The City Veins

One my highlights this year was heading over to Belgium for Darren and Emilie’s wedding. It was just an amazing experience, one unlikely to be replicated in my lifetime. It also seems to have pushed me into the wedding business. I already have two weddings to play next year. Unfortunately, both are friend’s services, so I can’t charge them anything.

I have included a recording I did of Fandango (Danse Espagnole) in this post. You can look at the sheet music here, and I have previously written about the song on my old blog (please ignore the times in that post, this is a different recording, the measure numbers are correct). This is the song I am playing in the picture above, which occurs around measure 64. As I wrote in a previous post, this is the hardest piece I know that I am willing to attempt in front of other people. I hope you enjoy it.

 Fandango [4:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Since we’re taking a mini-break to do some songwriting and there’s not much besides holiday parties going on, here’s some more fun lists:

 The 25 Most Ridiculous Band Names Ever

The 10 Most Terrifyingly Inspirational 80’s songs

and my personal favorite:

The 9  Most Unnecessary Greatest Hits Albums of All-Time (complete with Most Awesome Amazon.com User Reviews, some of which are just as funny as the album itself. Thank God the Internet gives EVERYONE a voice to spout their stupidity.)

Continuing to not have much of importance to say, I thought I’d post another link. This is the perfect example of what happens when office workers (probably white) have too much time on their hands and decide to make graphical representations of rap lyrics in MS Excel.  God bless them for it.  Weird Al would be proud.

http://forums.phishhook.com/viewtopic.php?t=664613

Aaron, being the optimistic person that he is, seems convinced that I can learn how to sing. He is so sure of himself that he has declared that I am going to sing on every song. We started lessons on Saturday.

The lesson started with Aaron explaining how to sing properly, including:

1) How to breathe, my shoulders should not rise. The singing breath is actually a lot like a Yoga breath.
2) I should open my mouth as wide as possible. Apparently, I should over emphasize opening my mouth to the point that I can’t actually pronounce most words. Aaron claims that a lack of pronunciation is not a problem.
3) I need to sing more in my throat, and not in my nose or the top of my mouth. Opening my mouth will apparently take care of this.
4) I need to sing louder.

In summation, how I used to “sing” was all wrong. Granted what I use to do required quotation marks so as not to offend actual singers. Unfortunately this robbed me of what meager singing skills I had. I have been diligently practicing, running scales and rehearsing the parts Aaron wrote for me, and I am making some progress.

I must say that I have gained a new appreciation for Aaron. I have always known what a good singer he is, but after about 20 minutes of practicing my voice is really tired. I don’t know how he can do a whole concert.

Our practice last Tuesday was the first that I really sang at. I figured that I am going to have to learn how to sing and play at the same time, so I should start soon. Some of the songs were okay, but for the most part I was horrible. After we finished Toe the Line, Spencer diplomatically said, “I know you are trying, but that was awful.” I reassured him that I did in fact know that my singing was horrible, and we agreed that I need to a lot more practice before I share my voice with the world.

Photo by Flickr user rgdaniel.

Pitchfork’s list of the 20 Worst Album Covers of 2007 is way too funny. Granted, it is difficult to come up with a “cool” album cover sometimes, but these albums make you wonder: who the hell came up with these? Presumably, the record label or manager or someone else other than the artist would have had to sign off on these as well, and these people should be immediately fired for not saving the artist from themselves. On the other hand, they sure brightened up my Thursday morning.

Enjoy!