recording

Weekly Wish VIDEO - "Lullabye"



Here is the latest Weekly Wishes video, filmed on location at my friend Matt Dinsick the Drummer's apartment. Singing is my friend Adam Reich, and joining us off-screen is Adam's friend Danny Reisbick the Bass Player.

This is the video that got tabled for logistical reasons back in the spring - it's hard enough to get two busy people's schedules to line up; four was a little ridiculous. But now it's the end of summer (read: not very lucrative, but less hectic at least), and we were able to find a couple hours the other afternoon to get together Matt's apartment in a leafy part of Brooklyn near Prospect Park.

Now, I'm a pretty considerate musician-neighbor. Matt is even more so because he's a drummer (neighbors are a lot quicker to get annoyed about drum practicing than piano practicing). He wanted to be wrapped up by 5 p.m. We got a couple decent takes at the beginning, but I decided to use this, our last take, what I like to call a f***-it take. I don't know that it was any better or worse than any of the others (as always, there are a hundred things I'd like to do better), but it was fun. And the dog outside seemed to enjoy it, too.

I have been wanting to learn to play that piano solo for a long time. Yay!

Gershwin, Take 4,936

My cousin left day before yesterday, so now life is back to normal (define normal) - with an addendum to my usual motto: try to suck down a little less booze each day.  (My night of heavy drinking with my cousin was three glasses of wine over the course of six hours - which I'm proud to admit to my parents and perhaps a little embarrassed to admit to my hard-drinking late-night cabaret friends).  Anyway, it's time to get back with my routine of practicing, Weekly Wishes projects, seeing local friends, and doing the bare minimum of housekeeping and working out.

Things are not going according to plan.  Well, most of life is.  Weekly Wishes - totally expendable in the business sense but important to me with my complete lack of business sense - not so much.  

I tried to record the Gershwin yesterday so I could post a video by the end of the month, but I didn't like any of the takes I did yesterday.  I hadn't practiced for a few days, so I could hang out with my cousin like a normal human being, and nothing was landing right on the recording.  All my bad playing habits - rushing, technical problems, missing the whole musical point of the damn thing - were out in full force.  It's amazing how recording something I intend to show others makes me pickier about my own playing AND makes my playing go in the crapper.  Grrrrrr.  I did kinda like the take where my kitty Diesel jumped up on the piano and made me lose my place, but only for the comedy.  Oh, and I haven't so much as listened to Ben Folds.  Too busy with gig stuff, and catching up on other work, and wanting to get the Gershwin video done without "wasting" another week on it. 

Ok, regroup.  New plan:
1. Give myself a short time slot to record - like a half hour from setting up to cleaning up - when I get home this afternoon. 
2. Pick the take that I like & post it.
3. Forget about Gershwin and all the things I wish I'd been able to do better, and move on to other work.
4. Be annoyed that everything takes so much longer than I want/expect it to.
5. Go out to dinner and forget about all of the above.