ditsy/down with the decoupage

Hi; happy March!

Today my mom and I worked on some prototypes for an Easter project we want to do with our knitting club ladies: decoupaged wooden eggs. They turned out so cute, in my opinion! We used various old leftover party paper napkins taken down to one ply, wooden eggs from the craft store painted white with some coats of gesso, and of course, Mod Podge.

This was really, really fun. Mine is the egg with pink flowers, all harvested from a floral napkin that had a ton of different variously colored flowers printed on it. My mom did the blue and white egg (she added in some beige napkin bits for an antique look). It looks so impressive for such a simple craft. I learned a technique to help with smoothing the wrinkles out of such delicate material as a single napkin ply, which was putting my whole hand in a plastic sandwich bag and gently rubbing the recently-Mod Podged flower with the smooth plastic of the sandwich bag covering my fingertip. It worked a treat for getting things to lie smoothly and evening out the application of said Mod Podge.

I haven't done decoupage in a billion years. Over fifteen, probably, or else I probably would have posted about it here, and I can find no such post. The last thing I decoupaged was a decorative box, I think. And I'm fairly sure I cut up some ancient Seventeen magazines for the images I slathered upon that box. So it's definitely been a grip.

Once I finished my prototype egg, I spent quite a while cutting out a lot of shapes from napkins, because I am not sure everyone who attends knitting club and might be interested in this craft is going to be able to handle scissors themselves. It seems prudent to have flakes of various decoupage-able things already on hand instead of having people cut their own.

The ditsy floral look is really appealing to me... always. But definitely right now. Here are my last two selfies, taken weeks apart.

Two different days, two different shirts, If You Can Believe It. I am currently into wearing my hair pinned back behind my ears. I got a haircut in February for the first time in a few years. While it is still long, my hair is no longer Pentecostal-length.

(Screencap from band video just 'cause. Still at it and it's still taking up half my time.)

Other notes:

• I've gotten to play my Omnichord a lot more than I expected to in band! High-key thrilling tbh.
• I was asking myself all morning: "Why do I hear 'decoupage' in a Strong Bad voice?" Turns out there is a sbemail. I had zero recollection of this particular sbemail, but one single tiny braincell must have packed this association away. (My brain has a fair few Strong Bad-oriented pathways. I should do a post about Homestar Runner-isms that I still use...)
• I've been rewatching Outlander since the final season just premiered. I want to be properly emotionally primed. I'm on season three right now, so season two is still fresh in my mind, and can I just say, what silliness is this "Faith survived" business? There is no way a newborn (if she did indeed survive) infant could remember a song. SILLINESS!!! They have got to explain this biz.

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sick daze

Being sick is a heckuva way to kick off a new year. For two weeks I was on a rollercoaster of feeling better only to yartz half an hour later, or whatever. I kept thinking I was on the mend and then I'd have an evening of chills and nausea.

I can't rightly recall what I even did for some of these endless evenings where I felt too bad to really do anything much. Oddly I did some cleaning and organizing. I played a lot of merge games (I play almost no games on my phone other than Solitaire, usually), to the point where I was having merging-related dreams. Speaking of dreams, I had Stranger Things dreams even though I haven't finished ST5. And speaking of TV I haven't finished, I tried to watch Heated Rivalry, but got irritated when episode three abruptly switched focus to the other couple -- the juice bar guy and other hockey guy -- so I paused in the middle of the ep and haven't gotten back to it yet. I'm not sure that I even like it but I'll probably finish it up.

I'm officially on the mend now; I was able to attend band practice this week and knitting club this weekend.

Between holidays and illness I didn't have band practice for a month, so by the time I got to attend again, I was feeling really intimidated and nervous about the idea of playing and singing in front of people again. I am actually very shy, aha! Our drummer was out, so the practice was more low-key, and I ended up being really thrilled because I got to bring my Omnichord!

(These pictures are screencaps from video footage -- hence they're pretty grainy!)

I mainly wanted to demo it and get their thoughts on its usability as a keyboard/synth element for us. It was so cool to plug it in and hear it amped in this setting, and to play it along with other instruments being played. We ended up playing through "Daniel" by Elton John a few times and the Omnichord really filled in the sound of that song. I was actually completely stoked!!! I was also stoked because I was able to keep up fairly well. I did mess up here and there; I'm still in that phase of learning the instrument. Sometimes it's a lot to try and process in the moment, what note is needed and where that button is on the instrument, on top of perhaps singing the song. It becomes a pileup in my brain and I just fritz out and mess up. But, in my opinion it sounded great, and the band guys were very supportive. I was honestly elated at how well it works for "Daniel" and I think we'll hit that song again and polish it up more in future sessions.

