lunatric fringes

I have been doing lots of singing recently, which makes me a seriously happy person! I've been doing some varied stuff. I have joined a choir that is tackling some really tricky acapella free jazz(!) at the moment. It's music by Bruno Lecossois. I don't think it's to everyone's taste probably, but I think it's gorgeous stuff and I'm loving doing it, even if it is driving me demented practising some of the more hypnotic bits!

http://blecossois.free.fr/

(The link is to Bruno Lecossois' acapella group's website, who are called "Les Grandes Gueles", ("the Big Mouths"). It's well worth checking them out, there's some audio and video clips.)

I've been doing some vocal jamming as well, which is like swimming naked in the sea compared to the racing lanes of the acapella stuff. It's challenging in it's own way, when you have a microphone in your face and you know that any utterance is liable to be subject to scrutiny and mixing; if you dwell on that too much it can make you feel a bit self conscious, so you just have to get into it and let go. Like most things that are worth doing, you have to commit yourself fully to the moment or you tend to crash (oh my God I just used a mountain biking reference to illustrate everyday life! This is not good!) Here's some - mixed by Speccy T....
http://www.myspace.com/lunatrixcollective

I've also booked me and Tone D into a songwriter's night in Mach, so we can have a second scary stab at our dynamic duo stuff!

*gulp*


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I never claimed not to be a wrongun

Sometimes I wonder: what is "appropriate" behaviour? I have always figured that, unless there is a good reason, on compassionate or self preservation grounds, then scrupulous honesty is the best thing. I'm thinking now that maybe it's not quite as simple as that.
Like, I happened to mention to my husband yesterday, in one of those "isn't it funny when..." kind of conversations, that I (occasionally) get an urge to kiss strange men on buses, on the neck specifically. I hasten to add that I have never, to date, acted upon this impulse because that would clearly be bad and I'd probably get thrown off the bus. Well, to my surprise, he didn't laugh in recognition of this clearly ordinary impulse. No, actually he looked a bit shocked, and told me I was odd.

Well this threw me a little as I thought blokes were forever staring at boobs and thinking about sex, so my impulse to kiss the odd neck, in a purely platonic way, would be perceived as a perfectly normal thing that everyone did. So, to test this hypothesis a little further, I mentioned this incident to the ladies-wot-lunch. They didn't think it was such a common impulse either, and gave me a very similar look to that which my husband had given me last night.

So maybe, in this case, scrupulous honesty didn't have to include discussing things that just pop into my head. Sometimes the whole truth is possibly a little too odd for general conversation topics. The trick, I suppose, is in figuring out which bits of the whole truth are odd before airing them during polite conversation.

I will get the hang of social niceties one day.

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departures and arrivals

Ok, so this seems to have developed into a blog about my band. Not that its my only social outlet or anything! no really, I, um, did some gardening the other day and, er, bumped into a bunch of people at the market last week... No, I'm not convincing myself either!
Anyway, my band... We've had a spot of bother recently, for reasons I shall merely put down to "musical differences" we have spent the last couple of weeks without a bass player. It now, hopefully has resolved itself and we'll be back on course soon, with just over a month before our next gig. Plenty of time!! But an interesting upshot of having a bit of practise time on our hands is that me and the splendid Tone D. Lowerer have finally got it together with a few tunes of his Udu drum and my vocals. It has proved a stomach churning experience.
I'm not generally a one for stage fright, but this is the scariest thing I've (almost) done in a very long time. I say almost, as we were booked to do a slot in the Living Room music night at the Cwps, but unfortunately Steph, who runs it, was taken ill and it was cancelled. But we had a bash at it yesterday in the barn where we practise. It wasn't in front of many people, but I've just heard the recording of it, and I sound really nervous, so maybe it's a good thing we didn't play the Cwps the other day, in front of lots of people! I don't really get what makes me so nervous, but as someone pointed out a few days ago that it is scary, but healthy, to push yourself away from your comfort zone sometimes. So I will try again, and hopefully feel a little bit less nervous next time!
Oh, and I was really impressed with the sounds in the barn yesterday, the good doctor, who owns the barn, was testing his new PA out, whilst we obligingly made a racket. It was a real treat having someone there tweaking knobs and leaving us to focus on making music.

