My husband is a rock musician. Through and through. Ask him to play anything ‘rock’, blues, even jazz, and he’s all over it. Ask him to play something more folk or classical, and he begins to suffer. He’s an upbeat man. I’m a downbeat woman. I look for the beat. He looks for the ‘and’ between the beats. Trouble brews. Always.
Most of what we play …because that’s what he arranges …is classic rock — stuff written to emphasize the upbeat. And, of course, I play it like the downbeat woman I am …which makes for lively sessions with husband waving his hands in the air, singing out the upbeats. (I’d love to catch him on video doing that, but, well, that’s not going to fly. He’d be giving me his Beethoven impersonation. You know, stormy eyebrows?!)
Anyway, we did manage to get In Memory of Elizabeth Reed laid down, so, here, in all its upbeat glory, despite the downbeat woman on flute, is the audio of the culmination of today’s efforts.
For those who have the capability to play flac files, which are better sounding than .mp3s because they’re lossless, here’s that file:
For those only capable of handling .mp3s, here’s that one:
About once every three years, I catch some nasty upper or upper and lower respiratory disease, this despite the most powerful flu shots and the most potent pneumonia shots available as preventatives. Usually, these nasties come compliments of my truck-driving husband, diseases which he catches driving Canada. …Or they might come from some friend who has children and neglects to wash his hands and face after hugging and smooching them off to school. And the nasty is always devastating, coming near to killing me.
I absolutely do not do ‘sick’ well. I’m never gracious about it. Neither do I run to the doctor’s office — no point. By the time they can get me an appointment, I’ll have either died or survived. And, yes, I despise doctors, too, simply because they do not listen. Instead, it’s “daddy knows best” with verbal pats on the head as they proceed to use the appointment as an opportunity to treat me like their personal lab guinea pig with blood tests, urine tests, scans, and x-rays that have nothing at all to do with my illness, results delivered to me a week later telling me that my tests came out fine, but that makes no sense to them because, by rights, I should have all these things wrong with me based on statistics, so they’d like to do some follow-up tests, now.
Would you just give me some bloody antibiotics for the secondary infection, please?
Well, they think I’ll recover without them.
Right. As I hack up more greenish, putrid-smelling phlegm.
That will be $160 for the visit, two grand for the scans, another $300 for the x-ray, and, $75 for the urine test.
You betcha. Oh, and none of it is covered by that ugly close-to-a-grand-a-month-just-for-me Obamacare policy I have to pay to Blue Cross.
This last weekend, two recording sessions produced two new covers to release. Video won’t be available for awhile, because, honestly, with one of me, I can’t keep up with the processing. Tuesday last, I posted he audio of Nothing Else Matters, a very special piece to Forrest and me, but, while I uploaded the audio of Hold Your Head Up, I didn’t have enough time allotted to get it linked in and properly labelled. I did manage to get it up on SoundCloud, but barely. There’s no cover art, yet, so I’m using one of our defaults. Again, just not enough of me to go around. Enjoy.
Residual effects from recording our video tribute to Chris Cornell still plaguing me, namely an ear-worm that’s been playing itself over and over in my head for a solid week, we set up for recording again, this time to record Forrest’s arrangement of Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters.
Nothing Else Matters has special significance for Forrest and I. It’s our love song, describing in music and words, how we feel about one another and, truly, about life with each other …and life in general, too. The music evokes the kindled essence of who and what we are to each other, to life, and to ourselves. The lyrics express our attitude, feelings, and perspective about life, others, society, and, yes, even the core of our love to and for one another. It’s our song in a lot of ways, far beyond normal significance.
Enough of all that stuff, though. Back to the session.
Because it’s rock, we keep it strictly in time to its intended tempo, recording under headphones to a click track …which makes it a bit of a trick, because intonation (staying on pitch) on the flute requires subtle adjustments, note by note on the fly …which requires both ears listening. To complicate things, the flute has delay (sometimes called echo) on it in places, and, later, both the guitar and the flute are under heavy distortion, the guitar chunky, the flute gritty and reedy. For me, this makes performing it a careful thing, because I must compensate accordingly for the signal lag that happens to the flute under distortion patches.
Add to that, in this session, my red light fright made my back and neck rigid with tension. Halfway through, it felt like I had knives or, maybe, ice picks, stuck, both, in the back of my neck and in my lumbar region — nasty, piercing, metallic sensations that worsened with the most subtle movement. By the end of the session, I was greedily, needily eyeing a bottle of pain killers, something I rarely ever take, no matter what. I managed to finish the session without resorting to chemical numbing, but just.
A few stretches, bends, and deep breathing techniques cleared the problem within minutes once I fled the studio, escaping outside into the night, there to assuage my taut nerves with gentle darkness and kind evening breezes. Then came the sound.
Session done, Forrest had opened up the studio windows and was playing the recording. It filtered out into the night and, listening, I felt awed. That was us! From a distance, It sounded epic, and that’s saying something for a flute and guitar duo of a song that brings me, a woman who doesn’t cry, to the brink of tears.
“Nothing Else Matters”
So close no matter how far
Couldn’t be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
And nothing else matters
Never opened myself this way
Life is ours, we live it our way
All these words I don’t just say
And nothing else matters
Trust I seek and I find in you
Every day for us something new
Open mind for a different view
And nothing else matters
Never cared for what they do
Never cared for what they know
But I know
So close no matter how far
Couldn’t be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
And nothing else matters
Never cared for what they do
Never cared for what they know
But I know
I never opened myself this way
Life is ours, we live it our way
All these words I don’t just say
And nothing else matters
Trust I seek and I find in you
Every day for us something new
Open mind for a different view
And nothing else matters
Never cared for what they say
Never cared for games they play
Never cared for what they do
Never cared for what they know
And I know
So close no matter how far
Couldn’t be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
No nothing else matters
A whirlwind weekend — rehearsal, recording, videography — the resulting video a tribute to a rock star recently passed. Long hours, long days, longer nights, then Monday.
After getting Forrest to the truck, I desperately needed ‘down time’ and quiet to grab a little sleep. And, of course, as soon as I fell comatose into bed, Mom said that a friend showed up. I guess they stayed quite awhile, glancing every so often toward the door to my bedroom that sits at one end of a balcony span overlooking the great room. But I was far gone into oblivion, literally banked by a protective passel of cats, Laddie, the dog, snoozing away, guard-of-the-door.
I didn’t get more than the necessities done yesterday. I couldn’t. I was wobbling on my feet with exhaustion. But it was a happy, productive weekend, which is nice. We actually rehearsed, recorded, and successfully video recorded Forrest’s arrangement of Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell. Then I compiled the video.
It took five-and-a-half hours to put the video together, and, that, for me, is miracle fast, because I usually spend at least three days compiling them. I wanted it done by the time Forrest woke, so pulled an all nighter after getting house and hold battened down for the night. And I managed it — just. On render, there’s only one not-so-glaring mistake — quite a feat when you’re doing something on-the-fly.
The response to it has been lackluster, but that’s okay. We’re happy.
While yesterday was recovery, today I’m feeling like ‘the day after’. You know the feeling, I’m sure. Over-indulgence in anything carries an aftermath of echoed requite.
So, meanwhile, here’s our version of Black Hole Sun.
