Admin Lisa Wagner
AdminForum Replies Created
-
Love all your stories!!! Thanks for sharing 🙂
-
Thanks Jung! We’re definitely enjoying the summer here, in fact a few days ago was the hottest day ever recorded in UK history. We’re roasting here … but loving it 😉 Reminds us of the scorching hot summers back home in Austria. Which actually kind of leads into the answer to your question …
Well, first, thanks for sharing the school bus story. That sounds like the cheerful, “everything-is-right-with-the-world” sort of childhood memory that would stay with you forever.We have many like this regarding Beatles. We must have been in 7 or 8th grade (around 13 – 14) when for a time in our lives The Beatles took over everything 🙂 And I mean everything. I don’t think we talked about anything else or listened to any other music for a good solid few months if not a year (thank god they have so many songs :-)). I’ll never forget this one day, when I walked home from school, listening to (of course) the Beatles on my MP3 player. I think I’ve written about this day before in one of the blog posts and it seems like a pretty insignificant setting but for me it sums up the effect the Beatles had on us. I got off the bus, the sun was shining and it was playing “Getting Better”.
And for a moment I didn’t care about anything else in the world. School, friends, heart-ache, worries, … All I could think of was how in the world music can be this beautiful. And I cried and I cried because I was so happy that something like this exists. And it wasn’t the lyrics in particular that evoked those emotions, it was about everything those 4 boys created, the beauty and spirit and this feeling of friendship and unity you felt through their music. I was the closest to real-life magic I ever felt … forget Harry Potter or flying carpets, the Beatles were witchcraft, that’s how good they are 😛
Like I said, walking home from school, getting emotional over a rather cheerful Beatles song doesn’t sound that significant but it’ll stay with me as one of my most precious memories of my teenage years. It showed me what music can do, how it can transform and move you in ways few things can.
Stay beatley 🙂
-
Holymoly Angelo, I’m impressed! You have a better overview of what we’ve played over the years than we do ourselves. Wow!
You were spot on with nearly everything. The Ovation you mentioned belonged to a friend in the United States (the one we played in the “California Dreaming” video) and the black “Strat” you spotted was my very first guitar I ever owned, a cheap Strat copy (the brand was “Golden Tone”) from Aldi 😛 And we only own one sunburst Strat, the one from the “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” video belonged to our guitar teacher back then.
It’s crazy how long the list has gotten by now. We still own most of the guitars we ever played, though we have sold or traded some occasionally. We store them in their original cases away from moisture and too much heat.
Now to answer your questions:
“what is for each one of you your favorite nylon strings electroacoustic, favorite steel strings electroacoustic, favorite electric, 12 strings guitar, possibly with a comment to let us learn something from your experience.”– Okay, so for Nylon I really like my Cordoba, especially for live shows. I’ve taken it on tour with me and like that it is a real working guitar. Nothing super precious that I’d be scared to take on the road, it has a built in mic and the piezo sounds fairly balanced as well (as far as piezo pickups go). It sounds like a nylon string is supposed to sound, doesn’t feedback a lot and is comfortable to play.
– Steel string acoustics are more of Mona’s thing as I generally find myself playing electric or classical guitars most of the time. But when we do play acoustically together (and I’m not on nylon) we often use the two Martins. They both have a Roland Cosm Preamp built in that simulates a full toned sound as if the guitars were miked up directly (instead of the typical harsh piezo pickup sound).
– Favourite electric – easy pick – my Gretsch Duo Jet – because it is the best thing ever made. period. 😉
– For 12 strings, I have a thing for the Höfner acoustic. There is something so mellow about the tone and the playability is superb for a 12-string. We call her the Big Bertha. It was an impulse buy when we visited the big music store in Cologne/Germany. For 400€ we couldn’t leave her behind.
And how nice to see Michael and Philipp mentioned. It’s been a long time since we’ve played with them but as far as we know they are both keeping super busy back home in Austria, playing in various bands and doing studio stuff. 🙂
Thanks for the questions!
-
Hi Rick,
I really like the look of that brown Fender tweed strap on my Gretsch. But I’ve been swapping straps from time to time, depending on what I feel like. The MLT straps you mentioned (a great gift from overseas :-)) are super comfortable, so I normally use them on the heavier guitars or when we’re playing longer gigs.
My Gretsch is surprisingly light (it’s partly hollow) so I don’t really have any specific requirement and just use whatever looks and feels best to me.
I’ll stay EXTRA groovy if you stay EXTRA groovy 😀
Best,
Lisa -
Hello Bill,
we’re glad you decided to introduce yourself here in the forum and thank you for joining us a while back already! I guess we have to thank the YouTube/Google recommendations for your ending up here 😉
We’re happy it made you stumble across our music and thank you for following your curiosity into the MLT universe!
So cool to hear from a photographer. I’ve been getting more and more into photography over the last few years and it brings me so much joy 🙂
Even better that you were able to turn your passion into a career.
Thanks for all the encouraging words and for enjoying and appreciating what goes into creating the Club. Don’t hesitate to let us know what you like/dislike or any suggestions as to what content you’d like to see more of.We’ll see you around and send all the best to Ohio!
-
Thanks Rick!
For the opening/ending scene we chose a volcano that you could access from one side where the lava had broken through many, many, many years ago, so we only had to walk down a little bit. The other 90% of the ridge were still intact so it looks super deep when scudding down the drone.
