Surprise

I'm really pleased with how I can surprise myself. Today's surprise was, not surprisingly (I know, I know, I'm too clever) about music.

I had a house guest the last several days and he was lovely and amazing and we hung out with each other and a lot of mutual friends and that was all wonderful. Including playing an American Idol-based karaoke game on a friend's Wii in which I did fairly well at singing stuff like "In The Air Tonight" and "Tainted Love" and didn't feel TOO bad at wishing I'd done even better.

Lovely as it was, I was sort of chomping at the bit to get back to my regular routine. Problem is, I also wore myself out having a nice time (we were all up especially late the night of Wii karaoke because we also watched a Harry Potter flick until nearly 1:30 a.m.)

So I ended up cancelling tonight's rehearsal with Eric, my bass player.

But tired as I was ... and a bit depressed today, what with poor weather and lingering tiredness, which always affects my mood .... I still wanted to write.

I hacked around with some simple ideas in C and spouted some lyrics and ended up writing a quick ditty. I've been meaning to try writing a little more simply, I-IV-V progressions, not move all over the place, which in one sense is a sign of my increasing sophistication and in another sense is about me not knowing how to take full advantage of any single chord I've got.

Anyway. Came home tonight and worked it out a little more on acoustic guitar. Which we know I still don't play all that well. But it was sounding okayish.

Laid down a rough track on my MacBook--no metronome, keeping my own tempo. The microphone in this thing is still surprisingly awesome for quick-and-dirties. Guitar and voice. Sounded pretty decent.

I decided to figure out the tempo. Found a rhythm pattern that kind of fits. Re-cut the guitar, no voice. Added a synth bass line. Added the vocals again (first two verses and choruses. Put in a little piano. Put in a bit of backing vocal harmony.

Um .... suddenly I have half a song? With acoustic guitar cut in one take? That sounds halfway okay .... you know, nothing that would be totally out of place in a Robert Pollard "I hacked this together kind of fast" way.

Like I say: surprise.

I sort of need a vacation from hanging out with fun people, which is my usual vacation from work. I had been thinking it would be neat to go away totally by myself for a week, with only a guitar and a laptop, not hang out online so much, and spew forth as many songs as I was/wasn't feeling like writing real fast.

As a dry run for something like that, this evening was WAY fabulous.

Who knew I was getting so quick at knocking things out? Boy, if my old Berkeley classmates could hear me now. Actually, I should point Aoife at some stuff. Maybe this is something I should let her hear. I suspect she'll agree I've come a LONG way.