Long Time, No See

Hey everybody! Remember me? Yeah, I'm the guy who "runs" this site. It's pretty dusty and cob-webby right now, but I'm hoping to clean it off and get it back into shape. In my last post, I wrote about how I'd get back to you on Across the Universe, then you never heard from me again.

Until now.

Well a couple of events have transpired since then. You see, I wrote that post, then proceeded to enjoy the movie, or most of it, when the phone rang. I investigated the caller ID before answering and discovered it was my boss. Calling me from his home. When he should have been at work. Which = not good. He'd been canned, and I saw my plans for a little self-medicating "me" time spiraling straight down the drain.

I was called into work the next morning and immediately invited into my ex-boss's boss's office, along with the station manager and the corporate VP of engineering. I was calculating in my head how much I could possibly collect in unemployment when they turned the tables on me and offered me my ex-boss's job. Part of me was flattered while the other 99% wanted to throw up. The opportunity was a good one, but the responsibility of leading the department through a major transition was daunting. I told them I'd think about it.

Then I went on vacation to Mexico with the fam.

Here's our boat...



...and the dolphin we swam with in Cabo San Lucas (his name's Ricardo)...



...and the resort pool in Puerto Vallarta where I drank WAY too much tequila.



I returned from vacation and took the job, and life has been an adjustment ever since, mostly for the better. For the first time in what seems like forever, I'm working normal hours, Monday through Friday. I'm having dinner with my family, attending every softball practice, every softball game, and tucking the girls into bed every night. I'm catching up on what I feel has been lost time with my family, and that feels great.

But on the other hand, there's been a loss of personal time that allowed me to be able to engage in activities that I really enjoyed, like writing and updating this blog. That's OK, though, because I'm doing what I need to be doing right now. I hope not to go so long before my next post, but I'm not making any promises.

Book Meme

I've been tagged by A Musing Mom to participate in a book meme. Cool! So here we go:

1. One book that changed your life.

Jaws by Peter Benchley. Even more so than the movie, this book has made me forever skittish at the mere thought of swimming in any body of water other than a pool. What?


2. One book that you have read more than once.

Stephen King's The Stand -- probably my favorite King novel. Also the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Yes, I'm a dork. And no, I can't follow directions.


3. One book you would want on a desert island.

The obvious answer would be The Outdoor Survival Handbook (or something similar) by Raymond Mears. Duh.


4. Two books that made you laugh.

Naked, a hilarious memoir by David Sedaris covering just a portion of the outlandish moments that have comprised his life, from hitchhiking across the country to his stint at a nudist colony. And Jonathan Franzen's novel about a dysfunctional family to end all dysfunctional families, The Corrections.


5. One book that made you cry.

Final Rounds, James Dodson's story of the last trip he took with his father, a golf vacation through England and Scotland, before his father succumbed to cancer. A golfer's Field of Dreams.


6. One book you wish you'd written.

Any one, just one, book of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter Series...and the money that came along with it.


7. One book you wish had never been written.

Leviticus.


8. Two books you are currently reading.

More of David Sedaris' crazy life-antics in Me Talk Pretty One Day, and Steve Martin's autobiography Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life.


9. One book you've been meaning to read.

I'm really wanting to go back and read a bunch of the classics, and the two at the top of the heap, for reasons unknown, are Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's Dracula. Some of it's because I'm a freak and like to read things that scare me out of my mind, and the other is because I read Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian last year, a historical take on the legend of Vlad the Impaler or Count Dracula, and wanted to follow it up by reading the mother of all vampire books.


10. Five people that I tag.

Muddleman
Brandt's Randts
The Dancing Sni
Beast Mom

I can't count either.

Use It or Lose It

All my life I've had a tendency to take the more difficult route in learning life's lessons: pull-ups on the clothes bar in your closet is not a good idea; flipping someone off in front of your history teacher will draw you a little time in detention; stealing the lids to the brand new garbage cans in order to play Knights of the Round Table will get you chased down by your mother; and peeing directly into the wind...well, you get the idea. Granted, these are all examples from my childhood and early adolescence, but trust me when I say that the process has followed me into my adult life. I've heard my most recent life lesson expressed thousands of times, but for me, lessons just never seem to sink in and take hold until I experience them first hand. And the lesson is this: use it or lose it.

