I can't believe I'm actually trying to write a song.
At the suggestion of Timm, the drummer in Mary's band, I'm trying my hand at a musical composition. For bass guitar and taiko drums. At least, that's the intention; I have no idea what the result will be, haha.
The trick, of course, is that a full-fledged, fully-realized song doesn't just pop out of your head the way Athene popped out of Zeus' (his headaches must have been Olympus-sized....). Unless you're really lucky. So for the past two evenings, in the manner prescribed in a textbook for writing poetry, I've jotted down a drum pattern idea here, a bass riff there. An idea for a sort of call-and-response section between the bass & one or more drums. Just getting stuff down on paper, that kind of thing. Eventually, jamming on some of these riffs might inspire even better ideas.
One of the points the author of the poetry-writing book makes is that one develops a daily routine, a habit of writing. Even if a day's results aren't worth keeping, it's worth it to keep doing it. So it seems with the music-writing. I'm sure this applies to painting or drawing, anything creative...but painting is a laborious, time-consuming process for me. I'm ridiculously deliberate, and hate rushing, so it takes ages to finish anything. I'd rather set aside at least a full hour for painting, after sketching out the general concept, just to get a sort of color framework in place.
I've had a keen interest in art for a number of years, but it wasn't until I enrolled in an introductory course at Cambridge College that I seriously put brush to paper (since we were rank beginners, Prof. Callahan had us buy heavyweight-paper art pads, and we used chalk, charcoal, and acrylic paint). I absolutely loved that course, but I haven't completed many paintings since then. : ( But when can I find the time if I'm playing bass, playing taiko, writing a song, and maintaining a blog? [insert a somewhat resigned shrug here]
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
Happy Drummer, too!
Last week I had two taiko drumming gigs: Thursday night at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and Saturday morning in West Boylston, Massachusetts. Both went pretty well, though I had a couple brain cramps - they were probably minor 'fumbles' that nobody really noticed, but when they happen, they remind me in no uncertain terms that I still have plenty of room (maybe a continent's worth) for improvement.
The MIT gig was for a pretty cool Japanese cultural event - there were some dancers, video projections, singers and other musicians in the performing arts, games for the kids to play, and more. The people who were checking out our drumming performance were digging it; the kids were just mesmerized by those big drums and the thunderous sounds we were bashing out of them. {big smile}
The gig in West Boylston was for that community's bicentennial celebration. It was a beautiful, sunny, comfortable morning for our gig. It was my first major outdoor gig, and it was really something to hear people talking about how they could hear our drums from quite a distance (the event's venues, food stalls, merchandise tables, etc. were spread out over a large park, an adjoining baseball field and other spaces). A fun thing at some of our gigs is audience participation - the kids almost always have huge smiles on their faces as they grab our big drumsticks ('bachi') and have a go at hitting the drums. "License to be loud".
The West Boylston kids seemed to be a little intimidated at first, but they eventually made their own brand of taiko noise. And nobody minded how loud they were.
The MIT gig was for a pretty cool Japanese cultural event - there were some dancers, video projections, singers and other musicians in the performing arts, games for the kids to play, and more. The people who were checking out our drumming performance were digging it; the kids were just mesmerized by those big drums and the thunderous sounds we were bashing out of them. {big smile}
The gig in West Boylston was for that community's bicentennial celebration. It was a beautiful, sunny, comfortable morning for our gig. It was my first major outdoor gig, and it was really something to hear people talking about how they could hear our drums from quite a distance (the event's venues, food stalls, merchandise tables, etc. were spread out over a large park, an adjoining baseball field and other spaces). A fun thing at some of our gigs is audience participation - the kids almost always have huge smiles on their faces as they grab our big drumsticks ('bachi') and have a go at hitting the drums. "License to be loud".
The West Boylston kids seemed to be a little intimidated at first, but they eventually made their own brand of taiko noise. And nobody minded how loud they were.
Monday, September 15, 2008
The Great Gig in the Sky
Exit Richard Wright.
I found out around 5:10, just before I left work this afternoon. What an empty feeling in my spirit. As a support musician, I'm at peace with frequently being overlooked while Mary is singing her angelic vocals and Terry or Ellen are playing such cool guitar licks in our band; I don't mind being some of the glue that holds everything together rather than taking solos. Yet I can't help but feel Rick's keyboard genius was overshadowed 90% of the time in the Floyd, and it just seems sick that he's gone....as if his contribution to the band was never fully acknowledged, and now....
R.I.P., Rick.
