We all want to be big stars, but we don't know why, and we don't know how

[missroserose]

I'm not sure if I'm going to make my original goal of three performable songs by September. (If I went with "end of September", maybe, but the intention was "by the end of summer", and I'm pretty sure the bulk of September is firmly in fall.) If everyone will pardon my bad manners, I'm going to take this moment to flip a gigantic bird at every single jerk who posts "Mr. Jones" as an "easy beginner guitar!" song. The chords are easy, yes, and the riff is relatively simple, but it's fast enough that it's taken me two months of near-daily practice to get up to anything resembling speed. And not only is the strum pattern syncopated, every fifteenth and sixteenth measure uses a different one that I haven't worked out yet. AND that's not even counting the melody line, which comes in on a triplet and only gets weirder from there. AND AND AND the chords on the tab that I found online were completely wrong, along with half the lyrics being misspelled, so of course I had to sit down and do them up myself. (Come on, Google, I expect better from the first hit you bring up.)

And yet I'm still determined to learn it - even more so, now that I've actually played it through (albeit shakily) a couple of times. A certain amount of that is sheer stubbornness, plus the whole "I've come this far, might as well see it through" aspect; but I also just really, really like the song. It's got such a sweet blend of desperation and pathos and naivete and tragedy and worldliness. The singer seems to understand that the fame that he wants so badly is ultimately insubstantial and only likely to lead to misery, and yet he still wants it so badly. In a lot of ways it reminds me of my visit to Los Angeles back in 2004; I'd grown up hearing about what a shithole the place was and how underneath all the glitz and glamour its values were so awful, and sort of wondered for a long time why anyone would actually want to live there. But then I went there, and saw a little bit of the glitz and glamour for myself, and suddenly understood better - it may be gilded, but the gilding is so shiny, you almost can't help yourself.

Anyway, that one might be a bit late. But with a little work I think I can polish up both "Warmer Climate" and "The Scientist". I'm especially looking forward to revisiting the latter when I learn a bit of picking; it sounds okay just strummed, but I think some picking will give it a little more variety.

Now to work up the courage to actually record and *shudder* watch myself...

Comments

[alexmegami]

Teeeeechnically, doesn't fall start Sept. 23? ;)

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

*laughs* True. But still, it doesn't seem quite in line with the spirit of the exercise.

[gracewanderer.livejournal.com]

When you come to Boston we will go somewhere and rock out together. Because I can't sing any instruments or play any... wait...

Okay I'm going to let that typo stand as proof of how little musical talent I have. But I can still rock out.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Ha! Don't worry, I firmly believe that the joys of music are universal, no matter what your level of ability. :D

Would you believe it's actually cheaper to fly from Seattle to Boston than it is from Tucson to Boston? Two hours longer, but $100 cheaper. Go figure.

I'd really like to visit you this fall, but I'm not sure where I'd get the $400 + spending money. My repertoire isn't big enough to start busking yet, I can't think of anything to sell that I'm not using, and all our regular money is tied up in saving to move + the trip to Florida my mother's leaning on us for (it's my grandmother's first Christmas since her husband died, and my mother doesn't want her to be alone, and Brian's never met her...noble and all, but I'd be a lot more thrilled if it weren't in Florida, somewhere that [a] I have no particular desire to visit and [b] costs as much as tickets to Barcelona to get to. Augh). Not giving up quite yet, but.

[gracewanderer.livejournal.com]

Well, no worries, I'm broke too, and I'd like to take some voice lessons before I start trying to sing in public. As for Florida, have you checked on flying into some other place and then bussing or taking the train to where you need to be? It might be a hell of a lot cheaper. Also, I've been there a few times, it's actually quite nice.

[bkleber.livejournal.com]

As someone currently going through the pains of teaching myself guitar as well, I can completely sympathize with what you're going through. Except that I've been at it longer with less perseverance and less progress than you, and have to date performed precisely one song, because some friends that were singing at an event we were running needed me to... And then the guitar mic at the performance was way down, so on the recording yu can see. Me but can't hear a damned thing. Win? Fail? I don't know.

In either case, I love your choice of song, and for what it's worth, I've listened to it and decided in the past that while it would be a great song to learn, it's harder than I want to start off with. So, way to go with picking an awesome not-tremendously-easy song.

Context may amuse you. I already play and perform on: violin (classical and Irish fiddle), viola, (and only just now, typing this, did I realize how much that looks like 'voilá'!), mandolin, lap/mountain dulcimer, piano, bodhran, doumbek, djembe, bones (Irish version of castanets), nose flute (yes, really) and jaw harp. So, music and I have a very good relationship, and I still find making my fingers do what they need to on guitar to be rather awkward and unnatural.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

*laughs* I think you have more music cred saved up than I do. I played flute all through middle/high school, which I quite enjoyed, but there's not really a whole lot you can do with it outside of a band (unless you find something really creative like this guy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59ZX5qdIEB0)), so mine's been sitting in the closet for several years now. I took voice lessons in college and have done a lot of karaoke, but figured if I'm serious about this performing thing I should have some way of accompanying myself properly. (Nobody told me how tough it can be when you're singing one thing and your hands are playing the counterpoint....aaaargh. Still, I'll get it eventually.)

