[Lisa Wagner]

Hi Brian! Yeah, you joined us here 🙂 That is wonderful, thank you for the great introduction.
We wish you all the best with any upcoming projects, you sound like a busy man!
We hope you’ll enjoy your time here at the Club. See you around!

[Lisa Wagner]

Hi Ivan and Sasha, it great to have you here! What a sweet introduction, you two seem like a great team 🙂 And well done, Sasha, for having your first performance singing Christmas songs at the church last week! That is exactly how we started off, too: https://test4.monalisa-twins.com/christmas-performances-2001/

We hope you’ll enjoy your time here and Mona and I send big hugs ♥

[Lisa Wagner]

I believe I did that on a programme called After Effects back then. It was a fairly easy thing to animate as it was basically just a white line zooming through the air and then disappearing. We thought it’d be a fun little detail. Glad you noticed 🙂

[Lisa Wagner]

Hello Jung,

Whoops, sorry that it took us a while to get back to this. Good thing is, our legs had more than enough time to recover since 😛

“what aspect of its production is the most difficult or time consuming? Is it in the pre-film prep, actual film day filming/process, or post film production in the studio, or all of the above equally?”

There isn’t really one answer as it always depends on the project.

We often try out a lot of different ideas and storyboards, effects and looks before we decide on what to go with. So the pre-film prep and planning can often be the most time consuming part overall.

Then for videos like “nothing is in vain”, “I wanna kiss you” or even “the wide wide land” it was definitely the post production that was the most time consuming.

Simple studio videos of us recording a song are usually quite simple and fairly straight forward to both film and edit. So really, it totally depends. We often get inspired by techniques we see being used in a different context or when a new piece of equipment or software comes out.

We usually follow the motto of not wanting to repeat ourselves, especially when it comes to our bigger productions (with the exception of things like our Duo Sessions Series). But even when we keep things simple, we don’t want to feel like we’re getting into a creative trot or like we’re playing it safe. So the workflow also changes for each of these projects 🙂

[Lisa Wagner]

Hi Mike,

Best Christmas present ever, hmm? Receiving my first ever electric guitar when I was about 10 definitely was a highlight 🙂
I think my face says it all!

I was just starting to take lessons and “only” had an old, rusty acoustic guitar at home to practise on. The kids with an electric guitar were uber cool 😉 Playing an electric guitar was uber cool! 😉

Holding this guitar in my hand definitely marked the beginning of something we hadn’t had a clue would happen later. Music and playing guitar became everything. And funnily enough, this guitar, despite being a rather cheap “beginner” one bought at Aldi, was perfect to start out with. Dad and I set it up properly and it sounded and played beautifully. I remember polishing the heck out of the fretboard!

Funny Christmas stories … well, as we sing about in “All I Want Christmas To Be” we always did swear that we spotted the “Christkind” (changed to elf in the song) dangling its feet from the kitchen shelf before disappearing into the night. Magic was real back then! 😉

♥
Lisa

[Lisa Wagner]

Hi Rick,
We usually don’t think of songwriting and chord progressions in “chord shape” terms. Being able to use a capo or transposing songs (like we often do) it’s really not about the specific chords you use but rather the sequence. When Paul talks about A D and E, he means using the I, IV and V progression if you look at it on a key chart . It’s the most basic blues chord progression that a lot of songs are built upon. For example, our song “Won’t You Listen Know” is in the key of A, so you could play along to the verses using these chords.

Paul learning the “B7” chord would have allowed him to play blues and rock n’ roll songs in the key of E, of which B7 (or a regular B) would be the “V” position. In this case E, A and B (or B7) being the I, IV and V progression. So he could now play along to blues and rock songs in two different keys, A and E, both of which are commonly used 🙂
I hope that made some sense!

I guess what I’m trying to say is that they had a completely different approach to starting learning the guitar back then, as they couldn’t just google a list of all the possible chord shapes and basic music theory. They were “hunting” chord shapes, which now makes for an awesome story 🙂

Unlocking the mysteries and possibilities of the guitar bit by bit, teaching themselves and most importantly learning by listening to all these great old records. A very different approach to how most people start learning guitar these days.

[Lisa Wagner]

I see you already posted it in the “General Discussion” forum which is totally fine 🙂 Cute reindeer antlers!!
Happy Christmas ♥

[Lisa Wagner]

Great that you spotted that! Thanks for letting us know, we fixed it and replaced the files.
Close To You on Uke?? We’d love to hear that!

[Lisa Wagner]

We tried our hand at creating our own logo quite a few times but it never turned out quite right. So we decided to let a professional do it whose handwriting doesn’t resemble that of an 8 year old 😉

The logo was done by a graphic designer called Stelian Vasile https://stelianvasile.com/ whose work we found online. It actually took us quite a bit to find the right person and a design we were all happy with but in the end it turned out how we envisioned it.

[Lisa Wagner]

#1 It’s funny that you brought up favourite Christmas Ornament. That question brought back a lot of memories of exactly that – choosing our favourite things to put up on the tree and looking forward to placing them on the prettiest branches every year.
For example, we had one blonde little paper angel with a super cute face that reminded us of the little sister of one of our friends from kindergarten. We called it the “Tamara Angel” named after the sister. It is what inspired the line on “All I Want Christmas To Be” … Small paper angels were waving at me …
So yes, I’d say the “Tamara Angel” would have been my/our favourite little ornaments.

#2 Favourite Christmas Treat? Our grandma (Michaela’s mum) makes heavenly cookies called “Linzeraugen”, a typical Austrian recipe, but uses rosehip jam instead of the usual redcurrant or apricot jam. My mouth is watering just thinking about them. She even sends them to the UK every Christmas 🙂

[Lisa Wagner]

Hi Ian 🙂

Welcome to the party, we are glad you joined us at the MLTC Club and say a big thank you!
We’ve never been to Durham unfortunately but from visiting a few other places around we know that the northern area of the UK is beautiful!

Groovy greetings from the opposite coast of the island! 🙂
Mona & Lisa

[Lisa Wagner]

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

[Lisa Wagner]

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

[Lisa Wagner]

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:

https://www.visitliverpool.com/imageresizer/?image=%2Fdmsimgs%2FCavern_Club_5_505581051.jpg&action=ProductDetail

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

[Lisa Wagner]

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 ♥