Two nights of Yacht Rock, and two times I have screwed up the Rosanna synth solo (my handwritten chart is pictured). I figured it out (too late) after the gig last night. We have also been playing our version of Christmas Vacation (done in the style of Rosanna), and I play a similar decending line for the synth solo, and now I can't get it out of my head when I'm trying to play the original solo. I've developed Chuck Knoblauch syndrome over it.
Thursday evening I also did a trio gig with David Ellington (piano), and Delbert Felix (bass) in Neiman Marcus at Lenox Square Mall. It went pretty well. I guess it was some sort of high end shopping spree. We didn't see much foot traffic, but the three of us had fun. Here are the mp3s for your listening pleasure:
Thursday night's Yacht Rock gig at the 10 High was sparsely attended. My old friend Mike Andriola showed up with a crew of people. There was also a girl right in the front who was super duper drunk, and I think the band watched her every move through the second set--she was like a time bomb about to explode on the monitor. So drunk, she couldn't even keep her eyes open.
Friday night was a private party for a law firm downtown. We were on the 50th floor of the Deloitte Building (191 Peachtree)...lots of cool views from that height. Our gig was in the executive dining room. Hardwood floors, windows, and sheetrock. We got loud. I played my solos on the dance floor out in front of the band, and that was kind of fun. On my solo on Biggest Part of Me, people on the dance floor actually moved away from me. It could've been the volume, or the blistering number of notes. It's kind of funny in a way.
An asian lady came up to me in the middle of a set and asked if we played anything with more soul. I said no. She said, what about the black people here? (nice stereotyping!). I said, black people like this stuff too. She was not swayed by my argument, so I laid my best line on her: I'm just the sax player. In other words, f*** off!
This is unrelated to my Rosanna issues, but here's a weird EWI thing: last week when it froze up, I just started pushing buttons to try and figure out what was wrong. On the EWI, you can select how you want the thing to react to breath pressure--it can translate into volume, velocity, aftertouch, and some other stuff. When I had messed it up, I had set so that it was all or nothing--either it was as loud as it would go or off. I thought I'd fixed it, but I noticed last night that when I would blow, the faders on my computer program would move up and down. It didn't do that before, so I tried something else. The something else would register that it was sending signal to the computer, but no sound. Later it dawned on me that since I had changed it so the faders would move up and down, those sounds now had the faders in the all the way down position--so basically I need to reset my levels now. Ahh, technology!
The good news tonight is that I'm playing a Platnumb gig. The bad news is that it's 9 PM to 1 AM, in Gainesville, so I'll be home at 3 AM again. Boo.
