Reelin' & Rockin' (12/24/2008)....A few days ago I was recording a song with my son: he played bass and drums and lead guitar part, while I laid down rhythm guitars and a keyboard part. Unfortunately the multitrack crashed and the tracks were wiped out (reminding us once again to save early & often), but we'll try again soon and I fully expect it'll be better next time around.
This process reminded me of myself back in high school, and what an unusual privilege I was given: access to a reel-to-reel tape deck made by a company called TEAC. It sat alone on a wheeled cart in the office of the drama teacher, Mr. Sloat, and I was astonished to discover that this machine could record FOUR SEPARATE TRACKS.
To a kid who had been playing guitar for a couple years, this was a goldmine. The TEAC wasn't state-of-the-art in the late 70s, but it was one of the first portable multitracks that was reasonably affordable, and it was a happy surprise that the school had one, and that virtually no one else took an interest in it. With its big knobs and clicky switches, it epitomized good ol' solid state tech, and did I mention it could record four separate tracks?!?
Yes, even then I knew that songs on my favorite albums were composed of parts that were often recorded separately, and I understood that a four-track recorder meant I could record guitar on one track, then put a vocal on a second, a bass guitar on a third, and maybe a harmony vocal on the fourth . . and then play them back together. With this machine, I was an instant 'group.'
For the next four years I made private time with that machine whenever I could, recording my first songwriting efforts, which ranged from acoustic tunes to pop and new wave-ish rock. When the school purchased an ARP synthesizer in my senior year, I learned how it worked (the basics, that is) and started to record with it as well.
All these years later, I'm still enthralled by the ability to put parts together, to experiment, to sketch out ideas on a large audio canvas. And evidently I've passed on that interest to my son, who has witnessed the process first hand. He takes the home studio as a given, and the idea that he can record tunes too as a birthright. Watching him pull the headphones on and then bend over a bass guitar, deep in concentration, and to see the satisfaction in his face when he decides "that's good" tugs at my heart.
One of the best gifts I've gotten this year.
Happy Hols to all. Be well and enjoy yourself . . . gw
The wonderful world of FLIX!
What Geoffrey Thinks: 2008 Movie Edition! (12/17/2008)...'tis the season of annual best-of lists, so why not add to the melee? Here's what I paid attention to this year.
Little Movies: 1) The Visitor 2) Frozen River 3) Slumdog Millionaire (UK/India) 4) Let the Right One In (Sweden) 5) Encounters at the End of the World (Or: Werner Herzog Visits the South Pole)
Big-ass Movies: 1) Hellboy 2: The Golden Army 2) Iron Man 3) Dark Knight 4) Pineapple Express 5) Cloverfield 6) Get Smart
Best Movie about Genghis Khan: Mongol
Honorable Mention for Kickass Music: Cadillac Records
Best Movies I Saw on DVD: 1) Dead Man's Shoes (2006) 2) The Last Winter 3) Tea With Mussolini (1999) 4) Man On Wire 5) Lives of Others/Das Leben der Anderer (2006, Germany) 6) Priceless/Hors de Prix (2006, France) 7) Heckler (2007)
Top B-Movies (AKA: Films That Were Fun or Affecting, Despite Not Being All That Good): 1) The Ruins (AKA: Killer Vines) 2) The Day The Earth Stood Still (AKA: See Keanu Glower) 3) The Happening (AKA: Killer Trees, Grass, and Shrubs) 4) The Forbidden Kingdom (AKA: Jackie Chan AND Jet Li?!?) 5) Quarantine (AKA: Everybody Gets Rabies and Dies)
Eh: 1) Wall-e 2) Kung Pao Panda 3) Indiana Jones & the Something of the Whatever It Was 4) Wanted (my son liked it) 5) Quincunx of Solstice 6) Tropic Thunderdome
Hark! The Herald Hit Count Sings! (12/5/2008)....Golly'n'gosh, begorah. This may not be my final bloggy of the year, but it is a recap.
First: this has been a tremendous year of growth for GW.com. While there was incremental growth from 2006 to 2007, this year's hit count has surpassed DOUBLE the count from last year. Contributing factors include this bloggy, new tunes posted on The DownLow page, and my participation in message-boards (thank you, Harmony-Central & TAXI drivers!).
Second: the musical journey that kinda stalled after the release of One Band Man last year is definitely back on track, thanks especially to Poison Dart Studios and the TAXI mission to produce music for particular markets (film/tv/etc.). Each new tune I record teaches me something, which makes each new recording exciting to me in a different way. The recording quality is improving and I feel like I'm getting my focus back, as well as enjoying the music again.
Third: you! Thanks so much for your time and attention to this humble web-spot. I hope to have good news to report in the coming months, and look forward to what's just around the corner . . . in 2009.
Uncle Turk Strikes Again (11/26/2008)....For some reason I still can't fathom, my father invented a benevolent Santa-like anthropomorph for Thanksgivings.
It happened when I was in junior high or so, at a time before my older sister had left for college. We emerged from our rooms that Thursday morning to find little treats left on display for us (an LP, a book, etc). It was then that my father told us the tale of this good-hearted bird, who shall forever go by the moniker Uncle Turk, and how he popped by the house late the previous evening to show us the meaning of Thanksgiving.
And to leave behind little presents.
The idea of a kindly gift-giving holiday fowl struck the rest of us as odd, but charming nonetheless. Which describes my father pretty well too, really.
Happy Tanxgibbon to y'all. gw
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fishing for compliments
No Geoffrey No Cry (11/14/2008)....Updated: I watched a DVD the other day called "Heckler." As it begins, it appears to be a comedian's-eye view of people who interupt a show by inserting themselves, shouting or cat-calling. The comedian in question is Jamie Kennedy, and the film polls other comedians about the experience, and how they deal with it.
I'm a big fan of stand-up comedy, and some of the featured comics are among my faves (Maria Bamford, Lewis Black, Patton Oswalt), but the film broadens the scope to include musicians (Jewel, Rob Zombie), writers (Christopher Hitchens), and even atheletes, which is interesting up to a point.
And then it takes on critics, which is a bit of a stretch. Critics contrasted against or equated to hecklers. Their 'credentials' are questioned, the usual "what've THEY ever done?" barbs are trotted out, while a few voices (such as Arsenio Hall) speak reasonably about the critic's role as valuable.
It's interesting to see a performer take himself off the podium and say "that hurt!" Comedian Harland Williams notes that a review of one of his movies critiqued not the movie, but his face and appearance, which clearly stung. In some cases, Kennedye sits with the critics and reads their savage reviews back to them.
