Now Available for Download: Ask Seek Knock

Ask Seek Knock can now be downloaded via SoundCloud! (Thanks to Danny Digital for the tip. Why MySpace doesn't allow free downloads of original songs anymore is beyond me.)

Ask Seek Knock by VirginiaBK

Just click the arrow button on the right side of the above audio player and the song is yours to play in your car, transfer to iPod, burn to CD, share, re-post to Facebook or Twitter, wrap as a present and give to your family, what-have-you. (What? I'm just making suggestions.)

Virginia BK - songwriter, producer, lead vocals; Alaska - studio/recording engineer; Mark Corbin of CorbinSound - mix engineer; Matt Gelfer of The New Students - guitars, fiddle, mandolin; Gretchen Poole - tenor back-up vocals; Rachel Zylstra of Rachel Zylstra - alto back-up vocals.

xo
Virginia

My Gift Is My Song and This One's for You

For reading, for following, for answers and listening!

For waiting, for playing, for singing and mixing!

From the isle of Brooklyn to your towns big and small!

Thank you, my friends, thank you each one and all!

Merry Christmas, from Alaska and Virginia BK!

Ask Seek Knock (1999)

(for the love, please listen with good speakers)

BIG FAT SPECIAL THANKS TO Alaska - studio/recording engineer; Mark Corbin of CorbinSound - mix engineer; Matt Gelfer of The New Students - guitars, fiddle, mandolin; Gretchen Poole - tenor back-up vocals; Rachel Zylstra of Rachel Zylstra - alto back-up vocals.

________________________________________

And for those who like a good (Christmas) make-over story, or who would like to look under the hood of the songwriting/recording process: an annotated time-line with audio and visual samples to show the transformation with each stage of the song's production.

December 30, 1999 - Amidst an otherwise boring journal entry about showering etc, a song appears.

ORIGINAL LYRICS (click image to enlarge.)

Summer 2002 -  I don't own/play/havemoneytohire bluegrass instruments so I record this piano/vocal demo on a Sony Multrack Recorder at my apartment in Miami, FL.

AUDIO SAMPLE: PIANO/VOCAL DEMO

April 2010 -  NYU songwriting class culminates in my first performance of an original song. Tired of using my imagination, I decide to finally record one of my jillion songs with proper scoring. Somehow.

Summer 2010 - Start lessons with Mark Baxter, who listens to the above piano/vocal demo and declares my singing too safe, too polished, too guarded, too careful for a songwriter. (He is right.) Begins stripping away the lacquer. Gruesome.

November 2010 - Mult-instrumentalist Matt Gelfer offers to play all of the instruments. (Really??)

December 3, 2010 - Lyrics adjusted for better prosody.

 FINALIZED LYRICS (click image to enlarge)

December 4, 2010 - Guitars (Matt Gelfer), scratch vocals (me), and back-up vocals (Rachel Zylstra and Gretchen Poole) recorded in our basement on a laptop and one mic. (4 hours)

FIRST RECORDING SESSION (guitars, back-ups)

December 7, 2010 - Voice lesson with Mark Baxter via Skype goes something like this: "This isn't a live play, this is a film. You shoot one phrase at a time. Your lead vocal track should take an entire day to record. Unfortunately, your song is great but I don't believe you when you sing it. Stop singing! Stop singing and just talk to me. You have a lot of work NOT to do. Merry Christmas!" (He is still right.)

December 8, 2010 - Matt Gelfer lays down fiddle and mandolin tracks on top of existing tracks. (2 hours)

SECOND RECORDING SESSION (+ mandolin, fiddle)

December 12, 17, 2010 - Lead vocals wrestled, strangled, slurred, stripped, and finally accepted for who/where they are and laid to rest. Dear Mark Baxter, if I wait until my voice is perfect (or perfectly imperfect) none of my songs will ever be heard. My gift is my song and this one's for my friends. (6 hours)

UNMIXED EXPORT OF ALL TRACKS (+ lead vocals)

December 18, 2010 - Mark Corbin of CorbinSound, who offered to mix the song (really??), performs wizardry before my very eyes and ears. The song is finished. (5 hours)

FINAL VERSION AFTER MIXING

Twelve years (seventeen hours) in the making, it turned out all right!

HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!

Photo Tip! Neighborly Cats Record Local Song

 

 Folding table + laptop and speakers = The Booth.

 

 Alaska, video producer turns sound engineer; Matt Gelfer, plays everything.

All right, y'all. Goes like this...

 

Indomitably brunette: Rachel Zylstra and Gretchen Poole on back-ups.

Pardon us; just harmonizin'.

We pause for an appointment with our mixologist. But coming soon to a Blogspot near you — a real song. The kind you can hear, even!

In Which My Feelings Are Best Expressed by One Abigail Breslin

Yesterday, the generously talented Matt Gelfer (of The New Students) slogged down Slope with fiddle in hand, to do the unbelievable. For the first time in my whole life, I heard one of my songs actualized, played by the instruments that have been swirling around only in my imagination all of these years.

For the first time my music was . . . outside . . . of me. All of this said, my feelings are best expressed in a scene from Little Miss Sunshine, played by Abigail Breslin.

Little Miss Sunshine - I Won  |  Movies & TV  |  SPIKE.com

Sing It So I Believe It

Parents packed and shipped safely home, Alaska and I declared today a day of rest. So, as the "180 minutes" of ALL THREE football games slowly passed, I propped up my socked feet and hunkered down with a backlog of glossies to see what's sleek in this world of ours.

I didn't travel far before coming across Justin Davidson's New York magazine profile on vocal coach to the opera stars, Steven Blier. Here's the link to the full story entitled "Sing It So I Believe It," nicely done: http://nymag.com/arts/classicaldance/classical/reviews/69638/.

It's interesting to see Blier's philosophies up against those of my own vocal coach. While Mark Baxter is busily stripping away my classical training so that I can deliver the message, Blier seemingly maximizes every last drop of his students' training so they can do the same. Different styles, different venues, but plenty of room for intersection. These snippets were particularly apropos to my latest blogvestigations.

Justin writes:

"Over the past 35 years, Blier has become a guru of song, the man who patiently guides singers past their vulnerabilities, who coaxes them to scrutinize and express some tiny grain of meaning in the text, who homes in pitilessly on glints of fake feeling. A mixture of therapist, teacher, impresario, and pianist-for-hire..." 

(Uh-huh...sounds familiar.)

"What separates the [songs] that interest him from those that don’t is not style, but a nugget of emotional intensity. 'A song is the closest thing I know in waking life to dreaming,' he says. 'It’s a coded version of reality. It’s not like playing a scene from Chekhov, where you’re trying to look like you’re having a tea party or a nervous breakdown. Instead, you’re enacting a coded, ritualized version of that moment, and somehow everyone in the hall is dreaming along with you.'"

(Hmm. Hadn't thought of it that way.)

 “'When I roll onstage, I am the song’s messenger,' he says. 'Maybe some other guy can play it better than I can, but I was given the message, and I have to deliver it.'”

(This one's  MOS DEFinitely going up on the bulletin board.)

"In concert, Blier’s emotional curiosity emerges as good humor and tenderness, but it can startle singers, says Sasha Cooke. 'People open up when they’re around him,' she says. 'You enter the room and all of a sudden everything feels very intimate. But some people don’t want to be figured out.'” 

(Do I want to be figured out??) 

 "Vulnerability and determination are the performing artist’s two contradictory but equally essential tools..."

(Those two specifically? Well, I certainly feel vulnerable enough and will even 80 times so when I brace myself and post that first song in a few weeks. Determination? Against my better judgement, perhaps, yes.)

And, on that note, the basement recording session is set for this Friday at 7PM. AUUUGGGHHHHH!!!!

Ass over Teakettle

As my "About Me" states, and as I've alluded to a bunch of times, I am a marketer by trade. I draw big pictures, I brand, I package, I strategize. I pay attention to what's important to people — artists, presenters, journalists, fans. I help develop and assess what the Word is, who would be most interested in the Word, and then connect with the best places to get the Word out. It's what I do. And I love it. Specifically, I think it's the bee's knees. This is all great and awesome for my career — my fantastic new biz partner and I have announced our joint venture, I am absolutely loving the work I'm doing for my first client, I plan to do a very good job. Et cetera.

