Flattery, they say, will get you anywhere. "I like the way you play that song better than the original," someone told me, "so you should record it." But since I can't leave anything well enough alone, I had to change it up and make it worse. You can't see it in the video because I set the camera up wrong and we didn't have time for a second take, but the boop-beep in the second chorus is a KORG monotribe. Basically, it's a single-voice oscillator synthesizer that you play by sliding a stylus (or, in the case, the field-expedient substitute of a Clayton .80mm guitar pick) along a pressure-sensitive ribbon. For the price of a monotribe you can get a real keyboard "synth" with 72 keys and all sorts of patches and whatnot, but it will be a digital synth, which is not close to being the same thing.
Garrett and I had fun with this one, and even if the mix is a little off, those things happen. Besides the monotribe, I'm playing my Rainsong JM1000. Garrett is playing my 1974 Gibson J-40.
Yesterday I barely "celebrated" Thanksgiving with a trip to Burger King for dinner. I am not a holiday person. Today the whole world called or texted or emailed me. One caller just got done doing the hair and makeup at a wedding for a fellow with whom she was once in love. Another is stranded far from home doing family obligations and experiencing a tremendous amount of physical pain due to this odd lupus-like disorder that is making all her joints hurt all the time. I don't have the ability to fix either situation, really. My son is still enjoying his time in Florida, chasing geckos and teaching his great-grandfather how to make dinosaurs out of a model kit. The world is chugging along. At some point, I need to get over this pneumonia and go join it.