We parked the car some 100 meters away from the outer edge and had to do just a little bit of hiking to get to the inside. Dad started the drone from there and we communicated through walkie-talkies to set up the shots and get some feedback. He had a better overview from his drone’s perspective and could tell us where to stand/lie to be positioned right in the middle of the crate which was hard to gage from the inside.
We used the walkie-talkie all the time during this video shoot, especially with all the drone scenes. Dad always had to stay far away in order not to be visible in any of the drone shots 🙂 It worked really well.
We’re working on a little behind-the-scenes video for the Club, so hopefully we get to show you a bit more of the workflow soon.
The John Sebastian shots were done in front of a white screen, but with a little bit of video editing magic we put him right there in the desert with us 🙂
-
No, the kid just enjoyed a bit of guitar window shopping that day 😉 I’m already spoilt rotten when it comes to guitars, so definitely no complaints here.
-
First of all, Thank You!!
Hmmm, not an easy question. We’ve always been interested in a million things so it’s hard to imagine what hobby/potential career each of us would have pursued if music was out of the question.When we were really young we were crazy about animals and horses, for example. If music wasn’t an option then, we might have devoted more time to that interest.
Later on in life, art, graphic design and photography got really interesting. So if you’d told 13 year old me I had to burn my guitar, maybe I would be a designer now (which of course is a hypothetical question as I would have plotted murder against anyone who told me to put down my guitar :-P)
So if I suddenly lost my voice, became deaf and dumb and forgot all musical abilities, I’d probably be drawn more towards visual art, or maybe something to do with health or fitness, or filmmaking …
… Gosh, I don’t know and I’m ridiculously glad that I don’t HAVE to think about that. Not having a plan B insures that you’ll work your butt off for plan A 😉
-
Hi Angelo,
A few years ago you could have seen us enough times during IBW to become sick of us by the end of the week – we used to play up to 15 shows a week! 😛 These days, however, we’re focusing much more on our own music, so we won’t be playing on this occasion.As far as recommendations go, that really depends on what you’re into. Some people spend lots of time down at the Cavern Club while others prefer the bigger, less sweaty places 🙂 There is live music on pretty much 24/7 in a lot of venues throughout the town. They also have bigger productions on at the theatres that can be really good. To catch some interesting talks (it will depend on what guest speakers they invite this year) you might want to consider getting tickets for the convention at the Adelphi Hotel (Sunday). Here’s the official event overview: https://www.internationalbeatleweek.com/
For Beatles Tours check out Jackie Spencer: https://www.jackiespencerbeatleguide.com/
She’s the best, but she’s usually booked out very quickly.It makes us really happy to hear how much you enjoyed your trip to Liverpool! We too, fell in love with this city the minute we set foot in it 🙂
-
Thanks Rick, glad you like the White Room cover so much! Talk about a good challenge 😉
I played it on my Fender stratocaster, in true Clapton fashion. A strat and some hefty wah-wah … can’t go wrong there!My “main” guitar is still my Duo-Jet, though as you mentioned, we are incredibly lucky (thanks to Steve!) to also own a Country Gentleman and Tennessean. I don’t think I ever played the Tennessean in a video but we’ve posted some pictures:
It’s a real vintage one from the 60’s and it sounds phenomenal. I played it on some of the tracks on ORANGE, like “Close To You”.
I just adore these guitars. They each have so much character in their own distinct ways. They don’t call it “that great Gretsch sound” for nothing 🙂
-
Not really, but then we don’t watch many shows in general. We’re open to suggestions however 🙂
-
Yep! We went round on that thing in different speeds more times than my stomach was pleased about 😉 It took some tweaking and lots of run-throughs to get the timing right.
As we wanted to post the video to celebrate 50k YouTube subscribers (which we were approaching faster than we expected) we only had one day to plan the actual video shoot. So we needed something simple but effective that didn’t require lots of post production.
Which is how the rotating platform idea was born.We scoured the internet for a contraption that could work and, you joke, but we actually did consider putting some sort of wooden platform on a spinning chair and having Dad somehow turn it manually. 😛
I still can’t believe our luck when we found a motor driven platform on Ebay, big and sturdy enough to hold two people and close enough for us to pick up (though still a 2 hour drive).
So the next morning Dad got up at 5am (what a champ!), collected the platform from some very nice chaps, and we shot the video the very same day/night 🙂
-
That’s easy, I’m DEFINITELY the funnier, less serious one.
-
I like it when Mona plays lead. It gives me a bit of a break 😛
She also plays some lovely lead on this one too: https://test4.monalisa-twins.com/leise-rieselt-der-schnee-2018/
Or the solo on Daydream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIHQBMijVO8
I’m sure there are a few more but those come to mind right now.Then she played guitar on all the Mike Massé songs we did together as I had the excuse of taking care of the bass 😛
No, I’ve not played drums at any “proper” show in a long time and that’s definitely for the better … With a drummer and Mona in the group, there’s no need for me to mess with something that two more skilled people could do a lot better 😉
-
Hi John!
What a touching “hello” message, thanks a lot for joining, for saying hi and for your words. We hope you’ve been enjoying yourself here so far.
Definitely let us know when your blog/YouTube channel is up and running, we’re looking forward to learning something new about Liverpool!
We hope you’re going to have a great time in the Club and whenever you’ve got a question, feel free to post it in the “Ask the MonaLisa Twins” forum.
Cheerio 🙂