Public debut on electric guitar
I make my public debut playing electric guitar at a local park's Sunday evening family concert series. The music school has invited me to play with their other students. Due to my classical music training and Confucian work ethic, I practice two to three hours per day on my days off work for two weeks before the concert. I rearrange my work schedule to make time. I take two extra guitar lessons, tweak the settings on the amps and effects, play with the Thunderbolt audio interface, learn how to use GarageBand. I try to learn MainStage 3, but the three hour-long instructional video on lynda.com is so convoluted and long-winded , that I table MainStage 3 for later. I focus mainly on practicing guitar using a drum machine as my metronome. I play for Dr. CB, who has transformed from top research scientist into an astounding singer-songwriter, seemingly overnight (Dr. CB is one of the most intelligent and fascinating people I know, with intimidating musicianship and songwriting chops). Both Dr. CB and my guitar teacher, Dr. J, tell me the same thing, that I need to work on my singing.
"Smile on the Wind" by Chauncey Bowers
I am singing only because I haven't found other singers/musicians to form a duet or trio with me yet. I am convinced that I am not meant to sing, that my singing voice only serves as an instrument to be used in times of drought. That is, I don't have anyone singing with me for now. I can keep a tune, and the prosody sounds tolerable. My alto has a limited range, although I can often sing in the range of Bono from U2. As soon as a decent singer/musician will join me, I will focus on mainly playing guitar, violin, keys, and only sing back-up.
I show up at the bandshell in the park an hour before the concert for soundcheck. While waiting for my turn, I chat with a few kids who will be playing in the same concert. I find out that the kids' dad plays drums. I introduce myself to the dad and ask him to play drums with me during my set. Then the music school's owner, Mr. AI, offers to play bass, in addition to playing rhythm guitar on one piece. Suddenly I find myself playing with a full band for the first time ever, without any prior rehearsals.
During soundcheck, I run the Thunderbolt interface's audio out into a combo guitar amp, and the volume is way too low. I soon find out that I have been moved up to the opening act, when the initial set list has put my set on second, and my set will start in 15 minutes. We abandon the guitar effects that I have carefully refined on GarageBand over the past two weeks. I will have to play my guitar clean, using an entirely analog signal directly into the amp. During soundcheck, I fumble my way through "House of the Rising Sun," which I have performed for smaller audiences without trouble. Hearing my guitar and my voice broadcast through the PA throughout the park, my hands start sweating, and my fingers start sliding off the F chord in first position on the fret. Every small error is magnified over 200 ft, among the dozens of people gathering for tonight's concert.
I go on stage and introduce myself to the audience. I tell them that I am almost fifty years old, and that it has been my lifelong dream to play rock guitar. We open with Dick Dale's "Misirlou,"one of the best known surf rock instrumentals. The Black Eyed Peas sample "Misirlou" and have a hit with "Pump It"(2005). Quentin Tarantino chooses "Misirlou" to open his breakout film Pulp Fiction (1994). I play "Misirlou" because I am inspired by DeVotchKa's "All the Sand in All the Sea" to learn tremolo picking on the guitar. Tremolo picking requires rapid, even picking on guitar strings, and the lead guitar on "Misirlou" features Dale's Fender Stratocaster with tremolo picking and minimal echo effects. When I first play "Misirlou" on acoustic guitar, Mr. AI tells me that it is an old Macedonian folk song. The melody has been in the eastern Mediterranean for well over 100 years in various arrangements, instrumental and vocal. Dick Dale's father comes from Lebanon, and Dick Dale hears this folk melody from his father's family. Dick Dale transforms an old folk melody from the Middle East and Eastern Europe, with a gypsy scale in E major, into a quintessential Californian surf rock tour-de-force. You feel waves spraying and crashing on Dick Dale's "Misirlou." I tell the audience that this 100 year-old song from the eastern Mediterranean has become a song of Americana, representing the S CA surf culture.
