Terrifying

After all this time spent with my vocal instructor, she finally laid the law down at my last lesson and told me, "you're singing an actual song today." I've been doing nothing but vocal exercises for so long but never was ready to make that leap.
If you've never had vocal lessons, let me tell you that there are some very strange exercises out there. First starting, I was quite self-conscious doing them because they distort your face in odd ways and some just have you making strange buzzing sounds and blowing your lips out really hard. But I overcame and now think nothing of it. Being silly with it makes it easier. But the thought of actually attempting a real song in a real way, without being silly, has been a roadblock for a while. It's terrifying. There's a lot of vulnerability in it. But, as I said, she laid down the law and I had no choice.

As I was unable to come up with a song, she picked for me. I'll tell you that the songs we did were certainly not what I had in mind when I started trying to sing. But you have to start somewhere, and thus we started with two songs that were in a comfortable range for me.
"You know what song would work great with your voice? 'Loveshack!' "
Now, I said above that neither song I ended up singing was what I had in mind...but it's freakin' "Loveshack." Everyone loves to sing that (ridiculous) song. It also has the bonus of a female part so my instructor could do that and I could do the male part. Doing a duet made me more comfortable about the whole ordeal.
"Loveshack" was done on a karaoke machine and the volume of it made me more comfortable singing. Part of my singing problem is a confidence issue when you can hear too much of just my voice. I can just belt it out along with the radio while I'm in the car and (mostly) be on key, but as soon as you cut the volume off, my voice withdraws back into my body like a scared turtle. So I think the loud machine was a good stepping stone.

The next song was "The Dance" by Garth Brooks. I'm not much into country, despite living in Nashville for so long (there's a lot more here than country, if you're not aware), but I grew up with my parents listening to country in the 80s and 90s and there are a few songs from back then that I like. This happens to be one of them. As we decided on the song she says, "now we are going back to the piano, you're going to play this song and sing it...I'll face away from you if it will make you more comfortable." And that is exactly how it went down. I managed to make it through the entire song and didn't feel it was a complete disaster. She was oddly excited and, seemingly, proud that I had made the steps I had, but instead of feeling proud about it myself, mostly I was thinking, "I'm never going to have a strong, interesting voice like I dreamed." I try to shove that thought aside the many times is comes to mind. Negativity is never going to get me anywhere.

Now, I've done plenty of piano performances at this point in my life, and I'm never really nervous about them. Even my first performance when I was only ~6 months into learning wasn't bad. I get a few butterflies leading up to it, but once I'm at the piano, I zone out and take care of business. I'm told I look very angry when I play, but that's just me focusing. My expression probably isn't helped by the fact that I have a default "resting bitch face" though...
Despite my playing piano in front of groups of people without nervousness, singing in front of ONE person - who has by now seen me and heard me do some WEIRD stuff - was dreadful. And she had her back to me!
I knew as I finished that I had been nervous but, as I reached up to scratch my brow, I felt my forehead and it was COVERED in sweat. My eyebrows were damp if that tells you how much. That gave me a new respect for live performers. Not that my respect was low; vocal classes has pretty much raised my awe of singers each time I go to class. Granted, I'm sure most of them are far more confident in their voice than I so they might not have quite as much inner turmoil about performing.

I'm supposed to be working on the country song for our next class and hopefully by then some of the mistakes I made I can manage to remedy. We'll see in a few days.

Satisfying Progress

I had a few enjoyable moments in the last few days. The first is that I sent my final -...maybe - version of my first piano piece to my vocal coach. She really seemed to like the initial versions but was far more excited for my most recent revision. She brought it up during our session yesterday and kept saying how much she loved the melody. More excitingly, she said how if she came across anyone at work (she's a professional song writer as I believe I've mentioned) needing a moody melody, she'd totally pitch my piece to them. Which is pretty freakin' cool. I don't expect anything to come of that but it was a nice confidence boost.

