Yeah, Rocky Horror is booked!

http://www.playcrafters.org/the-rocky-horror-show/

This is gonna be fun. Including four midnight shows.

Congrats, have a ball.

It's astounding
Time is fleeting
Madness takes it's toll...
Ahhh
But listen closely...
Not for very much longer...
I've got to keep control.
I remember doing the Time Warp.
Drinking those moments when
The blackness would hit me.
And the void would be calling.
Let's do the Time Warp again.
Let's do the Time Warp again.

SO. MUCH. FUN!!!!

:jig:

I would love to bring Hebe to this, but I don't think we can make it -6 Nov would be the only day and I think she can't leave until 3ish ....it's a 9 hour drive google sez. Even at monster speed, that's pushing it and no pee breaks :( HAVE FUN

Yeah, Rent is booked.

This show has very good songs, but is very long. I've got a ton to learn, and first rehearsal is only a few weeks out.

That's why ya do it, I think

Sweet! What a great show.

In another 10 years make sure you book their performance of "Book of Mormon," and then "Hamilton" another 10 years after that. :)

You've proven you can do it, you only need motivation.
Now you have motivation.
Yeah, you got this. :yesnod:

I can't wait! :) Your timing should be about right... around the time community theatre can afford the rights to put on those shows.

Y'know since NYC, J has been entering the lottery for Hamilton tickets every day. If she wins 'em she has to leave at 4pm and drive right up there, get to mid-town, park. I told her I can't go, can't just leave work like that. Plus it's insane.

I'll go with her. No, your right, that's insane.
Have to leave at noon and take a limo.

I don't know that I can continue my current fascination with the back catalogue of twee pop group Belle and Sebastian, and learn the songs from RENT, at the same time.

Ideally only one set of songs should be running through my head all day...

Careful you don't turn in to a queer , running around with show tunes in your head all day.

it's too late

Not that it's a bad thing. ;)

Not that there's anything wrong with that.[/Seinfeld]

:D

Sounds like fun!

I would write everything about this, but it seems I've gotten cold feet talkin' about everything in life for fear of sounding like a diarist or being all self-oriented and whatnot. Seeking some kinda balance I spose

Rent is pretty amazingly difficult. I'm putting in two hours a day in advance of Sunday's rehearsal, and the first official music rehearsal with the cast, on the 14th.

I've never put in two hours a day for an extended time, on any musical project. This is more of an opera than a musical. There are 42 different pieces to know. Good lord. I should not have taken this on. It's gonna be okay, because I'm committed and have a compulsion to not suck, but what a task.

I know the feeling of regretting taking stuff on, but then I think about what I'd be doing instead. Sitting on a couch watching TV is fine, but after a long time of that, I start to feel bad about myself. Good to have some irons in the fire.

Fuck balance, how can we vicariously experience you musical journey unless you make a bare clean breast of it. Nobody is forced to read it, and it saves coming over there is the middle of the night to waterboard it out of you. Win-win. :haha:

That's a lot of time and effort to dedicate to something is at best, temporary. But I guess the closest thing would be an athlete practicing for the Nationals or Olympics, then the actual event comes and goes in a flash. Win lose or draw, you still have the skills and abilities you develop during all that practice... and street creds. :thumb:

Capacity at this theater is about 120, and there are 9 shows, and they do pretty well when not scheduling midnight shows... so I estimate this audience at 900 people who will have a more complete and better experience if I do my job well. That's motivation enough!

The skin on your fingertips gets really thick. Especially on the fretting hand, the left hand, the one pressing down on the strings. You'd think it would be the right hand, which is plucking; and that skin gets thicker too, but not like the left.

Your hands get stronger. You never really think about your hands being strong. But just like anything, you exercise them, they respond.

After working really hard on one section, I noticed the veins in the back of my wrist and hand, sticking way out. They didn't used to do that when I was fatter.

I knew I'd regret selling the fretless eventually. One song here uses it to great effect, an effect I won't have in the toolbox. "I'll only use it once every 10 years," I thought at the time. "That one time in 10 years is pretty nice though," I think now.

After you sell a few albums you can buy another one.

You can't borrow one from someone?

not amongst my friends... because if musicians are friends with me, s'a good chance it's because they needed a bass player at some point :lol:

Bass players are like Moose, solitary except when they smell punani.

In an interview with Dan Rather, John Fogerty says he practices two hours every day.

Practicin' pays off: the second rehearsal yesterday, and I knew a lot of stuff.

Still not enough though. There was plenty I didn't know...

Usually the case: we didn't go over the song I worked hardest on and had to develop the riff for.

