Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"All that work, and men can't even have muliple orgasms. What a damned shame..." -- SpikeGoddess, responding to a hilarious (but not unrealistic) explanation of male sexual behaviour.

A few days ago cortejo turned one of my quotes-of-the-day into a poll. Now juuro has taken yesterday's QotD and run in an interesting direction with it. "This is a game of cosmic billiards." I'm actually getting some of that tranquil, meditative feeling by observing how the ideas and personalities bounce off each other and arrange themselves in the comment thread.

merde, if you haven't looked already, you should do so. After all, it was your utterance I quoted from which this arose.

By the time I had the car loaded yesterday, it was too late to make any side trips. Fortunately I had very little strumming to do yesterday, so I got away with adding some Crazy Glue to the back edges of the acrylic that have grown out far enough to be in danger of catching. I was mostly "flatpicking" (that's the hand motion and sound, though I'm using my index finger nail to do it) and playing classical. One bandmate was sick, another had a last-minute schedule conflict, but all in all theings went well. My mood was a real roller coaster though.

I showed up, got my gear hauled inside, took painkillers, ate the breakfast I'd brought with me, and started helping get things set up. When it came time to play, I found myself second-guessing my own decisions at every turn. Partly because it was "one of those days" self-confidence-wise (is there a version of bipolar disorder where it's one's self-confidence that swings up and down instead of one's mood, or is it like this for everyone?) and partly the old artist's problem of "too many options available". We recorded my guitar parts on the set I wrote about in my "afraid it'll sound like bragging" entry ("Music, Magic, and Chills", 2004-01-31), which wound up involving my playing three instruments if I remember correctly. (I brought four, and wound up using each by the end of the day.) Then I moved aside so Mike could record a bouzouki part. While that was going on, the rest of the band arrived (minus the two unable to come), so we rearranged the room and redistributed the microphones to record a "base track" of a waltz by Mike that we were unhappy with the previous attempts to record.

That base track, the "this is just so we have something to hear in the headphones as we record our individual parts later" track where we don't worry about mistakes or perfect mic placement or anything but timing, sounds good. A little bit of tweaking to make an instrument a little louder or another instrument a little softer might help it, but the initial playback was already sweet. Then we got down to recording indivual parts more carefully.

I went first. I was doing pretty well, though having trouble getting from one end to the other in a single take with no errors, until my drugs wore off. Sometimes when they wear off, it happens kind of abruptly. This was one of those times. I started feeling floaty and very tired and achy and had difficulty concentrating, which made the next bit of what I had to do go very slowly. And another dose would have taken long enough to take effect, that the choice was either to keep going anyhow, or to bring someone else in while I waited for my meds to work. Since I play melody on guitar all the way through (I'm only featured the first time, but I'm in the background under everyone else's solos, unless they decide to change that in the final mixdown), Mike wanted all my parts done before he brought in the others, so they could play to my real part instead of my part on the base track. We slogged ahead while the rest of the band waited.

The tune repeats five times. What we wound up doing was to have me start, and when I got to a mistake, I'd stop and we would back up to the beginning of that repetition to start a new track, repeating this process until I'd gotten to the end of the tune. I was having trouble getting the classical guitar repositioned quickly to play it in twelfth position for the fifth repetition (I had to turn it vertical to reach the frets cleanly; it's easier to play that high on a folk guitar or any guitar that has a cutaway) so I played the fifth rep in first position then went back and did a separate take in twelfth position. A few people had said the base track lacked "fullness" in the middle of the soundscape, basically that it was missing chords, so I did my only strumming of the day on the 12-string, laying down a chord track that I was barely conscious of playing. I was seriously strumming on autopilot except for where I saw Mike making "make it BIGGER" hand gesttures that I reacted to, and when I finished I couldn't remember what I'd played, so I was worried about whether I'd hit a rythmic pattern that really suited the tune or not, but I was told, "You're done. Rest." Hearing the playback later, it turns out I did okay. Then the drums came in and did their parts in a couple of takes plus a separate track to add tambourine, the fiddles came in and did their parts in two or three takes, Bill did his dulcimer part in a couple of takes, and I shot the occasional photo and tried not to fall over.

There are things I'm not used to hearing over my guitar and the rest of the band, standing behind the fiddles and usually on the far end of the stage. There are details I usually don't catch because my brain is busy making sure of my own parts. Hearing John and Becky play their parts of the waltz without hearing the rest of the band (I wasn't wearing headphones while they were recording their parts), I was struck again and again by the beauty of Becky's harmony. Wow, can she write harmonies! Hearing it played a few times and then hearing playback of it, the throw-my-head-back-and-grin reaction hadn't worn off after four listenings. We've got to make sure that comes through clearly in the final mix.

By the time we'd packed up (my car was at the top of the driveway, so I pretty much had to wait for everyone else to finish anyhow), the road had turned to a sheet of ice, and dinner was being offered. I gave the standard musician response ("Food? Yes, please.") and hung out for a while, during which time a county or state salt truck came by and melted the road.

I came home, discovered that my one remaining VCR had stopped working, and fell asleep. Today I'm about to head down to College Park for a tech rehearsal to work out the kinks in a sound system for Thrir Venstri Foetr. I'm tired, I'm achy, I'm hoping I don't have a nap-attack before we finish.

Yesterday I came home to discover that my remaining VCR no longer plays or records. So I missed a bunch of shows, some of which I care about more than others, and some of which I'll catch up to in reruns.

Tonight I was going to try to drive out to Bowie and Crofton, which'll mean missing Charmed. (There's a movie instead of Alias tonight, and I can always catch Law and Order in a rerun). Monday I can stay home to see CSI: Miami and Everwood, but Tuesday I'll miss 24 and Gilmore Girls while I'm at rehearsal.

Tuesday night I'm supposed to get hand-me-down VCRs that kindasorta almost work. One plays but doesn't rewind. I can deal with that for a while, having one that rewinds but doesn't play. I was wondering whether someone reading this might be willing to tape any of these shows for me, local to Baltimore or distant and willing to deal with mailing VHS or DVD to me. I would be grateful.

The most important is 24. I missed one episode last season, so I held on to the tapes of the rest of the episodes unwatched so I could catch the missing episode in reruns and not see the show out of sequence, and they never reran any of last season. So I still haven't seen the missing episode, and I watched the rest in a rush just before this season started.

(And John, this does mean I still have not seen that episode of Angel you want to talk about.)