I'm Sorry, But the Morning Ain't Gonna Come...

So, I don't know what has gotten into me this year, but looking back thus far, I have done a lot of things that I have never done--nor dreamed of doing--before. I have to say that the latest of my crazinesses was quite possibly the most out of my comfort zone. A previous student of mine, Geoph (who played Jean Valjean in Les Mis at Northridge) who is currently one of my son's guitar teachers (the other is a friend of his named Simon) asked me at one of my son's recent guitar lessons if I would sing with their Ska band at their CD release party. Now, I feel that I have had ample musical experience to be able to sing with confidence, and really, how difficult can a song that a 19 year old kid wrote in his spare time working as a host at Mimi's Cafe be to sing? Apparently, if the aforementioned kid is very musically gifted, the song can literally be the most difficult piece of music that I have ever seen!! So much for my bigheaded musical experience! For those of you with any musical background, let me explain a few things about this song. It is written in 6/8 time, the entire song is arpeggios done in 16th notes--and the best part is, the pace is at about 200. (Go and find a metronone and set it to 200 and then imagine singing 2 notes in between each beat). Now you have to know that each note has it's own syllable--and so this means that you are singing over 250 words in 45 seconds.

So, after a week of doing almost nothing else but practice, I had to go and practice with the band. Now I was thrown another curveball--I had to sing the song and compete with two electric guitars, a bass guitar, a drum set, and another vocalist who already knows how to sing loudly enough to be heard over the other instruments. I was still attempting to figure out whether it is humanly possible to breathe during the song, let alone sing with any type of volume. I was then directed to a mic, that I had to do the rocker thing with and "EAT" to be heard at all!! This was very uncomfortable for me as my previous mic experience has generally been standing next to my sister with a piano 25 feet away--we are usually standing at a pulpit and being reasonably (I say reasonably as this is me that we are talking about) reverent and the mic is facing straight up at the ceiling so that we are not too loud for the congregation. Needless to say that my Avenue (the Ska band) experience was quite different.

All in all, the whole thing was very enjoyable, and terrifying--I became lightheaded as soon as the song was over the night of the party and had to go outside for a minute so as not to pass out--but they have asked that I sing with them again, and although I had to promise to sing louder, it went pretty well in the end. Yea for living life and trying new and different things!! Yea for not getting in ruts!! Yea for making the occasional fool of yourself so that you can experience as many things in life as possible!!