The sitzprobe is next Thursday night. What's a sitzprobe? It's a painful medical procedure. No it turns out it's where the cast and band sit around and do just the songs with the singing. Everything has to be strong by then.

You can't find a drummer who'll put in hard work for community theater. They found one this time but it took 8 different people turning it down. They guy they got is Not Ready. Oh well.

The bass will have to carry the load...

dude. I hadn't been playing much (at all) for a while... Picked up the guitar yesterday, and couldn't get through one song without my hand going crippled. It was cold out, and I was leaning back in the chair with the neck up high... but still. I need to play every day from now on. my callouses are gone. I'm getting together with my dad and his cousin in August, and I need to be in playing shape.

IKR? It's one of those things; you don't realize how weak or strong that fretting hand is until you pick up the axe and give it a try.

Couple years ago I took like 4 months off, between projects, and then tried playing just a five song set of the old, hard stuff. I was shocked how much I lost in that time. Foo Fighters "Hero" requires the bass to be strong and sturdy and play solid eighth notes for the whole song... I was beat, just doing that.

It WILL, too... same sound guy as Rocky Horror, and he knows what I did for that show. There's a speaker cabinet under the audience, so they can bring me right up, and if I do a great job it will make a lot of things just work, even if the drummer is uneven.

With all this work, I am now able to read music....

...with my own notation in the margins of the score. I'll write out the notes in a simpler form. Some of the notation is fun, to musicians anyway: "Off to the pretty chorus" or "wait for snare dit-dit-dit" or "prepare for the fill!" or "Everything STOPS!" I'll write the lyrics in, if they help.

Then yesterday we rehearsed and I forgot my score! Fuck! But I had an un-notated PDF copy on my phone... thanks, Google Drive!... and wound up reading it, on the tiny screen... and did OKAY!

Thursday, with my score, I'll really be right on it, including what I'm calling "the pro riff", which just sort of... locked in. It's wild how that happens. This particular song contains a crazy riff involving all four fingers and all four strings over the whole song. It's VERY hard to get right, and judging by YouTube and other online resources... EVERYBODY FAKES IT.

Pretenders! Have you no pride! etc., etc. So I figured out how to play it correctly, and I play it every day, twice a day. And every time, I have to work hard at it; fuck it up most days. But as of yesterday, the muscle memory took over, and now I execute it without thinking at all. You want "Santa Fe"? Bam, there's the riff. Bam, there's the chorus.

It's technically the hardest song I've never had to play. "Ace of Spades" is actually harder but for rock-out reasons, not technical reasons. You can play "Ace" on one string, but playing it the right way still requires very hard work. It can draw blood.

If you play it right, and everybody else is faking it, when people hear you play will they say to themselves, that's not what I remember hearing before, he must be doing it wrong?

Even if nobody notices, you know you did good, and can take pride in putting in the hours to learning the right way. :notworthy

Bravo!

This makes me very happy.

go U!

How to play bass
 

How to play a bass guitar...

That's okay! Except for the bit bending the neck. Fuck that guy for even suggesting it. There's no call for that kind of shit.

To each his or her own toolbox, MY video would include ghost notes... two-finger rolling triplets... de-tuning notes with the tuner... using fret clank as percussion... playing way up on the neck and using vibrato to mimic a fretless... hitting the body of the bass for effects... playing weird slidey notes with the mic stand... giving the drummer a look and then hitting "one" real hard to get their tempo in line... and forgetting the key and having to look over at the guitar player's hand to see where we are in the song.

That's what my buddy told me. "Follow my first finger."

I'm really hot on Method #14.

Or if you can see the keyboard player, the left hand is bass, sometimes you can work it out from there. Sometimes!

During "Rocky" I could see the bandleader's keyboarding left hand, and would use it for timing... When are you going to hit that critical note you never cue us for? Because I will hit it at exactly the same time you do, and hence knock you the fuck out when it's perfect every time.

The notes you don't play, that's where the funk lives.

Where the funk lives. That's one of them title things.

Opening night, and it went fine!

I was really worried for a while there. the drummer they found had 2 rehearsals. The cast's mics were cutting out during dress. And I had yet to complete a show perfectly. But there's something about doing it for real that focuses everybody, and it went over fine.

The sound guy knows me now, having done three shows with me, and made me real loud in the mix. (But I can tell I'm too boomy in the house.)

The theatre is an old converted barn; and the lights, sound and this time the band is upstairs in the loft. We can look down and see some of the audience, but they can't really see us.

