Song currently playing: DC Talk – What if I Stumble
Aloha!
Tuesday finds me sick, but recovering.
Sunday evening was great, I love spending time with Mr. Ho. We went to Indian Echo Caverns. It was his first time going, though everyone in his house had gone. He never got to go because he had to work. He had invited me over to his house a couple weeks before, and I had recommended we rectify that problem.
He readily agreed, as long as it was accompanied by a Vietnamese dinner at a restaurant later, his treat. Of course, I was up for that. 😀 (Big Grin)
The caverns were truly stunning, and Mr. Ho, who had never seen such a thing, was truly stunned. Unfortunately, none of the dozens of pictures I took came out. My camera sucks in the dark, and has a terrible processing speed. Ah well. We had fun. Afterward we went out to a Vietnamese restaurant in Harrisburg. I had Pho’ (pronounced Fa), which is a delicious minty stew with beef, lettuce, parsley, sprouts, and different parts of a cow stomach. If the last one makes your stomach churn, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. It’s delicious.
It was joined with the complimentary spring rolls and French Iced Coffee. Mr. Ho also introduced me to a Coconut drink too, which I will have to learn how to make.
We spoke of many things, of love, of war, marriage and separation. I pity him sometimes, he has had such sorrow in his later years… if only his children saw that.
Monday we had Pagoda practice, and I met Saxton’s old roomie Long. Very nice fellow, and one heck of a football arm. He had had surgery done which had cost him a limp in his legs, but he made up for that by nailing every shot he fired.
Practice went well, we ran through the set smoothly, and Lox and I went over the solos in My Heart Set with the Sun and Of Things to Come, which I had been having trouble with. I think I’ve pretty much got them down.
Unfortunately, the blasted computer I’m trying to build for the band is not reading ANY drives now, causing me more frustration in not getting the band soft-recording. I’m thinking about changing motherboards.
The band just… gelled last night. Dunno. There was something there. We were running a new system, Lox got himself a new amp. I think he needs to spend some more time alone with it to get the levels, he doesn’t have as much bass pumping out of it. It’s nice and loud, but screechy.
Saxton used Lox’s old amp to sing through, but that was really screechy too. My head felt like needles by the time we were done.
I like having Saxton’s old amp to sing through, though. I think it fits my voice pretty well.
Lox caught me with the Man in the Movie song, but I told him I didn’t want to show it until after recording. I need to spend more time with it on the keyboard anyway, I need to develop the cello part more.
He mentioned, however, that he thought bands stayed together longer if each player brought a song to they had wrote to the table, and THEN asked for input.
I agreed with that very much. We do that sometimes, but a lot of our songs start out with someone messing around and everyone else jumping on the bandwagon. That works very well in some cases, but heaven forbid if you have any pre-defined ideas about the song, because the other players will squash them flat. Also, sometimes the medley completely changes because we can’t hear each other. This completely wrecks harmony at times.
I’m not sure. It works sometimes, but at times I feel it leaves something out. Orchestration is an important part of songwriting to me; I don’t put in parts of a song for no reason.
Dunno. I plan on having the cello, piano and vocals down before I play The Man in the Movie for them, and then ask what they might think about backup vocals, drums, guitar & bass. I think some of us like it one way and some of us like it the other, so I think compromise is good.
Besides, we do write some good stuff off the cuff.
We’ll see after this weekend.