Secondly, I managed to climb my way (slightly) both up and down the piano with my voice more than I ever have before, which I didn't expect having thought I'd hit my absolute limit prior to this. As of now it's looking like my range will officially land around 3 octaves or perhaps a step more. Here is what I was able to eek out yesterday.

Compared to my previous record:

I actually managed to land the B just below my lowest C but not reliably and it was a real struggle, requiring me to attempt it again and again until I just barely managed. So I'm not going to count that one.

Next goal: don't screw up my recital in a few weeks. I did a few runs through it on the grand piano at the vocal studio and found some parts that needed tweaking, mostly pedal work. I've discovered being a little lax with the pedal at home on my electric piano is a lot different than being lax on a real piano. The sounds muddle FAR more on the piano and I'm going to have to make sure I'm more diligent about the pedal in the future.

Woo #2

To go along with my previous post, I have nearly finished up my first ever song, aside from the lyrics. Though at this point I might just make it an instrumental...maybe. It's an ever changing situation and my mind switches every few minutes.
After I had settled on most of the melodies and chorus, I recorded it and sent it to my vocal instructor - who is a professional song writer - for her opinion. Her response was:
"Whoa!! That is sooo cool!! You have a real ear for melody lines - no joke - I could totally picture that in a movie - wow!!!"

Which naturally pleased me. Granted, she could have been trying to encourage me with positive reinforcement but I feel like she tends to be very straight-forward so I'm going to take the comment as stated and allow myself to feel pretty excited about it.

Now that I've finally started the ball rolling and allowed the fear of being terrible to subside, I'm really enjoying the progress of creating a song. Of creating at all, really. It feels like far too long since I said down and made something that was my own.
I don't know if my writing method is ideal, but I recorded the basic chord progression onto my phone and listened to it on a loop over and over (which may have driven me slightly insane) while humming melody progressions in my head. After a while, I started to hear where I wanted the song to go in my a measure ahead of time and I would build it from there. It sort of felt like those cartoons where a character starts to off a cliff and builds a bridge ahead of themselves to run on while they are in midair.

I always assumed the first song I ever wrote would be terrible - and it MAY be for all I know - and that I would hate it. But the fact that I not only don't hate it, but actually like it makes me feel pretty good.

There are still many hurdles and a long way yet to go, but I'm glad to finally have making the journey.

Woo

I was playing recital piece for my piano teacher last week and she commented on how my play style had evolved from being stiff and mechanical to more loose and how I seemed to play with more feeling of late and how she felt I'd become a real musician. And that  just made my whole day.

I, of course, don't feel that way but it's nice hearing it from someone else.

Song Writing Hurdles

I have a two week deadline to complete an entire song. Music, lyrics, the works. Not to be misleading with the use of the word "deadline", which implies ramifications if I don't complete it. There are no ramifications beyond personal displeasure and potentially disappointing my vocal coach, being the person who tasked me with this undertaking. That being said, consequences or no, I'd like to complete it. It may be terrible and it may be embarrassing, but it will be finished, and that is an achievement of sorts. By being complete I'll be able to leave it behind and try again, hopefully making my next attempt slightly less horrifying. Then I'll repeat the process a few hundred times until I hopefully have something mildly passing. Or more ideally I'll discover I'm a natural prodigy and write a masterpiece, but I'm not going to hold my breath for that one.

Having already squandered half of my two weeks, I recently realized why I'm struggling to make more progress. I'm spending a lot of time on minute details that probably don't matter. Or don't matter at this stage in the process, at least.
Last night I spent an agonizing amount of time on 4 measures for the ending. My working on the ending is in no way indicative of my progress through the song, by the by. I just happened to have noodled with a melody that I felt would sound good as an ending. At any rate, in measure 1 and 3, there is literally a single note that is interchanged between the two, and only by a single tone. And I couldn't for the life of me decide which I preferred. The change is so slight that when I sent it to a friend for an opinion, I was told, "I listened to both samples a few times and can't tell any difference," which makes me believe no one but a professional musician or someone with a very refined ear would even care, so why am I tearing my hair out about this?
Besides, I've decided that I need to try and treat song writing as I would a painting. A simple base layer to start with then slowly and steadily adding more and more details until it is full of texture and, by the time you are finished, becomes interesting. Hopefully.

