Category: iphoneography

Oxygen is Important

Today was the third straight car vocals day for me. Four songs on Sunday, four songs on Monday, which left two for Tuesday. I drove to the big, empty movie theater parking lot and started singing very poorly. I had to move the car as the sun was bright and killing me. Why wouldn’t we have had clear skies last night? Once again, the universe punches me in the nards.

When the last December song was finished I had plenty of time before I had to stop so I pulled up a song from re-recording round four. It wasn’t really ready for vocals, but the bass and drums were done and there was still a scratch guitar that I could sing over. What the hell.

The song is important for two reasons. First, it contains the greatest lyric writing moment of my pathetic history. A brilliant couplet that rhymes putz and clutz. Clearly my finest lyrical hour. Second, it’s just an absolute bitch to sing. Talk about a punch in the nards. I wrote it in… 2009? Maybe? 2010? Something like that. Some pre-GarageBand date. I’ve recorded it a couple of times, and because the words were written first (which is super rare for me) and without a melody, when it was eventually put to music there was one little snag.

There was no place to breathe.

Breathing… it’s kinda important. When I recorded it before I used two tracks and they each sang alternating lines. It was a cheat. I was willing to do it again, but I thought I might try to fix it. I sped up the tempo a bit so I could get through each section in less time, and I changed a couple of quarter notes to an eighth note rest/eight note combo. Basically I put in space for really quick breaths. It worked. Except that now I feel like I am going to die. The end of the song goes verse/chorus/chorus and there are no spaces between, and the vocal from each section runs straight into the next. I had to do a 24 bar phrase with only teeny tiny little gaps for breath.

Oxygen deprivation is a thing. My head hurts. What a putz*.

*See what I did there? I said putz after previously saying putz was my finest lyrical moment? Damn, I write good and stuff.

Tundra

This is a movie theater parking lot at 10:00 AM on a Sunday. The movie theater is open, Covid-19 be damned. Fortunately there is no one there. Granted, there’s another parking lot on the other side of the building and for all I know that one was full, but it still reassuring to know that I might not be the only person left in Massachusetts who takes Covid-19 seriously.

Anyway, I did some bad singing today. I had six songs ready to go but I only got to four of them. I’ll do more tomorrow. My throat wasn’t terribly cooperative today. Very scratchy and cracky. I tried warming up on the drive over but this time it didn’t help much. It was 24 degrees out when I started. I bet that had something to do with it.

Progress.

Rest in Peace

We lost an old friend today. Someone from the old neighborhood that we knew since we were very little. She knitted our Christmas stockings for us. Growing up my whole family had one. Then when my sister and brother and I started having families of our own she made more.

Rest in peace.