FRITZ KUNDLER

Living in Indiana, I was exposed to Bluegrass and Country Music and I still remember pickin-and-grinning with Jeff W. and the boys at parties and on his porch in Carmel, Indiana. I was also exposed to music which has a unique feature of moving from major to minor chords in a single passage. You can strongly hear this influence on the title track to this CD “Out of the Woodwork” as well as on “Where Have You Gone”, “Walking Alone” and “Under the Sun”. Listen to these compositions and see if you can hear the blending of major and minor chords to achieve a mysterious quality and a hint of sadness.

While in college I performed in local clubs, coffee houses and bars performing mostly singer song-writer style original compositions with Mitch E.. I also participated in organized music as the bass player for the Indiana University Girl’s Ensemble Choir (not a bad gig) and I took a few music courses as electives at the Indiana University School of Music. Many of my singer-song writer compositions can be found on my first album “Dreaming of the Past” which I released independently in 2000.

For many years, I played with a guitar plectrum or pick and did not know much about harmonics, percussive qualities of the guitar or the enormous variability in the tone of an acoustic guitar when played with different techniques. But all this changed as my adult musical awakening occurred while I was living in Boulder, Colorado. Basically on a whim, I attended a musical workshop of guitar masters Laurence Juber and Brian Gore. Both are modern finger-style acoustic guitar players that utilize classical and modern techniques to coax a never ending array of sounds and tones out of their guitars. They taught me to play with only my fingers and to utilize alternative open tunings such as DADGAD and Drop-D. These open tunings facilitate playing a rich accompaniment with a melody line by a single guitar soloist. I use the DADGAD tuning on most of my compositions on this album and in many cases; I am playing a single guitar with both lead and accompaniment at once. I also learned how to open up the percussive qualities of my guitar with the techniques of “slapping harmonics” and “soundboard tapping”. Listen for these techniques on “Jason’s Party”, “Out of the Woodwork”, “Walking Alone” and “Z-Squared”.
http://cdbaby.com/cd/lawrenceblatt