I'm only now coating the base with color and am a long way from painting any sort of sunset. I'll try and get the colors right when I get there instead of worrying about them while it is still early morning.

Brain and Finger Disconnect

Over the last year I've noticed a rather obnoxious disconnect between any music I play and what my brain is doing at any given moment during the piece. From the start of this piano learning process, one thing I focused on extensively was never looking at my fingers. The practice has served me well, but I've recently discovered - as I learn more difficult pieces that take me longer to learn - that it can cause me to become lost should I ever make a mistake. I used to be rather good at making a mistake and continuing on like nothing happened, which I imagine was a hold-over from my guitar days. But recently I've started to pause upon making an error and that gives my brain JUST enough time to activate and confuse everything. It made me realize that even if I know a piece by memory, I don't really know at any time what note I'm playing as I play it. That means if I've gotten my fingers out of position I have no idea where they are supposed to go without starting back a few measures. This can obviously be a problem.

Muscle memory is clearly an important skill with this instrument, but I feel my sole reliance on it has done me a disservice. I brought up the disconnected feeling randomly my vocal coach and she suggested that when I practice scales and arpeggios (the latter of which I rarely practice...I know, I know...) that I actively call out the name of the notes I'm hitting. My first thought was that this will also help with me oddly terrible ability to say the alphabet backwards from G. But I think she may be onto something. Having only tried this method a few times, I already feel that this is going to help me address the issue.
As I think on how long it took me to find a simple solution to my disconnect problem, it becomes quite clear to me that I need to come up with other similar efficient practice techniques if I ever want to rise above piano mediocre. My progress has been beyond disappointing of late and it's frustrating. I need a renewed effort on more efficiency and deliberate practice. If I can get those working in tandem I believe it will really boost my progress in the direction I want.

In other news, I sang the first part of a song in front of someone for the first time, and it was absolutely terrifying. All these times I've worked with the vocal coach, I have only been focusing on technique and exercises, forever pushing off attempting a real song. Okay, that's not quite true. To ease me into the process, we've often worked on the below:

Which I've gotten pretty good at, if I may be so bold. Though obviously not quite as good as Pavarotti. But singing a song in a language you don't know is pretty on par with doing various technique exercise. It's a lot easier to really throw yourself into it when it just comes out as a bunch of sounds. When it comes out as understandable words, that's when the doubt and fear and such really sets in. With that in mind, when the first word of the new song I worked on came out as little more than a squeak, I wasn't really surprised. I'm not discouraged though as I think on how far I've progressed since my first lesson. In the beginning, even jibberish sounds were hard to make myself do at any reasonable volume; even more difficult were the many strange exercises that make you look completely ridiculous. 

It took a while to become comfortable with all of that, but these days I don't think twice about having to hold my hands to my face and squish my cheeks up in weird ways so that I can trill my lips to get the sound I want. Or, as last time, stick a spoon to the back of my tongue and force it to stay flat when trying to make an "AH" sound. But a year ago I'd have folded in on myself in embarrassment. 

Those trials have certainly changed my view on how I think about singers when I see them make silly faces during  performance. I used to just think, "that's not a good look for them" but now it just makes me realize they are applying some technique or another to their voice. It's been very enlightening.

Whatever ends up coming out of the time spend in these classes, I feel at the very least it has been good for my self-confidence.