It's an odd thing to see a performer say outloud (to himself as much as the critic he's facing), "I know I'm good." The critic makes no bones about disagreeing, and in one case, the critic is positively gleeful about the power to be mean.
Here Comes the Connection: Sunday I got a review from Taxi, the music service I've signed on with in an effort to get my music into "media" (tv, film, commercials, etc.). The review stated that the song I submitted ("Happy, Happy Blues") was on target for the listing, but wasn't 'distinctive' enough. Ouch!
Part of my decision to turn to more blues songs was that I've gotten some of the best responses from audiences to my blues playing. Seeing this comment, I despaired a bit. "This is the stuff I do best, and it's not good enough? Maybe I have to accept that I'm just . . . not very good at this...." Artist Panic Alert!
I have moments of doubt, and I have moments of supreme confidence. No matter how much praise I get, it's easy to fall back into a feeling that my work is never good enough. And yet in the next breath I could posit that there's a lot of worth in the work.
As one comedian muses, when you step on a stage, you are both physically placing yourself above people--which can create a false idolotry just as easily as it can create resentment. In that moment, you assert a sort of power by commanding people's attention, but you also make yourself completely vulnerable to attack. There's nowhere to hide when you're in the spotlight. (On a live performance dvd, comedian Zach Galifianakis touches on this when he suddenly declares his hatred of celebrities, pausing and then noting, "I realize the absurdity of saying this when five cameras are pointed at me..")
It feels like I'm circling around this topic rather than making a point. I'm not sure I have one, to be honest, other than to say: ouch. Sometimes criticism hurts, even when it's well-intended. It's the hurt of a fall off a bicycle, rubbing your rump and climbing back on, even as you ask yourself if it's worth it. And you ride again. And fall again. And ride.
Backstory #3: Rooftop Blues (11/3/2008)...This tune was made up when I lived in Queens, New York, just on the edge of Astoria. Periodically I'd take my guitar up the stairs and play on the roof, which turned out to be a nice spot: I could see all the buildings around me, and could observe people passing by, but I was also alone on an unusual level (not many people showed up on the roof, except on the 4th of July). The air felt a little fresher than it did indoors, and I had a view of the NYC midtown skyline in the distance.
Rooftop Blues was 'written' on acoustic guitar, like 95% of the hundreds of tunes I've made up. Over the years I've always performed it as an acoustic solo piece, but in my head I always heard something much more like this recording, especially the lead-in where the bass first appears (I've heard those first two bass notes in my head for years!), so this was a real pleasure to record. It's also my first-ever "band" blues instrumental.
I'm in there, really!
The Artists Formerly Known as "Various" (10/30/2008)...A compilation album associated with the recent Baltimore Music Conference has come out, and one of my tracks is on it ("Out on the Road"). When the solicitation was sent around I took a brief look at the terms, which some declining artists objected to as overly restrictive. Basically, I signed away my rights (though not my copyright) to the track on this compilation for a year....but I figured, since sales aren't exactly ripping, why not?
The only other time I've been on a compilation album was in 1987, with an organization called Fast Folk.
They were centered in the Folk community of New York City, and issued
occasional 'long-playing magazines' (i.e., semi-regular compilation
albums). Some tracks by big-ish names (Shawn Colvin, John Gorka, Suzanne Vega) found
their way onto these albums, along with a few 'usual suspects' who were
involved in the workings of the organization behind the albums.
After I graduated from NYU, I started to hang out at a club called The
Speakeasy, on McDougal Street in Greenwich Village, which turned out to
be headquarters of the "Co-op". They met weekly and arranged concerts,
and there was cross-over with the Fast Folk people. My regularly sets at the Open Mics earned me the tip that they'd be
recording a bunch of the Open Mic "good ones" for a Fast Folk
album.
I was thrilled--a chance to be on an album!! DANG! (or DAG, as they say in Maryland)
The night arrived, and a bunch of us were recorded playing a couple of
our songs. Later I was told that some of the recordings
hadn't come out well, and that I would re-record. I did so, and that's
when "Children in Any Garden" was captured on tape.
Let me tell you, the weeks crawled by as I waited for the album
to finally be issued, and when it finally was, I thought "This is IT!" I held Fast Folk Musical Magazine (Vol. 4, No. 3): Live at the Hoot in my hands, saw my name in the credits. My time had
come. I was so naive that I expected that "offers would start
rolling in" from record labels, agents, clubs. They didn't. And I was crushed when a
Fast Folk show happened soon thereafter and I wasn't invited to perform.
But...that's the way it goes. I had no appreciation for how much WORK
it takes to get noticed--it's like a series of ledges on a cliff. You
struggle and huff and puff your way onto one, only to find there's
another ledge right above you, and more beyond that, on into the sky. I
hoped that someone would come along and give me a boost.
After all, I arrogantly wondered, wasn't my songwriting genius
enough?!?.
(short answer: nope!try again, please...)
this little ol' piggy
A-Punning We Will Go (October 28, 2008)....The words "A True Story" really resonate, sometimes. What an odd, dichotomous phrase! Putting "true" and "story" together, genius.
Was just reading bits and pieces about feral children, the type of archetypal story that, apparently, tempts people into blatant falsehood. A French doctor wrote a survey of 'documented' feral children and discovered that many of them are hoaxes or just plain fiction.
These are stories that have been told for centuries, they revolve around a child found in the woods and thought to be raised by wolves or bears. My first exposure to such an idea was when my Dad took me to see a Truffaut film called L'Enfant Sauvage, in which such a child was found in Aveyron, France, and taken under the wing of a doctor who tries to teach him language and empathy.
This was presented as a true story, and in this case, it was more-or-less 'true'. There was such a boy who was found running through the woods, naked and alone. He was given the name "Victor," and as the film depicts, he was taught the French language as well as customs, but had difficulty with both, learning only to speak a few words.
Having always been interested in language and what you might call interpersonal choreography (I once did research on eye contact, for instance, for a story I was writing), I can understand the interests piqued by "wolf boy" stories--how would a child relate to people if he had no real familiarity with them?
There are also stories of children deprived of human contact and language, the 'child-in-the-cellar' idea, which also occasionally (and sickeningly) actually happens. Sometimes these stories are predicated on the idea that if a child is taught no language and begins to speak independently, this will be the 'original' language, or the language of god. A crueler act is hard to imagine than denying a child human interaction. (An incredible graphic-novel adaptation of Paul Auster's novella City of Glass, examines the 'original language' idea.)
