Saxophone Selfie

Selfie with Saxophones

After a few months of practicing with a new singer and a new bass player (and with our old bass player moving over to lead guitar), my band — Duke Rushmore — is finally getting ready to play out live again. Two of our members make fliers for our gigs, and they asked for a selfie. I enlisted my wife to shoot this one for me.

Duke Rushmore Gig

Peace (rocking it loud),
Kevin

Slice of Life: Making Music Again

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective  …  You write, too.)

My band, minus a permanent lead singer (we’re in the process of auditioning some new folks), played out live for the first time the other day at a neighborhood Block Party, and while the weather was hot and the audience rather sparse, we had a blast on the lawn, and remembered again — after a long stretch of only playing for ourselves — the joy of making music for others.

That’s me on saxophone. We invited a friend to sing lead on this James Brown song.

Peace (play it),
Kevin

It’s Been A Long Time Since I’ve Rock and Rolled

Sold Out band

Later today, at a neighborhood block party, my bandmates and I will perform for a live audience for the first time in about four years. (I play saxophone). It’s exciting and nerve-wracking — mostly because our lead singer left the band a few weeks ago and myself and the bass player are taking over lead vocals, and neither of us is really a lead vocalist that can carry a band for extended periods of time. So we’ve divided up the task. We’ve also invited a friend to sit in and sing on a few songs.

Despite the nervous energy (will I remember all of the lyrics?) this morning, having an opportunity to move our sound from the basement to the stage (eh, the village lawn) on a beautiful day with a receptive audience is a great way to come out of the Pandemic Blues that sidelines so many musicians. There’s a whole level of energy from playing live with a band that is hard to explain.

We’ve recently gone back to an old band name — Duke Rushmore — and are looking for a singer so we can start playing out again on a regular basis. Wish us luck!

Peace (turn it up!),
Kevin

Science Journal App: Tracking the Ups and Downs of Music

Setting up the Music Space

I’ve had Science Journal app on my phone (Android) for some time now, and every so often, I pull it out to play with it. But last night, as my new/old band began to play for the first time in over a year with a PA system and guitar amps (long story short: we lost our singer and bass player and practice space, went acoustic, found new practice space, looking for singer and bass player), I wondered what the sound levels were.

Right before we started our first song of the night in our new practice space — Love Potion Number 9 — I put the Science Journal app into motion, capturing and recording the decibel levels in the room. Yeah, it was loud. Our drummer has been waiting a long time to pound on his skins (as opposed to the electronic drums he has been using). He pounded away.


But it was neat to see the spikes of the song in Science Journal later on. I could see where the solos were, and where the song dipped into the break part, and more. I could see where the decibels clipped maybe a bit too high.

It made me wonder about that 85 db range that we hit. So I tracked down this chart. No wonder our lead guitar player wears special “in ear” plugs. We hit 737 sounds!

Science Journal is part of Google’s Making & Science initiative, which is pretty cool to check out.  You can read more about Science Journal (it even connects to Arduino? Cool) with this article.

Peace (it sounds like),
Kevin