Plan B - Oscar Peterson

We pianists can be eccentric.  Musically self-sufficient - takes longer to get bored playing solo on a piano than on an instrument that can only play one note at a time (I would think, anyway).  Not portable - guitarists can take their instrument to the park or wherever the other humans are.  Yeah, we can be real weird, locked in the garret with our 88-key orchestra.

It was one of the oddest pianists I ever met who introduced me to the music of Oscar Peterson.  Must have been freshman year, because we were in the dorms.  He pulled out a CD and insisted, in his vaguely Slavic accent (my friends and I never could pinpoint his country of origin or sexual orientation, and he never deigned to clarify), that I had to listen to this.  "This" was Oscar Peterson Live. 

"Bach's Blues", what!?!?   It was Bach, but it was blues!  It was the real thing - jazz - but it had roots in "real", respectable, classical music.  To us weird maverick classical pianists, it was a little rebellious, but still safe to respect because it had Bach's name on it.  It was like being told you can have tiramisu for Communion, and it still counts.

So - I downloaded "Every Time We Say Goodbye" from the album Oscar Peterson Plays the Cole Porter Songbook (and subsequently, the rest of the album), and started playing along yesterday afternoon. Plan B, commence!

Cinco de Mayo

Cinco de Mayo - the Mexican version of St. Patrick's Day, when everyone assumes a particular cultural heritage for one day as an excuse to wear bright colors drink large quantities of beer.  I'm playing for Trish LaRose is Bulletproof tonight, and will either be wearing my Virgen de Guadalupe t-shirt w/ jeans & boots (for a funky downtown look) or my bright blue Mexican-ish embroidered dress (for a faux-Mex look).  Thus I celebrate my New Mexican roots - that, and the black beans & rice w/ honest-to-goodness, from-the-bodega Mexican hot sauce.  I honestly don't remember how big a deal we make of Cinco de Mayo back home, but here, even the Irish pubs are rocking the Corona specials.  Ah well...

I have been sick this week - little cold/flu/allergy bug, not sure what, but I definitely had a fever during Epic Wednesday yesterday.  I sound like I've been smoking since I was three, and I can't breathe through my nose.  But I feel much better than I did yesterday.  Way to go, fever, cooking the germs! 

Anyway, I've done the bare minimum of activity this week - ie, no social life and no wish.  I'm bored with my wish anyway.  I really need a specific song and a pianist to imitate, otherwise it's so vague and I can't motivate myself to do anything.  So I'm working on a Plan B for goodbye songs - Nat suggested "Every Time We Say Goodbye", so I'm gonna see what piano-ey versions I can find of that song.

Weekly Wish - Farewell Songs

I wish there were time for everything. For instance, writing and performing with Nat.
Photo: Farrell Goldsmith

Nat is my opera singer/playwright friend, next-door neighbor, erstwhile writing/cabaret partner, force of nature, Fire Under My Ass (nickname Fuma).  It's been far too long since we've done a creative project together.  We're both too busy with individual projects now to, say, write, self-produce and perform a children's musical about time travel, but a little medley to close her studio's recital might be just the ticket.  I wish Nat and Kat could ride once more on the D.S. al Coda to the past! (You will get that if you were one of the...60 or so people who saw our show.)

So... I'm going to learn "So Long, Farewell" from The Sound of Music, and explore a few other goodbye songs, including the Donny Osmond song "For All We Know".  This is step one in arranging a medley. 

I should note that I decided about this week's wish a couple days ago, and am not choosing this theme because of Bin Laden's death.  While I have great respect for the people who devote their lives to serving the country, and for those who lost loved ones in 9-11, I can't quite bring myself to celebrate a violent death. 

I heard about the president's address via - where else - facebook, and, like many other people in the 20-45 demographic, was glued to my computer screen for the better part of an hour, watching news results as they came up on screen, and waiting impatiently for NPR to switch to live coverage from the White House.  This morning, many of my facebook friends who are parents were wondering "out loud" how to explain it all to their children. 

I'm glad I don't have to figure that one out. 

Wildly Implausible

Amazing how much my life revolves around connectivity and electronics: Starbucks wifi isn't working, and I forgot my headphones.  I had made one of my patented Wildly Implausible To-Do lists for this break between accompanying classes.  Thwarted by the internet demons, I started cementing my Frustration Face, and then I realized my break is only an hour long.  Just how much did I think I was gonna get done?  No big deal, I can work offline for an hour (offline!?  What's that!?).  