I'm also kinda stoked because the gingham backpack I bought (which I featured in my last post) has ended up being the PERFECT size for my Omnichord. This was nothing I had in mind while buying it. But I can fit my band chord notebook, my Omnichord, and several smaller bags for my cameras and external batteries and a number of cords in the backpack with ease. It's nice because I don't want to tote the Omnichord around without some padded covering and I feel this backpack offers it better protection than me trying to chuck it into a tote or something.

To end this post: I took all the Christmas ornaments off my pink tree and put on some heart-shaped ornaments to make a Valentine's tree.

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put me in, coach

I've had this band-related post sitting as a draft for a month now, whoops. As you recall, I joined my dad's jam band back in July! It didn't really seem to be a band at the time, but it has since really started to feel like one. We recently got a drummer (!!!) and it has added so much energy.

First off: I love, love, love playing with these guys. They are so incredibly kind and nice, and the atmosphere of each jam sesh is so positive and encouraging! Even a shy person such as me can play and sing along and contribute to a song, even if I'm just slamming my foot on a tambourine. Perfection is not expected. We mess up, we start over. We forget to sing when we're supposed to. Whatever!! We're just having "a ball," as one guy regularly puts it.

However: Twice now I've discussed with my therapist that I am still trying to figure out how to balance my time/energy, because I've been dedicating a lot of it to jam band stuff. I am sure there's a happy medium, and I'm sure that my own personal equilibrium will balance out again. But for me, there's a lot of learning and prep work involved! I think to an extent that is true of all the members of the band. I know that the other guys also practice solo to learn new material. But I only have familiarity with about two songs for every ten or twelve we do! The rest I either learn there on the spot during practice, or try to study in advance. And those new-to-me songs can kind of pile up, because we're putting together new ones every week.

I hand-write the lyrics and chords for everything, because this way, I can organize everything so it's easy for me to read and play. I can make notes to remind me of how to play or sing a certain part. I use a lot of markers and highlighters to denote choruses, pre-choruses, bridges, and outros -- all that! Just reading chords off a tablet screen that I have to constantly scroll doesn't work well for me. So I lay everything out exactly as I want it on a page or two, no fiddling with page-turning necessary!

(At this point I have four disparate guitar chord notebooks going: my main notebook, which is huge and heavy, with all my songs I like to play; a "family sing-along" notebook with more folk/60s stuff that my grandma and other family members know, which I can use to accompany them when we get together and sing; a notebook dedicated entirely to Christmas music; and pictured above, my band notebook.)

Whew, babey. The pre-pro and rehearsal aspects are both a lot of work for me. Even if we just meet once a week, I am doing that preparatory work several days a week right now: prepping the chords and lyrics in advance, all by hand, listening to a playlist of songs that the guys wanna do so I can learn the tunes, practicing playing on my own, and sometimes rehearsing with my dad.

And:

I've started recording big chunks of our practices, just using my phone on a tripod. These videos are for my own personal posterity and enjoyment. I like catching moments I missed, seeing my dad get really into a riff or seeing the bass player grin when a song is hitting him right. They're also a learning aid for me. Listening back helps me learn the way we're doing a song. But I've also been sectioning out some songs and uploading them to YouTube for the guys to enjoy too. I was just posting them unlisted to a channel where I dump all kinds of spare stuff -- concert footage, personal videos made for friends, past guitar covers I've recorded. But one of the guys said, "Hey! Wouldn't it be great to have our own YouTube channel?"

And of course, it was well within my power to make that happen. So I have created our band's YouTube channel and have started funneling the videos there. (I'd link it here, but I dunno, it's very real lifey.)

This is another way I am dedicating time and energy to this endeavor. Even if I'm just editing the video on my phone to clip out a song and uploading it right from there to YouTube, it takes some time to scrub through hours-long chunks of rehearsal footage and do that locating, that cropping. I prefer transferring the footage onto my computer to do more targeted cropping in Premiere. And if I do that, I can also do some more advanced editing. Adding zooms, fade-ins/fade-outs, or the occasional text note or other little details. I can create videos for audio-only recordings one of the other guys often takes, using stock footage or whatever. Just zhuzhing things a tad, when it strikes me as better to do so.

Again!!! Whew, babey.

I hope it doesn't sound like I'm complaining. I love playing music with these gents, and I love video editing. But I am still struggling with an overly-full plate. Hopefully I will settle into a groove or better schedule for band stuff, because I haven't had the spoons to do much else. No crocheting, no sewing, no dolly stuff, no drawing, no writing. I'm usually a big-time journaler but have abandoned my pen. There are zero photos or videos on my phone of things other than the band. NOT EVEN NEPHEW PHOTOS!!!