One of my very good friends in Juneau is like you - she and her husband have all sorts of acoustic instruments (piano, mandolin, lap dulcimer, probably some others I'm not remembering) about the house and will just pull them out and play them of an evening. Her dulcimer especially is just gorgeous - she showed it to me when we were up there in June. Beautiful woodworking, beautiful inlay work too. And, of course, a lovely sound. Anyway, I'll tell you something I told her - if you ever find yourself in the Tucson area, take a trip to The Folk Shop. Fantastic place for people who love to play music; they've got new and vintage versions of all of the above instruments as well as banjos, didgeridoos, lap steels, ukeleles, and all sorts of things I'm probably not remembering. Plus they actively encourage you to take things down and play them, and get to know other musicians - it's like a musical instrument library, almost. (The really expensive/vintage stuff they keep in the back, but are very friendly about letting you play with if you ask nicely.)

I'm sorry to hear that the sound mixer on your performance dropped the ball so badly. One of the nice things about doing it all myself is that I can indulge my control-freak tendencies to my heart's content. :) (What? A performer being paranoid about things she can't control making her look bad? I'm sure you've never seen this before.) I've never actually dinked around much with recording in the past, although I know the theory behind it and (in fact) have some quite nice equipment. We'll see how it comes out...

[bkleber.livejournal.com]

The silver flute beat box guy! :-D I love him! I was showing that exact video to a friend last week while I was up in Nova Scotia. See, my uncle who gives me guitar lessons plays guitar, piano, sax, and silver flute! He's been performing in various little bands (2/3/4 people) for oh, probably the last 45 years on at least one of those, but flute is his favorite and his primary. He practices every day and I loved hearing him through the woods / across the lake while I was up visiting.

I thnk you've got plenty of music cred :-p I could never play anything that requires solid breath control, so flute, I probably couldn't do well at. And karaoke! Gah. I sing in the car when nobody is around, and when I need to clear a room quickly with only slightly less panic than a fire alarm will cause. Props to you - and for doing that in front of a room of people you don't know. It's something I love to watch and listen to, but it's not something I do. You and I appear to have rather complimentary musical backgrounds.

That music store sounds great! My favorite shop in the DC aa is similar, but probably smaller: The House of Musical Traditions. Everything is old-timey and hands-on, all the staff are musicians and love to help you make your music, it's where I get my drums re-headed, my bows re-strung, and where my bones, doumbek, first bodhran, mandolin, and lap dulcimer came from. Good place, if you're even the area I also recommend that you give them a visit :-)

The funny thing about the sound on that one performance is that I think the mic I was playing into was down, but it had sounded great at sound check. I don't know what happened, but I share your preference for being in charge of my own sound... It was a sad thing. You wouldn't have known it from the room, though.... We had a hundred and fifty people stomping and clapping along in the first four measures once we got to the energetic part and we were blown away by the enthusiasm and excitement! (for reference, we were performing our very own personalized version of "The Captain's Wife's Lament", as often performed by Paul & Storm, occasionally with help from Wil Wheaton... But our version was talking about swing dancers, not sailers. listen here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slWesdezt58&) for the lyrics, and check out one of the two-guys-on-a-stage versions to hear what their performances usually sound like. Most are 13+ minutes because of all the pirate jokes they intarrrrrrsperse between the lines of the song. Or, perhaps, the intersperse lines of a 3-minute song amongst 10 minutes of pirate jokes? Either way, it was a great performance, even if I was the only person that could hear my guitar for most of it.

Babble, babble. When you do get brave and record, I would love to hear it!

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

See, this is how I know you have more music cred than I do: you actually refer to it as "silver flute" rather than just "flute". :) My mother used to have a really lovely Native American-style wooden flute, actually; back when we lived in Anchorage, we'd occasionally go to drum circles (I admit this to you because I think you'll understand that it's actually a lot of fun from a musical/meditation perspective and not automatically think "filthy hippie") and she'd sometimes bring it along. Great fun to improvise on. I don't know what happened to it, although I still have her hand drum...it's hanging on the wall in here, actually. Hmmm...drum circles would probably be popular around here...

I honestly think karaoke gets a bad rep because it's something that (in our culture at least) drunk people do in bars. I've seen my share of bad karaoke, and I used to think of it as basically just messing around, but over the years I've discovered that it teaches you a surprising amount of performance-related skills - how to tailor your choice of song to your audience's preferences, how to read a crowd's emotional state, how to get (and, hopefully, keep) their attention, and (in some cases) exactly how much of your performance depends on having a receptive audience.