The pain: I don't get to see the show... AT ALL. I hear the whole thing; and it's being shot with a camera and video fed to the band... but the monitor had to go right behind my head, since we have no room. I may ask to change places with the guitarist for one show so I can watch it.

Balls, that's a drag not to be able to see it. And be careful up there remember what happened to Lincoln, and he could see the show.
Glad it all went well, I knew you would do your part. :thumb:

You're in the unpit? That is different. Congrats on the clean show!

Yeah but show two went poorly. The drummer hasn't rehearsed enough and blew a bunch of stuff. It didn't wreck things but it was messy.

So tonight, everybody made up for it, and we did great.

Every time through, I play better, I play more little tidbits... I would like to have a perfect show by the end of the run, where I play everything exactly right.

The audiences are enjoying it. Every audience is different; I'm always fascinated. Yesterday's audience just roared at one of the love songs, which is just awesome because you know the whole thing will work. If the audience really believes the character and his motivation by the end of act one, then when he dies in act two, they will be crushed... it is teh drama...

Not only do I get that "pro riff" in this show, I get tons of tender moments and lovely beautiful bits, where my notes help create that dramatic connection.

I sure wish I could see it!

That's why the bassman is always the cool one, the smug fucker with shades, he knows it all revolves around him.
He ties it all together. In this case it's the Toad carrying the flag, and doing it well. You be cool.

very cool!

And so the run ended tonight. And the Music Director was like hey, great job out there, great to work with you, let's do it again.

Maybe if the next one isn't a frickin' opera. I hear the next musical has only 6 actors and they may want to put the band on stage.

But it did interrupt J & I for weeks on end... hard on a medium distance relationship, to push all these shows and rehearsals in...

I will have fond memories of all the notes I wrote on the score to remember what I had to do.

http://cellar.org/2016/scorewritup.jpg

Another notch in your music stand, bragging rights, street creds, and satisfaction on a job well done. You can notch the bedpost later. :thumb:

Note to self, "Don't fuck up." :)

I realized, sitting here at work, that RENT songs are playing in my head.

That's not acceptable... they are fine songs, but I didn't choose them!

(Back to Belle & Sebastian, they have 9 studio albums and I've only gotten through 4 of em)

Meanwhile! Now the side project, "Shabbey Road", which I wondered would ever even be a thing, has become the "A" project.

When a couple of middle-age Americans with acoustic guitars get together, there's a bunch of songs they do. Songs that are required knowledge for any middle-age American with an acoustic guitar. Where, even if you don't know it by heart, if someone writes the chords down you can play it. "Amie", and "Take It Easy" and "Moonshadow" and "The Boxer" and "Truckin'".

Then if you can manage some vocal harmonies, it's interesting enough to keep doing just for fun.

This, to me, is not an act I would be a part of, partly in that I don't have an acoustic guitar and partly in that it's a little too "on the nose". You can play some songs that are obvious but not a whole set of them.

So when some of my musician friends were starting to do that, I thought well that's fun, but not something you would gig with. They invited me to play bass; and little did they know, the addition of bass to plain old three acoustics makes it sound twice as interesting. (Bass players understand this principle...)

So they really liked it when I came over, and I didn't mind playing these old songs. And then they started to add weird stuff in, like some Cure, and with my bass in, "Train in Vain", and a little more Dead, and a sprinkling of interesting new country...

And then they invited this singer Judy to practice one night and she pretty much nailed it. She could do Janis and she could do Fleetwood Mac. It was like wow. That works great. And then she started to add old blues songs in, and it was all sounding great.

So with Judy, this suddenly became a thing, and they booked a gig, and brought 25 people out; and it went okay; so now, they want to add a percussionist and make this more officially a thing.

And I guess that's the story of Shabbey Road. The true story, from my perspective. Right now we are all of varying amounts of various kinds of experience. By six months from now I think we will be pretty damn good.

2nd gig, July 2, Haggerty's Cafe, MacDade Boulevard, Morton.

I'm sure they had July 2 open because it's hard to get people out. But that's fine, if we play to a crowd only slightly bigger than the band itself, it will be a perfect 2nd learning experience. And those people will be entertained just fine

Gigging bands always wind up on MacDade. My local peeps know.

You'll be sorry when they're on the Ed Sullivan Show. :lol:

Much of the music business is about making connections, and expanding your chops, as well as having fun. When the groupies through their panties at you, it's a good sign.

They need my gentle guidance. One of our guys put a Craigslist ad for a percussionist. But he put the ad in the "Talent Gigs" category and not "Musicians".

"Talent Gigs" is 75% people looking for fetish and nude models.

Well that might work out. :D

Cool! I hope you have fun and also become rich and famous.

Depends.