Blisters On Me Fingers

For some reason, I decided all the stuff I was working on just wasn't enough to keep me busy, so I ended up buying a ukulele to fool around with. I figured having a fair bit of experience with stringed instruments, it would come to me more naturally than piano did. And for the most part that is true, but having big hands and trying to play this tiny instrument is certainly a learning experience.

For all the years I've loathed "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", it has rapidly become a secret favorite after playing it on the uku. With that easy chore down, I decided to skip all the logical steps and try and master "Bohemian Rhapsody" which is clearly a ridiculous move.
...but can you blame me?

All I've managed thus far is to blister every single finger even with the ukulele's nylon strings. Thi is clearly showing a lack of practice on the guitar of late.

Difficult as the song is, it has been a lot of fun to play. Try to play, rather. After a bit of concentrated effort, I have the first 30 seconds handled...only about 5.5 more minutes of song to go. I should have it mastered in a few years at this rate.

Various Happenings

It's been a busy year. Keeping an updated blog that only ~3 people read is more work than anticipated, especially on a topic that doesn't lend itself to being put into words.

Here's what has been going down.

1) I've had two recitals since the last time I updated, which tells you how far between my updates have been. Or that I have recitals too often. But I've grown to enjoy the recitals. After all, one of my goals was to play in front of people, though a recital isn't exactly what I had in mind, nor is playing a piece out of a lesson book. Still, it's progress and a step toward one of my goals.
The last recital I played my most challenging piece thus far, an upbeat ragtime song. And while I'm not a ragtime fan, I loved playing the piece, especially in front of a bunch of strangers. I get the expected butterflies before a recital but when I actually play I completely zone out and forget about everyone else. I didn't even notice a cameraman got right in my face. I'm told my gaze gets "focused, intense, and angry". The furrowed brow isn't anger, just concentration. I don't really recall being up on the stage except for feeling completely in sync with the piece, and that was a nice, rare moment.

2) I was in New York for a week this month for a wedding and made some pretty great new friends. I danced terribly out on the dance floor and had a great time when I was finally able to not worry about other people and just enjoy myself. Who knew dancing (even badly) was such fun? Have I really been missing out all these years because I was embarrassed? One of my new goals for the year is to learn to dance with some fast tempo songs so I can keep up with one of my new friends, Justin, who danced everyone's face off.
My other new buds are a husband and wife duo who are both musically inclined. When they found out I played a few instruments, they wanted to break out the instruments. He plays bass and she the violin. I played them some pieces I'd done before as well as a new one I was working on, and they played me an incredible cover of a Coheed and Cambria song that they are doing for an upcoming talent show, which I desperately hope they record. After that we just sort of goofed off, singing songs and jamming. I was reminded just how much fun it is to play music with people. It'd been far too long.

3) I played a ukulele for the first time and found it to be quite the pleasant little instrument. Playing it felt very naturally and I taught myself a few songs in an hour or so. I think I might pick up my own for fun.

Speaking of which, after I found out they had a uku, I shared with them a fantastic player I had just seen a few weeks prior.

All in all, a very eventful few months and I'm feeling quite inspired. Can't wait to see what the rest of the year brings.

I was thinking about some of my goals from when I started this whole process and it made feel that my progress has been craaaaawling by. I've accomplished a few of my objectives, but my most important ones are yet a long way off, though they shouldn't be as far off as I am making them.

I've always had a bit of a problem with being a jack-of-all-trades type of person. I know a good deal about a fair number of subjects and have experiences with many of them. I can draw decently. I can paint okay. I can play guitar alright. I can have basic conversations in a couple of other languages. I'm not a terrible rock climber, I'm somewhat talented at Aikido, etc. I find all of that satisfying in some ways, yet at the same time, I would love to be simply incredible at something. I'm interested in so many topics that I want to dip my toes into all of them, often forgetting that my life - as far as I'm aware - is finite and I probably need to have more focus.