(Ok, the lady next to me just asked me if I'm having trouble with the internet, so that makes me feel better - it's not my computer or my troubleshooting skills.)

ummmm... No time for 'Round Midnight the past two days.  I was going to make a quiche tonight, but, particularly since I just spent a half hour trying to get a wifi signal, that is Wildly Implausible.  Looks like it'll be scrambled eggs for dinner.  That's ok, cooking is not a priority.  CookIES, yes, cookING, not so much. 

Joy of joys, 'Round Midnight is AABA form!  It has a lot of frills - intro, optional interlude, blah blah blah - but the main body of the song is AABA, which we all know is my personal roadmap to bliss.  I think I'll try playing it in all 12 keys tonight, to finish memorizing & getting it in my ear, then jam out with Monk if I have time left over.  Otherwise will have to jam late tomorrow night (all Wildly Implausible, but many things that happen are Wildly Implausible). 

Entering into a few weeks of freelance feast (not famine).  Yay!  And then when famine time comes, I'll have time to eat again.  Maybe even make quiche.

Hard Times - Weekly Wish VIDEO #4!


Here's the video of "Hard Times" Arthur Wise and I recorded last week! 

Note the glass and the phone on the keyboard bench next to Arthur: I often lure friends and fellow musicians to my home with the promise of a beverage and some of my (almost) world-famous guacamole.  Arthur assures me he wasn't texting during the song, he was starting the phone to record. 

As I mentioned before, this wasn't my most polished performance, but I definitely had the most fun at this recording session. It's a tough balance to strike, between wanting to be perfect, and letting go of the nitpickiness in performance.  I knew from the get-go that I hadn't spent enough time to get all the notes Ray played, much less the exact timing etc. (which is really hard without a full band - I couldn't play exactly what he was playing without at least a rhythm section)... so I just ate a lot of guacamole and had a good time. 

More later on how I need to do more of this (have a good time, at least, maybe not the guacamole...).

Let me know what you think!

Weekly Wish 4/25/11 - 'Round Midnight

Madison Square Park
It is a beautiful, beautiful day in New York City - the kind of day that's just humid enough that subway stations hint at the murderous heat and humidity to come, but outdoors is a brief nirvana between slushy chill and odoriferous inferno.  There's a gentle breeze blowing through Madison Square Park, trees and flowers are blooming, and the wifi is free. 

I was going to do a little Art Tatum week, but about midway through my lobby gig today, it occurred to me that I really wish I could play "'Round Midnight" by heart.  In fact, I wish I could give it a decent go with the lead sheet in front of my face; my fingers stumble over the unexpected harmonies. 

The first time I played jazz in college, my combo-mates very generously compared my playing to Thelonious Monk.  This was the kindest possible description of my hopeful stabbing at the keys.  The difference is (well, one of the differences) that Monk knew what he was doing.  But we were both quirky and percussive, and the undeserved compliment kept me from dying of shame during some of my more pathetic solo choruses.  They thought I sounded like Monk! Yeah!

And here I am, a decade later.  I don't get to play Actual Jazz Music with Actual Jazz Musicians very often these days.  New York jazzers are scary - if they're not getting to earn a living just from playing the music they love, they at least want to be jamming with people who are good enough improvisers to give them a satisfying, challenging musical experience (ie, not me).  But I still like to think I'm a lot better than I was back then.

The moral of the story is, in order to get good at something, you have to A) love it a lot, and B) be willing to suck at it for a very, very long time while you're working on it.

Happy Earth Day (free caffeine!!!!!!)

Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz mmmmm teaaaaaa...

Happy Earth Day!  Public service announcement for people who have a Pavlovian reaction to freebies: free coffee or tea today at Starbucks if you bring in your own mug.  I plan on having my third free cuppa on the way home from my church gig this evening.  As a musician, I'm conditioned to take advantage of free food or drink whenever I can. 

So, Arthur and I recorded "Hard Times" last night, and it was the most fun I've had recording so far.  This is because A) I like collaborating, B) Arthur is fun to work with, and C) I went into it knowing it was not going to be a polished performance.  In a perfect world, I'd have enough time to make it perfect.  In the world where I live and move and have my being, there was enough time to get the notes figured out by late afternoon yesterday.  So some of the notes went away (where do they go?  and where do the wrong ones come from?) when it came down to recording with Arthur. 

