal in a way I could never have imagined in advance.

There was this guy there who had this strange looking Star Trek-like luminous accordion-like device hanging off his chest, and I immediately queried him on what the hell it was!

A dualo,” he said.

He then began to demonstrate. The dualo may look like a quaint accordion of the past – one of those quintessential French instruments that we define as being the backbone of so many songs by French singers, or even Belgian ones, like Jacques Brel – but it is capable of sounding like an orchestra. Or even, I was brought back in mind to the late sixties, early seventies, the days of Moog synthesizers and mellotrons and other keyed electric instruments.

The guy who held the thing is Jules Hotrique, a street-musician-cum-mathematician who is also the creator of the instrument, this dualo, and who is in the thick of developing this instrument of the future in dynamic with his engineers at his new French start-up.

So what is it really? Well, let’s say, a dual is 116 letup pads and captors that acts like a midi, keyboards, synthesizer, drum machine, with 8 hours of autonomy and the ability to be played through speakers, headphones, a computer, has looping sequencing and 116 editable instrument sounds that can be programmed, shared and even help you write music.

Welcome to the electronic-instrument musical world. And the device only cost €1000. That’s only a third of the price of my Gibson J-200, which is just a bit of wood and plastic and you have to play it all by yourself. Oh yes, you do have to do some learning for how to play the dualo; but you can get your first lessons by watching some of the videos I took last night….

And the open mic at the Baroc was not that bad either…

I’ve talked enough about the dualo, the videos do the best talking. The open mic itself was pretty good, and I got to play some songs, and I got to forget some chords on “Just Like a Woman,” which I play all the time, so it must have been the lack of sleep from recent days….!

Present also were many of the regular regulars, as well as one or two new faces and sounds I did not know, like a guy from Holland who did several pretty mean interpretations of well-known covers…. Again, check out the videos…!





Worldwide Open Mic Journey 2014: The Multimedia Consolidation – Paris

December 26, 2014
bradspurgeon

Paris Skyline

Paris Skyline

My worldwide open mic journey began in China in 2008 after the Formula One race in Shanghai, and little did I know that it was a journey that would continue for six more years and cover most of the globe, every continent except Africa (where I once lived and played music in an open mic decades earlier) and Antarctica, and that it would spawn a book, a blog, an album, a documentary film, numerous podcasts, music videos and other multimedia projects.

This year, 2014, I have decided to finish all of the projects and tie them together into a consolidation of multimedia. As part of my personal impetus to gather it all together for myself, but also put it into perspective on this blog, I have decided to create a page for each city I have visited on the journey, tying together samples of the whole multimedia adventure linked to that city.

So here is the page devoted to tying together the pieces of the open mic adventure that I have lived in Paris since I first started.

Worldwide Open Mic Journey 2014: The Multimedia Consolidation – Abu Dhabi

December 10, 2014
bradspurgeon

bait al oud

bait al oud

My worldwide open mic journey began in China in 2008 after the Formula One race in Shanghai, and little did I know that it was a journey that would continue for six more years and cover most of the globe, every continent except Africa (where I once lived and played music in an open mic decades earlier) and Antarctica, and that it would spawn a book, a blog, an album, a documentary film, numerous podcasts, music videos and other multimedia projects.

This year, 2014, I have decided to finish all of the projects and tie them together into a consolidation of multimedia. As part of my personal impetus to gather it all together for myself, but also put it into perspective on this blog, I have decided to create a page for each city I have visited on the journey, tying together samples of the whole multimedia adventure linked to that city.

So here is the page devoted to tying together the pieces of the open mic adventure that I have lived in Abu Dhabi since I first started.

Worldwide Open Mic Journey 2014: The Multimedia Consolidation – Brazil

December 8, 2014
bradspurgeon

Sao Paulo skyline

Sao Paulo skyline

My worldwide open mic journey began in China in 2008 after the Formula One race in Shanghai, and little did I know that it was a journey that would continue for six more years and cover most of the globe, every continent except Africa (where I once lived and played music in an open mic decades earlier) and Antarctica, and that it would spawn a book, a blog, an album, a documentary film, numerous podcasts, music videos and other multimedia projects.

This year, 2014, I have decided to finish all of the projects and tie them together into a consolidation of multimedia. As part of my personal impetus to gather it all together for myself, but also put it into perspective on this blog, I have decided to create a page for each city I have visited on the journey, tying together samples of the whole multimedia adventure linked to that city.

So here is the page devoted to tying together the pieces of the open mic adventure that I have lived in Sao Paulo since I first started.

Worldwide Open Mic Journey 2014: The Multimedia Consolidation – United States

November 9, 2014
bradspurgeon

austin pubMy worldwide open mic journey began in China in 2008 after the Formula One race in Shanghai, and little did I know that it was a journey that would continue for six more years and cover most of the globe, every continent except Africa (where I once lived and played music in an open mic decades earlier) and Antarctica, and that it would spawn a book, a blog, an album, a documentary film, numerous podcasts, music videos and other multimedia projects.

This year, 2014, I have decided to finish all of the projects and tie them together into a consolidation of multimedia. As part of my personal impetus to gather it all together for myself, but also put it into perspective on this blog, I have decided to create a page for each city I have visited on the journey, tying together samples of the whole multimedia adventure linked to that city.

