gotspit

thot:spitgirl:tales.of.a.beatboxing.oddity

[ sep 2005 | oct 2005 | nov 2005 ]

11.04.05 - Isn't it amazing the thoughts you have during a nice, hot morning shower? There's something about the combination of hot water and solace that invites a deeper form of contemplation. I can't even begin to count the number of times where I've had some kind of epiphany, a melody for a new song, or the plot line to a play while hosing myself off after a workout.

Today, I was thinking about a series of Emails that was sent out to a mailing list I'm on. One Email sent a link to a clip, and was mostly addressed to me - and it turned out to be a clip of Yuri Lane doing beatbox harmonica. Okay, I've heard of Yuri, and really intend to catch one of his shows these days (I'm bummed I missed out on "From Tel Aviv to Ramallah"), so it was really kind of fun to watch a clip of him performing.

Well, this Email thread went on to include a clip from ekrunk, which I also found rather amusing. And of course, since I tend to go on these ridiculous intuitive leaps, I started thinking about why hip hop artists choose these stage names to perform with. Granted, my own name isn't all that memorable and maybe something like "In2it" would be a little more hip hoppish, but I'm just wondering what the thought was behind it. Is it to choose a different identity than you might get with a name like "Duane" or "Jeffrey" or "Isaiah"? I'm not entirely sure.

I suppose there's something refreshing about putting on a new name. After all, there's a change in identity, some sort of metaphysical change where you become this person you have created a persona for. Or perhaps it's a way to become more yourself, because you no longer carry the baggage that your own birth name carries - including the times your mother used your name to call you when you got lost in the department store when you were 4.

All right, I'm going too far afield at the moment, which is probably caused by entirely too many happy moments recently. So this is spitgirl, signing out...

10.25.05 - I did say that this was an on-again, off-again blog, right? These past few weeks have been fairly packed for a person who is newly unemployed - I played guitar in a Christian worship band for a women's conference this past weekend, helped put on a martial arts competition the weekend before, and have been scrambling for the next place of employment.

All excuses aside, it's been a wonderful time of musical self-exploration, especially as I managed to get my hands on an iPod and am going through my CDs. Who knew that I had such treasures on my hands? I found that I hadn't touched some of them in a while, and so went back through my old collection of some of the a cappella bands - my roots - that I had in my collection.

I first became aware of this thing called vocal percussion through New York band Rockapella. For some reason, percussionist Jeff Thacher really caught my fancy. But it wasn't until I saw San Francisco band The House Jacks at my first Rockapella concert that I was really blown away - by Andrew Chaikin, who now goes by Kid Beyond. Later on, our band brought a percussionist on board: Paul Donnelly, who currently is in Minneapolis with a professional a cappella band.

Meanwhile, the Jacks brought Wes Carroll out to the Bay from his post with Boston group Five O'Clock Shadow. I've been honored to be partnered with him over the years with his "Ask Wes" column. He's bringing the column over to his own website, and we'll link to that as soon as he has that up.

It wasn't until my own band broke up that I entered the hip hop scene. A few months after the unofficial breakup of my band, I was filling in for a local Berkeley a cappella group when I was introduced to hip hop theater artist Aya de Leon, and the rest is pretty much history. I've made some amazing contacts over the years and have worked with some interesting groups.

Lately, I've also been experimenting with the live looping deal that Kid Lucky is well-known for, and although it's in its nascent stages, it looks promising... anyway, here's spitgirl, signing off...

10.05.05 - All right, so technically it's the 6th already, but since I haven't gone to bed yet (and I'm tripping on caffeine), I figured I'd just mark it as the 5th and hope that no one complains.

I had the privilege of attending a private event tonight in San Francisco at the Fillmore. It's a great venue, with a large concert stage with a dance floor and a smaller, more intimate stage upstairs. First off, I want to give a big shout out to cronkite, with whom I had the pleasure of chatting after their set. In spite of weird sound and lack of monitors, they pumped out a high-energy set of rock tunes, which I assume were all original. I definitely have to give them major props for doing so well in the venue. Way to go, guys. (They're nice guys, too, and have lots of interesting things to say on a regular basis. Go see their shows and talk to them.)

I came home tonight with a lot of thoughts about music churning around in my little head. The headliner of the whole event was Modest Mouse. The music was too loud and not quite to my taste - I'd never heard of the band before, quite frankly - but I took the opportunity to really sit and learn. My friend Scott must have thought I was crazy, because I wasn't moving at all to the music.

I was, instead, watching the drummer.

I took this on two different levels. First, I'm a kit drummer (I taught myself how to play from beatboxing, surprisingly enough) and I needed to up my level of proficiency. Well, the only way to really do that is to watch - and concertedly watch - a good drummer and the way that he puts together riffs.

But it occurred to me about half way through their set that I don't do this often enough with the beatbox community and that I'm actually Quite Rusty. I don't know why people seem to think I'm amazing or anything (I happen to think I'm kind of middle of the road), but I guess that's only those people who haven't heard some of the fantastic drummers we have in our community.

I know I should be hitting events like The Vowel Movement (based in SF) more regularly. I guess it's just a question of how seriously I take this art form and how I want to grow as a musician.

I'll fully admit it, though - I've been focusing on other parts of my musicianship over the past four years. Sometimes I think that this "jack of all trades, master of none" deal hurts me musically. Why not just focus on one or two? (For those of you who don't know me, I play piano, bass, guitar, drums, sing professionally, and beatbox. I do all on a regular basis.) Basically, it comes down to an issue of time and of priorities - where does one want to spend his or her time? Some big questions to answer.

There's much, much more that came out of this one event, but I think I'll save it for later.