I was discussing a favorite author of mine today and how in his podcasts about writing he constantly recites the importance of a motto that you may have heard, "BICHOK", which simply means "butts in chair, hands on keyboard." Likely this is obvious to you, but it's the idea that, as a writer or someone who wants to be a writer, you need to always be writing. You don't talk about it or don't think about or say "maybe when I'm in the mood." You just do it. He always stresses how it's almost more important to write when you don't feel like it than it is when you are inspired to do so.
This concept sums up some of my problems/limitations. No one who has had great success in any of my areas of interest have done it by doing it my way. "My way" being to extensively read and discuss a topic but rarely getting around to actually putting the time into practicing a given craft. If I spent the amount of time at practice as I do researching "how to", I would probably have mastered several skills and talents by now.

We can take one of my goals stated on my first entry as a prime example. I've always wanted to write a song, and writing a complete one was an aspiration when I started getting back into music. That was a year and a half ago. Guess how many songs I've written? Actually, guess the percent of a single song I've written? Either question you answer, the number is the same. Zero, if that wasn't obvious.

This is even after I was challenged by my vocal instructor to write one "no matter how terrible it ends up." Which is honestly a great way to start, probably. I always wonder, "how does someone even start writing a song" and the key probably is very simply, "they just do it" and there's no real magic to it. Any musician I admire surely started out writing terrible songs, despite their talent level, and they continued writing terrible songs until they started writing less terrible songs, and then they started writing amazing songs. And likely the secret to all those amazing ones is that they started out as terrible songs that slowly became amazing songs as they tweaked them, not unlike how a painting starts as a bunch of colored shapes and blobs and then suddenly you have a beautiful landscape or portrait.

I'm sure part of my problem is that I'm scared of making something terrible and then becoming disheartened. The obvious issue here is that if I never try, I'll never even get that far. Besides, I've made plenty of terrible things in my day, what's one more thing? I can't start improving on it if I never make it happen in the first place.

Dave Grohl has a great quote that sort of relates (though it's overall in reference to how ridiculous music reality shows are):
“Musicians should go to a yard sale and buy an old drum set and get in their garage and just suck. And get their friends to come in and they’ll suck, too. And then they’ll start playing and they’ll have the best time they’ve ever had in their lives and then all of a sudden they’ll become Nirvana. Because that’s exactly what happened with Nirvana. Just a bunch of guys that had some shitty old instruments and they got together and started playing some noisy-ass shit, and they became the biggest band in the world. That can happen again! You don’t need a f'ing computer or the internet or The Voice or American Idol.”

Maybe this will be the year I can really display how much I suck and maybe by the end I'll suck a little less.

Painting

A little more color this time.

Even More Painting

I'm more pleased with this one than I was with my last effort. Though I felt like my first attempt at palm trees was super sloppy. I see several ways I can do them better next time. I'm eager to see if I'm right.

I'm still doing music too, I promise.

More Painting

My most recent effort was a bit of a disaster. I sort of want to purge it from my home with fire, but it's always good to keep bad pieces around so that you can see how much you've improved over time. Still, I keep catching it out of the corner of my eye, making me die a little inside each time I see it. To be fair to myself, it was my first attempt at water or more detailed snow.

Painting

I've discovered it's quite hard to be verbose about learning a new instrument and thus I haven't really had much to say on the topic of late. I'm still progressing, still loving it all. Though, as always, I don't feel like I'm improving as fast as I should be. I'm toying around with the idea of learning some viola to go along with the piano. Just to spice it up.

The last year and a half has seen me returning to old loves (music, writing, etc) that I had put aside as the weight of every day adult life took my attention. To add to the ever-growing list, I've delved back into painting. I say "back" but that's not quite accurate. I used to be a fair - if not exceptional - hand at drawing with graphite but for some reason I never really tried painting. I had the itch to try it lately and have done a handful of acrylics in recent weeks. I am currently seeing rapid improvement on each painting as I continue to get used to the feel of the brushes and paints though I know I will inevitably soon hit a plateau and then have to fight tooth and nail for any improvements.  I'm actually sort of looking forward to it.

