Our Bruce lee? (crap,he died young too)

He blew my mind. Felt like a genius gift.

Nice guy too and got much inspiration from his workshop even though I'm not a great player.

Peace

Karl

After hearing "ido" from Ondrej's band Autopoliote, you can hear the rock influence as well. I would love to know if they have a CD coming around.

I posted this on the Didjeridoo tribe - but since we're talking about Ondrej, I'll repost it here

By late Sunday afternoon of JT fest, most folks had gone home. I asked Ondrej if he would be up for some individual coaching, and happily, he agreed to it. He had me play for a while, and immediately was able to pinpoint some issues that I was having, and gave me some good ideas about how to correct them. YAY!

He then went into his basic didge technique philosophy, which is this:
There are three parts to the didgeridoo sound. They are:

Drone
Tongue
Vocals

Each of these elements should work in isolation. As if you were playing three different instruments, not one
In other words, we should be able to do tongued sounds without affecting the drone. We should be able to do louder or softer drones with no affect on the vocals. The overblown ‘toots’ should not affect the tongue placement Etc.

Easy to say. Not so easy to do.
He told me that he does exercises that are much akin to a dancer practicing isolations – and he does them a *LOT*!

As Ondrej puts it “No one can helps you.”
By which I think he means that there are no shortcuts. If you want to play like him – sit down and practice three hours a day for sixteen years. That’s it.

I think he gets a little irked when folks come up to him and say “Show me how to do that!” - they've been playing for a few years, and now want to know how the ‘tricks’ are done. His response tends to be “Let me hear your drone.” If a person can’t do a really consistent drone, or can’t do a tongued or vocal pattern without throwing off your drone sound, then there is no use in him trying to teach far more complex patterns – and truthfully, there aren’t very many of us who are much more advanced than that. I know I’m not. …yet. :-)

He did, graciously, show me a few of his patterns up close, and slowed them way down. From watching this, I can tell you that – amazingly – 90% of what he is doing is the same stuff that the rest of us do. He has just refined it to a level that is astonishing. Everything appears to be effortless for him. He does a lot of sounds that I would think of as ‘intentionally overblown’ – sort of like a person imitating a turntable scratching sound – that are very percussive – for a split second, the drone is absent. I’ve heard Tyler do this kind of thing as well.

The other 10% seems to have to do with where he puts breaths and how he vocalizes. For instance, he showed me three different ways of approaching at overtone ‘toot’. None of them were particularly complex, yet I’d only ever done one before.

Regardless of whether you like his music or not, Ondrej is truly an innovator. He has gone beyond raising the bar for didge players – he has created a totally new bar, and set a new standard for ‘good’.

I hope it doesn’t take me 16 years to catch up :-)

Jay