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Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Surely One of my Next Careers

I was driving to the office singing along with "Margaritaville", filling in the space between lyrics with improvised wordless melodies such as Louis Armstrong would sometimes do, when a vision formed itself, lo before my very eyes:

Up on a stage, say at Center Camp at Burning Man because the bar is really low there, singing some song or other while playing the fillers on a trumpet, deftly going back and forth between singing and comping, and providing the bass line and underlying chords with a small attached keyboard. In other words, playing the background with my left hand, while at the same time either singing, or doing the trumpet finger-work with my right.

Flippin' brill, wot. Did a net search and no one's ever done this before. And no, I've never sung and played an instrument at the same time, as guitarists, piano players, and accordionists often do, but surely it can be learned, and then another instrument added on. Why the hell not? I'm ADHD enough. With the right drugs I can do anything.

The great thing is I'd have to design and build most of it. The trumpet would just be a trumpet. But the keyboard could only be a little single-octave job, with mechanical attachments such that my left arm holds it up while my fingers still have full range; attached at the wrist, say, while it in turn holds the horn, which is normally gripped with the left hand. In addition to the mad hours of practice this would require, I'd want to design electronics with sufficient intelligence to hold tones when I cannot, provide backbeats and bass chords so I don't have to, and produce real-time harmonic tones for special effect. It's a one-man got-damn circus act.

I suppose there's a reason the one-man-band guy always seems a little crazy. You'd have to be to try and do all that at once. Who am I foolin'? But if I break it down ... I know where I'd start.

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