Performing as a Trio

In August 5th 2022 I released my first album (can't believe its been 3 years already). Eight original songs that captured some of my quirky ideas of what the Puerto Rican Cuatro could do. One common theme across those songs was that I wanted to hear the cuatro more as part of the rhythm section and not necessarily as a lead soloist. If you recall my first blog entry, The Spark, that was intentional from the beginning.

Fast forward a few months and I'm booking gigs to play this new material. However I could never replicate the original sound of the recording. Reasons vary from musicians moving away from the Bay Area during the pandemic, the gigs not paying enough, different experiences with substitute musicians etc. Eventually it boiled down to the essentials for me to do the gig. With percussion and bass (gotta have that bass) I can dance.

The cuatro in traditional folk music is always the lead instrument. It cues the introduction, plays the melody and supports the singer constantly. To the point where usually the cuatro player becomes the musical director of the group. In a way slimming down my band brought the cuatro back to its roots.
However, to make this new music work I encountered some interesting challenges along the way adding layers of excitement to each new performance.

The Challenges

The first thing I noticed, when playing as a trio with the cuatro as the lead, was the amount of exposure I sensed. It felt like hiking above the tree line with just the ground as support. I pride myself as a musician of having good reflexes to know when something is about to happen on the bandstand and follow the moment. But when you are the one making the moment and the other two (drums and bass) have to follow is just a different muscle. You would think that because is only 3 people on stage it could be easier to manage, but I would argue that since we are all exposed any glitch is highly noticeable.

The second challenge were the tunes! Even though I wrote my tunes on the cuatro, sometimes they were not necessarily cuatro friendly because I wrote them for other instruments. As part of my creative process I'm searching for the things that I don't know how to play because that forces me to grow as a musician, composer and improviser. And in the heat of inspiration when the idea comes if I like it I'll write it down assuming that I will have the time later to practice it and learn them well. Now as the lead instrument I had to learn all the parts well. The more we played them night after night I figured out ways to modify my own tunes to deliver a consistent performance every time and still keep the main message.

Finally, I felt a huge gap between my part as a lead and the rhythm section, mainly because there is no harmonic instrument like a piano or guitar providing context within the space. Slowly I'm learning to embrace this silence as part of the performance, and help me choose how the songs will be different from one performance to the next. That said, sometimes it feels like have to work twice as hard to deliver my ideas very clearly, specially during my solos and improvisations. I want the audience to feel at the very least the tonality changes in the music, and at most that there's an intention behind every note I'm playing, even when there's not an additional instrument leading the way.

What Follows

Originally I never saw the trio setting as a long term configuration. But what started almost as way of musical survival it became my main medium of expression as an artist and is helping me grow as a person.
If I had to summarize each of the three challenges above with one (or two) word(s) it would be Awareness, Adaptability, Clear Intentions.
I can see a clear correlation between mastering any of these three areas in my musical development and my struggles to be a better partner, son, brother, friend, or a member of society. But that could be another entry altogether.
In the meantime, as a trio we have developed a keen sense of awareness that even when something is not going as expected we find a way to make it feel right, and groove with it. We have clear way of communicating on and off the bandstand, making it easy for me to trust my bandmates and know that night after night we have each other's back.
If you get the chance the hear us live or listen any of our recorded music, I'd like to hear your thoughts.