Somehow this thought-train stems from an idea I wrote as a lyric last night--the contention that insanity is defined as the repetition of the same action while expecting a different result, which is not a clinical statement but just a great quote from Einstein. I was pondering this notion and set up the following scenario:
1) You consistently pick one of two answers to a question. The answer is wrong, yet you continue to select it.
2) You consistently pick one of two answers to a question. The answer is correct, yet you continue to select it.
The second option started to seem just as crazy as the first.
Written by? (10/20/2008)....I played my new recording ("Hit the
Spot") to my coworkers today and was pleased by their response. One of
them said, "Now this is one you wrote?" I said yes, but applying the "written" word to what I do has always seemed like a misnomer. The reasons:
I don't read music, nor do I write musical notation
I "write" the lyrics, but the music part stays in my head and fingers
The third reason is more ethereal--ideas for lyrics or tunes don't always feel like they come from me, it's like they're coming through me from somewhere else. Certain songs seem to just happen, without my intending them to.
Hop on Pop
Me and the Boy (10/14/2008)....Over the years, various people have reacted when I refer to my son as "the boy," which never struck me as odd. Perhaps, at first hearing, it might make one wonder about my attitude towards him....is this evidence of disdain, or detachment? Nothing could be further from the tooth. To my mind, the phrase has a nice ring to it. I can grant that if you're not used to it, the phrase sounds a bit, what, clinical? Or just odd. But perhaps that's part of the appeal. I've always been drawn to interesting words, sometimes based on the sheer sound, sometimes on double- or treble-entendres.
One not very glamorous example is the word gal. My grandmother used it generically to refer to women, as in "she was a gal who played basketball in high school." I liked the sound of it when she used it. Then I started using it in the same way at some point when I was in college. Imagine my surprise when some women in their twenties got huffy with me and insisted the term was sexist, or at least diminishing. I had taken it as a harmless bit of archaic lingo. (Imagine my surprise in years since when referring to a woman I don't know well as that chick upset women less than gal!)
So it is that I've come to accept occasionally having to explain myself. I speak in a quirky way that partly stems from having an English parent: my ex-wife used to say that I had inherited the ability to speak without saying anything. (Example: British speakers tend to do things rather than just doing them.)
Add all that to my love of odd turns of phrase, or 'old-fashioned' expressions, and a dry sense of humor, and people often assume I'm kidding when I'm not. And, sometimes, vice versa, since I like saying preposterous things with a straight face.
"The boy," then, for me, only refers to one person, and I think giving my son his own definite article and noun is pretty darn affectionate.
PS. It's nice, naming this bit 'Me & the Boy,' because that's the name of a neat NRBQ tune that was a minor hit for Bonnie Raitt way back, another nice association.)
Chain of Fool(ish Thoughts) (10/3/2008)....a dear friend
asked me what my "shower songs" were, i.e., songs that one
automatically starts to sing in the shower, without thinking.
What I came up with was "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," sung very low, all
resonant and bass-y, in the style of Paul Robeson, which makes me think
of "Old Man River," which Robeson sang in the first filmed version of
"Show Boat," which reminds me that I saw "Show Boat" on Broadway back
when I was a married man, which makes me think of Brooklyn, and driving
into Manhattan in the little blue VW Rabbit, which ran on diesel, which
now seems like a good option because those engines run forever, which
makes me think of my coworker Tom and his experience with recycled
french-fry-oil in his car, and of course Tom just got married, and I
wonder how his honeymoon is going, which makes me think of the
Carribean (cos that's where they are celebrating) and how I really must
get back to Jamaica one day--I was there with my family when I was six,
and my favorite animal was the hummingbird--they were everywhere, along
with anole lizards and various types of ants, and once I held a
lizard's tale and the lizard skittered away, leaving the tail behind,
still in my grip, and there were lizards in California, saw one once
when my Dad and I went for a walk in the woods in the Santa Cruz
mountains, and I love going up there to a town called Boulder Creek,
which was rustic and woodsy (but the kind of rustic and woodsy that was
clearly supported by very wealthy people), and how the redwoods have a
special smell and when I first drove into the woods there in a state
park called Big Basin I could feel the humidity, the air cooled
noticeably with the thickening of the air and for the first time in
California I was reminded of my woodsy small-town New England roots,
which naturally makes me think back to the Blues (from the image I
chose for this ramble) and how charged up I was by the raw acoustic
Delta blues when I first heard them, and how funny it must've looked,
this little tow-head teen singing songs about how "the blues ain't
nothin' but a good man feelin' bad" long before I had ever been in love
or felt like a man . . . not that I do now.
Poison Dart Studios hops back!
The Return of Poison Dart Studios (9/29/08)...Holy acoustic foam, Batman! The little studio that could has a new look (altho yes, the new drums ARE black, just like the previous), with new carpets, additional acoustic wall treatments, and new studio monitors. And some serious organization....cables, microphones, hardware.
The (proverbial) ducks are in a (proverbial) row.
Now to get back to actually making music in there!
Heart and Soul and Suicide (9/23/2008)....This train of thought started when I watched a documentary about the band Joy Division, whose lead singer, Ian Curtis, hanged himself in 1980. With the group's songs still peeling through my head, I bought their second and final album, Closer, off iTunes, and then lay down on my bed to listen to it--just as I had the first time I heard it, back when I was in high school.
That first song I listened to, "Heart and Soul," (not, incidentally, the Hoagy Carmichael jazz standard) begins with a simple bass riff played (on synth, I believe) by Peter Hook, which is joined by a metronomic drum pattern played by Stephen Morris. After several seconds, droning sounds played by Bernard Sumner (guitar and keyboards) start to creep in, finally joined by Curtis' eerie vocal.
As I lay there I was struck again by the question: can Curtis...sing?
His voice is integral to the band's sound, to the point where it's virtually a fourth instrument. He sings in an unusually low pitch for a rock singer, which brought comparisons to Jim Morrison of the Doors. Oddly, I've never been a fan of Jim Morrison, and yet Curtis' voice got to me right away. As a conveyor of meaning it is dramatic and gripping.
As a conveyor of the song's melody, though, it is stunted. I still remember a description in a NY Times article from back then, a writer referring to Curtis' "casual approach to pitch."
