So, Dave and I worked on a new song for the first opening mic night tonight. It's not...polished, really. It's treading some new waters, which I think is good, but it also leaves me a little uncertain. First off, I am required to play guitar, which makes any musical project uncertain, but this one even more so because I need to rap while playing guitar. That's right - I'm finally fulfilling my ultimate dream of make a rap song in a non-traditional time signature (in this case 7).
It's not going quite as well as I wanted, but now that no one is in the apartment I can practice my "rap voice" (because when you rap you gotta be a tough motherfucker). My inexperience combined with the odd time signature and the bizarre nature of the lyrical content really makes this a difficult song to pull off effectively.
In writing the bass part for the song, Dave and I ran into some creative issues, mostly because I didn't feel comfortable dictating a specific part for him. I made a guitar part and a drum part and I said "you can make your own bass part". But when it came to the bridge section, which I so audaciously declared would be in 6/8 to contrast with the rest of the song (in 7), we ran into problems when Dave would play a part and then ask me "is that what you wanted?"
I guess it was partly the way he posed the question to me and partly my desire for the idea I had in mind. I tried to present it to him in a vague way: "It's percussive... or syncopated, with lots of stuff on the offbeat. Sorta like the bass part to 'The Pot' by TOOL" I said. This didn't quite yield what I had in mind, but I didn't really care. Dave, however, cared. Oh, Dave. Dave, Dave, Dave.
Dave.
He said something like "well, if you have an idea, I want to play it". Fine, I decided to write out a part. "I don't like to dictate parts to people," I said. "but whatever."
I wrote out the part, which you can hear by going here:
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/rgriscom/shared/black%20cherry.mp3
The original part I wrote was extremely difficult to play, so I modified some parts to make it easier by using hammer-ons and pull-offs. While this made it fit the instrument better, it still proves to be a challenging riff. The first half is fairly easy, falling in line with the time signature pretty closely (albeit with quite a bit of offbeat notes at the end of the first two measures). Halfway through, however, it throws a wrench in the whole process by playing something that sounds like it should be in 4, and then proceeds to complicate things by playing a series of offbeat descending notes in the upper range coupled with a constant lower root note. And all the while the part is meant to be slapped/pulled. Hmmm.
It was later that first night that I made the following observation "It's funny how I put you guys through musical hell and then just sort of sit here and laugh". You can hear this in a lot of our music - I made complex song structures or rhythms (or both) that challenge the band, but I don't actually take part in performing any of them - I just sing over them.
The next day we worked on the song I started learning the guitar part and working more on the vocals. Because it was taking so much time, Dave proposed we just play "Daisy" as our third song (next to this song and "Alkaline"). Now it's just up to me to learn all those silly words and figure out how to say them while playing my fairly simple guitar part at the same time. *sigh* I guess I actually need to do some WORK now that I need to deal with my own crazy musical creations.
In other news, Dave quit BLEEPing. That's right, he stopped. FOREVER. Well, except in the presence of other BLEEPing friends, assuming they offer him a BLEEP to BLEEP.
Yeah.
Also, I purchased shoeloveband.com for a whopping 8 dollars yesterday. Right now it just reroutes to our myspace page, but hopefully it will have something original up fairly soon. Something awesome and original.
Yesterday, Cyrus and I saw some really awesome African music on the quad (along with hundreds of other people). I didn't really hear the name of the first band, but the second one was called something like "Chico". I haven't found any info about this event or the bands, but I'd be interested if anyone knew something about them (supposedly they are local). I also witnessed Krukid casually walk on stage and do a really cool rap over one of the opening band's songs. Awesome.
AND the lead singer of the opening band had an Mbira with about 3 octaves with a contact mix inside so he could plug into an amp. AMAZING. I want to get one off ebay, but some of them are expensive. There WAS a lot of 4 for 100 dollars, but that's a little much...especially since I only need one of them.
After the opening band was finished, Cyrus gave me enough confidence to walk up to the band leader and ask him about his setup. The conversation went something like this:
"Hey, I was wondering - did you have a pickup in one of these?" I asked, pointing to the pile of three mbiras on the table.
"Uh, well, I have a contact mic inside one of them" he replied.
"Oh, cool. That's awesome. Did you make these yourself?"
"No, they are from Zimbabwe"
"oh, where did you get them?" (whyyyy did I ask this?)
"Well, I was in Zimbabwe when I got them" he said.
"oh, awesome. I just thought it was cool - my dad had one of these but it only had, like, one octave. How is this thing tuned?" (anooother question...)
"Well, it's got a scale going up here" he said, pointing to the small, upper-range pieces on the top left. (he failed to mention how the lower notes were tuned, but whatever...)
"Ah, yeah, I know my dad's had, like, thirds going to right and to the left (so you would alternate between sides to make a scale)"
"Hmmm, I'm not sure where that is from" he said
Then the conga player said "Maybe it's from
I wasn't really interested where that silly one-octave mbira was from, so I said "Yeah, I'm not sure where it is from. Well, that was awesome - you guys were great." and then walked back to where Cyrus was sitting.
Hopefully I'll be able to get my hands on one at some point in the near future.....(to add to my never ending collection of musical goodies)
Speaking of musical goodies, Dave and I purchased one of these and one of these for $200. SWEET. Dave is gonna be the coolest bassist on the block after he gets that whammy. He can make some crazy ass sounds with that thing. I want the delay pedal mostly because of the "HOLD" function, where you can press the pedal and it will cycle through the last sound running through it over and over ad infinitum. This is especially useful with the separate wet out and bypass out...so you can have the delay sound separate from the original sound, making it seem like two different things. The melt banana guy uses this a lot....It was cool that this one guy on ebay had BOTH of the pedals we were looking for. Well, to be honest, Dave WAS interested in the bass whammy (out of production), but it doesn't sell for quite as cheap.
Hopefully, we should be getting those in the mail at the end of the week.
I just got word from the almighty ND that we WILL be doing demo recording today, starting at 4:30. Sue told me she wanted to do a tutoring session tonight, but she hasn't emailed me about what time....so....as they say,
"bros before hos"!
-t
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