60. I Miss The Snow (RPM)

DAY SIXTY

This is my new tatoo.

Day sixty and it’s nearly 2!  Yay!  Tardiness!

Anyway… well, Jonathan and I have had a long few days.  I just returned home from driving him to the airport.  While he was still at work today I bought him a ticket to San Diego where his dad is in the hospital in the ICU hooked up to a ventilator.  It’s all very sudden and worrisome.  I hope you understand me being so late in the posting today… Some things take a back seat when  things like this happen.  I have never purchased a plane ticket on the day the flight was to take off: what an exciting purchase… if you can call it “exciting”.  I packed him a bag, he rushed home from work, and we were off.  Luckily, the cheapest ticket to San Diego was leaving from Westchester Airport: a very clean, tiny, tiny, tiny, airport with absolutely no traffic.  So, now, I am home.  With Lacey.  Thinking.  Trying to work.  We have just eaten turkey sandwiches and a black and white cookie.  I concentrate on why the white icing on the cookie is so hard and the black icing is so soft…

This is a song from the RPM Challenge I did with Guy.  I spent a ton of time working on a song-study on rhythm and perfect fifths, and then this whole thing kind of collapsed on us.  I will finished that song today and get it ready to post: on time!  I have the whole weekend alone with Lacey.  I will get her to help me on a song, too.

Pearl and the Beard have a show tomorrow night at Webster Hall and then we leave for tour on Monday!  Jonathan will still be gone…I will keep you updated on life’s progress as I post…

Oh, Life: you are a cruel, yet tempting mistress.

Recording:  I made 2 tracks of cello loops and sent them to Guy and Mike.  Guys lyrics are always so appropriate and haunting.  I like them.  Mike’s piano is perfect… I mixed this one because I initiated it.  I wanted to bring Guy’s voice up front: he has a tiny insecurity about his voice and usually pulls it back, but I love it, and think it’s right where it should be.  Thanks Guy and Mike!

I Miss The Snow

Down here the trees look weird

And the leaves don’t turn to copper and then fall

I put whiskey in my coffee

Just to take the edge off

Because around here the days are sharp enough to cut you

On Sundays I feel so listless

Cause no one here prays the way we did

Though I don’t know your phone number

I still dial to hear them talk the way we do

If I could just hear even a moment

Of you breathing I might somehow be all right

I miss the snow and I miss Melissa

I miss her sister who screams in her sleep

32. Study On Imperfect Dissonances (Or just scroll to the bottom for a song with words)

DAY THIRTY-TWO.

I hope we’re friends.  Would you understand me if I told you I’ve kind of lost my marbles?  Would you forgive me after I lost them and then got them back?  Would you believe me if I told you this doesn’t happen all the time, just on those occasions that I have a solo show at the Knitting Factory falling on February 4th?

EHP @ THE KNITTING FACTORY,  Thursday, February 4; Doors at 8:00; $10, with cellist Brent Arnold and Kelli Rudick.

I’ll be bringing with me only 20 of some new 365 EPs I’ve put together that have 5 songs from The Project.  They’ll probably be buried in the lining of a chair soon enough, so get them while you can still find them!

Today, in light of my show tomorrow night, and the fact that I’ve been completely looney and sensitive today, I thought I might test my own patience, and yours as well.  Rick Gribenas, my teacher and friend I talked about in song #1, made a comment about the final piece I did for his class.  I had the entire class sit in a circle and I surrounded them with tape recorders.  Each tape recorder had the same recording on it, but each played at a different time.  The sounds contained thereon started as pops, scratches, etc., but gradually moved to a Bach Prelude toward the end.  Each sound had it’s own moment and then faded away.  He made an interesting comment to me about each section, “The second I thought I was going to get bored and start tuning it out, it changed and I was brought in again.”  I think about this comment all the time.  Rick had an amazing ear and patience for sound that I don’t think I’ve seen on very many people.

Given this information about patience, I will now tell you a short story about what happened to me today:

I got my cello bow rehaired, and I left to pick it up this morning.  On my way home, I saw a guy sitting in his car with his windows rolled down.  With music blasting, I heard vocals rising from the CD that was playing in his car.  The man started to sing along completely off key.  What a cool sonic experience for me today.  I heard a recording with instruments and a vocal melody line, and this guy is just sitting in his car having a good time and singing a melody that is completely unrelated tonally.  It was such a cool sound that I wanted to recreate it somewhat today.

Another part of this entry is this: I was listening to a friend’s song recently, and I realized that the main harmony in the bass was just a tritone repeated over and over again.  Tritones are so cool (A tritone is an interval that spans three whole tones.)  Want to sing a tritone?  Are you a West Side Story fan?  Remember the song Maria?  The first two notes of the word “Maria” are a tritone.

