Bad Dream

Woke up Monday morning and remembered my nightmare: John Calloway, whom I haven't seen for ages, is a musician who directs the group I went to Cuba with. Anyway, I think his presence was totally random. But in the dream, I was in some sort of class he was teaching, and he had passed out a flyer with notes on music careers. I read it, and it started off with a story of a woman musician who had failed due to various professional missteps. The second story was about me, and it went something like: "Another example is Alexa, a promising Latin Jazz singer who is on fire when she sings in Spanish." But it went on to explain that I, too, had failed, for two reasons: I had refused to record the dance tunes that would have been necessary for world domination, and I had never really "dressed the part." Bizarre, huh? I woke up feeling really bad, but in the middle of the night I remember being in that sort of lucid state where it all seems real and there's nothing I can do about any of it. My husband said it was an example of how I hold myself to too high a standard, plus your usual artistic insecurities. Fascinating how the mind constructs these stories that can be quite creative and unforeseen.

The Lifeboat Exercise

I just came across "11 Tips to surviving a day job with your creativity intact" by Jori Lynn Keyser. There are some good ideas in it, such as this one:

"In his marvelous little Creativity Book, Eric Maisel suggests doing the Lifeboat Exercise once a day for three days in a row, but I find it works well as a life raft all year long. Find yourself a raucous bell, he says. Ring your bell loudly and shout, 'Create!' Go to your workspace, set a timer for ten minutes, and work. When the timer goes off, shout, 'All clear!' You’ve just made ten minutes progress on your creative work and fed the connection to your heart."

Incredible Scales Boardgame

I just found the Incredible Scales Boardgame. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm going to. I've been so exhausted recently when I get home that I haven't had a chance to work with my son on his piano practice either, but I just found this site that has a lot of tips on teaching music students and motivating them to practice. This sounds like a great idea. You make the boardgame yourself according to all the scales you need to practice, then throw the dice to see which one you should play and with which hand (left, right or together). If you make a mistake while playing it through three times at the speed you choose, you must go back and play it another three times without error. When you've successfully done that (at the speed of your choosing), you get 1 point (I think).

So, the site says, you end up practicing everything just the right amount--the ones you barely know, you do a lot, and the ones you do know, you only do a little. I think I'll draw it on a whiteboard that I'm not using right now. Obviously, this could apply to singing the scales or playing them on an instrument other than the piano. My only scale practice recently has been listening to the Jamie Aebersold scale syllabus CD in the car and singing along to get them in my ear. I think this could be a nice way to motivate myself to practice them.

Productivity Tools for Musicians

I'm on a productivity kick. Someone just suggested it might be that I'm nesting (hey, that's hint #2). But anyway, in addition to reading the book "Getting Things Done" and "Meet the Life Hackers" in the October 30, 2005 New York Times, I've been checking out the ideas on 43Folders.com. Here's a cool article posted there by a musician/web developer named Scott Andrew: “Productivity for the Practicing Musician”. Some good tips about calendars, booking gigs, email templates and the like. I totally second the sentiment he describes here:

"If you can devote just a few hours a week to the mundane tasks, you’ll probably be doing more for your music career than most musicians out there. You might even discover, as I have, that you enjoy the sense of accomplishment and — gah! — professionalism that comes from mailing out press releases and promoting your gigs effectively."

Fully Clothed

Yesterday was fun. In the morning I sat on the floor surrounded by music and put together most of the charts for next week's gig at the Octavia Lounge in San Francisco. This morning I couldn't sleep so after I write this I need to go transpose one more chart. Really, the chart situation is improving but still urgent. I have a hell of a week ahead of me but when things calm down I've got to revamp the whole organization method/filing here at the home office.

We took the dogs for a walk and then I did my makeup and met Wayne Wallace and Michael Zilber over at Yoshi's, where David Belove took some promotional shots of us for our gig in December at Yoshi's. I haven't wanted to jinx it but Wayne says yes, it is happening so I'm going to go ahead and get it on my calendar ASAP. We had a lot of fun taking pictures--hope they turn out OK. Another singer, Rennea, was there, and she helped out by mugging and doing funny walks behind David's back to keep us laughing.

Then it was over to La Peña at 5:30 to set up for the short benefit performance I had last night with the Funkanauts. It took quite a while to get set up, so I shortened our set by a few songs since I figured it was going to take at least another 45 minutes between sets to get the Funkanauts set up. It went quite well, and my husband came with my 5-year-old. Sebastian played quietly with his cars while we went 45 minutes past our intended start time, and Emilio told me that when the music started Sebastian sat politely, then turned to him and said, "Just two songs and then we leave, OK Daddy?" About midway through the show I heard him begging "Let's go!" and soon after I noticed they were gone. But I am so proud of him--I think these experiences are so important in terms of both exposure to music and ability to sit through a concert.

I sold 8 CDs, which is quite good. Of course, I personally made no money since I'd donated my services to the cause, but I got lots of mailing list names. The Funkanauts, who turned out not to have brought the naked girls pictured on their website (their manager said that's for the cover of their album), were definitely funky, Bay Area-style. A mix of Jimmy Hendrix, some classic funk, metal and rap. They probably wouldn't agree about the metal, but there was definitely some more crossover sounding style about them. I sat down to listen to the first song, and they were tearing it up but no one was dancing, so I had to step in and rectify that situation. I got some folks up to dance with me and ended up staying for the whole set. At the end, they were gracious and thanked me from the stage, saying "It's so great to meet famous people [sic] like Alexa Morales and Dave Mathews. And you know what's funny, those cats were reading music the whole time up there on stage!"

Spamalot on Broadway

I was in New York city last week and had a good time, although my hotel room was so small, it was quite literally like sleeping in an IKEA display. When I sat down in the bathroom/closet, my knees would hit the wall--and I'm short! But I walked all over the place and got to see Spamalot. It cost a fortune but I figured since I was there alone I might as well splurge--and it was so worth it. The show is hilarious. David Hyde Pierce (from Frasier) is great, in a role that seems pretty quiet until an amazing song-and-dance number in the second act that shows everything he can do. And he was so funny--could make you laugh with just a facial expression or reaction. But my favorite part hands down was this singer with amazing pipes, Sara Ramirez. She skewers just about every pop, R&B and Broadway singing convention there is. Sometimes, as a singer, it's almost uncomfortable; I sat there at times going, "Do I do that?" But she also has the most beautiful voice I've heard live, with control that left me almost jealous. I never have this reaction, but I found myself wanting to accost her at the stage door and find out what her routine or regimen was as a singer--does she do an hour of warmups every day? Who were her teachers? I guess if there are two things I'd like to be able to do vocally that I still can't, it's a gospel-style high belt/wail, and some of the more challenging gospel or jazz melismas and runs. The song "Find Your Grail" is so funny, and she makes fun of some of that style of Whitney Houstonesque singing. Really, she's not making fun of the style, I guess, but more of the over-emoting that can happen in such music.

On my last day I went over to Lincoln Center, under the mistaken impression that I was going to see Winton Marsalis's new Jazz at Lincoln Center site that I'd read about some time ago. Turns out that's actually on a floor in the Time Warner building a few blocks away. Instead I went to the Public Library for the Performing Arts, which is right next to Julliard. I tried to find a French song I want to do, but the librarian couldn't help--it may not have ever been published as sheet music. But I did copy two other songs out of a fake book. Then I walked through Central Park for a few hours and then went to Carnegie Hall and did the tour. Unfortunately I had to leave early to catch my miserable 7-hour flight back home, so I missed going on to the stage. But it was so fun to walk in there and think, "Someday I'm going to play here."