Screaming time signatures

I am now consistently going to the End cafe twice a week. On thursdays I go there with Stella, and on fridays I meet Fab. Fab and I then proceed back to Stella's to write, record, jam, listen, and then we go to O'Brien's for 'cartoon land'. Anyways.. We wrote for a while yesterday. So far the composition consists of just guitar and forte. It will show up on the glissando blog when it's finished and recorded. In the meantime I'll soon be posting a sax-forte jam.

Last St. Patrick's day, I had Fab and Sylvia over to record on the good old portastudio. It was my first portastudio recording. The song was 'Polly' by Nirvana, and I had previously laid down the ukulele (yes) track, along with bass and my own vocal track. I wanted, however, to have a take with Fab on vocals. It actually never got mixed down. Anyhow, this year I had them over to do another cover of the same song on the day after St. Patrick's. I went to work a couple of days early using my limited knowledge of chord substitution.

The original progression goes Em, G, C, D in the verse. I changed this to Em add9, G6, C, D. The top note in a chord progression conveys melodic transitions. Thus, if you'll take a look at the top note in this progression(see chord chart below), you'll see it forms a primitive melody that goes F#, E, F#, E. I made a note of this, thinking a brief interlude could be added featuring this melody. I also constructed a bassline based on the chords that I immediately knew was superior to the original bassline, which was obviously slapped together in an offhand manner.
We wound up working on it for about six hours. It is now mixed and still needs to be digitised before it can appear on glissando. Hearing it will be more informative than me describing the recording process.

More dreams! Two nights ago, I dreamt endlessly, but unfortunately I can only recall the last one I had. I was at a very loud and screamy concert reminiscent of the Blood Brothers concert I attended in december. The singer was the only band member visible, and she was in the front of the crowd instead of on stage. They launched into what was obviously their big hit, featuring the singer counting the time signature. "1-2-3-4-123456-1-2-3-4-123456", screaming the 6/8 bar.
Last night I dreamt about having these massive bruises on my legs. I went to see a doctor about it. I think he seemed sort of impressed. Anyways, I wound up going into a packed auditorium for the Windsor House presentation of The Wizard of Oz. Before the show, I saw these two little kids from Windsor House dancing together. They looked amorously at each other. The play began, and it actually had nothing to do with The Wizard of Oz. There were mysterious singing voices coming from backstage and some disgruntled guy dressed as a tree or something on stage. The audience took up the singing while clapping. Some people continued to clap a bit too long, and the tree guy went, "Stop that, and let me clap to show what that sounds like" in a very pissed off voice.

Pixie has reappeared and begun a new blog which is located here. It's highly enjoyable.

Everything I would have written

Sorr-ry I haven't written in a while.

Mel (my sax teacher), whose real name is actually Colin, invited me to see him play a set at a Greek restaurant last Friday. He said they were a trio "with an incredible bassist and an incredible drummer". I brought a truckload of people with me. Fab, both his parents, Cosmic clock, Sylvia and Wallis. He played tenor throughout both their sets. I recognised only one song they played, but I don't know the name.

During his solos, he never played any light-speed passages or anything. He always took his time, and his thoughts and ideas were extremely clear. I forget the bassist's name, but as Sylvia remarked as soon as she sat down, "They have an excellent bass player". Whenever we applauded at the end of one of his solos, he would nod at us.

The drummer's name was Joe, and he was very young. He had guitar face: drummer's edition. But he was entitled to it. I recall the first time I saw a live jazz band at an opening at the art gallery. The guitarist had an expression that is probably exclusive to jazz players. Kind of like he was high on his music, or as Jimmy Ricardo once put it, "He is having an inner communion with his God, the musical note". And that is how Joe looked, but much more over-the-top. Everyone in the place obviously loved him. His solos were almost like their own pieces of music. My new favourite living drummer (my favourite dead one being Shelly Manne, who played on Sonny Rollins's Way out west).

Everyone talked about it the whole ride home. I think everyone had an excellent time. When I asked Cosmic, so did you enjoy yourself this evening, she said she was surprised how good they were. I said yes, he said they had an incredible bassist and an incredible drummer. She said, "And he wasn't lying. But what he failed to mention is that he was good at playing, too".

On the drive, there is a corner where no business can succeed. There have been about three restaurants in the last three years. About a month ago, a new cafe opened there called The End. Stella and I went there to see if it was frequent-worthy. There are no coffee shops in our neighbourhood (no good ones anyway). It was clean, you could order just a coffee or a whole meal, the waitress had a lovely accent, there were a googolplex different places to sit (leather furniture, even), and the food was cheap but perfectly good. Five out of five fish on the Bishop scale!

Fab and I met at said cafe on Sunday and had dinner. We then proceeded back to Stella's to jam, the outcome of which can be heard on our blog. Glissando isn't a band name, it's just a cool word. Stella has forbidden us from discussing a band name until we have recorded at least six compositions. We will continue tomorrow before Eureka Seven, which unfortunately has been moved to eleven o'clock.

Man from another place

In the last couple of days I've been experimenting on the newly acquired pianoforte, or forte as I tend to abbreviate it to. It's been called 'piano' for so long (when it should have been called pianoforte) that we must even it out. For every time it's been called 'piano', we must call it 'forte'.

I had been meaning to record one of these improvisations, because I thought it may help me to come up with some ideas. So today, I did just that. I'm presenting the improvisation here, in four sections. The total run time is about nine minutes. The website I'm using to publish them is new to me, so I'll link directly to the files.