Okay, so today’s song:

It is eleven different tones cut up and repeated for about 2 and a half minutes.  The first tone is a tritone, then an interval of a minor second (think Jaws Theme) on top of that and so on.  Basically playing with as many dissonances as the memory in garageband would let me.  It crapped out at 11.  The last track I added was a “I’m feeling totally weird today and feel like a total idiot in general,” kind of track- arbitrary information set just underneath the dissonances- a huge weight crushing it.  *Shows are a cause of great happiness and complete anxiety for me both at the same time.  But all will be well.  And then I will have a cookie.

I understand that this might be a little out there.  So, because I love you-  I really do- I am including a live version (newly re-mixed!) of a song I wrote called War.  It’s tonal, loud, and I use the backwards option on my loop pedal.  I’ll be performing this song tomorrow (War, not today’s posting…)

I guess today’s point is the idea that we keep our ears open as much as possible without immediately judging and assigning a quality.  (I’m totally guilty of this…)

As my bow repair guy, Tom Barilla (who is moving to Pennsylvania in March! Saddness!) always says right as I walk out the door: Be well!

EHP

Study on Imperfect Dissonances

War – Live at WhySound, August 6, 2009

Start a war

Brain on Fire

And the tide comes in from the north

Break the skin

Burning through

And I feel the fire

You

Righteous hands

Solid ground

And these bones they’ve thinned

These bones they’ve thinned this skin I’m in

You

Start a war

Brain on fire

And these bones, they’ve thinned

These bones, they feel the fire.

**GLORIA RE-RECORDING:

**I have re-recorded and posted a new version of Gloria (day 3) for you to hear.  The live one has great moments, but the quality wasn’t superb, and I needed a better version.  Happy Listening! -ehp

2. Beats and Snogs

DAY TWO: Beats and Snogs

What Google Image Gives You For "Beats and Snogs"

Let’s talk about titles.  I don’t plan a title ahead of time unless something comes down from Heaven and says, “Hark, ye.  See ye this song title!”  Most of the time I just type some word salad into the “New File Name” space when I first start.  Sometimes, that word salad just usually ends up becoming the title in one form or another.  So, let’s not get our panties in a bunch about Beats and Snogs, especially since there’s no beats or snogs in it.  It’s what it wanted to be.

Today I will be addressing Garageband.  Why, you might be asking, when there are so many other awesome programs with which to record, am I using Garageband?

a. It’s “cheap”.  MUCH cheaper than paying millions of Emily dollars to buy protools (and the techie laptop you have to get to sustain the kind of memory you need for it) or other some such hardware.  And to those bootleggers of you: I’m just too lazy to hunt for it and a bit overly aware of the guilt that might come afterwords for not getting the legit copy…

b. It’s easy.  I have a Mac. There it is.

c. It doesn’t really matter, right…?

Now, I don’t LOVE Garageband.  It’s super limiting when it comes to the detailed tools necessary for mixing and mastering, but it works for my purposes most of the time.  My frustrations only grow to larger proportions when I work on projects like I posted yesterday (…and today’s, actually).  I had huge sections of poorly recorded and old material that I wanted to use but couldn’t make it cleaner or louder.  Part of this is my limited experience but some of it is the actual program I’m using.  Regardless, I’m doing a song every single day for 365 days.  I have to accept some of the imperfections that come, no?

I am returning to my “musical roots” of sorts with Beats and Snogs.  After moving from Pittsburgh to Utah, I found myself without a job and home all day with a new Mac computer.  I started experimenting with sound, recording, and sampling.  The instrument samples in Garageband are okay, especially if you tear them apart and put them back together micro-beat by micro-beat.  My main reason for using pre-recorded samples is because I don’t have free access to the real instruments or people that can actually play them (i.e. sweet-ass vibraphone).  I created a bunch of songs back then using this same deconstruction process in Garageband.  I stopped doing it in favor of more acoustic songwriting and real-time looping (which I’ll do later on, I’m sure).

This entry is a perfect example of me needing to let go while in the creative process.  I started this at 7:30 am and finished everything but the vocals at around 12:30 pm (It being the very end of the holiday season, I found I had some extra time).  I did another 2 hours on it just coming up with levels that only annoyed me a little bit.  To an engineer this probably doesn’t sound like much time, but I must remind myself that I’m doing this every single day and have a “day job”.  Perfectionism might become a problem, so I’m setting myself time limits to record and call it quits.  To be honest, I didn’t like this one very much at first, feeling like I copped out a little by using more deconstructed samples again and deliberately choosing not to spend much time on finding a great vocal melody line; but the more I listen, the more I like it.