Meaning what? His singing was sometimes decidedly flat. I say "flat" in terms of pitch, the note he was presumably aiming for, a note that would 'agree' with the chordal framework created by the other instruments. Not "flat" as in his delivery, although it was sometimes that too. His way with a song was often to state his verses in a low monotone, or a low growl, working himself into a fever pitch (pun intended?) for the chorus.
So what? you might say. Even frickin' Phil Collins does that!
Curtis' gift was in the feeling of inevitability--when he was quietly droning a list of desperate imagery, or he was attacking a repeated line, usually a chorus (such as "Where will it end?"). His passion felt right, somehow, even in cases where he was wildly off-key.
Which brings me to his lyrics. While the band collaborated to make the musical bed, the lyrics were Curtis' territory alone. On the second album in particular (which was released posthumously), they are full of quotable lines that stick in the memory: "Here are the young men, the weight on their shoulders" is one of the oft-quoted. World-weary doesn't quite capture the mood of these lyrics, it's more like world-exhausted.
And I fell for the stuff hard. It spoke to me as it spoke to thousands of moody teens the world over. My mother has mentioned in the years since that she was a bit alarmed by the 'world-weary' quality of songs I wrote when I was a teen. I even tried to write a song directly patterned after "Heart & Soul" and another song on that album, "Isolation," whose lyrics were almost unbearably naked:
Mother I tried, please believe me I'm doing the best that I can I'm ashamed of the things I've been put through I'm ashamed of the person I am
This made a huge impression of me, not just lyrically, but musically--"Isolation" is built on another catchy, simple bass riff.
And inevitably, the question of suicide circles back on itself: are these lyrics, or is Curtis' stentorian delivery, compelling because of, or in spite of, his death? Does his death amplify them, or in fact diminish them? (by, perhaps, inevitably freighting them with the weight of that ending)
Suicide colors everything it touches. His death was an instant myth-maker, and Joy Division, already a successful and influential band in England, became infamous. The surviving members went on to form a new and more commercially successful band whose name escapes me, and Curtis left behind an estranged wife and daughter, just as Kurt Cobain would do several years later.
My own history with depression leads me down wandering paths in the forests of Forgiveness and Fury. In the former, I see this damaged soul trying to deal with challenges that got the better of him, that made his life seem an irretrievable failure; in the latter, I rage at the selfish bastard, tossing himself and his gifts over the edge just as hands reached out to him, if only he'd turned and looked back.
I suppose both are equally true, and equally subjective.
the lobster would like RED wine, please
One Nation, Under Ploob (9/22/2008)...the cat sat on the mat.
"Ploob" was all that came to mind this morning. I think of it as a response to the world around us, the world as we find it today, where our dithering financial markets cause our leaders to abandon their principles (much as they did with their scruples) and throw money at them: that's bound to do the trick.
Perhaps "ploob" is a new word meant to define our bifurcated nature, our anguish/apathy at the state of our country, our hemisphere, our world. In a brief scan of our national news, I came across evidence that our economy is in the midst of a manic episode, that the border of Pakistan is more porous than the one that separates the United States from Mexico, and that a former city councilman was shot to death this weekend, during a robbery in the shopping center across the street from my house.
Where does the local meet the global?
If a butterfly flaps its wings in Beijing, will there be another hurricane in the Gulf?
Despair is the last refuge of the ego wrote Samuel Beckett, a man who probably knew a thing or two about mood swings.
Our presidint once encouraged us to go shopping in response to terrorist attacks. I guess we showed them!
GW at Leadbetter's
When Guitar Strings Attack! (Sept. 18, 2009)....Last nite's gig at Leadbetter's went quite well. This was the a debut of sorts: I played the whole (somewhat truncated) gig on my Gibson SG electric guitar.
Having been such a fanatic for acoustic sounds for so long, I treated the idea as a joke at first (yeah! ME? Playing electric? ha!) but came to enjoy the feel and the tone of the 'lectric so much over the last month that I turned the whim into a challenge (hmmm, challenge....a theme, perhaps?) and decided that--along with the tilt towards more bluesy stuff--I'd play the whole upcoming gig on the SG.
I played through my little practice amp, which worked well enough--all 15 watts of it! There was a decent crowd, many of whom were musicians waiting for their time slot, I'd wager, but very friendly and receptive. And my playing and singing were rolling along pretty well, especially after I cut the distortion on the guitar and delivered a fine instrumental ("Rooftop Blues") with a nice clean sound. (Although the distortion worked for a tune called "Beneath Me").
Then in the middle of the stark, dramatic solo in the middle of the stark, dramatic song called "Morpheus," the D-string broke. I stumbled through the rest of the tune, probably blushing all the while (lucky the lighting was tinged red). Like a dang rookie, I hadn't stocked an extra set of strings, so I announced that I'd play one more ("Just Around the Corner") and cut the gig short.
Met some nice people, including fingerpicking guitar players Baltimore Red and Uncle John Sawbriar, both of whom preceded me. What an adventure!
My thanks to Donna (and her friend Braidey) at Leadbetter's, and special thanks to the incomparable Zette for the photo!
the lovely & talented
Should Auld Aquaintance Be Forgit (9/12/2008)....from out of the teeming spam-infested tubes of the InterWeb this week came a message-in-a-virtual-bottle from my dear friend JoAnne Spies (rhymes with "peace"), a singer and songwriter of note. We haven't spoken in a few years, and it's good to know that she's still creating up in her neck of the woods (Massachusetts Berkshires).
She also sent an old song in which I'm singing harmony on one of her tunes, while playing bottleneck guitar. It reminded me of how our voices blended--they locked together in a way I hadn't experienced before or since.
I first met her when she walked into an Open Mic night at the Speakeasy folk club in NYC, probably 1989. I had already established myself as one of 'the good ones' in the pack of regulars, and I noticed her in the line and exchanged some banter.
She signed up on the List, and when it was her turn she got on stage without a guitar, which struck me as pretty brave (most of us carried at least one with us at all times, if only to shoo flies away). In her husky midwestern drawl she introduced her first song as "You Don't Pick A Man Like You Pick A Car." That got a laugh, and she then launched into the song a capella, a bluesy-country tune with plenty of bent notes in its wandering melody.
The song killed. Big response. It wasn't long before JoAnne was one of the "good ones" too.
Cuff links?
Taken, Not Stirred (9/9/2008)....When I was five, I had a magic goat, a brown wooly thing with slotted eyes and two horns that, if you looked at them closely, bore inscriptions that spelled out the words have a nice day, but not too nice on them.