Can't ever just have a little hobby. Always gotta do the most. What's that about??

I think things having their "season" makes sense, and I tend to go through mental crop rotation in terms of hobbies anyway. So it's okay if this is "band season" for me. It's okay to concentrate on just one thing and not do 354 things all the time. But I'm just a "do 354 things all the time" kind of person!! I miss feeling involved with my doll hobby stuff. I miss having those spare spoons and using them to craft something impromptu. My therapist has stressed self-care right now to try and combat what feels like endless pouring from my not-so-full bucket, so I've been trying to carve out time to play my own preferred music on my guitar by myself, without turning it into a "let's do this with the band" thing. I've been trying to play Tetris while I listen to the songs I need to learn.

Anyway, who knows how long this experience will last as a whole? How long can all of us join together? How long will we all be available and capable? How long will we have a dedicated rehearsal space? I do want to appreciate this group and this experience while it is happening.

I'll end with a few undeniable positives:

• spending time with my dad, doing something we both enjoy, increasing our commonalities and touchstones
• expanding my musical palate with songs I've never heard and would never normally hear
• playing music with others leads to improvement in musical skill all-around, and I welcome any and all practice and fun on the guitar
• I have always loved to sing and it is just nice to be able to do it in any capacity
• getting to play instruments I've never played before: the djembe, the harmonica
• socializing with kind people is such a treat
• putting my video editing experience to use is satisfying
• just such a cool thing to get to do, be in a band!

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bandstarter

So for a while my dad (just behind me in the picture above) had a side-hustle buying, fixing up, and selling guitars. I mentioned it in this post from 2022, because I used to take pictures of the guitars for him. He no longer does it, but this business of his put him contact with a lot of new friends. For the past little while he's been meeting up with what my mom and I refer to as his "guitar buddies." They aren't a band, per se -- they just meet up and jam out playing covers, for the heck of it.

Well, guess who recently got invited to the jam sesh!!!

To set the scene: They meet up anywhere that works, and as of late that's been in a warehouse belonging to one of the fellas. It's a clean and nice (but very warm in the summer!) space. In the warehouse there's a little area set up with a drum kit, lots of guitars, a piano, microphones, speakers, pedals, cables, tripods, music stands, and a computer. Unless they decide to meet up at someone's house, this is where they've been playing.

The attendees are in their 50s and 60s, and so they play a lot of songs from their younger years. 70s, with a skosh of 60s and 80s as well. Currently they do not have a drummer, but do have a drum machine. My dad plays lead guitar; one guy plays rhythm guitar; and one plays bass guitar. I think there's another guy who sometimes shows up, and I have no idea what he plays, but perhaps I'll find out someday.

Whilst a gigantic fan blows around papers covered in chords and lyrics, songs get worked out. Everyone who wants to sing does so. Specific songs are pitched by whoever, whenever.

Left pic courtesy of my dad!

The first time I went, I didn't know even one of the handful of songs they played. I learned one of them on the spot. First the chords, then the tune, by listening to the guy singing lead. They gave me a mic (!) and I sang some backup. Shyly. Even though that was the only song I could play and sing with (besides a very impromptu acoustic cover of "Stand By Me" with one of the guys while something else was going on), that was honestly my goal in attending: to be able to play along with at least one song.

Nailed it!

After my first time playing with them, my dad said, "Yeah, you fit right in." I took that as a super high compliment, because I am not skilled at all. However, I think it was a more a vibe thing: I am basically a 67-year-old man in all other respects. So.

The most recent time I went, I sang lead (!!) on what is truly my personal anthem: "One Toke Over the Line," by Brewer and Shipley. Just kidding. It's a song I learned expressly for this jam sesh. Hahaha. Not my usual fare. But fun to play. Honestly it is very fun to play music with others, and I'm honored I was invited. My skill level is honestly such that to be able to even remotely keep up with a song here or there is an achievement for me. I'm also nervous to sing in front of other people, but they make it a really chill environment and are so positive and encouraging.

I mentioned in the post about my guitar from 2022 that my dad and I don't have a ton in common, so even though we both play the guitar, our differing skill levels and musical tastes have kept us from really being able to play together. Those differences definitely remain. I am not a skilled player, and we don't listen to the same music. But I'm learning his songs, and he is learning at least one I picked out. This is really beyond any expectation I ever had. I'm happy to be able to have this experience with my dad.

(Almost all the pics in this post consist of screengrabs from phone videos, by the by.)

BONUS: Here's "One Toke Over the Line" as performed on the Lawrence Welk Show. Personally, as I am an honorary old guy, I enjoy it.

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