May 10th, 2008

[rone rivendale]

DRC: Well I got today off from work so I'm relaxing and re-cooping and all that crap. I guess I ought to find a website or something about how to play this damn guitar I got last week. I don't know the first thing about playing it lol.

QotD: Which instrument do you wish you could play to enhance your SF career?

[Spud]

Guitar is the main instrument I am missing. I play the clarinet and the electronic saxophone, but mostly I played keyboards on the early octothorpe recordings. I picked up an accordion along the way, and I can play it on songs I have written. I have had fits and starts with the flute, which appears on a couple of songs, but no guitar. Several years ago I realized that in writing our songs, I always started with the bass line, so I started playing bass. It has been my most successfully picked-up instrument in many years.

On our "Blueberry Hassle", I tuned a guitar to an open chord and played slides on it, but I wouldn't count that. The first time I "really" played guitar was on this week's Nur Ein, and I only played two chords, D and G. Still, a start.

Of course, one day I shall resume learning to play drums.

SPUD

[Märk]

qotd: "SF career"? It's not like anyone will ever make money from songfight... Anyway, I really wish I'd taken up drums years ago, because I actually have a good sense of rythm, but if I sit at a drum kit I'm lost.

[Spud]

qotd: "SF career"? It's not like anyone will ever make money from songfight...

Yeah, but "SF Experience" sounds so much more pretentious.

[Märk]

qotd: "SF career"? It's not like anyone will ever make money from songfight...

Yeah, but "SF Experience" sounds so much more pretentious.

Hey, it worked for Jimi Hendrix, right?

[Spud]

For a little while.

[No Horse Town]

qotd: drums. After that, some kind of horn. Also, some screaming/growling skills would be nice.

in other news, I'm tired and I hope I'm not getting sick again. My kid "graduates" preschool today. My hippie friend Dan says today is my "galactic birthday", according to some funny new age "Mayan" website... apparently it comes more frequently than a real birthday. I hope he gets me something!

[Rabid Garfunkel]

All of 'em. I muddle and stumble through playing whatever's at hand as it is.

Practicing would be a good idea. Yeah... practicing.

[king_arthur]

I actually have a saxophone in the closet here... somewhere... used to belong to one of the inlaws when they were in high school, but they hadn't played it in years, so it wound up here, and I don't even know how to get a sound out of it, to say nothing of playing it. Much as many here would like me to get real drums, I think I real sax would probably add more, at least more of what I care about. Someday, maybe...

Today: laundry, cleaning, take care of stuff at my mom's. Just started working on a song for tuneflow, using the Band Inna Box "reggae 2" drum style, and it's turning out to be way trickier than I expected - they do a lot of syncopated off-the beat stuff, and I finally just had to track the drums while counting 1-2-3-4 and recording that on a spare track so that I can get the guitar part down in rhythm. Weirdly, the standard "reggae" drum style they send with BIAB doesn't have any swing to the beat (it needs to, down at the 16th note level or something). This other style fits better, but, man is it tricky to play to... but once I get the guitar track laid down, I should be able to feel the beat for everything else pretty well.

So yesterday I was over at the middle school where the Mrs. teaches, and one of the girls was having trouble understanding some stuff and started whining about it, and it was like, exactly the voice of Cartman. I managed to explain square roots to her (I hope) without totally cracking up, but it was weird, weird, weird. She kinda looks like him, too...

Yeah, so, the usual zillion things to deal with. Starting to worry about how bummed out I'm going to be when I get sent home from Nur Ein and some of these people who get started on their song the night before (yeah, you Gleen) and others who are going, "well, I sent it in, but it's crap") make it to the next round. Oh, well, I should be used to it by now, right?

Other than that, life is not too bad. Watched the Grateful Dead Movie yesterday evening, and that always inspires me.

Charles (KA)

[Billy's Little Trip]

QOTD: The Triangle. But I can never remember if it ting ting clang, or clang clang ting. I've got a poster of Ed Grimley in my music room. It would be so wonderful to meet him some day. I'd go completely mental, I must say. Three sided instruments are hard.

[Rabid Garfunkel]

Spud could pro'lly give you better advice on the single-reed stuff, Chas, but in brief:

Get that reed good & wet. Take that reed off and let it sit in a shot glass of water for 5-10 minutes before the first time you try & play on it. Instead of dealing with all the fingerstuff in the beginning, slide the mouthpiece of the horn and make duck calls until you get the feel for it (where you put your mouth, the lower lip/jaw pressure, &c.).

[Spud]

Also, a sax that hasn't been played for a long time probably has some dried out pads. Take in and have a tech look at it while you're working on the duck calls.

SPUD

[Albatross]

Singing.

The End.

[Reist]

qotd: I wish I was good at keyboard.

[Paco Del Stinko]

Yeah, a big 'ol list I wish I coud do/do better. If only one, it would be singing. Drums and piano next.

I only played two chords, D and G.

Get yerself an Em and Am and you'll be all set.

[fluffy]

qotd: "SF career"? It's not like anyone will ever make money from songfight...

Tell that to MC Frontalot, Spinto Band, and Melvin.

drc I had a lot of things I was going to get done today but then my sister called this morning and we were going to go out for coffee "in an hour" and she kept on saying "sorry in a little while longer" and then finally we went out to lunch at like 2 PM. Ugh.

qotd I can play every instrument that I want to play. I pretty much completely suck at all of them though.

[Niveous]

QotD: Drums. Oh how I wish I had some cocktail drums and the ability to play them.

[fluffy]

Cocktail drums are surprisingly expensive.

I recently got an Alesis ControlPad, which works pretty well, and takes up a lot less space than my electric drumkit (which has just been packed away in a box ever since I moved). I haven't used it on a song yet though.

[sausage boy]

QOTD: Drums. Guitar. I have considered buying a guitar and actually learning how to play it, but most of my favourite interactions with the songfight community involve me begging for guitars, so I am hesitant to do this.

Xylophone!

[fluffy]

Get a monocle and then you can be just like Patrick Moore.