The 75 Dollar Night

Just An Hour And Twenty Minutes Of Playing
...what might have been....
Friday night, I left the Uxi Duxi when they closed at 8 PM, and was home and working on a song with Audacity, thinking that I was splitting the time between those two endeavors, soon afterwards, and until about 10:30 PM.
I was at the Lilly Pad around 11 PM, and sometime during the next hour and a half was able have 75 dollars thrown into my tip basket.
It was one group of about 5 tourists, who had stopped to listen to me just after I had begun a Grateful Dead song and then was having a life defining moment, when I thought to myself that, maybe it was time to lay the Grateful Dead to rest; the songs had a lot of meaning to me once, but it was very long ago, and rather than "whipping a dead horse," - a phrase a buddy of mine and me used to use to describe a musician we knew who seemed to be trying to recreate the Woodstock Festival every gig- perhaps, I felt.
I stopped after the first couple of chords.
"Do you know any Grateful Dead?," immediately asked one of the tourists. They were in their early thirties, but looked like having money had allowed them to keep the sheen on themselves, I suppose I would say they looked like Tennis players, or guys that raced in the America Cup yacht thing.
"Ah, I was just starting a Grateful Dead song, but wasn't sure," I said, before going back to China Doll, and doing what was a heartfelt, if nothing else, rendition, and that is probably when the three 20, and one 10 dollar bills went into the jar.
From my angle, all I could see was ones, but, I believe these tourists had the same savvy as others have had, and had buried larger bills under the ones.
With the two women who had snatched the 20 Euro (cent) coin fresh in my mind, I didn't let the group get more than 20 feet away after they had thanked me profusely and then left, before I scooped money out of the basket, leaving only 4 ones in it. I didn't look at the money I scooped out, only made sure that the 4 ones stayed in there; so it wasn't until I was at the Quartermaster that I learned that it had been a 75 dollar night.
Of course I was remiss for not playing longer, there was at least 2 more hours of tourist action out there. Plus, I had started so relatively, given that it's carnival time, late.
And then, I went home and stayed up the rest of the morning, and into the afternoon, working on music that is plodding along, but is laying the foundation for what I believe will result in music composed and recorded by myself which is almost as listenable as the music of the band called "Radiohead."
Now, this might sound like quite a pie in the sky, especially since the girl who frequents the Uxi Duxi and who wears equestrian boots sometimes and whose family is wealthy and who only has to attend Tulane University for fun and who is an artist because she has the luxury of entering any field she chooses without any pressure upon her to have to make a penny, and who is the same artist who lambasted any artist who uses "filters" in the creation of their art (especially when it is evident at first glance that they have done so) has said that her favorite band is Radiohead.

Bridge Construction
My latest approach to music, and what I have been working on the past couple weeks,  has an analogy in bridge construction, in a manner of thinking.
If I am building a 4 lane bridge (a 4 track recording) I will work on all 4 tracks simultaneously.
Before, I would do the equivalent of building one lane all the way across the river, and then going back to run another one alongside it, and would try to end up with a 4 lane bridge over the river.
Now, I am taking all 4 lanes at the same time, in short stretches.
I lay down a drum pattern and then do the opening bass riff over and over until I hit a smooth, good sounding one, for at least 8 measures.
Then I can copy this 8 bar stretch where the bass and drums are perfect together, and use the "repeat" effect to make this repeat for a while.
This gives me the canvas to lay down the guitar over. Same deal, I can play along to the perfect bass and drum section until I hit a real fancy sounding 8 bar stretch; then snip it out and make it repeat for a minute or so, while another voice is added.
The only thing I won't use this approach on is the vocals, since each verse will be different, so the repeat effect is useless. Except on a chorus, which will repeat. I can sing along with that repeatedly until the backup vocal is breathing in at the same time with and matching every syllable with the first voice.
Something tells me that all the music I have done in the past few years has been prone to sounding too raggedy because I haven't been matching multiple voices neatly enough. Well, now I will.

This is going to radically take my music to the opposite extreme from where it has been.
I had been playing guitar (and maybe singing) on tracks that ran for several minutes.

This was good in the sense that it allowed inspiration to strike and new verses or alternate chords might have been spawned.
But, the drawback was that the next instruments to be added had to be played by someone who could remember the exact form of the song. Didn't I sing one extra verse that one time through? Is this where the jam in the middle starts, or did I start it after one more chorus?  type of thing.
The remedy would be to stop and map out the measures onto a chart, which could then be followed along with -something which would be smart, but which might be an inspiration killer.
It utilizes the other hemisphere of the brain, which could be detriment to all...
But, I am going to continue to post music here; probably after I have taken the time to make videos of still shots to go with it, at the least...
It's 2:30 PM, I had better make my move towards Howard Westra's house, as the Superbowl kicks off in 2 and a half hours. And, I'm sure the party has already started; with food and drink flowing...