Speaking of which, that sounds like a fantastic performance. I love audience-participation stuff like that - don't get me wrong, I like the worshipful feeling of people just watching me enraptured, but I also love the way the enthusiasm of the crowd feeds into the performers and back into the crowd. Good crowd + good performers = even ridiculously simple songs become ridiculously fun.

{breaks to watch the video} Oooookay. I can't believe I didn't see the punchline coming. XD Yeah, that'd be a great one to intersperse with ten minutes of pirate jokes. :) How did you adapt it to swing dancers?

And don't worry, I'll absolutely be posting either YouTube videos or music links. We'll see...

[bkleber.livejournal.com]

For swing dancers, we wanted to keep it as innuendo-laden as possible, so we wrote it as "swingers", but it didn't scan well, and wasn't tremendously understandable or easy to enunciate at fight speed. So, we moved it to "dancers"... and we re-wrote all the lyrics to match things that swing dancers do: Mountain Dew instead of Irish stew, "there's even dancers in a cuddle puddle on the hardwood floor", "dancers hanging from the big-ass fan" (no joke, we have a fan with about a 12-foot diameter in our main venue whose brand is, literally, Big Ass Fan (http://www.bigassfans.com/)), and a couple inside jokes specific to our event. We started it off with a couple of pirate jokes, and I came out wearing a pirate hook on one hand - luckily, we found the actual hand hidden beneath it before I had to play :-) If you go back about 20 or 30 photos on Facebook, I've been tagged in a few holding a guitar - that was that day. And there's one of a few of our dancers doing the "We're not worthy" bowing in front of us, which was a blast!

And yes.. I'm a big fan of drums / drumming / good drum circles, but I totally get the "dirty hippie" issue. As a bodhran and bones player, I run into it at ceilidh / sessions, because after Riverdance happened *EVERYONE* wanted to play, and anyone can bang a drum with a stick. So, I bring my fiddle first, and then the bodhran later - they seem to trust that I won't be abysmal if I demonstrate that I can actually play first, you know?

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

I actually don't think I have you friended on Facebook. What's your username there? I'm roseneko there too, but I have the settings on "only friends of friends can add you" because I kept getting all these random friend requests.

[bkleber.livejournal.com]

If you search for "Benjamin Kleber" and find a fellow whose icon is a big guy wearing Renaissance festival garb and a funny hat, making a funny face, wielding a flogger, then you've found me.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Spot-on description, thanks! :) Added.

[bkleber.livejournal.com]

So I noticed. Yay!

[ivy]

Ha! I too am a former flautist... I probably have "Festive Overture" and the piccolo solo from "Stars and Stripes Forever" burned into my memory somewhere.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

I think my favorite part of my flute-playing career was when I spent a semester in a fairly small charter school - our "band" was more of an ensemble, with only five or six kids, and I was the only flute. It meant having to know everything we played really well, but it also meant that I could go to the library, find the music for "Can You Read My Mind?", learn it, and go to the teacher and ask "Can I do this as a solo in our Superman medley?" I got so many compliments on it after our performance. It was a little disheartening after that to go back to the giant high-school band format with eighteen other flutes who weren't interested in actually harmonizing or working together. Sigh.

No, I'm not a bit of a prima donna, whatever gave you that idea? :p

[bkleber.livejournal.com]

That's not being a primadonna, that's just loving the music! (and why the hell were they there if they didn't also love it as much as you?!)

[bkleber.livejournal.com]

May I just say that your Edward Gorey icon makes me happy? :-D I'm still looking for a rotating image of all of the Gashlycrumb Tinies, alas I'm sure it would be impossible to read at icon sizes.

[ivy]

The Doubtful Guest has always been my favorite, though there are many excellent Tinies as well. [grin] The tureen just slays me.

[ivy]

Mr. Jones sounds hard! And I agree, summer ends at the equinox. (My folks are big on harvest festivals, and that's the second. Lughnasadh (August 1st), Mabon (autumn equinox), Samhain (October 31st). Totally the beginning of fall/end of summer.) I'll be super impressed if you master it. Do you sing? I do. With the "may not be good but I'm loud" opinion of my mother notwithstanding, if you play it, I'll sing it. (Optionally with you, if you do, just to accompany you if you don't.)

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Ha! See, growing up in Alaska, the equinoxes always struck me as ridiculously early/late for the seasons to change - there was usually still snow on the ground! But I'll bow to your expertise.

I do sing - in fact, that was pretty much the reason I picked up guitar after putting it off for so many years. I love to sing and perform but without some kind of accompaniment (or a really, really good ear for a capella) I was pretty much limited to karaoke for performing. However, I'm more than happy to sing with folks as well as alone - see my above comment to gracewanderer about the joys of music not needing to be limited by skill. :) I'll probably need to learn a few more songs before hosting any proper singalongs, though.