The goat would tell me tales of his exploits in the far-flung and the long-ago: Mesopotamia, Sumeria, Trenton. To say that he had the gift of gab would be an understatement: polysyllabic words cascaded from his dark grey lips. He was a regular Rhodes-scholar in fur.
One day he fixed me with a steely gaze and said, "Next year you shall journey to another land."
"Why?" I asked, not looking up from my game of soldiers.
"The real reason is that your parents are sick to death of New England winters, and want to spend some time in the Caribbean," he murmurred, wandering over to my waste basket and peering at its contents. "But they'll tell you it's because they wanted to take you on an adventure."
I pondered this silently as I lay on my stomach, monitoring the movements of my plastic infantry battalion. A pitched battle lay only a few feet of carpeted floor away--a mob of multi-colored dinosaurs.
Finally I asked, "Will you be going too?"
"No," he said between mouthfuls of a soda can he'd found. "On the islands they raise goats everywhere, and have little respect for them. They eat goats as often as you eat chicken in this country."
Good, I thought to myself, sending my favorite soldier ahead of his mates--he was an upright green fellow with a tommy gun clutched against his right side. I imagined he was tough, courageous, but fair, and well liked by his men. A leader, I supposed, but not by any specific agreement. The others looked to him as naturally as they would look to the medic for care. (if there had been a medic in their unit, that is)
"You know," he said after another mouthful, "you don't seem to be taking this whole magic goat business very seriously. I mean, think of the opportunity that's been laid at your feet!"
After glancing at my shoes, I muttered, "I should be impressed by a talking goat whose magic skill is bagging groceries?"
"Well," he said philosophically, "It beats having no magic goat at all..."
Not by much, I thought. It was then that . . . no, it was years later, in a cafeteria lunch line in junior high, when David Ethier cut in front of me, that I realized everything's relative. I remember it like it was yesterday. "Why should I get upset if he gets a plate of the shepherd's pie first?"
It has served me well.
Oh yeah?
I Shot a Quince in My Pajamas (9/3/2008)...."Yea verily," I thought to myself in Shakespearean dialect, "whither go'est?"
"Did you say go-est," a voice, frail and old, though kind, enquired, "or ghost?"
My retort was quick and savage. "Mortimer!"
With that, and a cruel smile, I leaned back on the divan to lick the spatter of grey blood off my jowls. It was only then that I recalled my lunchtime appointment. Consulting my daybook, I reached for the hairsplitter.
"Must I?" was all I said into the elephant-tusk speaking tube.
All I heard in reply was the embarrassed cough of my social secretary, who tended to avoid confrontations of any kind, including dialogue.
Sighing, I steeled myself to the certainty that I would, as Consultatory Chairperson, have to be dipped in a viscous, nay, gellatinous substance after lunch. I only hoped it wouldn't stain the carpets.
Suddenly a third thought-pilgrim burst into the cupboard. "Watch where you sit," was his only utterance, although it clearly implied much much more than it literally revealed.
Lighting a chocolate eclair, I wondered how long this standoff could continue. The smoke, a dull brown, limped along the carpet in the general direction of the ocelot's bungalow, probably hoping for some amiable company.
Little did it know that the feline had been cremated only that morning, for reasons known only to itself.
[end of installment. time for your meds now, dear]
Where we goin'?
Left turn? Right turn? (8/29/08)...No, I'm not talking politics (Obama rocks!), my concerns are musical. The other day I was practicing a list of potential-next-album songs that I'd drawn up (I make new lists every couple weeks, it seems....I revised the One Man Band list constantly in the run-up to recording).
This one was full of songs I'm excited about, and had a more obvious tilt towards blues and bluesy tunes, with a few of my melodic strummy songs sprinkled in. As I was practicing them, I veered off and started playing other, older bluesy tunes from the pile (when I was in my teens I wrote songs compulsively, spurring myself on with the idea that I had to create a big pile of original material). Enjoying them, I scribbled down an alternative list of tunes that was ALL blues and bluesy rock tunes, and then sat back and thought, "Wait, can I do this?"
Simply put: I taught myself to make some good blues noises with my guitar in my teens, and ever since, people have responded to those sounds. But I felt like it was too easy, and not part of the environment I grew up in (thank you, white guilt), and not as ME as more personal songs I preferred. I would always play at least one bare-bones blues tune in any set I did--usually "Happy, Happy Blues"--but I thought of that as show-offy, and only an aspect of a more wide-ranging sound.
But people eat it up! You stretch that string, and you can see it GET to people, make them rock, or sway. Inside, I couldn't help wondering . . . maybe they like this more than my own cherished material? Imagine a band discovering that their audience prefers the songs they hack around with during sound-check warm-ups to their actual set list.
I love eclecticism. My iPod has music from 60s pop to 90s techno, Chinese trance music, South African mbaqanga, Brazilian tunes, 70s punk, blues, Ella Fitzgerald to the Eels, etc. etc. I'm not saying this in a 'dig me' way, I'm saying that I've always been like this. My old band-mate Charles used to ask me "Where do you FIND this stuff?"
Of course, a lot of our likes and dislikes start at home, and I give a credit to my sister, who liked variety, but particularly to my dad: imagine this quiet, thoughtful english guy who loved these earthy, gutbucket sounds: from dixieland jazz to reggae to downhome cajun music. The man loves to follow his ear.
One of my favorite things about the Beatles was that they reveled in experimentation, and varied their sound so much from song to song--that's very much what I was after in One Band Man. As a result, the idea of doing a blues album, something with a more consistent 'sound' or 'voice', seems alien to me.
But in playing some of the older songs and listening to them, I realized that my songwriting was sharp in those tunes, and sometimes displayed a dark playfulness that didn't always show up in my other stuff.
That's when the sublime siren sound tickled my ear: a challenge! Could I really do this? Could I pull off something most musicians do as a matter of course? Could I present something in that way?
It was the fun of playing drums that led me to buy a cheap set a few years ago, but as I got better, it was the challenge of getting good enough to play drums on an album of my songs (instead of hiring somebody) that really made me work at it. It was the challenge of making an album where I played every instrument--truly a lifelong dream--that kept me going when the album was suffering various setbacks.
The album title that popped up as my head was buzzing kind of tweeks my own conflicted nature: Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Blues?
Like it? Strikes me as kinda neat.
