Karan Andrea
President, Soul House Sound

Karan Andrea is a singer, songwriter and guitar player. Her CD Desolation Hero received critical approval from Maverick Magazine in the UK, and she has been called "...arguably the smartest woman musician in all of upstate New York." by Elliott Randall, guitarist (Steely Dan, and many others), producer, and composer.

Her current project – the instructional DVD Guitar Player Wanted: Vocals a Plus – grew out of a casual request to teach a couple of guitar players how to sing.

She says, “I used to teach English literature to athletes, and I quickly learned that if I made the material relevant to their own lives, and if I drew comparisons when I could between the physical and the intellectual, they got it.
I used the same idea when I fielded this request. I thought about the cognates between the guitar and the voice. How each produces sound, what knowledge crosses over, and what concepts are most important to understand.
What I came up with was a couple pages of notes and exercises, and a few anatomical drawings printed from websites – the kernel of this DVD. I did my schpiel, and I couldn't believe how receptive these guys were to what I was telling them. They really got it! I realized pretty quickly, having been around musicians of every skill level, that there was a need for a somewhat casual, but factually accurate approach to singing.”

In early 2012, Andrea secured digital distribution for her DVD with Truefire.com, and became a blogger for GuitarPlayer.com. She is also going to be offering online lessons and consults through Truefire’s Guitar Sherpa program.

In mid-2012, after a long haitus, Andrea returned to songwriting and performing. She will be leading songwriting workshops in her local area, and hopes to expand that into an online format in order to work with artists regardless of their location.

She will go back to her true love – playing and singing for whomever will stand still long enough to listen – armed with her best songs and her Fret-King Black Label Elise GG guitar.

She says, “I took a few left turns the past few years with the DVD, with life, but it feels great to come full circle and return to what feeds me artistically. And I have found the two instruments that serve me perfectly – my voice, which has only richened in these last years – and my Fret-King Elise.

I need just the right instrument to accompany my voice since I work solo, and acoustic guitars never did it for me. The Elise gives me such tonal variety – the humbucker and P90 pickups give me classic choices, but adding the piezo bridge to the mix gives me a lush, rich sound to support my vocals. That said, I can go from pretty, to dirty, and back in an instant. That makes both the rocker and the crooner in me very happy.

When you are one instrument and one voice, you have to be able to change things up sonically from song to song or you get bored. If you are bored as an artist, your audience gets bored too. With this guitar, I am always finding new ways to tell the stories in my songs.”

Karan Andrea
President
Soul House Sound, LLC
P.O. Box 548 Lancaster, NY 14086

User of:
Fret-King Black Label Elise 'GG' – click here

www.SoulHouseSound.com