Monthly Archives: April 2010

Duets

One day I’d like to pick up an instru­ment with a big­ger range (than a ukulele1), and start writ­ing my own mate­r­i­al. It’d be even bet­ter if I could form a duo with a per­son I was roman­ti­cal­ly involved with, like The Dresden Dolls or Wild Strawberries2.

Sometimes The Dresden Dolls play extend­ed ver­sions of their songs at con­certs3. The way they inter­act reveals such inti­ma­cy. In each face, you can see how they’re com­plete­ly lost to the music in those moments of dis­so­nant bliss, but they’re lost togeth­er. From body lan­guage alone, they read each oth­er for tim­ing, vol­ume, and inten­si­ty, until they feel where the oth­er is going by instinct. That kind of chem­istry is rare, and it’d be amaz­ing to be able to share that with some­one.

  1. The high‑g reen­trant is what gives the ukulele it’s dis­tinct sound, but it feels so lim­it­ing some­times. []
  2. Hellllllllllooooooooo Roberta Carter-Harrison cir­ca Quiver. []
  3. Okay, admit­ted­ly, Amanda’s singing isn’t any­where as good in the video as on the stu­dio ver­sion, but the near­ly five-minute extend­ed intro with Brian’s bril­liant drum solo would be worth the price of admis­sion by itself. []

Please make me feel alive, again, again, again

Thumbnail: Jairus and Audra

It’s been an emo­tion­al time. I’m in anti-social mode, but I force myself to get out when the oppor­tu­ni­ty comes along.

One day, we hit up a din­er around noon. I wore my flip-flops, and cruised west with the wind numb­ing my skin. My stereo gets loud­er as I accel­er­ate, and it only made me dri­ve as fast as I could to see how loud I could push Wild Gardens. For a moment, it filled me with serene bliss, and that was enough, among the steel and pave­ment and sum­mer heat in spring, to give me hope.

It’s that feel­ing I’ve been crav­ing. To be the only liv­ing boy in New York.

Thumbnail: Avocado chicken sandwich

Audra tells me I smell nice when I haven’t left the house for days. Gives me the breath-steal­ing hugs. And the fact that she’s so sen­si­tive about cross­ing my bound­aries makes her the sweet­est red­head I know. It’s hard not to believe in myself when she believes in me so well.

Continue read­ing “Please make me feel alive, again, again, again”…

Make Hymn Cry + Cover

In the win­ter I made a short video teas­er for Jesse’s upcom­ing album by get­ting him to per­form a song off it called Make Hymn Cry. As the only ukulele piece on a rap album, it def­i­nite­ly stands out.

Then it dawned on me this morn­ing to see if I could cov­er it. As I was try­ing to fig­ure out the chord pro­gres­sion, I real­ized it’s a fair­ly sim­ple song that only alter­nates between the G and C chords. The strum­ming in Jesse’s video is slight­ly sim­pler than on the album, the lat­ter of which is the pat­tern I use in my ver­sion, and includes the pick­ing arpeg­gio for the sec­ond verse.

Still, it took me half the day just to get com­fort­able with the strum­ming pat­tern because it’s syn­co­pat­ed in a way I’m not used to yet, the rhythm at the end of each bar divid­ed beyond eighth notes into six­teenth notes. This is what long week­ends are for.

The main thing I’m con­cen­trat­ing on is count­ing the beats so I can strum off them and keep track of where the extra strum is at the end of each bar. The next is try­ing not to speed up, which is a very bad habit of mine, regard­less of instru­ment. I also need to pay atten­tion to soft­ly rest­ing my hand on the strings when tran­si­tion­ing to the sec­ond verse; first­ly, to pre­vent the last chord from ring­ing too long, and sec­ond­ly, to phys­i­cal­ly feel where the strings are so I can get my thumb on the C string. I’m def­i­nite­ly not good enough to know where it is at all times. Most of the rest came by itself (i.e. I’m not con­scious­ly focus­ing on it), prob­a­bly from already lis­ten­ing a few times to a pre-release copy of the album Jesse gave me.

The phras­es of the lyrics are also syn­co­pat­ed against the strum­ming; it always feels like your strum­ming is late because the first word of every line falls on the beat before each down-strum), which adds anoth­er lay­er of com­plex­i­ty. The fact that I made it through with­out any major mis­takes but fucked it up right at the very end1 is why I can’t stop laugh­ing.

My singing is strained cause I’m try­ing to project above the strum­ming to stay in bal­ance, but it’s clear­ly out of my com­fort zone. I’m not good enough to strum soft­ly with con­trol yet, so I cheat­ed and just raised my voice. The thing is, I nev­er prac­tice singing when I’m prac­tic­ing my play­ing, usu­al­ly because I need to con­cen­trate on one thing at a time. Singing prac­tice is also bor­ing by itself, so I nev­er do it, even though I should.

Anyway, I had a good day after learn­ing this lit­tle piece, and being able to fig­ure out the chords and the strum­ming was prob­a­bly just as fun as being able to play it.

  1. I lost track of the extra strum in the sec­ond last bar! []

Graveyard of Aphids

Thumbnail: Flowering cabbage

At some point, the flow­er­ing cab­bage plant Heather G gave me start­ed to shed. The top leaves remained sup­ple and fresh, while the bot­tom leaves would dry up and fall off. I could­n’t fig­ure out why. I liked the look any­way, to see this plant grow­ing out of the decay it cast around itself, so I did­n’t wor­ry too much.

I was­n’t used to hav­ing a plant that was so alive. It had a pun­gent smell, and I noticed a few insects on it here and there. I thought the insects were a good thing, cause that meant the plant was healthy enough to sup­port oth­er life.

Continue read­ing “Graveyard of Aphids”…