09.30.05 - On a completely random note, I'm discovering that I like Macromedia Dreamweaver a lot. I've been playing with Dreamweaver 8, and it's extremely zippy and feature-laden. I definitely recommend any of you designers to check it out. I'm sure there are some designers out there, since many of the beatboxers I've met over the years are more than just drummers. Many I've met are also successful people in industry, are deeply committed to the community, and are composers, writers, and speakers.

Major props.

Anyway, back to the story of my experience at the Apollo. Here I was, getting progressively more nervous as people were telling me about this show - about how people were booed off stage, how tough the audience was, and of course the tap dancing guy. Even more distressing was the fact that I came down with a sinus infection the weekend before. And even worse, it then travelled southward, as sinus infections normally do on me. "It never rains, but it pours."

So here I was, with a massive chest cold (in the middle of September, mind you, when it was a solid 85 degrees outside during midday). I left for New York armed with new clothes and a bottle of Robitussin DM. I arrived sometime around midnight Eastern time and showed up at my friend Brian's in midtown. I had one day to switch over to Eastern time and make it to the theater for a sound check at 7am, which is, very conveniently, 4am Pacific Standard. And it was a half an hour via the Metro.

So I showed up at 7am for essentially an 8pm show, did a sound check at about 10 - my idea of a sound check is to just run the sound a little and save everything for the show. But apparently the person in charge was worried about me, because I didn't do exactly what I was planning to do that evening. I've never done that in my performance career, because in my mind a sound was just that - checking the sound system. Work the highs, work the lows, see if the mids sound okay, ask for a little compression, and that's it. Exit stage left.

So I got a long lecture about that, and I was getting progressively sicker and irritated that she wanted me to essentially script out an improv, and I think I reassured her that I was going to do something else and went to go dose myself on Robitussin, cough out a lung, and try to sleep across two or three metal folding chairs. It was turning out to be an awfully long day already, and it was barely lunch... I went out to McDonald's with the other two girls in my show (not my idea of great pre-show food, incidentally, especially since I stopped eating fast food in college), stopped at the drugstore for some other necessities (like a hairbrush, since I'd left mine at Brian's) and we made it back in plenty of time for the first show.

The show as about half full, since it was Friday afternoon. Made sense, I suppose. I watched on the little TV in the dressing room, once again dosed with Robitussin, drowsy but not sleepy, and doing whatever prep I could for my English class. Mo'nique was really truly funny as she kept the audience entertained between her takes, and she came out with some really amazing dresses. I watched people get booed off the stage, and each time it happened, I could feel my stomach twisting, even as I was struggling for a truly deep breath.

This is turning out to be a really long story... but I suppose it's memorable.

09.29.05 - Quite honestly, I don't know what makes me think that I can do this again - run the site at a regular pace, provide some interesting content, and heck, even to think about performing again. I keep on telling myself that I'm too old for this, that there are better sites out there, and that I should just stick to performing and focus on improving myself as a vocal percussionist/beatboxer.

So we'll see if it happens - see if I'll be able to keep it up, talk about what's been happening in music and in my life over the past four years, and how the industry seems to have changed - or maybe how my own perception of it all has changed. Maybe the world has changed. Maybe I'm getting all too philosophical for this time of night.

Regardless, this is an exciting time for us here at GSP - not only because I'm back in the swing of things, starting to perform again and coming out of my self-imposed shell that I called "normalcy," but also because of this hip, fresh design that uses a shade of orange that I would never wear myself. Many props to my little sis, who took one for the art form (but still hasn't seen the tape of me at the Apollo).

So I guess I'll start this blog off by sharing about my experience on the "Late Night at the Apollo" show a couple of years ago. I had auditioned to be on this regional show at UC Berkeley the December before, back when I had been gainfully unemployed and really had nothing better to do. I didn't make the show, I was hired on mid-semester by a private school, and immediately threw myself into being the best English teacher I could be. (The kids were all very impressed that I beatboxed. Those who weren't impressed by that was more impressed with the time in martial arts.)

Then there was the summer where I almost killed about five eighth grade boys through sheer frustration (ah, if only I had better chi - then they couldn't have traced it to me). Fast forward to September, where I decided to open this random Email. Now, this is amazing, considering I get hundreds of spam a day. I had to read it a couple of times - they wanted me to go to New York and do a show!

I was excited. New York! Somewhere in Harlem! Awesome. But I really had no concept of what the venue was all about, what the show was all about, and what kind of cultural impact it had. All I knew was that it was in New York sometime and that the show date they'd booked for me meant that I'd have to miss at least a day of school.

Well, fine. I went to the Academic VP and asked for a couple of days off to go to NY for a gig. She asked where it was, and my response was: "Oh... some theater in Harlem. Ummm... I forgot the name. Some kind of Roman god, I think - Jupiter? Apollo?" She mentioned that she'd have to check with the superintendent, and that was that. So I wandered about the rest of the day in teacher mode.

She caught me on my way out the door, telling me that she had to apologize. Apparently the superintendent had immediately recognized the show (watches it every week, I guess) and was really quite excited to know that someone he knew - one of his teachers - was going to New York to be on the Apollo!

This was really starting to freak me out...

Running short on time. I guess I'll tell the next part of the story the next time...

-spitgirl

Regular Features

A Basic how-to
Elaine Chao explains her way of making her favorite drum sounds. Hints and Techniques
Elaine Chao gives a few tips on VP

Vocal Percussion Listing
Meet the percussionist near you and register yourself to be a part of the community! Our Sounds
Just starting out? Or want to pick up the licks of another? Check out the sound clips of some of the pros...