Moldy ol' drum
Spots before my eyes?!? (8/19/2008)....Here's a look at the damage done by those untold gallons of water that spilled onto the floor of the venerable Poison Dart Recording Studios. This is the risk you take when you put your home studio in the basement, in the same room as the hot water heater. Luckily, the guitars and keyboards and most of the cables and equipment were off the floor, so the carpets are a loss, as well as some acoustical foam.
The carpet upon which this, my humble drum set's kick drum (aka bass drum), is an understandable loss, but somehow I wasn't expecting this . . .
Aurora Borealis
Oh, Rora! (July 31, 2008)...This picture appeared in a NY Times article recently, and I was so struck that I just had to purloin it, and now share it. I have a "thing" for aurora pictures, altho I keep thinking they must pale in comparison to the real thing.
So one of these days, I've determined, I shall travel northwards and see them in the (as it were) flesh. As tired as the phrase 'bucket list' has become, I believe the impulse is quite healthy (although, imagine my surprise when my 13-year-old son used it recently!)
More-rora Borealis
Seeing the Aurora Borealis would make a fine addition to my goals in life, some of which consist (or consisted) of:
Record and release an album
Record and release a proper "full-band-sounding" album
See an Aurora Borealis in person
Travel to Madagascar
Return to Jamaica one day
Oh, and I suppose I should add . . . find my bliss! (I know I left it around here somewhere)
Beat beat beat
Getting inside (June 27, 2008)....Last night I was playing drums in my basement....ahem, Poison Dart Studios. Typically, I practice drums by playing along to songs on my iPod, headphones attached to my ears like a heavy set of earmuffs. Occasionally I'll sit down at the drums to work on a new song, letting the tune play in my head as I tinker with ideas for drum parts. (even more occasionally, I'll actually write a song based on a beat I come up with, like "Hard to Know")
It was a typical nite, and I was playing along to whatever songs the shuffle brought up, and as I blapped along with my drumsticks, I felt a sensation that's gotten increasingly familiar lately....the feeling of being inside the music. It's not just that I'm playing in time to the song, but that my whole body feels attuned to the song...what I'm playing not only in sync with the song's rhythm, but the movements of my arms and feet are...well, what?
It's hard to express. "Attuned" is the best I can come up with. (in harmony? synchronous?) It's something beyond being 'in time' that relates to a level of comfort with the instrument. Playing the drums feels more natural than it ever has before.
When I was in college, my girlfriend Cindy said that when I play guitar, it seemed to disappear into my body, or rather, become part of my body. That was a very helpful image for me, and it made sense. Back then, I would often rock back and forth as I practiced or wrote new songs, my eyes closed. I think that habit helped me to feel inside thesong I was playing.
That's the connection I make with the drums now. It occurred to me that I've been playing the drums for four or five years now, and it's quite reasonable that my playing has continued to improve. And tho I'm a bit ashamed to say it, playing drums is more 'fun' than playing guitar is these days: when I pick up the guitar I start to think about tunes I'm working on, or songs I should be practicing. I get to feeling guilty about what I'm not working on, whereas with drums it's more purely about playing a very physical instrument and bashing along with tunes I like....it's just about playing.
which is another reason I haven't really done any recording lately . . . . <blinge*> . . .
* blinge = blush + cringe
Image from turbosquid.com
What Geoffrey Thinks (June 13, 2008).....how could I pass up a chance to write on Friday the 13th?
1) It occurred to me that I haven't made any mention of a film I've already seen twice, a film I think is one of the best I've seen in a long time: The Visitor. Please see this movie! It touches on so many themes, and initially I intended to write about it in the context of rhythm and the healing properties of drumming. It's a quiet film that builds slowly, with compelling characters and wonderful performances. Please see The Visitor!
2) Drumming rocks. I want to expand on this topic soon, but on a very basic level, there's nothing like taking part in an activity that gives you permission to hit things with sticks. (or, as in the case of The Visitor, with your hands)
3) After reading this article about the author Lee Child, I picked up the first of his Jack Reacher series of thrillers, Killing Floor. Good, tight writing, a great summer read!
4) Have a chicken quesedilla. Really, can you think of a reason not to?
Must...remain....calm
Dare it be told, Gilgamesh? (June 6, 2008).....The parents are visiting. The folks, the 'rents, the "aged p's" (Dickens).
I shall not allude to the strain related to ANYone staying in my house. Allowances can be made. Parental clucking is tolerable, and to be expected. They are intelligent, humorous people to all appearances, and can find ways to amuse themselves, which is a blessing. We sometimes sit for long periods in silence, all reading separately--this was quite normal when I grew up.
My moods have been variable lately, like the humidity. The oncoming heat is unwelcome. I don't respond well to hot weather, and this reality is exacerbated by the medication I'm taking. My house is air-conditioned in the summer, and minimally heated in the winter. I strive for a chilly balance, like in the mid-60s, but lower at night. I like to sleep in cold, with comforters and blankets frostbitten above me year-round.
I once wrote "Memories are like relatives, they camp out in your brain until you beg them to leave." My folks are actually staying for just the right duration: 4 days. This makes things comfortable because there is a definite span, and an end point in sight. My mother can plan activities and meals, my father may be up for a movie, and my son will try to find any excuses to slip away to do something else.
Where oh where would thine eyes alight were the forest not so bright as to blind one with its blaze? The kindling, gathered up for days, now feeds the fiery beast betimes until, sated, it sighs and climbs the rockface to find its cave where....
...something something brave. or knave. I have no idea why I wrote that, nor what the gilgamesh thing was all about. Happy hunting.
Digi-brush?
One Band Who? (5/20/2008)....I was taking a break and looking over the recent Maverickreview of One Band Man and wondering why I felt so disconnected from it, from the music it was praising. And it hit me. "Oh yeah! I recorded the music on that album THREE YEARS ago!"
I forget, sometimes.
I recorded the album in two separate chunks of sessions (separated by several months) over the course of 2005. The reason for the gap was financial, as was the long wait until I could afford to get the album mixed, and then mastered (thank you real-estate bubble!).
One Band Man was released just over a year ago now, and while getting the word out was by necessity a pretty small-scale affair, I was pleased by the reactions I've heard from friends, coworkers, chat buddies, strangers, and happy that people have played the songs (on shows such as Fevered Brain Radio Network). And don't get me wrong, I still love those songs I recorded. That Maverick review, arriving in my email box a couple months ago, felt like a nice cap to the year spent sending CDs to magazines and media outlets, playing some local gigs, and pondering what comes next.,,,
When I first imagined a follow-up, I was planning an even bigger production that would included other musicians, like a full dixieland band on one number called "The Sound of the Future" that would open the album.....but when monetary reality set in I started to think in the opposite direction, about stripping down to the guitar and not even singing, just doing a set of instrumental tunes--some for the purposes of marketing to media/film/tv.