Painting 1 and 2. Both of which I am hiding in my closet. The right one makes me die a little inside each time I see it.

Painting 3: Birch tree.

Painting 4. Bob Ross has been preparing me my WHOLE life for this painting.

Painting 5: Cherry Blossom Tree. Apparently I like to paint trees.

Painting 6: An attempt at a Monet style water lily.

Deadline

I have been tasked with writing a whole song by next Thursday.
"Just finish one even if it's terrible. It probably will be terrible. Write a bad - yet complete - song. Just get it done."


This should be a disaster.

Still Progressing

It's amazing how quickly you can get behind on something that you meant to do frequently. I was thinking today, "I haven't updated my music blog in a few weeks" only to look and realize it had been several months. Despite a little funk I went through where my motivation waned a bit, I'm still making progress though - as usual - not nearly as much or as fast as I'd like. Part of the problem I'm discovering is that it's oddly difficulty to write about music especially given my current state of musical skill isn't especially interesting to anyone but myself and possibly my instructor. And when you spend a lot of the little free time that you do have either practicing or in a class, it makes it hard to get around to updating a blog that no one reads. Still, I started this for myself as a motivational tool, and it will be nothing but a boon to me if I can keep it up a little more regularly with better detail than I've provided previously. My lofty vision of what I was going to do with this page was pretty high up the mountain side compared to what I've actually accomplished.

In my effort to fill all of my spare time with productivity, I think I possibly bit off a little more than I could chew. In addition to piano lessons, I am doing vocal lessons, as previously mention. Pile onto that the fact that I dusted off my guitar and have been trying to get back into that, as well as taking about 3 classes - 'music theory', 'music tech', and 'learning how to learn' - I think it's fair to say I'm a little overwhelmed. That's not even counting the self-study I've been doing for work to try and improve myself so I can progress there as well. All of that said, I'm sure you can see how I have gotten a little over-zealous in what I can accomplish in a given time and have had trouble staying afloat.

I'm going to try and spread myself a little less thin so I can give each thing I'm working on a bit more quality as far as my effort and thought goes. At this point I'm almost doing myself and anyone helping me a disservice by drowning myself in work.

I will do better.

Vocal Range

Today was my second vocal lesson and I'm already feeling a lot more confident in what I might accomplish if I stick with it. We worked on seeing how far I could sing along with scales using a variety of sounds. I went ~2 octaves and my instructor thinks I can go farther still, both high and low. All these techniques for focusing on projecting sound, for imagining sounds, and paying attention to the shape of your mouth, and where the sounds sort of resonant inside your body is all oddly fascinating to me.

This was the range I did today while keeping my voice in harmony with the piano. Exciting stuff!

I'm hoping I will soon be able to look back on this starting point in signing the way I look back at starting piano and being amazed at how far I've come in so short a time period. I wish I'd not fallen out of playing music for so many years...I would be so much farther. But I can't undo that so I suppose there's no sense fretting over it. Eyes forward!

Singing

  Today, after years of being too terrified to take the step, I went to my first voice lesson. And it was a freakin' blast.

  When I arrived I was really hoping there would be no one else there, that no one would be able to see me, and that we would be in an air-tight room where no sound could enter nor escape. Obviously not a single one of those hopes came true. But part of the reason I wanted to do the class was I thought it might help me with my shyness, so what better way to put that to the test. I'm 33, it's time I stopped being shy. I managed to make it through without fainting or voiding any bowels or anything else that fear might cause a person, so I call that a victory. I was slightly comforted when I entered and this tiny little 6 year old said in a cute voice, "hi! I take singing lessons just like you!"

  Who knew there was so much going on with the voice. Head shape, neck length, how you picture sounds, all sorts of things I never imagined mattered. I don't know what I truly expected out of such a class, but I think it involved an instructor just going, "okay do what you just did, but try to make it sound good." 