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Pandoras box

I bought a very sexy thing the other day. A multi-effects box for vocalists. Wow! I can not only be a cyborg, wizard, alien or monster, but I'm learning how to programme it to do vaguely sensible stuff as well!
I have completely neglected my family and chores since I've got this thing. In fact, apparently, (according to the man who sleeps beside me) I was making sound effects noises in my sleep the other night. I didn't really understand that, but I have been working on a spooky breathing effect that makes me sound like a hyperventilating old witch, so I don't really want to probe any further as to what he meant.
But they are great, better than telly (not difficult). It's going to properly complicate my music making though, it's hard enough remembering whether I'm supposed to be singing or playing the melodica at any given time, let alone pressing the right button and avoiding some of the sillier sound effects whilst on stage! But I shall use it, dammit! It is my shiny new toy, and the icing on the cake is that it is sparkly and purple! I have yet to practise with it with actual other people - this might be a sobering experience as I'm sure, like most things, it's going to sound best in my own head, and not neccesarily the ears of others!

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Good I am not, but happy I am

Well, I've not really managed to be good at all recently. It seems to be a skill that is beyond me.

I've been having a good time though, whilst not being good. We (Quercus Burlesque) have had a few gigs in fairly rapid succession recently. The lovely miss Molly Wanton came to play with us for one of them, as she was in the country briefly. That was a real treat, we've not done a gig with our illustrious accordion player since September, just before she packed her bags for Spain, when we had the worst gig we've done so far, which was a shame. It was crap because I kicked a drink over as I got on stage and blew up half the P.A. setup. Never a good start - we had to turn the monitors round and use them as speakers, a good solution except we couldn't hear ourselves - not good! It reminded me of an even worse gig I did with my old band, where for some reason, the vocal microphone was wired so that it only came out of a speaker outside of the place we were playing, so I couldn't hear myself, but the people outside could only hear me! ouch! I don't actually want to remember that gig! But it's my benchmark of bad vocal setups, and it makes me feel better if we have a dodgy or non-existent soundcheck, that it can't possibly be worse than that!
Oh, and we have a new place to practise now, which is a very good thing as our bass player has just bought himself a 200W bass amp, which I think may have blown the roof off of our house, not to mention destroyed all hope of civil relations with the neighbours!

Oh, and another thing - aforementioned noisy bass player is creating a website for the band (currently under construction, although there's quite a splendid animation of Tone D Lowerer's bowler hat spinning!): http://www.quercusburlesque.co.uk. It's going to be the place to be on the internet soon, so bookmark it now and avoid the rush!


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brainstrain

Today I am trying to be good and clever (neither, it seems, come naturally to me). I have a meeting on Wednesday where I need to justify my intellectual existence. Trouble is I don't actually believe I exist intellectually! So motivation is hard, it's like trying to convince someone of the existence of Father Christmas - a nice idea, but I'm having trouble sounding like I mean it.
My next challenge - being good. Theoretically, all I have to do is knuckle down, do a mountain of reading, design a few experiments, and sort out a timetable to do it all in. But right now, my most pressing thoughts are what tunes we are going to play at our upcoming gigs, how to sew together my bustle to finish off my new outfit, and getting excited about other peoples impending purchases of amps ( the pros and cons of 50W versus 100W - one so portable and convenient, the other so chocolatey).

So here is my statement of intent - I shall be good. I shall not waste another minute on checking emails or writing blogs or thinking about what I am going to sing OR wear. I shall procrastinate no more, this is it...
But its so close to lunchtime now, I might as well make a fresh start after that!


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you can be sure of shures

Yippee! - my new shure microphone arrived today. Two of them actually, one for me and one for Tone D. And stands! This is a very good thing as we often have to share a stand, usually his drum mic plus my vocal mic. This is awkward and has almost caused a bust up on a number of occasions, when on of us fidgets with the mic causing the other mic to swing round and clout the other person. All well and good, but if you must do this sort of thing then take a leaf out of John Ottway's book and use a mic worthy of such an activity...




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