Club 118: An Ellensburg Trip

Last weekend, we went out to the Ellensburg Poetry Prowl to support our poets, Melinda Mueller & Maya Jewell Zeller, and to check out the scene. I had been very much looking forward to spring camping in Yakima Canyon, but the weather was dreadful and we ended up spending the night in the Motel 6.

Here’s something about Victor: it appears he would like to sleep in an isolation pod swaddled like a baby. When we bought a new mattress, his primary concern was that it be vibration canceling! He sleeps with earplugs, eye mask, and a complete set of granny gear! Needless to say on Sunday morning, I woke up to find my husband grouchy and beMOANING my movement in bed, my yawning, my very existence.

So I told him I’d write a dance party song and he suggested it be called, “Club 118” after our hotel room. I’m calling it the Bears in Bed Mix.

So here’s what I’ve done and learned this week:

1. I’ve upgraded to Logic X. I figure if I am going to watch instructional videos to learn software, I might as well do that only once for a fully-featured program rather than Garage Band.
2. I got all the Roli software working and understand a bit more how it works. Not how to adjust all the sounds, just to get them to play at all!
3. A few keyboard shortcuts.
4. A bit on tempo, tempo adjustment, and all those clips—and what the names might imply.
5. Finally, I watched a video on how to adjust EQ.

So here’s where I am at after working on this song for a week:

Good lord, dance music is hard to do. As a matter of fact, I think it will be impossible to actually post a song a week on learning to make music… a sketch maybe, but not a complete song! There’s something not right about the end of this tune but I don’t know how to fix it. There is also a bit of “throw everything in” just to see what it does! Ha! While it was fun to make some jokes, I am also quite done with making music like this.

Rather, I have spent the last several days thinking about a project of trying to write some songs for ballet, and in particular for duets between men. This weekend, we went to see Crystal Pite’s Emergence, with its fantastic score:

and then I often watch this film (as it shows up in my YouTube sidebar)…

So, I can not post a new song every week! That was the exuberance of unknowing. But equally crazy, I am just going to make music for dancers in my head. Fantastic!

Finally, here’s a few shots from the quick trip out there… mostly, just our hike with Melinda, in one of our favorite places in Washington: The Potholes! Thanks to Melinda’s good eye, we did see the cranes as we were about to drop off the plateau down to the Columbia.