Then there's the fact that I worked from a recording with a full band.  Ray floats all over the beat with his bluesy fills, because the drummer and bassist are laying down the beat.  With more time, I could have made my left hand a little more independent to make the time steadier.  Would also love to have made a more dynamic arrangement (the horns take care of it on the recording, but I didn't think about that until too late), and gotten more of the articulations in the right hand (oh, and more of the notes... heh). 

So that's my self-critique.  I had a lot more fun, given that I had no illusions that I might be able to create a polished performance.  Score for this week: Katgut 1, Perfectionazi 0.

Ack Ack Ack Ack Ack!!!

Newly reinstated Don't Panic reminder
Two minutes later...
That is the sound my brain makes when I have to learn music quickly.  Actually, it used to be my inner monologue anytime I played music, because it never felt secure.  Fun thing about not having technique.  But since I've been working on it, the panic only sets in when I have to learn something really fast. 

Yesterday, I had to learn a couple scenes from a new opera for a last-minute rehearsal gig I picked up.  Because of that, I have to play catch-up on Ray Charles today, because, heaven help us, Arthur and I are going to record tonight.  Ack ack ack ack ack!

The problem with "ack ack ack ack ack" is that the panic gets into your muscle memory, and while music may sound frenetic, it should never feel frenetic to play it.  A few months ago, I printed out an image of "Don't Panic" from Hitchhiker's Guide and taped it to my piano.  Then Diesel ate it.  He's also a fan of post-its and corrugated cardboard, though not so fond of veal cat food which is the only flavor carried by the ghetto bodega next door.  I ask you, who feeds veal to kittens??!!? (It was a cat food emergency.)

But I digress.

I was pretty happy with my work yesterday - I stopped panicking long enough to get it semi-under-my-fingers, and to analyze which parts were important to nail and which parts, not-so-much (rhythm and cues notes for singers = important; getting every note of a series of 5-note tone clusters = not-so-much), and I was not the total disaster I feared in rehearsal (I don't dip my toes - or fingers - into the opera world very often).

So.  Back to the piano to hang out with Ray.  I printed out another "Don't Panic" sign for Diesel's eventual nibbling pleasure. Ack Ack Ack Ack Ack!! Don't panic, don't panic, don't panic...

Weekly Wish 04-18-11 - Ray Charles

If last year was a time for generalization and overview, this year is a time for detail. I didn't do much w/ Fats last week (sadly), but I'm kinda ok with it, because I did a lot of details work with some other music I had to work on.  It falls into the category of "I wish I had more of a career", so I'm ok with that. 

Back to my own quixotic Wishes this week, though: Ray Charles/Hard Times.

My friend is coming over to sing & record on Thursday night.  (Rolls up shirtsleeves.) I work well with deadlines. 

Today's mission: play the song in all 12 keys - sans riffs/fills, just to get really comfortable with the progression and possible chord voicings. 

Annual Pop Quiz!

It was about this time last year when I posted my "messed-up love" quiz.  This year's quiz is inspired by a reader comment: What well-known pop song contains the lyric "moot"?

That's it!  That's the pop quiz!  See you next year!

...Ok, the real reason I'm springing this pop quiz on you, gentle readers, is that I have done diddlysquat on my Wish this week; ergo, I have nothing to write about it.  Well, almost nothing - I just reserved a copy of of the solo transcriptions from the library, and I've got some Fats Waller on my ipod "Wish Project" playlist, and I've been thinking about it a lot...

Here's some stupid human behavior for you: I was looking at the transcriptions the other day on Amazon, contemplating ordering it so I'd get it today (I have free 2-day shipping with Amazon prime, blah blah blah).  Well, I happened to see that it's available for Kindle.  Huh.  I'd never noticed that before.  Instant download.  All of a sudden two days seemed like such a long time...

No, I didn't buy the Kindle (I'm saving for a drumkit, remember?)... but at that moment, I couldn't bring myself to order the book when it would take TWO WHOLE DAYS to get to me.  This from a girl who hails from the Land of Manana, where 2-day shipping regularly takes over a week.  

Hopefully I'll get the music by Saturday, when I have a day off and a little time for Wishful practicing.  Again, the by ear thing... just that Fats Waller played sooooo many notes, and I didn't learn to read music for nothin'... C'mon, NYPL, don't let me down!  I owe New York state a lot of tax money, and I wanna get something out of it!

Weekly Wish 04-11-11 - Fats Waller

Diesel is a sweet kitten when he ain't misbehavin'...
Well, that was a waste of five bucks. 

