Electric and Eclectic.

As some of you who know me are aware, I've been playing a lot of music lately. I maintain two bands on the regular, and lately I've been filling in as the bassist of a third band as they seek out an official replacement for the place which I am currently holding. I enjoy playing music more than nearly anything. But recently I have been all across the board in what I am doing musically these days. As some of you may remember, I came close to putting together an indie band back in mid-summer, but that kind of fell apart, which in hindsight is really for the best. I have been playing with this new band and it's been a blast, and I finally got to play with a keyboardist after all these years.

But now I find myself at an interesting impasse: chances are I will probably have to take a month or so off from musical pursuits while I finish my thesis or else it will never get done. Still, that should presumably wrap up no later than the end of January, which will then leave me with something I've basically never had before: a regular schedule and routine to my life with a reasonable amount of spare time. I won't have papers hanging over my head, for the most part when I come home from work, my work day will be done, and I can do almost anything I want. While most people think this may be a dream come true, it's kind of a nightmare realized for me. See, free time = way too much time to be inside my head.

So I'm thinking I might want to see what I can learn about keyboards and electric-type music. No, I'm not going to start manufacturing beats out of my garage or do anything that might label me as an "MC" but I think it could be a very interesting experiment into my musical mind. I have thought about it from time to time, especially when I listen to bands like Ratatat who do that whole guitar/electro thing amazingly well, but even post-rock and shoegaze bands are starting to incorporate interesting digital stuff into their music. I suppose the topper was tonight when I exposed the other Lava Rats to the "band" Why? and Rodd said before the first song "See, this is the kind of stuff you should be doing, this is right up your alley." What exactly he meant, I can't be sure, but it certainly caught me a bit off guard, because up to this point not much outside the realm of punk, jazz, or surf has really been "up my alley" as far as guitar playing is concerned. It'll be really interesting to see how the type of stuff I've been playing over the last ten years will influence what I do in the next couple of years.

Who knows, maybe next week I'll be on a completely different page, but at the moment, I think that would be a fun skill to learn that would make me that much more musically alluring, though I need to figure out how to make that happen without spending money....