For my U.S. chapter, I divide it up between the two cities I visited for the adventure, New York City and Austin, Texas.

So here is the page devoted to tying together the pieces of the open mic adventure that I have lived in the United States since I first started. At each subsequent Formula One race that I visit this year, I will add a new such page. Keep posted….

Worldwide Open Mic Journey 2014: The Multimedia Consolidation – Istanbul

October 16, 2014
bradspurgeon

Istanbul

Istanbul

My worldwide open mic journey began in China in 2008 after the Formula One race in Shanghai, and little did I know that it was a journey that would continue for six more years and cover most of the globe, every continent except Africa (where I once lived and played music in an open mic decades earlier) and Antarctica, and that it would spawn a book, a blog, an album, a documentary film, numerous podcasts, music videos and other multimedia projects.

This year, 2014, I have decided to finish all of the projects and tie them together into a consolidation of multimedia. As part of my personal impetus to gather it all together for myself, but also put it into perspective on this blog, I have decided to create a page for each city I have visited on the journey, tying together samples of the whole multimedia adventure linked to that city.

Because the last race that I attended was in Sochi, Russia, and it was the first time that I have been there, I did not have any material aside from my weekend’s experience there there year to constitute a part of the Worldwide open mic multimedia thing. So what I have done instead, is to take a race that used to exist, and where I have a lot of material, and which no longer exists. In that way, I have fit into the multimedia adventure a race location in the place of Sochi, and made use of a major part of the adventure:

So here is the page devoted to tying together the pieces of the open mic adventure that I have lived in Istanbul since I first started. At each subsequent Formula One race that I visit this year, I will add a new such page. Keep posted….

Worldwide Open Mic Journey 2014: The Multimedia Consolidation – Japan

October 10, 2014
bradspurgeon

osaka

osaka

My worldwide open mic journey began in China in 2008 after the Formula One race in Shanghai, and little did I know that it was a journey that would continue for six more years and cover most of the globe, every continent except Africa (where I once lived and played music in an open mic decades earlier) and Antarctica, and that it would spawn a book, a blog, an album, a documentary film, numerous podcasts, music videos and other multimedia projects.

This year, 2014, I have decided to finish all of the projects and tie them together into a consolidation of multimedia. As part of my personal impetus to gather it all together for myself, but also put it into perspective on this blog, I have decided to create a page for each city I have visited on the journey, tying together samples of the whole multimedia adventure linked to that city.

So here is the page devoted to tying together the pieces of the open mic adventure that I have lived in Japan since I first started. At each subsequent Formula One race that I visit this year, I will add a new such page. Keep posted….

Worldwide Open Mic Journey 2014: The Multimedia Consolidation – Singapore

September 29, 2014
bradspurgeon

singaporeMy worldwide open mic journey began in China in 2008 after the Formula One race in Shanghai, and little did I know that it was a journey that would continue for six more years and cover most of the globe, every continent except Africa (where I once lived and played music in an open mic decades earlier) and Antarctica, and that it would spawn a book, a blog, an album, a documentary film, numerous podcasts, music videos and other multimedia projects.

This year, 2014, I have decided to finish all of the projects and tie them together into a consolidation of multimedia. As part of my personal impetus to gather it all together for myself, but also put it into perspective on this blog, I have decided to create a page for each city I have visited on the journey, tying together samples of the whole multimedia adventure linked to that city.

So here is the page devoted to tying together the pieces of the open mic adventure that I have lived in Singapore since I first started. At each subsequent Formula One race that I visit this year, I will add a new such page. Keep posted….

Worldwide Open Mic Journey 2014: The Multimedia Consolidation – Italy

September 10, 2014
bradspurgeon

Milan

Milan

My worldwide open mic journey began in China in 2008 after the Formula One race in Shanghai, and little did I know that it was a journey that would continue for six more years and cover most of the globe, every continent except Africa (where I once lived and played music in an open mic decades earlier) and Antarctica, and that it would spawn a book, a blog, an album, a documentary film, numerous podcasts, music videos and other multimedia projects.

This year, 2014, I have decided to finish all of the projects and tie them together into a consolidation of multimedia. As part of my personal impetus to gather it all together for myself, but also put it into perspective on this blog, I have decided to create a page for each city I have visited on the journey, tying together samples of the whole multimedia adventure linked to that city.

So here is the page devoted to tying together the pieces of the open mic adventure that I have lived in Italy since I first started. At each subsequent Formula One race that I visit this year, I will add a new such page. Keep posted….

Song of My Youth, and Video in Personal Photos: Not Much in the Mood

September 9, 2014
bradspurgeon

PARIS – After my sessions at the Melodium Studios this year in full-band mode, I wanted to record just me with my voice and guitar for a really simple acoustic song. I decided to record a song that I wrote when I was around 16 years old. It never actually got a title, but I’ve just decided to give it the logical one of: “Not Much in the Mood.” In this recording that I did in the living room with me playing guitar on three tracks and singing, it’s about as simple as it gets from a recording point of view.

I decided also that since this was a song from the past – which I do occasionally still sing in open mics – that I would not do a huge production dramatic video of the kind I’ve been doing, but to just illustrate it with some photos of the two music-performing periods of my life: When I was a teenager (and early 20s) and then photos from the recent period of my open mic adventures in the last five years. Nothing showy or complicated. Just two periods of my life and the song that has crossed them both:

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