Category — 帅巴J

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In 2009 my good friend, 蛋糕, was kind enough to collaborate on an exciting and difficult a cappella project. With the meager tools we had at the time and our genetically limited vocal range, we threw all we had at this temperamental art project.  Like many of our ideas at the time, the song began to develop around our foreign disposition within the big red goose. By the time we had hammered out a general tune and enough lyrics to sustain our creative thirst we’d stepped right into the competitive language learning market and, by my scale, came out better than expected. So go ahead and plug this one-take a cappella-draft in between your NoRain and Free Fallin’ road trip exercises and you may find yourself learning a little language and culture.

Enjoy!

Original song and lyrics are filed under it’s original published date: 2009-07-06 

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This was a very hot day.

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“Happy Birthday”

Out of tune, un-practiced, well appreciated.

YeeHaw!

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June 1st I debuted my banjo talents in front of the Stanford Graduate School of Business (estimates of 500+ people) in a standing room only environment. My frist run at a public performance. I have to say I can do a lot of things in public without batting an eye, but this Really pushed my limit.. phew.

To begin, turn it back one week to May 25th when I received an email. It asked for a banjo player to do a song. Not much else. So I accepted and learned what terms I’d accepted. I would be playing a recent pop song featuring a banjo playing at about a million miles an hour with three other people on a stage for .. some people. Oh, and by the way, “we play in one week.”  More so, we didn’t have the sheet music, so figure that out too.

Now I’m not too clever when it comes to writing music, but after some YouTube lessons and I exercising my ears about 40-dozen times, I did my best to work-up a short score for my 5-string duties. After three days, I had the TAB down and could begin practice. In celebration of my achievements, I went on vacation for the memorial day weekend.

Returning Tuesday, with one day left, I set my fingerst to work, in the dark practice of a solo musician playing to an invisible band, as they exercised sixty miles away. Those living within earshot became quite tired of this new annoyance in their life.

Wednesday morning, with a little more than 12-hours to go, I drove to Palo Alto and worked in about forty-five minutes of band time before they had to return to their coursework and I to my leisure. It was the only rehearsal we would have before playing nearly ten and a half hours later at 9:20 PM. With the others off to class I reflected on my whirlwind of a week and the serene calm I must understand in order to perform. I came out of my trance and walked onto the stage, presenting the best we could do for a sloppy drunk crowd. Aside from a few kinks and the stiffness of a frist performance, the show turned out just ‘fine.’ (fortunately, my mic was turned down and mistakes went without much notice – I assume.)

Now I’ve got the performance bug.. hahaha.. Enjoy the show.

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This is the banjo lead for Mumford & Son’s “The Cave.”

Pardon my errors & Enjoy!