For this Audio Assignment, worth 1.5 stars, we were asked to play the first song we learned of musical medium.  The first song I learned on the piano, which I played for almost 10 years, was “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”.  This was also a song that my parents used to sing to me when I was headed to sleep, so it was a song of meaning when I began playing the piano.  I always enjoyed playing piano, but more-so enjoyed things with meaning to me.  It is such a simple song, but yet, when I hear it, or play it, I am reminded of the countless times my parents put me to sleep singing the song before bed and the times I have put kids down for sleep and sung the song to them.

To do this, (since I am and have been out of town) I downloaded a piano app on my iPad to play the song, to record it via Sound Cloud.  I then uploaded it onto Sound Cloud.

Enjoy! And get some sleep!  Originally posted on my Sound Cloud:

This assignment fulfills 1 and a half points of the required ten for the week of 2/16 to 2/22.

This prompt, entitled ‘Make Music DAMNIT’, was a bit confusing, but I think it said to record a song in a way that reminds me of what it was like to first learn how to play it.

Thus, I recorded myself on the guitar playing two verses of the song ‘Bankrupt on Selling’ by Modest Mouse. This is one of the first songs I ever taught myself to play. Since I haven’t played for a while, the recording sounds a bit like I am still learning how to play it. My reluctance to play Fmaj is quite clear (I’ve never taken to bar chords).

Also, I recorded it acoustically using a tool I found on my computer called ‘Sound Recorder’, without any cords or equipment attached. The resulting sound is just terrible, and I am very proud. It reminds me of what it is like to be a beginner, and not know what Audacity is (which, I think, is what the prompt called for).

I decided not to try to sing along with the recording, as I have been trying to master the vocals to this track for years and am not quite satisfied with the way I sing it yet (Plus, trying to record vocals with ‘Windows Sound Recorder’ and no mic would have made it ten times worse).

Though I knew this 1-and-a-half star assignment was small in star amount, I knew it would be big in meaning. If you don’t already know this from some of my previous posts, music is and has always been a really big part of my storytelling process and so I knew I had to do this one to continue to tell the story of Cat’s and that of myself.

I picked up my love for music from my father, with whom I used to dance around the living room to Jimmy Buffet’s Fruitcakes album and from whom I would pilfer his Beach Boys Greatest Hits CD as soon as he wasn’t looking so that I could listen to it for the umpteenth time. Said time was usually right before my dad was heading off to work, which included not just a 20 minute car ride to the airport but a 6 or 7 hour flight to Phoenix, not even including possible delays and the subsequent to the house that he and his fellow pilot friends shared, known informally as “The Crash Pad”. Needless to say, he needed some of his favorite tunes to get him through some of the not-so-fun-parts. But I made up for it.

As soon as he got home, Daddy Daughter DuetI would try to teach him some songs on the piano and we would plunk out a duet to “Heart and Soul”, and one of the first songs I taught myself (I enjoyed playing by ear and letting my fingers flow much more than being confined to the lines of the staff and the pages of a book) was one of his favorites, “Surfer Girl” …how coincidental given that I grew up on the beach! . He always loved when I played that song and that of course meant that I love playing it for him, though I was sometimes too shy to. And so when I thought about a what songs meant most to me, this was definitely one of them.

And since that Cat and Wally’s relationship and story mirrors much of Amy and Mike’s, I figured that this Audio assignment would be yet another one that contributed to the development of my noir character while simultaneously contributing to the development my own character as I continue to strive to honor my father in all that I do.

I’d like to think that, like many of her good qualities, Cat got her love for music from her father at an early age, just like me. Given that Cat was very young during this time, I thought that the Annette Hanshaw version of “You’re the Cream in my Coffee”, a very popular ditty in the late 20s, would be their “Surfer Girl”, their “Heart and Soul”. But even 7-year old Cat is a lot more bold than I am, so as her dad goofily yet perfectly played, she danced around the conjoined living-room-and-kitchen of their tiny yet homey apartment, singing along as he did.

Though I do play piano, I am not the one who played it as well as in the version I used for my soundbite, which can be found above in the video (..isn’t he AMAZING!?!??!). I converted the Youtube video to MP3 by copy and pasting the Youtube link into this website.

I was then able to import it into Garage Band (my go-to audio editing program), where I trimmed the entirety of the clip down into the 40-ish seconds that you will find in the final completion.

This is another assignment that I truly enjoyed, and I think that it was for two reasons. First, due to the fact that I did it in a timely fashion (which I didn’t really do during my first wrestling match with Audio! #ProcrastinationStation lol), but more so because I related in to my own story, to a very treasured memory. Assignments, character development, and storytelling is more effective and gratifying that way for SURE. Don’t be afraid to make DS106 another one of those treasured memories by boldly and openly sharing some of the treasures of your past to tell the most beautiful story there is … YOURS.