Posts tagged with "music"

finishing the game

It’s been an aim­less win­ter. Some days full of mean­ing, oth­ers pass­ing with­out so much as a moment worth remem­ber­ing. I’ve learned to cher­ish every storm cause each one could be your last. Who knows when you’ll get to walk on trails cut through tan­gled branch­es with the snow as wet and thick and heavy as this again?

long driveway with snow

The hol­i­days snuck up on me. I’ve been try­ing to fig­ure out where all the time has gone and how best to use what’s left. The only dec­o­rat­ing I’ve done for the sea­son is a real pine wreath (gen­er­ous­ly giv­en to me by Steph) hung on the office door. A small act that does­n’t seem like much com­pared to the glo­ri­ous ceil­ing-scrap­ing trees in the hous­es of my friends and neigh­bours, but cer­tain­ly more than I’ve done in the recent years. It’s an easy con­ces­sion to make against my grow­ing dis­taste for the com­mer­cial­ized Christmas cul­ture when my room is filled with the scent of sap, scat­tered pine nee­dles, and oth­er reminders of life.

car-in-snow

The ever-faith­ful steed.

My exis­tence is defined by what I have left to do, and the list grows ever short­er. I live week-by-week, through cycles of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and play, try­ing to meet each need in turn. It’s always a del­i­cate bal­ance to be man­ag­ing when so much in life is out of your con­trol.

As for the short term, I’m off to Shirley’s for Christmas and my annu­al dose of fam­i­ly. It’ll be a com­plete break from my reg­u­lar life of sin­gle-serv­ing meals and nev­er being around more than one per­son at a time. I imag­ine we’ll spend most of the days eat­ing fin­ger foods and watch­ing real­i­ty TV among the ram­bunc­tious flus­ter of her kids. I always look for­ward to see­ing how they’re car­ry­ing their grown-up voic­es and how their styles have changed.

hot chocolate

This is the time of year I’m most scared of being left with­out plans1, but recent­ly I haven’t had enough time alone. It’s left me feel­ing numb and tired and that’s exact­ly what I need right now.

Friends still make the best dis­trac­tions. It’s easy to hide from any­thing when you’re shar­ing a blan­ket and some ear­ly episodes of Trailer Park Boys.

  1. Also why I usu­al­ly make a trip to Toronto. [↩]

clever people and grocers, they weigh everything

It’s been hard to write, though not from a lack of inspi­ra­tion. Far from it; it seems like there’s a smile or tear hid­den in every lit­tle detail of an Autumn day. The prob­lem is I don’t have the time. I don’t reflect on an emo­tion­al rush until I have a chance to write by a win­dow in the dark, and those oppor­tu­ni­ties are get­ting more and more rare.

That means I’m get­ting bet­ter at putting my feel­ings on hold, though no bet­ter at fig­ur­ing out whether that kind of dis­trac­tion is a good idea. I imag­ine it’ll all catch up to me at some point, and I’ll find out soon enough.

girl in doorway

It’s a sure sign that the Cipralex is out of my sys­tem. I’ve decid­ed that being able to feel is bet­ter than being numb, even if that means not know­ing which way things are going to go. Right now, I’m just appre­cia­tive of fru­gal forms of hap­pi­ness again, my lat­est dis­cov­ery being the feel­ing of a healthy lath­er rins­ing clean from your hair.

Maybe my time away did me some good. I lost a week, but I’m feel­ing recharged. I’ve been pro­duc­tive. I’ve been social. I’ve even been exer­cis­ing.

Now I’m ready to begin again.

Matteo Carcassi: Study in A Minor (Etude No.7)

While study­ing this Carcassi étude — and ana­lyz­ing as many ver­sion as pos­si­ble in aid of that — I real­ized that clas­si­cal music is like wine. They’re both based on a cen­tral theme or taste, and it’s the sub­tle dif­fer­ences between the inter­pre­ta­tion of each per­former or wine mak­er that make them unique and inter­est­ing. That’s why you need to lis­ten to a lot clas­si­cal music (or drink a lot of wine) to devel­op a palate. I bet two dif­fer­ent musi­cians (or even the same musi­cian at two dif­fer­ent points in their career) play­ing the same piece would sound the same to some peo­ple for the same rea­son that two dif­fer­ent mer­lots would taste the same to oth­ers.