Last week, a friend of mine informed me of the American Idol Songwriting Contest and invited me to submit a song. I guess another lesson I should learn is always see what you're up against before agreeing to do something. Since I was feeling cocky over completing my first song in three years, I took on the challenge. That was a week ago, Tuesday. The next day, a thought occurred to me: I wonder when the contest deadline is? I looked it up and my jaw dropped: April 17th, tax day. I had one week. Game over. Not gonna happen. I was already in the process of putting in twenty hours of overtime at work, and my taxes still weren't done. How in the world would I write and record a song in seven days?

Although the cards seemed to be stacked against me, I decided not to pack it in. I mean, I still had seven days, right? Actually, six. I spent Wednesday getting our taxes done. At some point, I don't remember exactly when, a concept came to mind that I thought I could run with, and I spent the next several days jotting down ideas and experimenting with rhyme schemes. I also pulled out my guitar and played around with several chord progressions until I settled on one I liked. After filling several pages with my scribbles, I finally sat down Monday morning to organize to my thoughts. I worked for about an hour and made significant progress, but that was the only free time I had. I entered Tuesday the 17th, deadline day, with an incomplete song.

I figured I had maybe two hours on Tuesday to finish, then record a demo of the song. HA! I pulled my Fostex MR-8 digital multitracker, and it's user manual, out of the drawer that housed it for the past year, and blew off the dust. Kyra was excited because she likes to put on the headphones and sing into the microphone while I accompany her on guitar. To her, this was playtime. To me, it was time to get everything set up so that when I took her to school, I could get down to business. We played for about an hour, taking turns singing songs. I love playing the guitar and having the girls make up tunes and lyrics on the fly. More often than not, they come up with some good stuff. I've been tempted to use some of it, giving them credit, of course.

I took Kyra to school, then went to work. I pulled out my guitar to lay down the guitar track to my demo. Remember, I didn't have a finished song yet. I thought I'd lay down the accompaniment track and then fashion the lyrics and melody to fit. After about ten false starts, I finally laid down an acceptable track. It was only a demo, after all, and I had already given in to the idea that whatever I presented was not going to be perfect. I just didn't have the time and I was OK with that. I recued the track to listen to it, but there was nothing there. Silence. What the crap! I forwarded through the track and found the beginning, roughly a minute in. Since I hadn't used the recorder in such a long time, I forgot to recue it after all of those false starts. Oh well, at least it was there.

I turned my attention to the lyrics, and after massaging them for close to an hour, I came to something I could live with (by American Idol standards, anyway). I then began to rehearse them with the guitar track I recorded earlier. This was the first time that I would attempt to sing the song in my full, head voice. As I was writing the song, I would rehearse it in a light falsetto that was usually audible only to myself. As soon as I sang the first verse, I knew I was in trouble: the key I had written the song in was too high for me to sing comfortably. Crrrrrrrrap! It wasn't always this way. I used to be able to sing up in the rafters with little or no problem, but since I haven't really used my voice consistently over the past few years, I've gotten a little rusty. OK, a LOT rusty. Life lesson? If you don't use it, you lose it. I got it.

Normally, I would say "No problem" and just transpose the song into a lower key, but I couldn't do that because my guitar is jacked up. It buzzes when I play certain chords, which is the reason I wrote the song in the key of E...no buzzing. So I was stuck. I also realized that the song was too long. If I was going to gut out the song in the key of E, I was going to have to shorten it, which meant re-recording the guitar track. What the CRAP!!

By this time, Diane was home from work and the girls were home from school. My "two hour project" was stretching to four hours and beyond. I recorded the guitar track over, this time with only a couple of restarts and recues, and then moved on to my vocals. I figured I'd give it one run through and be done with it, but I screwed up the first verse. I hit the "Undo" button which was only supposed to delete my vocals, but it also erased the intro of the guitar part. MOTHER PUS-BUCKET!! WHAAAAT THE CRAAAAAAP!! I was furious. It was late afternoon, I had been working on this song for most of the day and had nothing to show for it. I'd had enough and was ready to pack it in.

