Thursday, October 6, 2011

My neck is spasming

Gorm and I have a long lasting tradition that we like to call music day. Okay, it's not all that long lasting and we don't do it nearly often enough to call it a tradition, but we do call it music day. Music day makes me happy.


Gorm plays the piano, I play the guitar and we will switch off singing, depending on "whose song it is". When we first started this tradition, we were terrible. I'm sorry, but it's true. When you're jamming with someone, you have to have a pretty good idea of what that person's style is like. We had no idea. To top it off, we didn't know half of the songs that the other person was making us play. I'd sing high and he'd sing higher and it just didn't make any sense. It really, truly was a train wreck. It was absolutely horrible.


Since then, we've gotten together more often; enough so that I know what his style is and he knows mine. This has helped immensely when having to navigate through a song that we have never played together. It's not always good, but it's definitely always much better than the first time. I think it's safe to say that our worst song nowadays is better than our best song back in the day.


We try to keep a certain number of songs in our repertoire just to make sure we always have a song that we can go to when we do train wreck. See, we're not that bad, we played that song well! But each of us will learn at least a song or two during our time apart and will bring the new music to the session. Sometimes it works well, other times, not so much.


We've had music day twice in the last month or so (which is a new record for us) and have brought a number of new songs to the table. Even with our innate ability to butcher good songs, we've managed to pull through and at least do "not terrible" renditions of said songs.


A few weeks ago, Gorm informed me that he had a new song that he learned. He also told me that it's a song that has Heather written all over it. He said it's totally my style and he can totally see me singing it. I wasn't convinced, but I youtube'd the song anyway. The first time I listened, I thought, yeah, okay, I could play and sing it, but I don't know why he thinks this is my song.


Once I started actually singing and playing it, I rapidly changed my mind. It's like I had an epiphany and totally got where he was coming from. When we met up the next time, I'd been rocking that song for quite some time. It was almost an instant hit for us (which doesn't happen too, too often).


Since it's been almost three weeks since we last played, we've been discussing getting together again for another music day. Again, he informed me that he has added another song to his play list. I asked which song and he told me. Before I even had a chance to say whether or not I even knew the song, he said "You're singing it!". How's that fair? He can't learn new songs and then expect me to sing them, can he? He told me that I have no choice, because it's a "chick song".


I let him have that one, because I have made him sing a few of the songs in my set list because they're "dude songs". Okay, maybe not, just mostly it's more in his register than mine. Since he's willing to do that with songs he hasn't even heard before, I thought I'd give this new song a whirl.


Yesterday, I youtube'd this new song and found the chords online; he wrote out the chords on a scrap of paper at work, but naturally, I'd forgotten it at work. Turns out I have heard the song and I even like the song. Also it turns out that it is a total chick song and he would look and sound a bit ridiculous if I forced him to sing it. So I won't. You're welcome.


So anyway, I'm now anxiously awaiting the next music day. Hopefully it will be next week. *huh? huh?*


Also, I just went out and bought some new music related items. The most impressive items are a microphone stand as well as a tuner.


The microphone stand is a desktop model and fits my 'studio platform' remarkably well. Also it's much, much better than the mini-milk-crate I was using to prop up my microphone (kinda ghetto... kinda like my old tea cozy). The tuner is a clip-on model that senses the vibrations instead of 'listening' for the note. It's supposed to be way better for loud environments, like the fishing derby or when Gorm won't stop playing piano so I can tune my guitar. It's going to be glorious.

2 comments:

  1. "Even with our innate ability to butcher good songs, we’ve managed to pull through and at least do “not terrible” renditions of said songs"

    You should go into advertising =P.

    ReplyDelete

Wanna brighten That White Girl's day? Leave a comment - they make me happy!