The Musical Schizo

I gently apologize for the profanity in the title, but nothing short of that sort of raw emotive speech would properly express how great Chandler and The Bings show at Speakeasy was last Friday. Of course, it didn’t start off that way for me. I was a damn mess.

So I came up with this great plan on placing cameras to get good video of the show, which we anticipated would be pretty well-attended since it was our first show in Austin since February of 2020. Well, nothing I was trying was working right. We were down a camera because of circumstances (trying to gig on a Friday when you have a day job is less than fun and everything is rushed), and my GoPro was being weird (mostly operator error, unfortunately). I didn’t have enough time to get it all together and finally decided to just quit because I knew if I spent another minute trying to make it all come together I would have a terrible show. I was on the brink of tears and rage because I felt like I’d completely failed my bandmates and squandered an opportunity to capture something really special. The latter of which turned out to be true, unfortunately. It was really special.

WE KILLED IT. Filled the place. Kept most of the crowd for most of the night. I mean, the place was 2/3 full even during our last set. It blew our minds. Of course, listening to the recordings I made (didn’t fail in the audio department, at least…), there was some glaringly bad playing and singing, but it wasn’t most of the time, and most could be attributed to nerves or rust (which is pretty inevitable considering how little time we’ve had for rehearsal). Despite the occasional suckage, we brought the rock. And people sang along ALL NIGHT. It was your standard pre-pandemic CATB show. And it filled all of our hearts in ways we never expected. Seeing all the familiar faces was amazing. I had multiple friends show up who I hadn’t seen in years even before the pandemic (one who was in town from UTAH, even!) The only thing bad about it was that I didn’t get to spend enough time with them because I was on stage. But they all had a great time, from what I understand, and some who hadn’t seen me play before couldn’t believe how good I was, which was really nice to hear. I think. 🙂

We had professional shots done by The Vinyl Lens (super nice guy – hire him). Even though I was sweaty and looked fairly horrible because I’ve gained some poundage in the past year, and there’s even a picture that makes me look like I’m balding (I’m pretty sure I’m not), I’m still psyched that we had them done because we have some great shots in there.

Just wish I had some video…BUT ANYYYWAY…

It was a wonderful night, and I’m so glad I got to share it with my brothers in the band and all our wonderful friends and fans that came out. That’s all for now. Have a great rest of your week!

TMS

I am sorry I didn’t have a blog last week – it was super busy but really good in the offline life. My mom came to visit because my older son was graduating from high school. It was a lovely time, but didn’t leave any time or energy for blogging. So I’m going to publish an extra Mumbling this week after this one.

So I decided to continue with the whole learning songs thing here.

Things are about at the same place on the song I mentioned in the last post, which is okay, all things considered. Like I made clear earlier, there really hasn’t been time to make much progress, but every time I try to play it, I remember most of what I need to know. We have rehearsal tomorrow night, so it’ll be the maiden voyage of this attempted one-off cover. We shall see what happens. Hoping for the best…

We’re also picking up a bunch of older songs we played to add a little diversity to the setlist, which will probably be more necessary when we have more time to be busy. It’s fun going back and playing along and seeing what I retained from the last time I played songs. Thankfully, it’s usually a lot. Sometimes, I’ll go back to refresh something and realize I learned it all wrong. Then I get a little mad at my past self for a moment, and proceed to fix the issues.

Since I wanted this one to kind of expand on the last one, I’ll take you through my process of learning songs.

First I determine my level of familiarity with the song, and lock down what precise version we will be learning from – there are often different versions of popular songs (single edits, etc.) and I want to make sure we’re all learning the same arrangement. Saves time later. I try to listen to the song like I’ve never heard it before (sometimes I’ve honestly never heard it – or at least don’t remember it). Then I focus on the parts I need to learn and try to isolate as I listen, to determine what sort of EQ adjustments I can make to make the part pop out of the arrangement so I can learn it easier. If I can find the stems of the song, even better, because then I can just listen to the instrument isolated. But that’s not always available.

Second, I listen to the song. A LOT. Over and over. Over and over. ESPECIALLY if I have to sing something in it.

Third, I nail down the parts. Sometimes if I’m strapped for time I’ll refer to a transcription, but I mostly like to learn it myself because I trust my ear to pick up the nuances better than most mainstream transcriptions I’ve seen. I try different voicings and fingerings to find the best way for the parts to live under my fingers and still honor the tune and cover properly.

Fourth, I play the learned parts along with the song. A LOT. Over and over. Over and over. AND when I have to sing, I do that while I’m playing the part on whichever instrument so I can work out any “pat head, rub belly” conflicts.

