Memorize, memorize and more memorize

I have 47 songs completely memorized. That's 47 songs in about 4 weeks. Now granted, about 15 of these songs I've been playing for years, but even so, they were never memorized. So for a guy who always believed I have the worst memory of any pianist in NYC, I'm really excited about my progress. I have had some help. A friend of mine learned Russian while in the Army about 20 years ago. His job was to intercept their military communications. Very hush, hush, top secret and all that cold war nonsense. But he had to learn Russian very rapidly and I asked him how he had done it. He steered me towards a book by Harry Lorayne which tries to give you skills in association. For instance: suppose you are learning French vocabulary and you are trying to memorize the word for Duck, which is canard (ka-nar). If you visualize, i mean really visualize "someone throwing a can hard, and you duck," you can create an association between the English and the french word. This book teaches that the more ridiculous the picture you create for your association, the easier it is to remember. Suppose you are trying to remember a list of seemingly unrelated items in order. You would associate each item with the previous item in some very ridiculous way. For instance, if you are associating the word airplane with tree, you might come up with a picture of a million trees flying through the air; or big jetliner landing in a small tree. Even though I'm not even half-way through this book, it has me thinking in ways I've never thought before, and I'm sure it's helping with my memorization of songs. The latest two songs on my piano are Hey There Delilah and Hurts So Good. I have 10 more days before I go down South to perform all of this music.

Oh, Dios mio!

Last night my doorbell rings. Before I have time to walk the 20 feet from the piano to the door, it is ringing incessantly. Now I have a doorman that is supposed to screen all visitors and call up for permission to send up the visitor, but clearly this didn't happen, and I don't like people knocking on my door unexpectedly. It's a NYC privacy thing. This is why we have doormen. I open the door and there is this beautiful Puerto Rican girl of about 25 or so with her 10 year old son. It seems that she is from the Census Bureau and would like to ask me some questions. "Sure!" I say, knowing how important this is. She immediately begins firing questions at me, still standing in the hallway. I suggest that we move the party inside. After about 40 minutes of very personal questions, some of which I denied to answer, thank you very much, and 12 pages later, she finished. She didn't like the fact that I declined to answer some of the questions and spent a significant amount of time trying convincing me that this information was confidential and my government would NEVER use it in any way other than that which it was intended. Yeah, that didn't fly. I began telling her all about illegal wiretapping, arrogant presidents and the demise of the Constitution, an exercise in silliness considering that she really wasn't that bright. I did question her about the timing of the census as I thought it wasn't supposed to happen until 2010. But apparently the Department of Commerce and the City of NY sponsor this census and they do it every 3 years, and only 1 in 270 households gets to participate. Who knew?

After she finished she turned the form back to the front page where I happened to notice that this particular form that we had just filled out was intended not for my apartment at all, but rather the one across the way. I pointed that out to her and she responded by saying, "Oh, Dios mio," or some such expletive and her pencil eraser began flying a mile a minute over every personal answer that I had just spent 40 some damn minutes giving her, right there on my kitchen counter (the very same place that my roommate would to park his stoned ass a short 26 hours later and pretend he was Michelangelo Lloyd Webber, but that's another post). So there we all were, her, her kid, myself, and eraser dust flying everywhere, getting all cozy and laughing about the whole thing. I found out that "dad" was also a musician, and that today mom had bought the boy a cute little puppy for $800 and that it was making mommie sneeze and she was considering taking it to the pound. When the entire thing was all through, I think I learned more about her, her kid and her "kid's father" than she had erased about me and my "household." She left around 10:15 pm, and I could hear her banging on the door across the way 30 seconds later.

Cut to the following day.

I entered my building at 5 in the afternoon with "Tenacious D" blasting "F*#k Her Gently" in my ipod head phones when a small child comes running up from behind me and grabs my hand and begins pulling it hard, trying to get my attention. I turn around and see it's the 10 year old boy that was in my apartment last night. He is very excited to see me. I guess I hadn't really realized the extent of our bonding. He wants to show me his little puppy that is apparently helping out with the census today, as his mother was talking to the doorman, (puppy in hand) no doubt to torture another hapless resident. Oh, Dios mio!

work...continued

Ok...it seemed to work. Judy and I got a lot of good work done tonight at our rehearsal, and she realized that the charts she gave me from her last music director were very umm....unclear. She accepted my suggestion and we worked out only 4 songs, but we spent an appropriate amount of time on them and they came out really well, and both of us began to feel much better about working together. I came home to my stoned roommate trying to make a clay "Phantom" mask all over the kitchen counter with Bernadette Peters' Sondheim, etc. Concert blasting. Oy!