I think I'm going to proceed on a middle track, somewhere in between the idea of an instrumental "album" (tentatively titled "Instrumentos") and a follow-up to One-Band (which was to be called either "Bantertainment!" or "Doesn't Play Well With Others"). I'm going to tinker in my studio, and post things online when I'm happy enough with them, some silly and some semi-serious, and maybe at the end of the year I'll take stock of what I've got and see what's what.
By then, perhaps you'll be downloading music straight to your toothbrush! Feedback: "Love the instrumentos I have heard
online, BUT Please continue singing some. You have a great voice which
is getting rarer and rarer these days."....Sheila, VA
...right NOW?
Procrastination, thy name is such sweet music (5/14/2008).....I'll get to this later. Really.
(5/16)....It's not that I wouldn't like to write an interesting blog/record some worthwhile music/clean up the house, goodness knows, it's not that. It's just that−oh look! A package from Amazon!!!
Sorry, what was I saying.....flugelhorns?
Just haven't had the energy to do what I'd like to do when I'm home. And I think to myself . . "well, the music isn't going anywhere....it'll be in my head whether I record today or on the weekend...."
Oh, I remember. This post was prompted by an article I read in Salon about Ralph Ellison and Truman Capote, and the challenge (and pressure) of writing the NEXT work after you're declared a genius. For Ellison it came after "Invisible Man," and Capote after "In Cold Blood," and both of them never finished the "next" project they worked on for years after.
Please note: I am neither comparing myself to either of these writers, nor my measly work to theirs!
The article debated whether writer's block was akin to procrastination, and pondered the difference between those two states: the dammit-nothing's-right block vs. the put-it-off-til-whenever.
I don't write that much these days, but it doesn't worry me. Ideas come and go, and sometimes I'll write one down and try'n work with it. It's not Block that worries me, it's procrastinating, the feeling that I SHOULD be doing something productive, that I SHOULD go down to the basement and work on the next masterpiece or folly, that I really OUGHT to get back to the studio. . . . but then . . there's the siren song of the living room, the Captivating Call of the Couch.
Random note: Michael Flanders (of Flanders & Swann, a british musical comedy duo of the 60s), who was wheelchair-bound, said that he quite liked his state of being because the wheelchair was a perfect mask for a profound laziness. Comments: "Actually I think we get fits or bouts of
inertia, then sudden attacks of our sort of genius" ....Patricia, NJ
The way sound looks on a mixing board
On Illusion (5/5/2008)....in talking about the music I make with a dear friend this weekend, I explained the difference between my two albums this way:
People used to hearing me play the guitar and sing (especially in person) probably consider Comfort Noise to be more like the 'real me' than the big production of One Band Man. But to me the opposite feels true, because when I'm playing and singing, say, "Just Around the Corner," I can hear the harmonies and bass guitar that aren't there. When I play "Right Before My Eyes" I 'heard' the walking bass line and worked out the lead guitar part before I'd ever recorded them...like you might have a picture in your head of your 'ideal house', I have an auditory 'ideal picture' of a fully realized song.
So the songs on One Band Man are meant to represent how I picture those songs, in their complete form. It may sound odd, but when I first wrote "Crowd Control" I had a very distinct image of a cheesy electronic drum sound opening the song, just as I knew that "Hildegard" must open with a harpsichord sound. I 'wrote' both of these songs as I usually do, with only the acoustic guitar and some blank paper for the lyrics.
And yet . . as I was driving and listening to songs off my ipod, I reflected that the songs on One Band Man never actually "happened." They only exist because I recorded bits in such a way that they could be played back and resemble a full band playing. But that "band" never existed, and those performances are impossible.
The illusion is what's presented on the album. If I were suddenly asked to
perform songs from One Band Man live, in a more-or-less faithful way,
then I would have to enlist musicians to help me recreate something
that never existed in the first place, except in my head. This is true of many albums these days, even by "real" bands. Drums are often recorded first, because they present the biggest challenge to the recording engineer--a big range of sounds, from the heavy thump of the kick drum to the tinkly brightness of the cymbals. While the other members of the band may play and sing along while the drummer plays, their parts are often re-recorded later, which means the performance of the song, in the end, never 'happened' the way it sounds.
All the same, in recording a song in my studio last week (now posted on the Downlow), I went after my 'mental picture' of the song, which called for acoustic 12-string guitar, and electrics, and bass, and drums. Putting aside the guitar instrumental I had been working on, I decided to have some fun and experiment with the new mics and equipment I'd bought and see what I could throw together.
I chose a silly song I wrote a few years ago called "Spatula!" and I laid down the separate tracks, the song started to appear....like primary colors blending together to make new ones. I then re-did a few parts (bass and backing vocals) and it resembled what I've 'heard' all along when I play the song for myself, the harmonies and other guitars that sing and play (in my head? in the ether?) while I hold a single guitar and sing with my only voice. And, interestingly, the very process of doing so brought new ideas to mind (such as the "ba-bump-ba" backing vocals) which I then committed to the recorder.
Does any of this make any sense? And, does it matter?
Why I like little frogs so much (4/29/2008).....it all started at Baltimore's National Aquarium. Just before you get to the moving walkway/escalator to the Tropical Birds & Animals area, there were a couple of tanks that contained poison dart frogs. And then after you exit the Tropical area, there are a series of tanks that feature several varieties of these amazing little creatures in the family Dendrobates.
I'd never seen any up close before, and I was transfixed. They struck me as the cutest things I'd ever seen, with their tiny little feet, quick hopping movements, and especially their magnificent coloration. Turns out their collective name is a misnomer: of the 175 different varieties of these little guys, only 3 or so were ever used by indigenous tribes to poison their darts or arrows, and most of them are only "poisoned" enough to produce a bad taste in a predator's mouth.
So I decided that I liked poison dart frogs, and started to pick up little frog figures at the Aquarium's gift shop each time I went. The frog became my totem animal, and my work desk soon housed a small colorful collection of them.
Photo: Kitchen-Hurst/T. Sack
Some months later I flew out to California to visit my dear friend Wendy, and as she obligingly drove me around to familiar haunts from my Bay Area days, we stopped at a book shop in Berkeley, where I saw the a picture (shown on the right) in a rack of greeting cards. It's a Red Eyed Tree frog with a baby on its back, and as odd as it might sound, I immediately associated it with my son, who (when he was little) used to love to clamber on my back and lay there.
