I bought Christy a not-expensive-but-not-dumpy cello a few months back for her to learn how to play. She’s talked about it for years, and I had a friend that was upgrading, so he gave me a good deal on his old one. She was super excited, played it a few times, and then it spend like 5 months in the shop–mostly due to the fact that the stupid people just never called us back telling us it was ready (and we never called them either). Right now it’s sitting in the studio…waiting to be played…
Right now I’m finishing up a movie score that I’m writing for a friend of mine (for long-time readers, someone I worked with at the dear ole Concordia Gala of Stars 2007). Currently it’s mostly completely WRITTEN, but it is all synths and samples in Logic, so it just sounds like a big accordion or organ…and NOT like a movie score. So I need to add some real instruments to replace some of the super-cheesy-fun-filled sounds of trumpets and horns that I’m using. AND I need strings. Even just one or two people can add enough realism to fool the ear…and with as much strings as is in this thing, a few people to play on TOP of the already existing string parts I’ve written would be just right. I added the suspended cymbal myself (my personal fav), and I’m recruiting some other players (to do it for free, God bless ‘em…it’s totally a pro bono gig for us all…ahhhh student films), but I hadn’t heard back from my rock-star friend/cello player. He’s been in a Sting video or something…and a bunch of other amazing things…he is simply…phenomenal, as a person and as a cellist.
So I glance upon Christy’s cello sitting in my corner last night and I think to myself, HEY, I CAN DO THIS! And start thinking other bizzare things like, “I’ll just record one note at a time”…and, “How hard can it be?”…and other ridiculous things like that. Two hours later (at approx. 2:30AM) I had played a whopping 5 whole notes…and although it sounded lovely, there was NO WAY I was going to continue…
And now…drumroll please…those five notes for your enjoyment. Here is a picture of how it ended up looking in Logic, and audio is below.
(P.S. I totally went one note at a time. It worked, but at, like, a thousand times slower than one would think is humanly possible).
Thank goodness my cello-playing rock-star friend emailed me today and said he could come do it.
Phew!