Fifth, I rehearse the song with the band and make any necessary adjustments to my arrangement so I’m truly filling my role in the ensemble.

Sixth, I play the song in front of an audience and determine how that affects singing and playing it. Then I make THOSE necessary adjustments.

After a few gigs with the song, it’s unlikely that I’ll ever forget it. The majority of songs learned by using this longer process stick in my brain and I can play them wherever, whenever. It’s pretty nice.

If you are a musician who reads this, I’d love for you to share your learning process in the comments. Maybe you do something cool that would help even more!

Well, that’s it. If you can get a shot, get one. If you can help someone get a shot, help them.

See you in a few days with another new one.

Thank you for reading, and peace be the journey.
TMS

So the Bings have been asked to learn a particular song for an upcoming wedding – actually, a bunch of songs. And one in particular is a song that I have absolutely no history with – no memory of ever hearing it, no strong sense of its form, no love for the genre (which is how I missed it), and honestly, now that I’m learning it, I kind of think it’s garbage.

BUT – one thing I’ve always been excellent at as a performer is finding a way to love things I kind of hate. To me, that’s part of your job as a musician who gets paid for music – pretend to love what you’re doing even when you kind of don’t – after all, you have to do what OTHER people want you to do sometimes, and that’s totally okay.

I’m not going to say which song it is, because I don’t really want to get into it about it or its genre, but a quick perusal of my past Museday Mumblings might clue you in to the genre, especially if you start from the beginning.

In a matter of days, I’ve managed to go from hating the song so much that I didn’t truly believe I could ever learn it to having it completely down musically and almost down for the vocal parts that aren’t lead vocals (jury is still out on how much I’ll be singing, but I’m learning it all). The beauty part of having learned songs for cover bands on bass for about 30 years is that I’ve gotten rather good at getting the parts pretty much immediately. So locking down the musical changes was actually pretty easy once I figured out the sections and then their arrangement. There are a few parts where I don’t have the bass part down well enough to sing the vocals I anticipate having to sing, so I’ve been working on that, but the whole process of “finding the fun” has reminded me how much I really love learning things and knowing how much my efforts will make someone happy (in this case, the bride).

And, shocker, I’m actually starting to kind of like the song after learning it. Not because it’s good – it’s still chaotic nonsense at times – but because I can tell how much heart these guys put into creating it, and I want to honor their efforts and really kick ass on it.

That’s the trick – finding a way in to the creative process to own the song for yourself. Even when it seems there’s no way in, you have to try and find a way to relate, whether musically, lyrically, or just “general vibe”-y. Like many of the songs I’ve performed as though they were my own but I sort of hated over the years, I think when I play it, no one’s going to have a clue how I really feel about the song, and that, to me, is a great accomplishment as a musician and performer – finding a way to love something you kind of hate, and honoring it for what it is and how much your audience loves it.

It’s a lesson to remember for every working, paid musician who can’t seem to get past their taste where it concerns material to perform for their audiences. Remember – it’s not about YOU*.

*-(I mean, until it is, and it’s your own music or your own specific artistic statement, but this isn’t one of those situations – we’re playing a damn wedding…)

Take care, have a wonderful weekend to kick off the summer, honor those who gave everything for this country on Monday (and NOT ALL VETERANS – that holiday is in November), and get your damn shot.

Peace be the journey!
TMS

Wow. So it’s been a YEAR of these weekly missives. A year of writing on topics that I tried very hard to make interesting for you. At the very least you got a window into my brain. It was very hard not repeating myself, and I tried very hard to acknowledge when I was repeating myself. Repeating myself is kind of annoying, because I’m always repeating myself.

Dumb jokes aside, I’m proud that save for one week I took off on purpose, I wrote a whole year of weekly blogs.

This week’s is late, but it’s been a week. I had a great topic but then completely ended up having no energy when I had time and no time when I had energy. Perhaps it’ll pop up next week. And perhaps after a year I might make these blogs a hybrid – a little video to go along with the writing. We shall see.

Thanks for sticking with me. There’s much more to come, and I’ll be adding more multimedia content and livestreaming more. It seems stupid that I have this super-nice video switcher and I’m not doing jack squat with it.

I might invite some of my music friends to join me for some kind of zoom interview thing where we chat about various topics. Not sure…there’s the whole no time when energy-no energy when time thing to deal with first.

Take care and have a pleasant tomorrow – and if you haven’t been vaccinated yet – GET YOUR DAMN SHOT. The evidence is super clear at this point of the safety and efficacy of the vaccines. Because there are a lot of gullible dummies in our society who believe the grifters and charlatans, vaccines might be our only way out of this crap.

Peace be the journey!
TMS