It was such a funny parental image that I bought the card at once, thinking I'd mail it to him . . but instead, when I got back to Baltimore, I showed it to him and told him how it had reminded me of him. He laughed at that, and ever since then we both consider the funny looking critter "our" frog.
And that picture has adorned my workspace(s) ever since. I look at it, next to all manner of school pictures of him and my neice and nephew, and can't help but smile. As a result, I decided (against all classifying logic) that the Red Eyed Tree frog is an honorary member of my froggy favorites, the Dendrobates.
To Catch a Phrase (4/10/2008).....Songs can come from the humblest beginnings: a single interesting chord change or a simple figure of speech. Those initial ideas can form the core of the song, or end up on the periphery.
A few examples:
1) At work one day back when I was living in NYC, a tech had come to my cubicle and encountered a problem with my computer's system connection. Momentarily stymied, he sat back in a crouch and stared at the wiring. Softly he said to himself, "It's too simple to be complicated..." I was so taken by this phrase that I constructed a song called "Matter of Choice" around it, making that line the top of the chorus.
2) One summer I worked as a dishwasher at a summer camp, and I can recall the moment when, my hands in soapy water, my mind drifted along and finally snagged on an English expression: "I shouldn't wonder." It's an aside that means something like "I can imagine" or "I bet" (e.g., "She was pleased as punch that he proposed, I shouldn't wonder.") As I fiddled with that phrase in my head, I shifted to a more literal take, and added "..but I do." Suddenly I was humming the line "I shouldn't wonder but I do....about you," and had an impression of a 60s girl-group sound. That phrase became the main "hook" of the lyric, and the song was titled "I Shouldn't Wonder."
3) A very low day when I was in California. I had been let go at my job that morning, sent home with my desk items in a cardboard box, and that blow was gradually sinking in. I called a few friends and told them what had happened, and expressed panic about my prospects. Each one tried to be reassuring, and all of them said something along the lines of "it'll get better" or "something better is coming," or "it's around the corner." I walked into the kitchen and was about to heat up some water when I realized that a line was running through my head, melody and all: "Something better's/just around the corner."
I went into my room, picked up the guitar, and it poured out onto the page within a half-hour. That song is called "Just Around the Corner," and is one of the 10 best songs I've ever written.
rrrrrRRRRRrrrr!
I ♥ Zombies (4/7/2008)....The first time I saw a zombie movie, or rather, THE zombie movie (Night of the Living Dead) was Halloween night, 1982. Newly arrived at NYU, I was still in the full flush of big-city excitement. After watching the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade for a while, with its swooping giant puppets and costumed West-Village dwellers camping it up, I had retired to the dorm's tv room. I was buzzed, and sat down happily just as the brand-spanking-new MTV channel began its Halloween broadcast of the horror classic.
The movie began, and its dated b&w look and dialogue seemed to point to a fun, kitschy screening. But as the picture went on, I couldn't help but get geniunely creeped out. Being wasted didn't help matters, because when I turned around for reassurance from my fellows dorm-mates, I was confronted with the sight of students dressed up for halloween---a whole 'nother set of monsters. I would gulp and quietly turn back to the tv.
At that time it was still possible to be geniunely shocked by the content of a movie like that....I'm not sure it is anymore. At some point thereafter I saw the others of the original George Romero 'of the Dead' zombie trilogy: Dawn (aka the one in the mall) and Day (aka the one in the Army barracks). It was only later that I learned of Italian cinema's embrace of zombies, with flicks such as Zombi and City of the Living Dead, and much later, the geniunely surreal Cemetary Man, which starred Rupert Everett.
Which brings me back to the original question.....why the hell do I like this stuff?
I think it's the fact that they push the horror movie to its very limits. The idea of dead people coming back to life is preposterous enough, but the further detail that they want to eat living people streaks right into silly territory. Yes, I said it, zombies are dead silly! (It's amazing that it took as long as it did for somebody to make Shaun of the Dead, altho Return of the Living Dead was the first true zombie comedy.)
Whenever people try to explain horror's appeal (a big mistake), it sounds ludicrous. There's always stuff like "...taps into our instinctual fears...the dark, death..blah blah.."
I think it's simpler: it's fun to get scared. Think roller coasters, bungee jumping, extreme paratricyling, or the prospect of eating liver: there's a little tingly rush that accompanies the mere contemplation of these activities. Not for everyone, certainly, but to fans the prospect of a new horror movie is a treat. Watching horror is close to the experience of watching a comedy, really--both provoke a reaction, whether vocal (laughter/shrieks) or physical (laughter/jolt).
And zombies have both the creeping-dread of their agonizingly slow shamble (before the recent running-zombie movies, that is) and the often ingenious cinematic solutions to budget problems. Because until recent days, there was no such thing as a big-budget zombie movie. The word 'cheesy' often comes to mind when watching them, and cheesy can be sooooo much fun. Yet they can be geniunely enthralling, in an end-of-the-world how-would-you-react kind of way.
P.S. I'm pretty sure that my great affection for the 60s British Invasion band the Zombies is coincidental....or is it? Have a listen to Time of the Season and decide for yourself.
Closer, closer (4/3/08)....Work continues at Poison Dart Studios. The last couple of days I've returned from the (dreaded) dayjob, eaten some dinner, and switched on the preamps and connected the mics. Then I sit down, tune the guitar, and try, try, try again.
I'm still working on the same guitar piece, "Wheatlfield Lullaby," that I've been trying to record for weeks. I keep coming SO close to a 'take' I want to keep, yet I keep not quite getting there. A string buzzes, or my wrist cracks when I form a particular barre chord, or I just mess up. Last night I noticed my mind wandering while I played, which is usually the last thought I'm aware of before some mistake happens. ("Hmm, I can't wait to post it, I wonder what Charles will think," and then blap. "Damn!")
The tune has improved, and I've added a few nice details to the arrangement as I've practiced and run through it.
Which means, oddly, I'm still pretty happy with the process, and still enjoying the extreme clarity of sound that the new mics and preamps provide. Naturally I'd like to get this piece "done" and move on to others, but I'm not quite at the impatient stage. I have this feeling that reaching the goal will open up a floodgate, even just a little bit, and that I'll move on through other pieces.
But I hope the final take is worth it after all this!