I found out around 5:10, just before I left work this afternoon. What an empty feeling in my spirit. As a support musician, I'm at peace with frequently being overlooked while Mary is singing her angelic vocals and Terry or Ellen are playing such cool guitar licks in our band; I don't mind being some of the glue that holds everything together rather than taking solos. Yet I can't help but feel Rick's keyboard genius was overshadowed 90% of the time in the Floyd, and it just seems sick that he's gone....as if his contribution to the band was never fully acknowledged, and now....
R.I.P., Rick.
Monday, September 8, 2008
A Happy Gigster!
Hi there,
Well, I know I still owe you another entry re my trip to NYC, but I have to talk about tonight's gig. Yes, your friendly correspondent is a Happy Gigster tonight!
Just got back from a set at Wonder Bar, a venue in Boston's Allston-Brighton neighborhood. We helped to kick off the annual Boston Music Festival, a weeklong celebration of everything from Jazz to Folk to Rock to World Music. At several bars & clubs all around the city. A really cool idea, but the publicity for it was pretty random; it’s such a great idea, people should know all about this for a month or more. Anyway….
Our bandleader Mary Casiello is a grad from the Berklee College of Music and writes her own material. Mary is a wonderful talent, and it’s always fun to play bass in her band because her songwriting incorporates a wide range of moods, interesting harmonies & chord progressions, and rhythmic textures. Terry, the guitarist, and I have considerable freedom to improvise riff ideas and explore tonal properties for the accompaniment of Mary’s songs; e.g. for one song I crank the highs and scoop the mids to get a bright, slap-like sound out of my bass (I’m strictly a fingerstyle player, plucking with my index & middle fingers; I can't play decent slap bass at all, so I don't) and for a couple tunes I play mainly in the upper registers, as legato as I can, to approximate a sort of cello sound.
As a support musician, I appreciate that I get to experiment with different sounds, feels, rhythms, and tones – like the way The Beatles used to work in their early-to-middle period, whoever has the best idea – that’s what we play, which is energizing and inspiring. Some of our rehearsals have consisted of a handful of tunes with ongoing arranging by the whole band; playing for awhile, starting again with new ideas, then revisiting it later if we feel like it. Sometimes we also jam on it a bit, so we can stretch a given song out for a coupla minutes.
Tonight’s gig bore the fruit of these rehearsals – we were really “on”, pretty tight with the material; we played three new songs live for the first time. I ploinked out a couple clams on one of them (painful wince….), but I pretty much nailed the other two (insert sigh of relief here). They were well-received, which is nice: as the songs are brand-new, we’re breaking them in live, so I’m sure the arrangements will be tweaked here and there as we go along and the songs will just get better & better. The crowd was smallish but as time went on more people turned up, and they were digging the music. Yeah!
Well, I know I still owe you another entry re my trip to NYC, but I have to talk about tonight's gig. Yes, your friendly correspondent is a Happy Gigster tonight!
Just got back from a set at Wonder Bar, a venue in Boston's Allston-Brighton neighborhood. We helped to kick off the annual Boston Music Festival, a weeklong celebration of everything from Jazz to Folk to Rock to World Music. At several bars & clubs all around the city. A really cool idea, but the publicity for it was pretty random; it’s such a great idea, people should know all about this for a month or more. Anyway….
Our bandleader Mary Casiello is a grad from the Berklee College of Music and writes her own material. Mary is a wonderful talent, and it’s always fun to play bass in her band because her songwriting incorporates a wide range of moods, interesting harmonies & chord progressions, and rhythmic textures. Terry, the guitarist, and I have considerable freedom to improvise riff ideas and explore tonal properties for the accompaniment of Mary’s songs; e.g. for one song I crank the highs and scoop the mids to get a bright, slap-like sound out of my bass (I’m strictly a fingerstyle player, plucking with my index & middle fingers; I can't play decent slap bass at all, so I don't) and for a couple tunes I play mainly in the upper registers, as legato as I can, to approximate a sort of cello sound.
As a support musician, I appreciate that I get to experiment with different sounds, feels, rhythms, and tones – like the way The Beatles used to work in their early-to-middle period, whoever has the best idea – that’s what we play, which is energizing and inspiring. Some of our rehearsals have consisted of a handful of tunes with ongoing arranging by the whole band; playing for awhile, starting again with new ideas, then revisiting it later if we feel like it. Sometimes we also jam on it a bit, so we can stretch a given song out for a coupla minutes.
Tonight’s gig bore the fruit of these rehearsals – we were really “on”, pretty tight with the material; we played three new songs live for the first time. I ploinked out a couple clams on one of them (painful wince….), but I pretty much nailed the other two (insert sigh of relief here). They were well-received, which is nice: as the songs are brand-new, we’re breaking them in live, so I’m sure the arrangements will be tweaked here and there as we go along and the songs will just get better & better. The crowd was smallish but as time went on more people turned up, and they were digging the music. Yeah!
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