But when it comes to my own music-making, it means that I am ass over teakettle. I mean, I am sitting up high on my horse maniacally whipping that cart.

For example, I'm on the train. BAM. A song bolts into my head. Chunks of lyrics, like they're free downloads from some Universal Creativity Bank. Snippets of a melody, maybe the entire chorus, maybe just a solid hook. OOH-RAH.

And then I start scribbling them down, fiddling with the ideas. What about this next? Or this? Yeah, yeah, yeah! The spaces fill in, the words keep flowing through, it's almost finished. HUZZAH.

I sit down at the keyboard and map out the chord progression. (Removes monocle, sets down quill.) I guess in rock they're called changes. Fine. So I "map out the changes." HMMM. I GUESS THEY'LL DO.

GIDDYUP. GIDDYUP. GIDDYUP. GIDDYUP. GIDDYUP. The marketing cart comes tearing in from behind and the next thing I know it's dragging the poor undeveloped song by its ankle. BUMP — FLIP — SMASH — down some old beat up pot-holed country path.

Marketing brain computes in overdrive. Before the song is written, it is given a title, placed on an album, and cover art is envisioned. The album is given a title. A short list of prospective producers, publishers, and record labels has been generated. A venue has been identified for the album release. A band. How the band will be branded. The kind of show we will put on. Does anybody have a beard. What we will wear. (My shoes will be green.) Which bloggers and journalists will be invited based on their interests in X Y Z. Which music supervisors at which ad agencies might be the right fit for a commercial sync. WHAT?!

You must understand, this happens almost instantaneously. This baby can get from songwriting to crazy in about 6 minutes.

OK, I'll be nicer. It's not crazy. It's what I do. And for my clients, that's a damn good thing. But the catch is, the Flash Marketing Storm raises the water level waaayyy to high for me. I'm a pro marketer. But I am a beginner songwriter. And the fact is, I need to splash around ankle deep in a neighborly creek for a while. As in, record one song. Let it be itself. If it's mediocre, who cares? It's just music. Unproduced, unmixed, unmastered. Played by whatever instruments I have on hand, or joined by whatever friends are happy to come over and play. And by "play" I mean for fun.

And so, I am very happy to say that I have found the pause button on marketing brain, and I have also found a mandolin-banjo-guitar-violin friend and a super tech-savvy video-editing and audio-learning husband, who are going to help me record one of the first songs I ever wrote. The plan is to do this in our basement before Christmas.

And the audience? Not music professionals. Not labels or producers or music supervisors or publishers. Just friends and family and friends of friends and sojourning readers and music professionals who happen to also be friends or friends of friends or sojourning readers.

So, who wants a copy? Think of it like an mp3 Christmas card of original music (and I'll try to think of it that way too).

I've Been Wholly Insincere

Yesterday at a power lunch with an incredibly talented and attractive (he's available, gentleman) publicist friend of mine, we overheard a singer at a nearby table talking to his date about His Voice. (Eyeroll. The brass player comes out in me. Blasted vocalists with their scarves and their hot herbal tea and matching mittens and perfect posture and make-up on their faces. Gag me. )

. . .

So let's talk about My Voice!

Prior to my first lesson with Mark Baxter (has it already been 5 months?!), I sent him a few tracks from a piano-vocal demo I made back when I was living in Miami in 2002, along with one single solitary track of my own music, just to give him a sense of my voice. I told him that, for reasons I couldn't quite articulate, I L-O-V-E to sing but have never liked the sound of my singing voice. I told him that I find it boring, uninteresting. Kind of lame. How to fix this? A gal who loves singing more than just about anything but cayen't stayend the sound of it?

And this is how this dude shot me right between the eyes before I had so much as walked in the studio and unwrapped my scarf (kidding! remember, it was June). He said he had listened to the tracks I sent and wanted to tell me something. (Yes, I think. Fix it. Make it sound Right.) And he spent about 10 minutes talking to me about honesty.

