The rehearsals of the revised chord progression for my R&B song
were once again stalled a bit, delayed, whatever word you want. Chalk
it up to life stuff, other obligations, things like that getting in
the way, you know?
But I have been on the
Legato III
refreshing myself on the song as well as trying to change up how
the chords are played to get something that is more interesting
and might even make me a better keyboard player than the
barely-adequate one that I've been ‐‐ yet I suspect
I'll still be light-years away from being a "keyboardist."
Nevertheless, I've slipped in a bit of rehearsal on the chords.
Since I'm trying to punch up how the chords are played, I've been
doing a lot of work at a very slowed-down tempo to try and do some
work with my left hand that is beyond what I have ever done. Then,
of course, I'll bring it up to tempo when I can play it at tempo.
Having never had even one formal lesson on piano, I have absolutely
no true coordination between my two hands and I can't come close to
any sort of independent movement between the two. So that's my goal:
to get something more interesting happening with the piano part. It
will still be something probably not exceeding what a reasonably
practiced twelve-year-old can do, but I hope it'll be sone kind of
good step forward for my ability. It's like the bass line in
the one section of
"Backward in Time,"
the one that took me WEEKS to conquer.
Before I started rehearsing the song I imported the new drumkit
tracks into the song project on the
Tascam 24-Track.
I say tracks in plural because, as is standard, the drum kit
is in stereo, on two tracks, with some
pan‐mix
for the various drums, cymbals, etc. But before even doing that, I
cleaned out all the tracks in the song project in the recorder: the
original drumkit tracks, the spoken guide track, and the four piano
parts.
I also had to redo the spoken guide track since the addition of the
new chords in the progression changed where all the sections start
and stop. After cleaning everything out I imported the new drumkit
part and the new guide track onto the 24-track.
The motivation to get these now is that I'm consulting on the
soundwork
for The Guild's
production of
Dial M for Murder
and both are needed for a
daisy chain
between a wireless mic in the
greenroom
and the theatre's mixing board in the
tech booth.
But right after the show closes, both pieces of equipment will go
to their real home to next be employed in the recording sessions for
my 25/26 Music Adventure.
This isn't the first time I've bought something new for myself that
first made a detour to a theatre production. Years ago I bought a
set of wireless phones for myself, and one of the two units was a
prop
in the Guild mounting of
Belles,
by Mark Dunn.
There have been a few other times my personal purchases first hit
the stage before going home.
Ultimately the graphic EQ is another supplement for my bass guitars,
another enhancement for shaping tone. I had one back in my youth.
I still have it though it's not in great shape. It was one of a few
guitar pedals from last century that I intended to try to repair
during the COVID shutdown, but that project never got off the ground.
The preamp is intended to boost the volume for both mics and my bass
guitars as I run them into the 24-track recorder. Sometimes the
signals on these are much weaker than I like. The preamp will also
come in handy in live performances ‐‐ IF such were ever
to come about, that is.
To be confessionally honest, I have barely rehearsed the R‐&‐B
song's piano part. The ambition's there but I'm finding it difficult
to muster the motivation.
It's an amalgam of two things. First, I have been struggling with
what I self-diagnose as a low-grade depression, which has led me
toward often going down a
YouTube
rabbit hole of reaction videos, both of younger people experiencing
mostly music from my youth, or people reacting to episodic
TV I like
(Stranger Things
&
NCIS,
especially). It's also induced me to sleep a lot. The other ingredient
is procrastination, because, let's face it, I'm a bit intimidated
by the work ahead of me to come up with, AND PLAY, this
"interesting piano part" that requires me to improve as
a ‐‐ (clears throat) ‐‐ piano player.
But I have taken action on this task. I went into the
Logic Pro
project that is specific to the drumkit track and I have
rendered four WAV files
with the spoken guide track mixed with the drumkit. Each WAV file
is at a different tempo (speed): 50%, 75%, 90%, and 100%. The purpose
is to play back these tracks so I can play along on my
Legato,
working on the piano part, trying to create that more interesting
variation of the chords that will have me more than simply playing
the piano part like it's a keyboard version of the rhythm guitar.
Obviously, I'll start out at the 50% tempo and work my way up to full
speed.
We'll see how long it takes me to avoid the YouTube rabbit hole and
get my ass back to business.
On the other hand, I have recently come up with some other song
ideas: snippets of lyrics and theme, as well as some concepts for
the musical composition. I came up with at least the idea for a
song, earlier today, as a matter of fact. Also, I still need to work
on lyrics for the R‐&‐B song, which I have not done
for a while.
ANNOUNCING THE CAST:
Showing weekends
Dec 5-14, 2025
Tickets on sale...
