Posts tagged with "music"

House Show II: Invitation

Owing to the suc­cess of last year’s house show, I’ve invit­ed both Shane Watt and Jesse Dangerously to come and per­form again next month. Not only will there be awe­some music and an assort­ment of mini-cup­cakes host­ed in my liv­ing room, it’ll also be Jesse’s birth­day par­ty.

This will be a col­lab­o­ra­tion across Eastern Canada, as Shane will be com­ing from Montreal (with a poten­tial secret guest), and Rosie will be trav­el­ing from Halifax on man­dolin to join Audra, Nic (also com­ing from Montreal, as Rockefort F. Loopfrog, the beat­mak­er), and I as part of the Dangerson Famile. However, I don’t think Dolly will be mak­ing an appear­ance because the sheer num­ber of peo­ple in the house last time real­ly freaked her out.

second house show flier

I had a lot of fun mak­ing this fly­er, fea­tur­ing Mr. Cupcake. The great thing about Avenir is that it sup­ports so many vari­a­tions of the type­face, which lets you make movie and con­cert posters in the clas­sic style of a full-jus­ti­fied col­umn of infor­ma­tion.

third show

Jesse sent me an e‑mail this morn­ing, invit­ing me to play a few acoustic tracks on his set tonight at the Elmdale Tavern in Hintonburg. Naturally, I could­n’t say no. I got to his place ear­ly, and in the four hours lead­ing up to the show, we worked out the arrange­ments.

The venue was nice and cozy, with the front tables only a few feet from the stage (which was bare­ly ele­vat­ed itself). There was no kitchen but a bar and a pool table in two main rooms, and this fact meant the place lent itself to peo­ple com­ing to watch some­thing, instead of social­iz­ing and talk­ing over it, as it com­mon­ly hap­pens in a restau­rant or pub with live music.

Self-portrait at 29 10/12

Waiting for sound check.

I was­n’t ner­vous the entire night until the minute up to the very first song; I was doing the main chords and it would have been painful­ly obvi­ous had I made a mis­take.

And since we were unam­pli­fied, we came off the stage and stood at the tables, with Jesse rest­ing his glock­en­spiel on the front-most one. It made the audi­ence all the more vis­i­ble — and me all the more ner­vous — so I just kept my eye on Jesse for tim­ing and vol­ume cues to take my mind off it.

But with a lit­tle more time, expe­ri­ence, and prac­tice, we nailed every track. Also includ­ed was an appro­pri­ate­ly spot­light­ed group high-five after the Videotape-Write Protected-VCR med­ley, which is cer­tain­ly the most dif­fi­cult piece (on my end) due to the fact that I’m play­ing the vamp that leads the tran­si­tion between each piece and the tim­ing is real­ly tricky to get down. I also noticed that I kept strum­ming my strings habit­u­al­ly to make sure I was in tune to avoid the dis­as­ter that hap­pened last time.

A tall, dark-haired gen­tle­man with a cig­a­rette in his hand said, “Good job, bud­dy. It sound­ed great.” as I was walk­ing by to load gear in my car. It was a nice lit­tle acknowl­edg­ment.

Aguado Dionisio — Study in A Minor (arranged for ukulele)

Got my new tenor ukulele and it’s an absolute­ly gor­geous instru­ment, although I’m sure that’s relat­ed to the cost1. After a few weeks of try­ing out the Aquila’s they came with, I put on some Worth brown strings with the low‑G.

Study in A Minor is a great piece to learn because it’s rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple (so I don’t get dis­cour­aged too eas­i­ly), but there are three tricky parts to focus on improv­ing. They’re also each dif­fi­cult in their own way, grad­u­al­ly work­ing the dex­ter­i­ty or flex­i­bil­i­ty in a cer­tain fin­ger or two.

I want­ed to film this as a record of the way the ukulele sounds now; it’s a sol­id lace­wood spruce body, so the tone will devel­op over time as the wood matures. Also, so I can have a quick ref­er­ence of what it sounds like with longer nails on the pick­ing hand (which were prompt­ly cut after, because they were dri­ving me nuts). It’s rel­a­tive­ly clear sound, where­as with­out nails it’s sort of “wet”.

I first learned this on a sopra­no ukulele, and I had to retrain my fin­gers to stretch on the tenor. It was a BIG dif­fer­ence, and I did­n’t think my fin­gers would stretch far enough at first.

It feels amaz­ing to prac­tice some­thing for weeks, and to final­ly have it click one day. Then you nev­er want to stop play­ing cause you’re afraid you may lose it the next day.

  1. Jesse says I paid “real instru­ment” price for it. [↩]

29 9/12: The Rocker

Music has always been a big part of my life, so it’s strange to con­sid­er the fact that I only seri­ous­ly took up an instru­ment the year I’m turn­ing 30, which I gen­er­al­ly con­sid­er late to be start­ing any­thing new.

I used to play piano and flute, but that was nev­er real­ly my choice. For the for­mer, it was more of my mom want­i­ng me to be a good Chinese boy, and me not want­i­ng to let her down. When it came to the lat­ter, my school had a strong empha­sis on arts, and either visu­al arts or music were manda­to­ry. I chose music1, and played the flute; far from ide­al for a teenag­er going through puber­ty and an iden­ti­ty cri­sis.

I bought my first ukulele a few months ago, and I don’t think I’ve stopped play­ing since.

Self portrait at 29 9/12

Jammin’ in my jam­mies. With what may pos­si­bly be an erec­tion.

Photo by Jess.

So much of my life has been filled by those four lit­tle strings. It’s an entire­ly new medi­um I’m still explor­ing, a mus­cle I’d yet to flex, a way of express­ing myself that’s so unlike any of my oth­er out­lets.

I get pains in my fin­gers and wrists from play­ing too much, so I struc­ture my life around the breaks; doing laun­dry, writ­ing, clean­ing my room, sort­ing my paper­work until the tin­gling or pinch­ing goes away. The pads of my fin­gers are dead. I used to fall asleep think­ing of her — now I work out scale pat­terns and chords across the fret­board in my head until I pass out. I even decid­ed to make the ulti­mate com­mit­ment and grow out the nails on my strum­ming hand because the longer they get, the more pleased I am with the sound (and I find both long nails and asym­me­try absolute­ly dis­gust­ing).

It’s come to the point where I’d rather play ukulele than play games, or go out, or talk to peo­ple. I love play­ing so much that I enjoy it even though I’m still no good at it.

I turn 30 in three months, and music is my hot hot bath, my dead end, and my girl­friend.

The Turning 30 Series

  1. Ironic that I’m so much more of a visu­al artist now. [↩]