Work

Well I got a phone call last weekend. A very nervous cabaret singer with a music director that had gone MIA. She's got this Judy Garland tribute show she's doing (does this town really need yet another Judy Garland cabaret show?...really really??) and so I'm stepping into someone else's shoes and have to make this work. She is very nervous and it is affecting our rehearsals because she is coming from a place of fear. She wants to rush through a run-through all the songs she is doing rather than spending quality time on each and then putting it all together in a later rehearsal. And in her rapid run-through, because she has not articulated, and in many cases not even thought of what exactly she wants, we are not in sync, and she's freaking out. I think tonight I will take control of this rehearsal and see if I can get her to do it my way. I'll let you know how it all works out.

one week later

Comments anyone?

Job offer

Well, it is beginning. I got my first real job offer as a Dueler yesterday. The owner of the club I was training at all last week made a phone call and as a result I was invited to play a four night gig at another club down South. It will still be training, but the pay is fair, the travel expenses will be picked up and I will be playing the entire gig, not just sitting around watching. The guy I will be training with has an amazing reputation as an entertainer and as a musician, so I expect to learn a lot. I can already tell from talking to him several times that he has a very strong personality. This will be a real good opportunity to practice humility. Oy!! Oh, and I have been instructed NOT to bring any music up on stage with me. Which means, I have reduced my available repertoire down to about 25 songs. I expect that by the time I do this gig, in 3 weeks from now, I will have memorized another 15. This should be reeeal interesting. At least the guy training me is fully aware of where I'm at.

Busy Week

Well I'm finally back in NYC after spending over a week at my "audition" down South. The original audition was only for the first weekend, but they asked me to stay a second weekend to continue the process. The answer to the question everyone seems to ask is, No, I didn't get exactly what I wanted. They didn't offer me a real job. I was told I still need more time for preparation and training. Well, that's why I went down there in the first place. I was applying for a "training" position as a dueling pianist. I think my presence there helped the club owner and the other two pianists define what they were really looking for, which was not a trainee at all, but rather an "A" player to replace the guy that left. This is all fine. I was treated very well by the club, the owner, and the other pianists. They paid me a nominal fee for my training and housed me. I was responsible for all travel.

Meanwhile, after having been immersed in the world of Dueling Pianos for the past 9 days, I am as motivated as ever to continue my practicing. I currently have 230 rock songs that I know, so I will now change my focus from adding new songs to memorizing and mastering the ones I know. Everyone I speak with tells me I should work to get "off book". OK. Message received, loud and clear. Even though I have always believed I have a really shitty memory, I'm motivated, so I will do this. I already have about 20 songs under my belt.

It was very cool being up on stage in a real venue with several hundred people paying attention. And I have always been very nervous about being on a stage like that, but this week i discovered that it wasn't all that scary, and even though I was unsure of how well I would do each time I got on stage (that due to all the critisism I was getting all week) I found that I wasn't nervous. I managed an attitude that I would either do well or I wouldn't but either way I would learn. And that is unusual for me. I have always been terrified of doing badly on stage. And when I was up there, I found myself much more focused than ever been, even though everything was unfamiliar and I was juggling so many things at once.

One cool number the other pianists did was Sweet Child of Mine. One of the pianists got in costume as Axel Rose, jumped up on top of the two grand pianos and played electric guitar. They had special lighting, and we were working with a drummer. It sounded amazing. Meanwhile, the bar manager poured Bacardi 151 on top of the pianos, at the guitarist's feet and lit them so there were flames shooting up. He then used the rest of the 151 to blow fire out of his mouth in front of the pianos...it was quite spectacular.

DuelingPiano Audition

I was invited down to the Carolinas to audition at a dueling piano bar. I sat in on Saturday with 3 other players and an adoring audience of 300 rock-lovin' southerners, singing Sweet Home Alabama and Santeria. Apparently the bar can and does hold 425 but it was a "light" night because of the NCAA final four games that night. So the good news is that I was invited to stay on through this weekend to continue the audition process. I expect to be back in NYC on Sunday. Now back to memorizing more lyrics!

for thought

Why in this country are we violent and literate?
Answer: Because we are taught to read.

rant: suspension of reality

Have we as Americans, smart and stupid alike, all gotten together and decided to suspend reality and enter into an alternate universe where George W. Bush shouldn't be run him out of town or impeached and imprisoned for high treason and crimes against humanity? Did we all actually agree to re-elect him and hand over, again, the public trust that he would act in our best interests after seeing his act for 4 years? Did we all agree that when he or his press secretary says something, it should reported as "news" rather than propaganda and manipulation? And this after 7 years of continual mistruths, lies and fantasy spewing out of the spigot of disinformation formerly known as The White House; lies that have proven themselves as such after only a few short weeks or months. How can the press look their audience in the eye night after night and say that the White House says this or that without at least a twinkle in their eye that belies the shared joke that our executive leadership has become? If you had a friend or family member that continually altered the truth to suit their needs, wouldn't you stop listening? And if you were recounting something they said, wouldn't your face reflect exactly how much trust you had in the veracity of such a statement?

REALLY!!...how is this possible? Has black become the new white?