oncall sex for life: singing

Showing posts with label singing. Show all posts

Tired but out and about

I'm still kind of snuffly. Patrick is better, although he has some remaining congestion. He's got another Tacoma Opera rehearsal tonight, so hopefully it goes well. I'm going to attend the dress rehearsal for his opera tomorrow night with my sister, and it should be interesting. They're doing La Tragédie de Carmen, and I'm particularly keen on seeing it since I've sung the habanera from that opera and I'd like to hear it done with a real orchestra. Hopefully there is some sort of translator to help us along. When I saw Don Giovanni, they had the English translation of the libretto projected up above the stage. Immensely helpful.

I cannot wait to wear my awesome new head decoration and peer pretentiously through opera glasses.

Blessed Sacrament Church

Hey y'all. Patrick had a gig last Saturday at this church with the Tudor Choir, and I got to tag along. I took a few pictures, and you can see more here.

Musicians assembling. Patrick is rightmost on stage in the picture.

Sorry for the blur. This window was really hard to take a picture of due to the light behind it.

I tried getting a shot of the Christmas tree next to this that you can partly see, but it turned out blurry.

I love all the lit candles. The flickering is hypnotic.

Also, randomly, sunset over Puget Sound last Friday.

Songwriting continues

I've got two so far. I was working on the second one last night before the cold meds really took effect, and managed to revise it a bit. I'm still not any good at rhyming, but I don't think I care... I'll try to figure out some music for this second one. The first one only has a melody, nothing else, and I've got to flesh that out, too. There is so much work involved! Now that our piano is tuned, I can use it to help me decide how the songs should go.

I had a dream that told me if I wanted to write songs, I had to do it while sitting at the piano. Sometimes my brain is very straightforward about stuff. Like when I was little and sucked my thumb. I used to carry around a clean cloth diaper and tickle my nose with it while I sucked my thumb, and that was a lovely combination. My mom wanted me to stop, so she asked me how she could get me to do that, and I told her to take away my diaper. If she did that, I would stop. So she did, I did, and that was it, no fussing or anything. Maybe my brain's got the right idea about songwriting now.

It's hard for me to write songs about happy stuff. Usually I get them coming to me when I'm in the grip of huge emotional waves, and those tend to be negative, so I get writings full of blazing anger and despairing darkness. Maybe if I tried writing while hypomanic I'd end up with more positive stuff? I don't know. Anyway, it's not like anything really tangible has come of this yet. I just thought I'd let y'all know that I'm working on it, and my musical project has not been forgotten.

Improved version of Calling to the Night [now with actual link]

We figured out last night that something was wrong with the mic compression on the track, which was making it sound weird and vaguely out of tune if the person listening didn't use really good speakers/headphones. We didn't notice at first since we were listening to it through the recording software and an excellent headset. So we fixed that and I'll upload the improved version after I get home today. Serves us right for getting excited and trying to put it out as quickly as possible.

Here you go, Calling to the Night! Same as before, right click and save it to your desktop. Make SURE you delete the first version before downloading this, as it might not copy correctly. We had that issue with it, for some reason.

Also, we fixed the video sound. Here y'are.

Calling to the Night

An mp3 of this file is available here at Dropbox. Right click that link and save it to your desktop.

I told myself I wasn't going to mention these anymore until they were done, but I can't help it.

We did the first test recording of Calling to the Night last night, and it went great! We'll do a few more takes, and there's some harmonizing that needs to be added in, but it shouldn't take too long before we have a finished track. It's a really weird gig harmonizing with yourself. I can't wait until it's finished and you guys can hear it! I hope you like it.

So far this month is very productive. Along with the music stuff, we did another 40 cranes last night, so we only have 60 to go! My art project from April is nearly complete... Whee! I'll post pictures when it's done, and possibly video, depending on my bravery and the state of my hair.

Happy Friday everyone!

I take this as a personal affront.

It is SNOWING. Barely. But still. That horrible white stuff is drifting from the sky. There were a few flakes this afternoon, but now it's a bit more in earnest.

Note to world: Oscar Wilde was just screwing with you. There is NO importance attached to being earnest. Thanks.

In other news, we seem to have some sort of vermin living under the house. The cats were enthralled last night, and finally even Greg and I could hear rodentia scratching around under there. Greg thinks they're rats. I'm not sure. But rats, mice, gerbils, very small pachyderms, whatever they are, I want them gone! We're going to let the landpeople know, so hopefully they will take care of it. Whatever that entails. Although if they don't get around to it and eventually one of those little bastards eats its way up into the house, the cats will have an absolute field day. Ratpocalypse!

STOP SNOWING. NOW. Bloody weather.

I sang for four hours Friday evening after work, and it nearly kilt meh. Okay, so no. But I WAS very tired afterward, and I think I pulled or strained or something-ed a muscle in my left side. Singing is hard work, y'all. The first couple times I had a lesson, the next day it felt like I'd been doing situps for hours. I suppose it went fine. We were told to wear (and I quote) "stupid hats" for this Figgy Pudding business on Dec 5th, so while we were out at Fred Meyer last night I poked around and found a delightful one. It's a Santa hat with bell-bedecked reindeer antlers on it. How can you go wrong with a gem of that magnitude? I'll have you know I got a compliment on it (because of course I put it on my head immediately and wore it around the store) before I had even bought it. And then I got more compliments when I wore it to Harry Potter... You'd think people had never seen a bell-reindeer-santa hat before...

There was another hat I'd tried on first because it seemed a bit warmer, but as G informed me it made me look like I had my head shoved up Frosty the Snowman's arse. So that wouldn't do at all. And the reindeer antler headbands struck me as 1) not warm enough and 2) vaguely too reminiscent of drunken sorostitutes. Which, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, is an affectionate nickname given to sorority girls who dress like cheap hookers. Ah, the holidays!

I'm contemplating making stockings for us this year. My personal one is at home in Montana, and we have not got any here. We decided to do them this year for something fun and new, so (aside: STOP BLOODY SNOWING! There is even MORE coming down now! I'm going to write a nasty note to somebody about this.) I looked at a bunch online and they of course seemed overpriced for what they were. I've got an idea about instead of going to the fabric store, going to Goodwill or Value Village or similar and buying cheap clothes to cut up for fabric. Fabric bought at an actual craft store is insanely expensive, if you weren't aware of that. And I'm making stockings, not a tent. I don't exactly need fields of the stuff. So perhaps next weekend I will venture out and see what I can find.

Also, we bought a tree. Our last one got chucked in the bin because Somekitty who shall remain nameless chewed on the lights and half of them didn't work anymore. Of course it was the middle half, so we couldn't really disguise it with anything. We also have a bigger house, so we are going with a Mountain King prelighted balsam fir (multicolored). I can't find a single damn picture of it that's bigger than my eyeball (and isn't Flash) anywhere, and I can't figure out how to make a Mac take a screenshot, so go look at it here. We're going to have to go get some more trimmings, as our tree before was considerably smaller. But that is fine! I heartily enjoy trimming trees.

It is snowing MOAR. I feel sad. Why can't this crap (I just typed "carp" like three times and I suspect fish falling from the sky would actually please me more) wait until I have a four day weekend and don't have to go to work? I have stuff to do!

I'm going to go swill hot tea and sulk for a while in my pajamas.