"Don't quit," Diane admonished. She assured me that she would keep the girls busy and gave me the green light to finish the job, so I returned to my makeshift recording studio. I laid down the guitar track AGAIN and quickly moved to the vocals. I practiced them a couple of times to warm up my voice and to ensure no screw ups, then hit "Record". I got through the first verse fine, but began to struggle at the end of the 1st chorus. Verse 2 was OK, but I was outright hurting by the end of the chorus. I mustered all of my strength to get through the bridge, but by the final chorus, I was flat out croaking the melody. It wasn't pretty. "It's a demo. It's a demo. It's a demo," I kept telling myself as I finished the song. Only later did it occur to me that I could have recorded the vocals in sections, taking a breather to rest my voice. But I wanted it done, and I got it done.

I walked into the kitchen where Diane and the girls sat at the table, grinning. Kyra had her hands over her ears, Kailey mimicked me singing, and Diane asked me if I was OK, all of them basically busting my balls. "It's not pretty, but I'm done," I replied. Not really. It took me another couple of hours to read the manual, then go through the long and tedious process of converting the tracks to a stereo .WAV file, uploading the .WAV file to my computer, converting the .WAV file to an .MP3 file, and submitting it to the Idol contest. But I eventually got it done and I was exhausted. And even though I got it done, it felt like I had wasted the day.

Lesson learned? Use it or lose it. If I used my multitracker more often, I'd know the ins and outs and not have to rely so heavily on the user's manual.

Use it or lose it. If I sang more regularly, I'd maintain some of my range. Granted, getting older will suck some of that range from me, but still.

Use it or lose it. If I'd write more regularly, I might have had a song already in the can that I could have tweaked/submitted instead of killing myself to write and record a whole new song.

Use it or lose it. Lesson learned? Probably not.

Did My Taxes AND Wrote a Song

Taxes and the American Idol song were due today. I neglected my children and nearly killed myself trying to complete both of them, but I did, neither particularly well. I just hope I sent the right stuff to the right people. I don't think the IRS would be particularly pleased if I sent them a song instead of cold, hard cash.



Abbott & Costello - The Tax Return

Shoulda Done My Taxes, But I Wrote a Song Instead

One of the reasons I started blogging was to give myself a regular outlet for writing. For several years now, I've had a monstrous pile of mental crapola that has been blocking my ability to write music. As a musician, that really sucks. The pressure has been mounting as the dry spell extended over three years, my notebooks filled with broken appendages of lyrics and chord progressions that I just couldn't bring myself to finish. I needed to break that spell, and blogging is one exercise I've been using to "write" myself out of my songwriting funk. Truth is, I really haven't worked that hard to break through; I haven't "made" myself finish a song, allowing it to be what it is. If I get to a point where I'm stuck or don't like where the song is heading, or if the song doesn't seem like it's bound to be a Top 40 hit, I abandon it and move on. I've revisited my creations on and off over the years, made some revisions, but no completions. Until this morning.

I should have worked on my taxes. Kailey was at school and Diane and Kyra left early to go to the zoo for Kyra's kindergarten field trip, so I had the house to myself. I had several hours to get a great start on our taxes, but seeing as how I have the gift of procrastination, I decided to pull out my guitar and diddle around instead. I played for a few minutes, messing around in E minor. It's always E minor these days. If I ever actually get around to recording a CD, I'm going to title it "Songs in Em". Suddenly and unexpectedly, my muse began to speak. I don't have a problem getting my muse to speak, it's just getting a complete thought out of her that sucks. I grabbed my notebook and began to write, the first verse seeming to flow from my pen.

"That's pretty good," commented my muse as she began to float away.

"Get back here and help me finish this thing!" I growled as I grabbed her by the throat.

"Hey, take it easy, Bub!" She likes to call me Bub. "You're strangling your muse!" I apologized for being so rough and explained to her my need to finish the song. She agreed, so we worked on it for a couple of hours until I was satisfied that it was a good stopping point. Like me, my muse is global and easily distracted, and she tried to flit away a couple of times, but I stuck to my guns and kept corraling her and urging her to keep working with me.

The song isn't truly finished. It still needs some tweaks here and there, but it's the most complete song I've written in a long time and I'm relieved. I put a lot of work into it and forced myself to keep at it, which I haven't been able (or willing) to do in quite a while. It's not going to be a Top 40 hit, and I'm OK with that. But I will finish it and I will record a demo of it. And hopefully this will open the door to more songs.

Now I've got to finish my frickin' taxes.