Teaching is coming back around. I did five or six in a row yesterday, which is good news. The store (Music and Arts) keeps telling me that when my Mondays and Tuesdays get full, they'd like me to add an extra day. That sounds good in theory, but since that hasn't happened (all available slots full) once in the past three years, I'm not holding my breath. Plus, I'm not sure about which day would work. They asked about Saturdays, but I've almost always got a gig Saturday night, and now Jack's getting to the age where he has sports stuff happening Saturday mornings. Sundays could work, but I don't think the store has an open room that day. The other day they asked about was Friday, which seems like it could happen. Just like Saturdays, I seriously wonder what kid is interested in killing part of their weekend on a music lesson. I know I would not have wanted to do that.
Last night was a Platnumb rehearsal. The original basis for calling the rehearsal was to prep for recording a new demo. I'm not sure we accomplished that--there was no mention of that, and I doubt it was on anybody's mind. Instead it was a review of a couple of songs and a trudging through of a couple of new ones. It's cool to add some new stuff, but I prefer to add them at soundcheck. I would say that I really only need to run through stuff once to make sure the form of the song is set. Anything beyond that is a waste.
The trend with newer material tends to be in cobbling multiple songs into a medley of sorts. These tend to be songs that don't work on their own, so we prop them up against other songs--just a taste, not a full meal! Sometimes it works, but sometimes it's of absurd--I mean, if the song doesn't work live, let it go! Play the mp3 on the break! We come up with some pretty random segues...will they work in two weeks? We'll see.
My main problem with rehearsal is that Jack is at an age where I would like to be around for stories and the end-of-the-day stuff, and leaving to go wander through a rehearsal is not what I want to do with my time. I already miss this on Thursday nights, Saturday nights, and Sunday nights because of gigs. When it's a gig, I can justify it in my head, but when I have to go hang out while somebody in the band tries to learn a song he couldn't bother listening to beforehand, I really don't want to be there.
On to today!