I just downloaded sheet music for a Fats Waller transcription (I hoped) of "Ain't Misbehavin'".  The first page (which is all you see before you buy) looked promising to be a note-for-note transcription of what he plays, but it was not.  Of course, they all say Fats Waller, because he wrote the song.  I guess that's what I get for being lazy and not learning it by ear.  I can do it that way, or I can buy the book of his solo transcriptions.  I'll probably do both - buy the book but learn some parts by ear anyway.  Eeeeee!!!

"Eeeeeee" is for excitement - I love, that is luurrrrrrve Fats Waller.  His playing is full of both muscle and humor.  He's the kind of guy who'd write a song called "Your Feet's Too Big."  "Your pedal extremities really are obnoxious", he says at the end of the song.  I mean, I ask you.  I wish I could get inside this guy's head a little bit. 

"Your pedal extremities really are obnoxious - one never knows, do one..."

Why Wish

Today I figured out why it's important to do my Weekly Wishes project.  I mean, beyond the wishing "...I could play like such-and-such".  As I've mentioned several times, I'm constantly arguing with myself about whether I should be putting time into my own whimsical project, when time is at a premium and there are so many other things begging to be done.  So today's revelation makes me a mite less conflicted than before, always a welcome sensation to this Gemini. 

I imagine it must be really lovely to be a naturally cheerful, positive person.  I wouldn't know.  I've learned from experience how destructive pessimism can be, and how nothing worthwhile gets done without a constant stream of "I think I can, I think I can".  The pastor at my church gig uses the example of two wolves - which wolf wins the fight, the good one or the bad?  The one you feed.  I have to fight every single day to keep from pouring a bag of premium feed into the big bad wolf's trough (wait, do wolves eat out of troughs??!). 

My point is, I realized today that my Weekly Wishes project is my reminder to feed the good wolf.  It has indeed been a busy week, but when I threw up my hands the other night and decided to give a teeny part of my week to working thru my Dr. John book/CD - just because I like that style of music and because studying music is what I do with my life - the good wolf won.  I haven't had much time to put into it, but I've been having fun with the Texas boogie (started memorizing it and trying it in other keys today), and just reading/listening through the rest of the book.

To satisfy the Voice of Reason:  I'm a lot more motivated to practice when I have a just-for-fun thing on the practice list.  And making time for one important thing helps me remember to try to make time for other important things, like friends and working out.

Oh, and sleep. 

Weekly Wish 4/4/11: the Battle of the Doubts

Remember the Doubts?  My friends, the insidious little inner monologue mofos that try to convince me that every decision I'm making is wrong?  Well, lately they've been creeping back, doing reconnaissance work, lobbing the occasional test missile to find my new weak spots. 

Some doubts are useful - like when I see some old person struggling to get around on the subway, and I wonder exactly what I'm going to do when I get old.  Work til I die, still schlepping up four flights of stairs at the end of the day, after I've bounced my old bones around the city on public transit?  Maybe better think about how I can make enough money to put away for when I can't work so hard - or at all (God forbid, I'd go crazy). 

Then there are the useless Doubts.  They were being "helpful" today when I was trying to figure out my Weekly Wish for this busy week. 

"Don't do a wish this week.  You don't have time. You should focus on actual work, that might make you actual dollars," intoned the Voice of Reason (the VR is related to the Doubts by marriage).

"Hey, I've got a wish for ya," hollered a Doubt with a thick Brooklyn accent.  "How about, I wish I hadn't grown up in the middle of buttf***ing nowhere, so I could have gotten more experience as a kid, or at least seen professional performances?"

And all hell broke loose:  I wish I'd known more about my career options when I was in college.  I wish I had been ready to know my career options in college.  I wish I hadn't spent so many years getting in my own way.  I wish I hadn't played for so many years with bad technique before I found a teacher who could help me fix it.  I wish it hadn't taken career disappointment and near-injury to take that step.  I wish it weren't too late (thirty thirty thirty thirty...)...

"SHUT UP!!!!!" Katgut came roaring back. Ok, regroup.  Just make a damn wish, ok? Just pick something and learn it.  Fats Waller? ...nah, not this week.  Review Billy Joel or Elton John favorites? Go back to Lullabye? No, I need something new, a present for my bedraggled self.  ...Hey, what's this book I bought and never used?  Dr. John Teaches New Orleans Piano?

I do wish I could play a little New Orleans piano.  So I'm gonna take a little time every day, a half hour or so, and work through as much of this book as I can.  The CD that comes with it is cool, because it's Dr. John himself playing - not soulless midi tracks of the examples in the book - and he breaks down the examples with an intereviewer, so it feels kinda like a really chill master class.