As time goes on, you, my friend, will discover that Emily Hope Price loves movies.  I love seeing movies, and I love watching my favorite movies over and over.  The best part about a good film is the visual and emotional residue it leaves on you after it’s over.  Some of my favorite movies are ones that most people hated, but I love watching them because the cinematic feel of the piece as a whole is so great.  This song is like that for me; in fact, most of what I write tends to lean the way of color and texture…Headphones are recommended.

In this entry you will hear more of the Rick Gribenas recordings (see Day 1) towards the end.  In this example I had asked him if he had anything with words or people talking.  He pulled out some great moments, and I only wish I could find the whole session.

Tomorrow!

EHP

Beats and Snogs

P.S.

Admittance of a deeply ingrained guilty pleasure: Record scratches & pops are some of my favorite sounds in all existence.  I’ll try to keep it at a minimum.

1. Rick Gribenas/365

Preamble

Since announcing this new project, I’ve gotten some mixed responses.  Most have been very supportive, a few have been, “Are you crazy?!  What happens when you go on tour or get sick?!”  To those latter people, I will say to you: I have no idea.  But, I’m heading into this process with an open mind.  Now, I realize that, realistically, I may not be able to post a song every single day (given internet access, recording conditions or a huge monsoon), however, I will make an effort to at least post an update every day.  In any case, I’m incredibly excited with what the project has already done for me: a realization that I can create anything.  With so many days and opportunities to create something new, how can I possibly hesitate or over-edit?  And I suppose that’s what I want to teach myself: there are no limits and sometimes you just have to let things be what they’re going to be.  And those out there listening and reading, thank you for participating in this experience with me.  So, here we go…

DAY ONE.

Rick Gribenas

In 2004, I completed my master’s degree in cello performance at a private college in Pittsburgh named Carnegie Mellon.  During the winter semester of my first year there, I signed up for a class called something like, The Sink Drips Dry.  It was a sound art class taught by  an adjunct professor and artist named Rick Gribenas.  It was mind-altering for me as I stepped into a totally different kind of thinking and observing.  Learning to listen differently and see differently, I started composing and improvising in a whole new way.  At the end of my two years in the program, a master’s recital was required.  The program I had devised with my teacher was entirely from the standard cello repetoire: Bach, Beethoven, and now, sadly, I don’t recall the 20th century piece.   Debussy?  I really wanted to do something different that expressed the things Rick had taught me.  So I approached Rick, being an active and incredible installation and multi-media artist, about collaborating with me on a piece for my recital.  He agreed enthusiastically, and we met one night to brainstorm ideas.  I recorded the entire evening on my mini-disc player.  As I recall, the evening was a difficult one for me because I felt totally out of my league brought on my insecurity and intimidation.  Rick was warm, friendly and totally open to new thoughts, but, still, I remained petrified!  Oh, how I wish I hadn’t been so reserved!  This guy, even at the ripe-old-age of 27, was totally beyond my artistic experience.  I felt I couldn’t think of anything interesting or remarkable to play or express musically.  He sat at a table of knobs, boxes and tape recorders, blipping and bleeping, quiet and focused.   He was kind and patient as I stumbled around and requested different sounds from him, looking for something that might inspire an idea.  As my recital came closer, I unfortunately concluded that the collaboration wasn’t going to happen in time.  I now think this happening was more driven by my insecurity than fact.  In its place, however, I performed the 4 movement Four Stages, a piece about the four stages of Hodgekins Disease which I wrote and dedicated to Rick.

On March 17th 2009, Rick passed away at the age of 31.  As I start this 365 Project, I really wanted to have Rick there from the beginning.

This first piece for the 365 Project includes sections from the recording I made the night Rick and I brainstormed.  A collaboration!  Tomorrow, I’ll get into how I’m putting things together and my general frustrations about the production process, but for now, I’ll just keep it at this.

At the very end you’ll hear a sound byte of Rick’s voice that might be difficult to hear.  I included it anyway because I felt like it described things perfectly.  At one point in the recording, I requested a sonic change from him, and you can hear him reply, “I get you. I guess I was just trying to listen.”

See you tomorrow

EHP

1. Rick Gribenas/365

BRICKS Pittsburgh

Rick’s wife Charissa has started a (soon to be non-profit) organization in Pittsburgh, PA called BRICKS that aims to connect Young Adult cancer patients to people and resources that may be useful to them as they undergo treatment and beyond. They also hope to raise awareness about Young Adult cancers, and impact survival rates through education and activism.  She is a fine, fine lady.  Read her incredibly moving personal accounts and how she is changing lives at http://brickspgh.blogspot.com.

Rick’s website: www.gribenas.com

“We must be lofty and emotional; there must be risk if systems are to be shifted and rearranged.  It is necessary to transmit and receive.” – Rick Gribenas