Roqblog No. 2

Rehearsal this week was much improved upon last Tuesday’s fiasco (which I will get to in a moment. Patience, woman!). Firstly, I managed to avoid drinking a bottle and a half of wine the night before which is key. Although oodles of sleep were lacking (as per usual) I feel that the six mugs of green tea throughout the day managed to help me avoid too many vocal issues.

So last Tuesday…imagine if you will every euphonious note the human chords are capable of producing; from the soul stirring chestly rumbles to those heavenly angelic soprano warblings. Now push about two-thirds of those into a rusty, raspy flat region not unlike the Doldrums and you have what was going on with me. In short, not good; not good at all. It was the sort of rehearsal that makes one seriously wish to throw in the proverbial towel and swear to cease from any sort of vocally melodic past-times until the end of her days. But not me! Nay! I am a brave soul who (irresponsibly) drank too much wine, slept too few hours and managed to wholly blow out her voice during her lunch break on the day they were supposed to be doing rough recordings of what it all sounded like in order to nit-pick, critique and trash everything to bits, a.k.a., a day not to suck. Which I did…amazingly so. Hoo-boy, was it ever awful.

Adding into that awfulness, the drums gave out (which means that an iBook decided to roll over and die) halfway through a song that was finally sounding good which quickly spiraled the rehearsal into a “let’s play with our peddles and find new settings” session; granted the second bit of that wasn’t so awful, but even so I still felt bad about the whole thing. We did, however, do a quasi-acoustic version of the song tentatively called “Undefended” (we’ll see if that title makes it all the way through) which was kind of fun. As someone who routinely sucks at playing and/or learning to play the guitar (in my defense- it was a right handed acoustic, and I’m no Hendrix, yo.), I’m always amazed by skilled guitarists and their ability to fully understand that wacky instrument. I won’t digress too much on that train of thought simply because I’ll end up rambling like a damned fool, so the end.

Oh yes, and Strum (the guitarist) started playing a song I really hope we get to work on eventually; it was sincere and bittersweet and sounds lovely.

MOVING ON: This past Tuesday was a marked improvement upon that nightmarish session described above. So what if I had some sharps here and there. So what if Fingers (bassist) and Strum kept making faces which made it impossible to take anything seriously. It was fun and full of comraderie-ness, and that’s what this is about yes? Yes…yes it is.

Since we decided to shelve “The Song Whose Name Shall Not Be Mentioned” (seriously, it shan’t because the old title could possibly result in child molestation charges which nobody wants and as I am unable to saddle that tune with a good melody and lyrics a new title has not yet been assigned aside from “The Song Whose Name Shall Not Be Mentioned”) for the time being, focus was given to a livelier tune currently being called (by me) “Am Main”. I’d been having difficulty with the pacing, but after listening to nothing but Shingai Shoniwa’s scratched record vocals I think I finally figured out what it’s supposed to sound like. Now it’s melody tampering time! Both Fingers and Strum seem to like the original melody and chorus, so I have to go back over those and re-evaluate what works and what doesn’t. Fun!

Also got some rough recordings of two other songs which have allowed for some great jumping off points. Currently they’re titled “Undertow” and “Childhood Games”, although the latter title might change later on, but we shall see. ANYWAYS, the recordings are nice to have as I can hear what it sounds like and where I need to work on phrasing, shaping, timing and overall stylization. Hopefully the rooms won’t be so demmed cold from now on and I can avoid all that “Inverse Euphony” that was going on (seriously, what the hell Bomb Shelter? Your employee may be super cute and all, but do I really need to start wearing a scarf? There’s only so much a girl can do with six cups of green tea with lemon and honey before she gets frustrated…and has to pee…a lot).

All-in-all it was good. Starting after the 11^th we’ll be going into bi-weekly rehearsal mode. Most likely one “loud” at the Bomb Shelter and one “quiet” at somebody’s humble home; the “quiet” rehearsals will definitely be helpful as they won’t involve us spending money on a room and feeling pressured to use the time to generally RAWK. This way we’ll be able to really nit-pick the songs and focus on certain bits until everyone is happy. Until then, it’s back to the lyrical writing board and tampering with the “chosen ones”. Ahoy!