WHAM. OK. Well, that was not what I was expecting. I shall now paraphrase (though I could transcribe the whole thing from that cruel, cruel, disc he makes me bring to each session):

Here's the thing, he said. We are all animals. We have a finely tuned sense of whether or not somebody is being straight with us. The moment a stranger walks into a room we have made an almost instantaneous judgment of them: safe or unsafe, trust or don't trust, real or hiding something? And we do that very same thing when we hear someone sing. Singing is primal. We can all tell (or at least we think we can tell) when somebody means it. If they let down their guard, we let down ours. If they let us in, we let them in. Trust. 

 And here's the blow that won the match before it had started:

When I listen to you sing, what speaks loudest to me is not what you are saying, but how careful you are being. How you are hiding behind all of your training. How all of your defenses are up, ensuring that no vulnerability shows through. You are heavily guarded, shielded. I hear someone who is going through acrobatics to sound correct. If that's what people hear, they won't even bother to pay attention to the words because they won't be interested, they'll be bored, they won't believe you because they won't trust you. Is that what you want people to hear when they listen to you?

Jesus. Well . . . no.

For someone who has, on more than one occasion, been referred to as "honest to a fault," this is pretty much the last lecture I was expecting to receive. I mean, for better or for worse, I can't stand talking to someone whose guard is up and who's only presenting veneer. I consider making conversation to be part of my job and I can definitely do it when I'm "on duty" but I find myself counting the minutes and wishing for the moment when the crap is up and the conversation can finally start. And I'm pretty awful at sustaining any friendship that stalls out in facade territory. Boring. Get real. I surround myself with friends who dig deep. To a large extent I don't think I can help it.

BUT - he's completely, totally, 100% right! I mean, he nailed it. And I felt this huge sense of relief! I didn't realize it, but that is precisely why I haven't liked listening to myself sing. I don't even believe myself! How can I expect anyone else to??

I was always frustrated in voice lessons because every teacher I ever had was training me to be a mezzo soprano with 26 Italian Songs and Arias, coaching me on "Sure on This Shining Night" (OK, I actually really loved that one but wished it was about a fourth lower). Those weren't the kinds of sounds I wanted to be making. I didn't want to wiggle my hand to remind myself to use vibrato. I never wanted a big fat lacquered voice. I just wanted to sing what I was feeling, seeing. I wanted to tell the story as I see it. That's all I still want to do. I have all of these words and melodies and harmonies and stories inside that I want to tell. I want to make songs that people can hear and say "Yes! It's just like that! I see it too!" I want to write a song that somebody can crawl inside and call home the same way Sufjan Stevens, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, and Emily Saliers have done for me.

And so, the past few months have been warbly. Unstable. Edgy. I'm making some of the uhg-liest croaking sounds imaginable. I'm flat. I'm sharp. I'm weird. I'm resisting the almost-consuming compulsion to sing like "somebody who knows better." I'm singing "too high" in my chest voice. He assures me the cracking and squawking is no sign of injury, just a sign of a control freak who's refusing to let go of all of her safety nets. Sounds like a hot mess.

But I see signs of progress. There is no correct way to pronounce, to inflect, to phrase. I am discovering the myriad effects a person can get with a single tone. It's endless. It's overwhelming. And each one means something different, totally, slightly. There is no Right. And maybe, so what if my voice cracks?

I don't know. As of now, it doesn't feel like I have any...control...over the sound. As in, how can I convey the feelings behind the words if my voice is bucking around Brooklyn like some freaking startled bronco? I suppose I could only sing songs that are intended to sound haphazard and reckless? Mmm. Still, it's been six months since I started this blog and I ain't let nobody hear nuttin' yet. I mean, if I keep waiting until I sound awesome and everything's perfect then it's never going to happen and everyone's going to lose interest, right?

So many questions. And only two lessons. But I heard Sufjan Stevens's voice almost crack a few times on Monday night and it was heart-breakingly effective. I paid attention because he meant it.

And I mean it. I really really do. I just have to let go and get out of it's way.