I did my half hour just before I wrote this  - annoyed the neighbors by playing the basic Texas boogie in all 12 keys.  Status: much better now, Doubts have retreated for the time being, and I can play a really simple Texas boogie. 

The Gershwin Transcriptions (and Bloopers!)

Wow, this Weekly Wish video was a pain in the ass, especially for a 1-minute solo piece! But more on that in a moment (you can watch the blooper reel while you wait, only 45 seconds!) - first, for those who followed a link here in the hope of getting actual information:

This piece is from a collection of solo piano arrangements Gershwin wrote of his own songs. I chose Swanee, because it was one of two songs in the book that were also available on the Gershwin Piano Rolls recording.  Of course, what he wrote down is much simpler than what he actually played on the piano rolls.  Mortal that I am, I chose to learn what he wrote down.  The arrangement I learned is only two pages long, and doesn't include the intro or verse, just starts right on "Swanee, how I love ya..." etc.  It's a short, repetitive song, so much of the musical interest lies in the variations Gershwin wrote for the piano - fills and ornaments in the right hand, and harmonic variation/passing chords. 

Mind you, "musical interest" should not be confused with "important".  One of my Stonewall singers, Brookes, was over for rehearsal the other day.  Since the piece is only a minute long, I've taken to bombarding innocent people with it when there's a down moment.  Brookes was digging through his bag for his sheet music, and I saw my chance - and what do you know, he started singing along!  Fun. 

A couple days later, I was practicing after my failed recording session, berating myself for being a terrible musician and a failure in life, when I did have one lucid, helpful thought: Why was is so much better when Brookes was singing with me?  Not just because I prefer accompanying to solo piano.  The melody, dumbass.  I'd been working so hard to get the damn 16th-note triplets clean that I forgot about the melody (see, this is why I like singers; for their sins, they do take care of the melody for me).

About recording: listening back to yourself.  Aggagaggggglkkkkk... but if you can get over the cringe/gag factor and listen as if you were listening to a student, it's really enlightening.  My playing has gotten maybe a little bit better recently, but I've gotten waaaaaaaaaay pickier, from listening back with the knowledge that I intend to put in out there on the interwebs where anyone can see it.  This is not a comfortable thing, but I think it's a good thing. 

I wasn't satisfied with my playing on this one, but I decided to find a stopping point so I can move on to other things I want to play.  I chose the take I did for the video because, while there were a couple takes where the technical stuff landed better, this one felt free-er and less careful.  And it didn't involve a falling piano lamp.

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.

Weekly Wish 03/28/11

My piano tuner is almost done making my piano sound beautiful again!  He had to raise the pitch 12 cents, which is music jargon for "it was kind of obnoxiously flat."  Take that, neighbors who were blasting techno at 7 a.m.! 

Weekly Wish:
Heh... oh yeah, I learned the solo for "Lullabye", but I wish I knew what Ben Folds was playing during the rest of the song.

Last year I only ever had time to learn the structure of a song, and jam along to get the overall feel (which is what we classical-background babies tend to lack most) but didn't have time to listen closely to the details of what the piano player is doing.  The point of my Weekly Wishes project is to learn from piano players I admire by copying them. 

Maybe I've written about this before - I don't remember: I used to be the music coordinator for the Songs of Love Foundation.  One of the veteran songwriter/producers for that organization is also a wonderful pianist - plays jazz, club dates, in cover bands, all the stuff that I think is really cool but kinda suck at.  Once I was over at his apartment - think I was recording vocals for one of the verrrrrry few songs I wrote and sang (I mean, the organizations mission is to make the children feel better hearing their song, so...).  I asked him if he was still studying piano, and with whom. 

"Nah, I haven't taken piano lessons since I was a kid," he said.  I was amazed.  He gestured to his CD tower: "They're my teachers."

I wanna be like them when I grow up.

Just a Glance; or, An Hour at the Met

Finally had a little time to get up through the instrumental section of "Hard Times" today, after exploring Central Park and the Met with my cousin, and meeting her other friends for brunch (complete with mimosas and a dimwitted, surly hostess).  My goal: get through the first three sections of the song without worrying if they were perfect.

Have been getting hung up on perfectionism again, which makes me not want to practice at all, but rather wallow in my belief at how great it would be to be able to play like that, which surely I could do it if I just tried.  I affirmed my hunch that the fills in the second verse are much the same as the second verse, noodled my way through the instrumental section.  I was just finding a stopping point when my cousin returned.