The first section, Land of Sketchy opens with one chord repeated a few times in the bass, then the right hand enters and plays extensions of the chord before playing a very brief melody. An arpeggio in the deep bass ensues. Then more chords, with fairly fucked-up-sounding extensions. Then some large, hopeful chords mutate into horrible wrecks(melodic ones) and it ends with two blasts of, um, death.

The second section, I can't get comfortable is mostly a slow melody in very low registers. The notes slowly link and form a chord, which is repeated ploddingly while some high melody notes enter (again, altered extensions). The bass notes then crawl lower into extremely low registers, and the high melody continues. When the melody has finished talking, the bass thinks for a minute and then stops.

The third section, Hm(sigh). is very short and probably my favourite of the four. It opens with a mournful bass arpeggio that I most certainly will be using in the future. You're hearing it here first! Cookie contributes percussion and then chords, extensions, melodies succeed. It keeps its mood for a while, then begins to see the light. Then it gets extremely frustrated and it kills itself. Dramatic! But if you're not paying attention it will appear to fizzle out meaninglessly(and boringly).

The last section, Blunt Instrument emerges with a quiet percussion intro. Some seemingly happy chords begin and establish a 3/4 beat before minor extensions prevail. It speeds up and gets quite riled up, relaxes for half a second, then accelerates intensely before the percussion and plucked-string outro.

Bob's poem

My most recent sax lesson, which took place on tuesday, was the most fruitful yet. I asked my teacher, Mel, so what can you tell me about playing a solo over a chord progression? He showed me how to analyze a piece of music, a solo or head, so I could get an idea of what one might play over a given chord. He recommended that I purchase the Charlie Parker Omnibook and analyze and learn the music in it. So I did. And the first thing I discovered, quite frustratingly, is that the lead sheet (for 'Blues for Alice') I had previously printed off the internet had at least four mistakes in it. Right when I could play it up to speed! Frikkin' internet, eh? So I'm relearning that tune, pretty much, along with 'Segment'. I'm also working on my own decomposition.

Alrite, I had some more weird dreams last night. Nothing to do with the last two, though. The first one involved George Harrison sitting in a room wearing white sheets, surrounded by a bunch of people, his students, who were wearing similar clothing. He was teaching them various Indian customs. Then John showed up and was of course letting everyone know that his cloud was higher than theirs. George said to his students, "Here's how you leave the room", and began edging out of the room in a sort of crabwalk. Everyone began following suit, but John's version involved wiggling his arms and more wobbly steps. I guess that was the more enlightened way of doing it.

In the second dream, I was in my livingroom, which was bigger and very crowded with people. There was also a large table in the middle. Bob Dylan was there, and he recited a poem. It was addressed to himself. It went something like, "Bob Dylan, you're being held aloft by God. So what's it like to look the most famous man in the world in the face? I wish I were you, because you exist in a verse." He picked me up and threw me onto the table during the recitation.

O'Brien surprised me and Cosima on friday by producing two Eureka Seven DVDs from his pack, Eureka Seven being a tv show we watch religiously. It's exciting!

This is pretty much why I created this blog

Helleh. That's a palindrome.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a dream in which I was at some kind of zoo. I met a talking lion(not Aslan!) in the barn. He told me he didn't want to get out of the zoo so much as he'd just like more time outside. He was only alloted an hour outside in the evenings. So I helped him get out for a while. When I was in the barn later, I looked at the horses. Every second stall was empty. The horses that were there were all incredibly depressed, and this was causing them to get skin diseases. They looked like their faces were rotting and you could see muscle and bone. The reason every second stall was empty was because those horses were too depressed to even be born.

And more recently, I had a dream about some kind of travelling 'freak show'. The people in it had no skin. One guy had this sort of film growing over him, but it wasn't skin. He had a beard and it grew over the beard. There were many people showing up. I was the only one who noticed the skinless people weren't particularly overjoyed to be there. I was wondering why people were showing up and not doing anything to help. They just stared. I was trying to figure out what they were thinking. Was it that they wanted to know their lives weren't actually that bad? Did they just want to have a feeling of being better in some way?

It crossed my mind that these dreams are connected, in that they both involve someone being put on display, that same someone being depressed, decaying flesh or a lack of flesh, and me being the only person who cares. O'brien has pointed out that while the people on exhibition are isolated, in that(almost) no one cares about them, I too am isolated in that I'm the only one who cares.

Blues for Alice, transposed for Eb alto sax.

I can't get stopped

One of the things I have to do with my life is inform the public of the full name of the piano. The full name is pianoforte, which means softloud. The earlier harpsichord could only play forte. So the name pianoforte is derived from the original italian name for the instrument, gravicèmbalo col piano e forte, literally meaning 'harpsichord with soft and loud'. So if you think about it, pianoforte is itself an abbreviation, meaning piano is an abbreviation of an abbr.

I have been playing the sax for about two months now. I'm trying to learn a bunch of songs so I can, you know, know a bunch of songs. The two I'm currently working with are Blues for Alice by Charlie Parker and Epistrophy by Melodious Thunk. Once I get them I'll most likely post mp3's here to sort of guage my progress.

I have discovered a chord that I like very much. It's the maj9-5. Below are two ways of playing it on a guitar, but the voicings are a bit strange in that they each contain only one root note.

This blog will be good. I promise.

Hello all y'all.

I left my old blog to die nearly a year ago. Too much of it was, "Then the vending machine ate my quarter, which sucked". This one will attempt to be slightly less mundane. I've had to use the Occupant blog 'til recently, but I grow weary of not being allowed to use the font of my choice.

The name of this blog is the chord sounded when you play the strings of a guitar open. I figured that out myself! I'm tired so I'll write a better entry tomorrow.