  The majority of the class was discussing what to expect, my experience level, my goals, and so forth. I was really put at ease during that portion so when the actual work rolled around I didn't completely freak out. Okay, I'm making that dramatic. It wasn't bad at all, I just had built it up to be a lot more intimidating than it was. I was given the option to either try and harmonize with piano scales, or sing a song I thought I was good at singing. Obviously I went with the former.

  The exciting news is that she said I hit every note almost perfectly, I only had trouble when switching from a chest voice to a head voice, which she tells me quite common and that I corrected for the problem quickly. We did a little over an octave and a half, and she said she thinks I'll be able to go a bit higher as well as probably a lot lower, so maybe I'm not as big a lost cause as I thought. I'm pretty pumped about the whole ordeal. There's little I love more than belting out a favorite tune. This gives me a lot more confidence to try and write music someday.

  Interestingly, I warned her I might be a troublesome student because I have no uvula... or the "hangy-down thingy in your throat" as people tend to call it. I figured since that causes problems with me doing certain things like rolling letters, that it would be an issue. But she believes it will actually be a boon and seemed super excited to use me as an experiment to see how high she can get me hitting notes. Evidently I'm her first uvula-less student. Finally a positive side to not having that thing, hooray. Hopefully her theory is correct.

  Thankfully I made it out without her requesting to hear my Aaron Neville impression, which earlier in the class she'd said she wanted to hear. Bullet dodged for now. Not that I'm worried because my Aaron Neville impression is amazing.

  All in all, a fantastic experience and I'm glad I finally went. I'm looking forward to next week. Ariel will be back teaching piano and I'll get my next vocal lesson which I'll feel considerably more confident at. Good times.

  Getting back into music has really been a wonderful move for my life. It's not only opened me up to a lot of other things, but I had forgotten just how much I like playing instead of simply listening. And nothing makes me feel more alive than learning new things. 

"She's the sea I'm sinkin' in"

A Pi Song on Pi Day

  Since I've been terrible about updating lately, I thought I'd at least share this fantastic video on the aforementioned Pi Day.

Cajons and Jam Session

  Today was a music-filled day. To start the morning off, I had a cajon lesson with Steve Bowman from the Counting Crows, who was a very talented, friendly, and down to earth fellow. He really sang the praises of his instrument and despite the fact that the cajon (or even drums) isn't something I've ever aspired to learn, by the time we got started I was feeling pumped up to get my hands on one. And as seems to always be the case with a new instrument, once I sat down and learned to play a little bit of music on it, the hooks were in me and I wanted to learn more. I don't anticipate cajon is something I'll pursue as intensely as piano or guitar, but I do think I'll attend a few more sessions. Swollen, throbbing hands aside, I found playing to be a very satisfying experience and this would be a good way for me to finely hone my rhythm.

  Here's a low quality video of part of our session, filmed on Steve's camera potato. My favorite part is toward the end where it sounds like a horse galloped into the studio.

  After that, I hung around the studio for a bit talking to a few talented ladies who up until recently toured with Mustang Sally, and then I had my first ever piano-violin jam session with one of them. I don't know if it was nerves or the giant window through which the sun beat down upon me, but I was sweating a bit when I settled in to play with complete strangers. Thankfully I soon forgot my trepidation as my mind was forced to focus on keeping up with the songs. I loved the sound coming out of the room with our combination of instruments, even with all of my mistakes. We played a few old-timey songs, ending on a waltz that is absolutely beautiful on strings...and all the better accompanied by piano, in my opinon. As seen below:

  I need more days filled like this. Learning new things and collaborating on creative endeavors tickles me in all the right places.

Seaboard Grand

  I don't often see new instruments created these days. I was shown this a bit earlier; really interesting tech that resulted in an equally interesting device. I love the sounds coming from this thing. It seems like something you'd see at a Sigur Rós show.