Order Of The Day
- Delete most of last nights drunken rant about killing Howard in his sleep so I could record music.
- Download chords and lyrics to song stuck in my head now.
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| Does Howard Dream "In Color?" |
I feel better now,
after a good night's rest, aided by Howards allergy medication, which I washed down with Steel Reserve 211.
Order Of The Week
Money is going to be an issue this coming week...
I just might have to go without beer and cigarettes for the next few days, is what it boils down to.
The bright side is that I probably won't make any more recordings like "Jungle Sailing" while sober.
My food card was charged up this morning at 5 a.m., mercifully.
I will have to talk to Howard about buying his Cheetos and his Pepsi every day, in exchange for "a couple bucks."
Then, I CAN busk in front of the Chevron at night; just with small expectations, so as to keep my spirits up.
I'll worry about crossing the bridge to New Orleans when I get to it. Maybe Howard will spring for my bus fare, knowing that it will give him a few peaceful nights without someone playing guitar five feet from where he is conked out on diazaproxene, or whatever that stuff is...
I am pushing myself to complete three (3) songs by Friday.
- One "top 20 busking songs" song.
- One off the wall song, that one might not expect to hear out of me
- Perhaps an original, or something that I wrote when I was a kid...
I still think you should work on your actual playing sound. Computers are a time, energy, and money hole. The "digital divide" is getting bigger; you'll see more people like us, barely able to get online, and the few "cool kids" who can afford $1000 a month or so to always have the latest gadgets and net access that's faster than dial-up. If you get to where you sound good, said "cool kids" will put you on YouTube. This is what "Homeless Mustard" did. Worked on his voice and sound, and got filmed and onto YouTube.
ReplyDeleteI'm tooting on my harmonica here and there, and also using what tiny slivers of time I have to look into marionettes. I might just make one out of sticks, got plenty of those here.
My evil plan being to have some skill that I like, feel deeply about like you feel about your music, that I can survive off of if I have to, living out of a backpack.
Harmonica, whistle, stuff like slide whistle and kazoo, could be really handy along with marionette skills. That stuff can all go in a backpack. And the stars of the show would be the marionettes. I can think of an unending number of funny or interesting characters. Plus there's a pretty good chance I could sell quite a few. I could become a regular fixture in Santa Cruz, like the balloon dude is, because no one does marionettes or puppets there.
The thing is, I'm considering leaving here. The guy who owns this place is a slob and a hoarder, and my life has become one where all my energy goes into cleaning up his messes and doing stuff at this place. I'm having to work harder than I think I should have to, to just exist. It's not the life I want.
So I need some skill I can live on, preferably under a roof. I'm perfectly willing to do without a car, but the skill has to feed me and pay enough for a room or something. So I have to be able to average $50 a day. I got to where I was making that spare-changing, but I don't want to do that any more. And I agree, it's huge money - I only made about $30 a day average last year and I really hustled. $50 a day is basically the net earnings of a day's work at minimum wage, and a lot more money than most are making now. But I think it's do-able.
The way to make it work is to move to Santa Cruz, or one of the Peninsula cities like Mountain View. Santa Cruz would be the best. And the way to make *that* work is to sell off everything I can possibly live without to generate the money to get me started.
@Alex, you still haven't told me if you look for follow ups to you comments here, or if I should address certain things in the blog; a lot of time they overlap, like I could tell you what I'm going to put in my post anyway; I agree about the working on the sound thing;
ReplyDeleteI have concluded that the best way to record is to set up and play and sing my best stuff like on the street, and then use that (shitty sounding because the mic/analog to digital circuit can't seem to process two signals at once) track as a guide;
A second, cleanly recorded guitar can be played along with the first track, and then a third one for vocals, then the original guide-track can just be erased- that way I don't have to do things like count measures in my head wondering when the drum pattern is going to change...or just stop 'cause it ran out
And, maybe it would be alright to have just an acoustic guitar and a voice; instead of trying to remake Abbey Road on my laptop.
Something is going to have to give here, too. Another couple bad recording sessions and the time they take me away from busking are a double liability. More in the short blog post...
Well, since I suck at blogging, commenting here is almost like my blog, I guess. Feel free to answer or not, whatever you have time for.
ReplyDeleteYou may have to find places that naturally have good acoustics and record there, like the old-time guys did.
I think like a lot of people reading this, yes, there IS some interest and wistfulness and even envy of the free time you have and the lack of "strings" in life.
I am swamped with taking care of this place and with lab work. At least the pay's good. But I plan to take a week or two off when the land owner's back and go to Santa Cruz for a vacation of my own. I plan to street perform somehow. I'm not sure what it will be. I'm keeping my Lee Oskar close, and tooting on it all through the day - generally it's "Hey, can I play *this* song?" and generally the answer is Yes. If you get any more harps, get Lee Oskars. I could get a bad-ass little mic and amp and see if I get away with 'em in Santa Cruz, or just go acoustic. Yeah .... probably better go acoustic. Harmonicists are notorious for substituting an amp for experience. I don't want to be one of those. I have a real bug right now to experiment with marionettes, too. Make 'em, string 'em up, and teach them (or maybe they teach me) how to dance. And harmonica can go well with a marionette, you remember that Disney movie where the kid would do a trill on his harmonica and make things levitate?
My stupid blog is all about "learning the piano at age 50" and well .... digital pianos are awesome, but I haven't been doing anything with it, and right now it's gonna help me more to be able to do some choons musically on the harmonica.
Oh well off to do Mad Scientist stuff.
Thank you for your great post. This blog is great.
ReplyDelete