This is sup­posed to be played alle­gro, but I’ve yet to hear a ver­sion above 105 bpm that did­n’t feel rushed to me, so I pre­fer to play it andante1. Luckily, I enjoy clas­si­cal music, and I can tell the time I’ve invest­ed in devel­op­ing that foun­da­tion trans­lates over to non-clas­si­cal songs, not only in the extra fin­ger pre­ci­sion but in prac­tic­ing tech­niques too.

I’m still using elec­tric strings2, which I’ve had on longer than any oth­er set, cause I love how crisp and brassy the tone is through­out the range. For a piece like this where the melody switch­es between bass and tre­ble, that becomes real­ly impor­tant.

  1. Also cause I’m not good enough to play it that quick­ly yet. [↩]
  2. XL Chromes, warm/mellow, flat-wound, extra light gauge. [↩]

going out in style

Cause I want to has been the rea­son for every­thing late­ly.

I start­ed to under­stand how we’re all dying in the Silvia Plath sense of the word, so I decid­ed I might as well go out in style. Vonnegut got it right with his Pall Malls, though I choose not to add tobac­co to the mix.

Magic draft

Steve draws some­thing real­ly good or real­ly bad.

I quite con­sis­tent­ly get my ass kicked at the drafts that Seth hosts, his crew always being made up of vet­er­an play­ers. The advan­tage is that I always walk away hav­ing learned a thing or two, and get­ting enough new cards to build on a con­cept is a nice lit­tle bonus. If some­one told me I’d be spend­ing mon­ey on a col­lec­table card game at this age, I nev­er would have believed it.

Magic has been keep­ing me busy in a good way. It’s nev­er just about play­ing, it’s also about being around friends, and the cama­raderie, and get­ting fat on Steph’s amaz­ing meals. Those are exact­ly the things I need in my life.

pho and spring rolls

#1, beef rare, every time.

The red bean ice is a treat I don’t get often enough.

It was hard bal­anc­ing my time around oth­ers and the time I need­ed alone. I have needs that require the com­pa­ny of cer­tain peo­ple, and when I’m try­ing to meet those needs, that often leaves me feel­ing very over­stim­u­lat­ed. The exhaus­tion had been giv­ing me flare-ups, not to men­tion headaches that dulled the sens­es and elo­quence.

Now I have some breath­ing room, and a chance to do all the lit­tle things I’d been too occu­pied to han­dle, like catch­ing up with peo­ple I haven’t seen in a while, get­ting the car fixed (from $9k worth of hail dam­age), fil­ing my tax­es (from two years ago), chang­ing the strings on my uke to high‑G tun­ing, or just watch­ing a movie. I’m still in night mode though, where I tend to get the most done after 10pm, and I find myself staving off sleep to do just one more thing.

root beer float

Root beer floaaaaaaaaaaaaat.

I want to trav­el some­where, cause it feels like it’s time to step out of my com­fort zone again. I haven’t made enough of my own expe­ri­ences and mem­o­ries for too long. But I’m in too unsta­ble a place right now, and I prob­a­bly will be for at least anoth­er year or so. Ironic that it’s insta­bil­i­ty I crave. It’s left me won­der­ing what I should be explor­ing here.

Slept Through a Landslide

Jesse Dangerously — Slept Through a Landslide cover

Rap Legend Jesse Dangerously just released his lat­est sin­gle1, a remix of Tired Angels from Krista Muir’s most recent album. He want­ed a bit of breath­ing room between vers­es and asked me to write a ukulele solo, so we hit the stu­dio a cou­ple months ago. I was lucky enough to learn a lot about the record­ing process that had large­ly remained a mys­tery to me.

This was my first time try­ing to write music that was­n’t a cov­er. It was unique chal­lenge, cause it’s hard for me to tell what sounds good vs. what sounds good only to me. I also have a habit of try­ing to fill my arrange­ments with too many ideas instead of fol­low­ing a theme, so this time I tried to build on the hook that Krista sings. Then I added as much vibra­to as I could on my soft cedar-topped nylon-stringed uke to fill out the sound.

I also pro­vid­ed some back­up har­monies at the start of Noah23’s verse, and it’s weird to hear my singing with some real pro­duc­tion. I don’t think I’d rec­og­nize my own voice if some­one did­n’t tell me it was me.

Jesse has the abil­i­ty to piece togeth­er a bunch of mot­ley musi­cal ideas from var­i­ous gen­res, and it’s awe­some to hear some­thing that start­ed out as a sim­ple rap song become more than the sum of it’s parts.

  1. In the cred­its at the bot­tom, the city of each per­former is includ­ed. I love how Rosie’s loca­tion is “lives in a van”. [↩]