Fine, have a song. But, know that i wrote it less than 72 hours ago, and that it took two mics, two takes, one completely made up lyric transition, a heap of compression, a helping of reverb, a well-placed fade out (over my well-meaning but not well-tempered 20-beat Eb (look out, American Idol)), and carefully deployed doppler (i dare you to locate it) to make me even vaguely pleased enough to post this.
Creative
Erratic
Nine years of guitar playing and i still can’t manage to get through one frigging bar of 2/4 while trying to write a song.
This may indicate that i am writing new songs. I know that the hoopla celebration about this sort of thing has waned since i don’t accompany such announcements with audio any more. I’m trying to rectify that situation.
Seriously.
It’s just that as the years go by my standards get higher, and when i can’t strum a bar of frigging 2/4 correctly once in a half hour of recording i tend to give up where i would have previously just posted my weird aborted measure of 3.5/4 (i know, i know, that’s 2/4 then 3/8, shut up) and winced.
Nevermind how getting better at singing is like cutting infinity in half, and for every improvement i make my goal of being “good” seems to be persistently unreachable.
I think this will be a rare post that doesn’t involve creative editing or a contrived story about my life.
I sent my iPod back to Apple, certain that it was really broken and that i would receive a refurbed iPod and promptly sell it in its still-sealed mailer and then buy a fancy new iPod. Imagine my surprise when Apple sent me an email this morning to inform me that nothing was wrong with my unit. Sure. I didn’t troubleshoot for five hours until all the iPod did was the scary hard-disk death rattle over and over again and then bring it to an Apple store who TOLD ME to send it in for repair. Not at all. I am going to throw a major seven at some poor unsuspecting tech guy if they try to charge me for servicing a non-faulty unit, or some other such idiocy.
Also, i still don’t have the tracking number for my new guitar, which is a little frustrating since upon its arrival i only have a 24-hour window to decide whether or not i’d like to keep it. Plus, i am a hugely spoiled brat and want my now guitar asap. (and a squir-rel)
Finally, not since SongFight & SomeSongs have i become so immediately obsessed with a website as i am with Threadless. It’s like Songfight but with stuff to buy. Users submit t-shirt concepts, members vote for the concepts on a scale of 0-5 with a special “i’d buy it” button for emphasis, and roughly every week the webmasters choose what is presumably the highest score shirt with the most “buy it” clicks and make it into an honest to goodness t-shit.
Prepare to become addicted to both rating designs (some of which are so amazing that you want to bribe someone to produce them) and window shopping (with a few exceptions the designs they choose are awesome).
Alright, obviously i’m not recording any gems at this hour (which you won’t fully understand until you hear the notes i hit in chest voice on the new ones). To sleep.
Whoever’s Listening
You know, back in the day i might not have understood what chords i was fretting, or what key i was playing in, or even how to sing, but god bless me, any time i didn’t think i’d remember how to do one of those things i made little notes in the margin of my lyrics or recorded the song. Which is more than i can say for my current state of affairs.
My goal for this week’s free time (made even more free because E isn’t even here, so i’m completely alone and to my own devices) is that i had to play each one of my 140 completed documented songs all the way through – researching how to play them, when necessary.
It’s funny, spending the better part of your free time listening to lo-fi recordings of yourself from six years ago trying to pick out the bass notes of chords. If i’m ever famous enough to warrant one of those The Early Years collections… oh boy, there’s plenty of crappy early years to choose from. I mean, aside from the hundreds of recordings from the beginning of CK forward. Early.
Anyhow, after 20 minutes of fruitlessly rewinding a real audio file from 1999 that i think was recorded in a spectacular 8-bits of digital sound in a futile attempt to figure out the bridge of the song i wrote on my last day of high school i finally pulled my old lyric book off the shelf to discover that the four weird alternate tuning chords i had been so desperately trying to replicate were printed in neat numerals at the top of the page, dated 6/19/1999.
That makes song 48 of 140 complete.
Fingers just starting to get sore.
Like I Love You
Maps – Playing with new toys – stomp distortion for guitar, and compression to keep it at a constant level. Oh, and singing like a girl, but i’ve always done that.
Thick Skinned
The point isn’t really that I have to wear in some new callouses by Saturday so that I can make it through the four sets I’m playing on, but that my callouses grew. Thickened.
I’ve been playing guitar for eight years at the end of this month. I remember when I had been playing for two and a half years, and I would watch Anthony, who has two years of playing over me, and think “Wow, look what I’ll be able to do in two years.”
And, well, maybe I can do some of the things Anthony’s done now. Who knows? I realized that the path is not linear, and it’s not parallel to anyone else’s. Early on I learned how to churn out chunky, thumping chords, Ani-fying any song in an attempt to make it my own. Just now I am learning the strength of learning something note for note, rhythm for rhythm. Isn’t that backwards? Don’t most people play along to the disc first and then figure out their own way to do it? That’s what I’ve been told, anyhow.
On the scale of great I’m sure I hardly rank – plenty of practice left on that front, no disputing that. But, not only can I get better, but even with as much playing as I’ve done, there are new callouses to be made.