"Misirlou" by Dick Dale:
"Pump It" by Black Eyed Peas:
"All the Sand in All the Sea" by DeVotchKa (Live at Red Rocks Amphitheater with CO Symphony):
While Mr. AI and I have played "Misirlou" together before on acoustic guitars, we have never played with a drummer. I manage to play the entire song at 130 beats per minute (bpm), which is about 10-20 bpm slower than Dick Dale. 130 bpm is the minimum speed where the song maintains the energy of crashing waves. I thoroughly enjoy myself and make all the slides and transitions up and down the fretboard and sound decent. Consider that I begin playing "Misirlou" at 75 bpm and gradually work my way up to 130 bpm with a metronome over the past three months. Each note on the guitar string when tremolo picking has to be played evenly at a breakneck speed, and this challenging technique sounds amazing when done properly. My husband R later tells me that our rendition of "Misirlou" is the most rocking song of our entire set.
We play "She Sells Sanctuary" by the Cult next. I tell the audience that I'm playing a song that's younger than I am, written by the great Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy. I have always loved this song ever since its release in 1985. I start teaching myself the song about two months ago after I watch a few YouTube video tutorials and work out the riffs by ear. For some reason, I have only recently developed the confidence to play this, even though it has a very simple chord progression of D-C-G. Billy Duffy says in interviews that the key to playing "Sanctuary" is to get the sense of locomotion in the song. I aim for a constant, hypnotic and droning velocity on guitar and voice. I have a great time playing "Sanctuary" with drummer and bassist live and become completely immersed in the song. I want this moment to last a little longer and extend the outro guitar solo by an extra eight bars. The drummer, who knows the song well and tells me earlier that it's one of his personal favorites, closes the song at its usual point, while I'm indulging in a last minute, guitar improvisation. I look back at him to signal that the song is going a bit over, as I find a smooth riff to close the song with the whole band. Not too bad for my first time as bandleader. I consider "Sanctuary" my best performance of the set.
"She Sells Sanctuary" by the Cult:
We end with "White Wedding" by Billy Idol. I mess up the opening B minor chord and have to start over again, which throws me off, even after just performing two songs successfully. I also make a last minute change to play lead guitar now that I am playing with a full band, although I have been practicing the fingerstyle guitar arrangement over the past three months. I play both the lead guitar and bass lines in the fingerstyle arrangement, which is a lot harder than lead guitar alone. I have spent months working my way up from 80 bpm up to 125 bmp on the metronome, to get the timing down on singing while playing the sixteenth note riffs of the second and third verses . On stage I can't hear my own voice on the monitor. My mouth keeps accidentally hitting the microphone. I move too far away from the mic, I get lost and flub the vocals. The frantic feeling bleeds into my guitar playing, even though I have been playing "White Wedding"'s lead guitar for almost two years. I soldier on, through messy nerves and missing vocals, navigating through without stopping or pausing, sometimes adding an extra measure or two of guitar riffs to mark my path through the song. I'm not sure how much the audience can hear my many mistakes on "White Wedding." Mr. AI, who has heard me play it on acoustic guitar a year ago, tells me that we should have rehearsed this older song. I wonder if he thinks that I have just gone on stage and played it without much practice. It stings even more since I have worked on "White Wedding" for so long, and the first two songs of the set have gone so well. I end my set by thanking the audience and telling them that I have been playing guitar for two years now.
"White Wedding (unplugged)" by Billy Idol, featuring the fingerstyle arrangement by the amazing Steve Stevens:
In Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, the first chapter opens with the backstage scenes of a play. The novel's female protagonist, April Wheeler, plays the lead in a local community theater production. April has settled down in the suburbs as a housewife with two young kids, after graduating from a leading NYC drama program. April stands out with her talent and beauty among the community players and stars in the play with much anticipation. At the last minute, the leading man drops out of the production due to illness, and April has to play opposite an unprepared understudy. She realizes that she is "working alone," and begins "visibly weakening with every line." By the first act's end, she has lost the other players and the audience, and they have all become "embarrassed for her." Yates' many other novels have explored the same theme of this tension, the gap between expectations of great art and performance meltdown under real-life pressures. I would rather avoid becoming a tragicomic character in a Yates novel when I play music.
Revolutionary Road (1961) by Richard Yates: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48328.Revolutionary_Road?ac=1&from_search=true
Dr. CB comes backstage to tell me that I shouldn't be surprised about a last minute meltdown (on "White Wedding"). He says that the only preparation for performing is to keep playing in front of an audience regularly. I will have to find other places to play music. Somewhere that welcomes a fifty year-old Asian chick rocking out on electric guitar.