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Seven years ago today
Meanwhile, after e-mailing former Dream in Color guitarist George, I thought to pop over to Call it Karma’s website and sure enough they have some new audio files up. The remixed demo with Jeremy on percussion in place of the sequenced drums isn’t that exciting to me, but a new song, “Days Go By,” presented as a rehearsal recording, shows great promise. It seems like vocal harmonies are becoming a big part of the CIK sound.
NP: “South Central Rain,” Steve Ball Roadshow, Live at Pitcairn Scott Art Gallery.
Saturday, 5 February 2005
12.14: Initial inquiries towards something I wanted to do for my dad’s 64th birthday, but wasn’t especially practical to attempt in 1996. But now, it can be done. If I can persuade my brothers to join in, we’ll record a Hosek Brothers version of “When I’m Sixty-Four.” It occurs to me that violin, banjo and bass would actually make good instrumentation for the song.
Nine years ago today
Wednesday, 5 February 2003
E-mail cowriting is going surprisingly well. I need to find a piano.
Ten years ago today
Tuesday, 5 February 2002
Well, one of tomorrow’s singers called up sick. SO that means that we’re down to two for next week. Not sure what to think of the two who are showing up, so I think we’ll end up having to do another week of auditions. I think we might be able to squeeze in a rehearsal with Shannon next week somehow as well...
years ago today
16.17: My new double gig bag just arrived via UPS. It looks to be a very solid protective bag. It’ll be nice to be able to carry fretted and fretless basses around easily.
00.14: Spent the evening at the CHaT meeting. Bumped into Debbie, a former choirmate at St Michael’s and one of the singers who will be auditioning tomorrow. The talk was somewhat informative, but nothing that wouldn’t become apparent from experience. Not much networking, but partly because I was trying to get home fairly quickly in the vain hope of getting in some bass practice. Four auditions scheduled for tomorrow evening and at least one for Saturday.
Monday, 5 February 2001
11.11: An amusing call this morning from the ad. I started in with my standard caveats about this not being a band to expect to make money from, pointing out to her the realities of the Chicago bar band scene (say you get 100 people in at $3 each. Pay the sound guy $100 for the night. That leaves $200 to be split 5 ways after expenses). “So this is just a fantasy,” she says and hangs up. On reflection, I’m not sure what the “this” in that statement was: Was she referring to our band, or to her desire to be able to make money as a singer?
Random blast from the past
In other news, the rack is partly re-assembled, but I’ve not yet put the HD into the Kurzweil and tested it. Soon.
Sunday, 11 July 2004
Today is the 200th anniversary of the duel between Alexander Hamiilton and Aaron Burr. Hamilton is well-known as the guy on the $20 bill, while Aaron Burr played Perry Mason on television.
Sunday, 14 August 2011.
Second rehearsal of the gypsy jazz group. My endurance was a great deal better, although I was a bit behind in printing up charts. I’ll have to spend some time on this before the next rehearsal. I’m feeling pretty good about my playing, although I want to be spending more time practicing.
Monday, 8 August 2011.
A new musical project. I auditioned for and was accepted by a nascent gypsy jazz group as their bass player. My finger is a bit sore from that much pizz playing after so long away from the instrument. I also found myself fatiguing well before the audition was over with my fast walking parts hard to keep up to tempo. Fortunately, a lot of manouche bass is a somewhat less demanding root-five kind of line.
Sunday, 16 January 2011.
Got a bunch of lyrics done on “You Took My Photograph” but I’m not done. Pulling out the rhyming dictionary has helped a bit. I’m actually finding it to be more of a book to creativity than I would have guessed. I do find myself wanting to rhyme “days” with “protease.”
Saturday, 15 January 2011.
Nailed down the music for “You Took My Photograph.” I had some really nice ideas that came to me while falling asleep last night, but I lost them. I did remember some Gospel-esque chord progressions which I did manage to approximate while working on the song. There’s a nice shift between G and Bb in the tonality of the song.
Tuesday, 11 January 2011.
Nobody played their songs at this week’s songwriting class. I guess it was a case of terminal shyness. Next week, I don’t care: I’m playing my damn song. This week’s song wasn’t so good, but I have some ideas for where to go with next week’s song and I think it’s going to be pretty good, close to a keeper (especially if, as I hope, I can get some feedback on the song).
Monday, 10 January 2011.
Finished the song for tomorrow’s class. I’m not really happy with the lyrics, but the melody’s not bad (even if I couldn’t remember how the short lines of the chorus were supposed to fit in). I did do a nice thing where there’s a shift from Bb to D on the choruses. One of those great harmonic things I picked up from Gospel music.
Friday, 7 January 2011.
Ended up doing no evening practice, but I did write the first verse and chorus of my song for my songwriting class during a slow moment at work. I rather like what I’m doing with rhymes in that song, and I’ve got a clear view of where the song is going.
Thursday, 6 January 2011.
I had hoped to be able to squeeze in a bit of flute practice on Thursdays between work and my short story class at UCLA, but it appears that this is a hope in vain. I left the office at 5.30p and at 6.18 the bus hasn’t gotten past the 405. I’m not sure I’ll even be able to get dinner. I did get a bunch more song titles recorded, including digging into some of my old files for songs planned but never written for Techne and Worst Case Scenario. I need to create a file which will be my songwriting queue, perhaps in Evernote. I can also keep some notes on the songs and their potential ultimate destinations.
Wednesday, 5 January 2011.
A bit of freewriting at lunch, plus a handful of titles written down: “My Dark Brother,” “Seven Years in the Desert,” “I Call My Mom Jocasta,” “Living in Hi-Fi,” “Lime Green Spring,” “Enthroned in Blue.”
Did some scale work on the mandolin and tried to train my fingers to be able to play I-IV-V in A, although it’s far from perfect.
Tuesday, 4 January 2011.
First songwriting class with Peter Case. He talked a lot and played a few songs. A fair amount of what he talked about were things that I knew from my days as an English major, although it’s nice to be reminded of these things. I’m going ahead and diving full on into the homework: A bit of more-or-less freewriting every day, coming up with 25 song titles (I have a few already, and more will doubtless come), plus a songwriting assignment for next week. I think I’m going to write about Los Angeles for that one.