Heaneyland!

Perhaps this will distract people until the thank-you cards arrive

Many people who attended my wedding asked if they could get a copy of the song I sang during the ceremony, "Enthusiastic". At the time, all I had recorded was the guitar part, but at long last, I recorded a vocal track, so here it is.

There is a certain amount of backstory, though, as to why I had the guitar part recorded to start with. You see, I had written the song for the wedding (well...more like I had written the song as a surprise for Rose, and I was happy enough with it that I wanted to sing it at the wedding; close enough). Then, at the rehearsal dinner, while passing up folding chairs from the basement of the gallery we were getting married in, I sliced open my left thumb on the back of a folding chair. Fairly gruesomely. I put a bandage and an ice pack on it, managed not to have a panic attack, and went to dinner.

After dinner, those of us who had returned to my apartment reassessed the damage and determined that, even though it sucked, and even though I still had several wedding-related tasks to do before the ceremony the next day (printing the programs, burning the mix CDs for the reception, etc.) I really needed to go to the emergency room.

So we ended up in the emergency room until about three in the morning, after having watched Jaws one and a half times on the waiting room TV (TNT was running an all-night Jaws-a-thon, so after the first showing ended, it started all over again). Let me tell you, there really isn't a much less appropriate movie to see in a hospital waiting room than Jaws. (Sample line: "Right arm has been severed above the elbow with massive tissue loss in the upper musculature.") Anyway, I ended up with two stitches in my thumb, so there was no way I could play guitar the next day. Had it been my right thumb, it might have been doable, but the left thumb is the one that squeezes the back of the fretboard, and applying that much pressure was screamingly painful.

So, since I figured I wasn't getting any sleep that night anyway, I recorded the guitar part to the song four bars or so at a time, holding my left hand in various unusual positions that didn't involve pressing the pad of my thumb against the guitar. So, like, I'd lodge the neck of the guitar in the webbing between my left thumb and index finger, play as many chords as were possible to play from that position, stop, rearrange my hand, and pick up where I left off. Then I spliced it all together digitally, burned it to a CD, and sang the song at the ceremony karaoke-style.

Honestly, apart from the fact that I had a big gash in my thumb, it was much less stressful to sing it that way instead of playing it live, because it is a fairly difficult song. As for my thumb, it's been back in shape for a while, so I could have rerecorded the guitar part, but I thought it would be more appropriate to leave it as it is.

Posted by Francis at 01:03 AM