My imperfect but productive session today was inspired, if not by the mimosas, then by our trip to the Met: my cousin and I were both dragged through museums as children - dragged slowly, while our respective parents took in EVERY MORSEL OF INFORMATION in the building.

"Mom, I'll be in the gift shop," I would say to my mom after about 55 minutes of well-behaved tedium.

"Mmm-hmm ok honey," she would respond, her eyes not leaving the information plaque she was reading.

Consequently, my cousin and I both evolved brain synapses that fuse after about an hour in any museum.  The attention span we do possess, we prefer to spend by walking at a moderate speed, making cracks about the things we see.  Today, we made up bawdy alternate titles for paintings and decided that the Romans used ornate marble bathtubs which they repurposed as sarcophagi at the end of life (matching lids, half off!).  Sure enough, after an hour, we grew quiet and pensive, our brains turning into culturally overstimulated mush.  Time to get out of there.

You may think that we don't appreciate art.  Other museum visitors who heard us giggling our way through the 19th Century European paintings almost certainly thought so.  I assure you, that's not the case - art adds so much joy and silliness to our lives - why should we have to plod through and take it all so seriously?

Delays and Distractions

Someone put this on facebook a while back. Sometimes fiction is so truthful.
A day bookended by travel delays: This morning rush hour, I was stuck in the bowels of the subway system for almost an hour on a train that couldn't proceed because a safety barrier was stuck.  We ended up having to go backwards a few hundred feet to get on another track.  My favorite part of the ordeal (I mean, what's not to like?) was when people in my car broke into weary laughter when the train operator announced, "The train. Is about. To mooooove!"  Someone shouted "Margaritas!"

As a self-employed contractor who relies on public transit in a city that would be crippled by traffic if the proletariat commuted above ground with the bourgeoisie, I have a lot to say on this subject, but for now I will confine myself to a haiku:

service cuts, delays
as infrastructure crumbles
my small business dies

Now my cousin is waiting for her delayed flight from San Francisco. She won't be landing here until well after midnight, which will be interesting for both of us when I have to leave tomorrow before 8 a.m..  Guess I'll draw her a little map to my neighborhood cafe, so she doesn't have to wake up at 5 a.m. her time.  By the way, who does HOMEWORK at a CAFE on their first trip to New York?  Apparently the addiction to workahol runs in the family.

Speaking of which, after a break which included the most amazing 15-min chair massage EVER and far too many fritos, it's time to get some work done so I can present my cousin with a bowl of chili and a clean(ish) apartment when she finally arrives.  On the agenda:
*run through rep I'm going to play for my teacher tomorrow at our approx-monthly lesson
*plan workshop I'm co-teaching tomorrow morning
*transcribe more Ray (try to get up through the sax solo)
If I stay away from Fritos, the internet, and other distractions, it should take about 3 hours.  So let's be real and say 4.  Which I know is a fairly accurate estimate, since it doesn't involve the New York City subway.

I am Officially a Music Nerd

It has happened, a whole new level of geekdom: I have been called a music nerd by strangers.  I got an email from the writer (?) on mastersdegree.net, notifying me that I'd been included in this article - a list of music theory blogs. Can you believe it? A whole list of other nerdy music blogs!  I am in heaven.  I can't want to have time to check them out. 

Today was a lighter work day, so I practiced a lot AND made potato soup and cornbread for dinner (be impressed. This is as domestic as I get.).  AND I also took a short nap with my Guard-Kitten.  He actually deigned to curl up by my tummy - he usually sleeps down by my feet, all the better to bite them when he wakes up and decides it's time to play.

Spent some time with Ray tonight.  (If you're just joining us, I'm working on Ray Charles' "Hard Times" this week - whether I deserve to be on first-name basis with him is debatable, but I'm working on it).  I quickly reminded myself of the chord progression (you may remember it was one of my songs last year), then I slowed things down a little with Quicktime and worked on the first verse.  Have decided to figure out the right hand part first, since I'm gonna have to add in a bass part for the left hand.  Practicing in slow-mo is fun, because I can hear every bend in Ray's voice.

Calling it a night - will have to live up to me music nerd reputation another night.  Definitely coming down with something, and tomorrow is Epic Wednesday, followed by my cousin's arrival Thursday night, followed by about 6 weeks without a full day off.  Freelance feast or famine: spring is harvest time.  Can't get sick!