“Yeah,” Jake said. He looked at Mary, who was sitting in one of the chairs, her rehearsal violin (which meant it was only a two-thousand-dollar instrument) sitting in her lap. “Mom, can we borrow your tuning fork for a few?”
“Of course,” she said, reaching in her case and pulling it out.
It took a while, since the strings on both guitars were badly in need of being changed in addition to being out of tune, but eventually Jake and Celia were able to get the instruments into passable tune for what they were trying to accomplish.
“All right then,” Jake said, looking at Celia. “What should we try first?”
“How about you run through Insignificance with Mary?” Celia suggested. “It’s a simple piece—well, you know what I mean—that will help us kind of get plugged in.”
Jake thought this through for a moment and then nodded. Insignificance was one of his tunes, an original he had penned shortly after returning from exile in New Zealand. It was a lively ballad musically, strong on acoustic guitar, but with lyrics that were dark when analyzed—lyrics that described the essential meaninglessness of life no matter what one managed to accomplish during it.
“All right,” he said, giving the Les Paul a strum and then grabbing a C-chord. “Let me play the chorus for you first, so you can get a feel for the melody.”
“Sounds good,” Mary said, fingering the handle of her bow.
Jake began to fingerpick out the chorus. It was a gentle, almost hypnotic melody. He ran through it three times and then added his voice to the fourth.
“Insignificance,
Just a speck in time and space
Insignificance
One day we’re gone without a trace
Insignificance,
We fight so hard to leave our mark
Insignificance
In the end, we’re all nothing but a spark”
“I like the melody, Jake,” Mary told him.
“Thanks, Mom.”
“And your voice sounds ... well ... richer.”
“I quit smoking cigarettes,” he told her, and then, with a guilty shrug, “for the most part anyway. It’s increased my range and timbre considerably.”
“Well, I’m certainly glad to hear that,” she said, delighted. “Such a nasty habit.”
“Yeah, I’ll agree with that,” Jake told her. “Anyway, what I’m hoping for on this tune is a subtle, constant accompaniment with your violin during the vocal portions and then some accent enhancement over the guitar chords during the chorus breaks and the bridge.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “Give me some specifics on the composition,” she told him.
“It’s in the key of C-major,” Jake told her.
“Obviously,” she said, giving him a little eye roll.
Jake nodded. “It’s a four, constant throughout at ninety per minute. The primary instruments will be the acoustic guitar and the violin. When we mix, there may be some subtle bass dubbed in, but that is still to be determined. There will be no percussion at all.”
“Okay,” she said. “That sounds easy enough. Abafando during the vocalization parts and accentato on the changeovers.”
“Uh ... right,” Jake said. Unlike his mother, he had not had a formal musical education other than a semester at community college. He knew the concepts inside and out, but was a bit weak on the official terminology. “That’s pretty much what I said, right?”
Mary smiled. “Right,” she said. “Is there anything else?”
“I think that’s the long and short of it,” Jake told her. “Except for the solo, of course.”
Mary’s eyes widened. “The solo?”
“Naturally,” Jake said. “There needs to be a nice, melodic violin solo between the bridge and the final chorus. It will be one of the highlights of the song.”
“It will?”
“It will,” he confirmed. “I’ve actually composed the basics of the melody with the thought of that violin solo in mind. It’s going to be awesome. I can just feel it.”
Mary smiled, warming to the thought. “Well ... I suppose I could do that,” she said. “I’ve done more than my share of solos with the symphony. As long as the notes are properly placed on that page and I’m allowed to rehearse it up to the point that...” She looked up to see her son shaking his head at her. “What?”
“You have to compose your own solo, Mom,” he said.
“I have to compose it?”
“It’s tradition,” Jake told her. “In rock and roll music the musician composes his or her own solo. You’re the one most familiar with your instrument and what it can do. Matt always composed his own guitar solos for Intemperance songs, even if they were my tunes. And Nerdly always composed his own piano solos as well.”
“Please don’t call him Nerdly, Jake,” Cynthia said with a wince.
“Uh ... sorry, Cindy,” Jake said. He turned back to his mother. “Anyway, that’s the way things work with rock music.”
“But Jake,” Mary said, “I’m not a composer. I play music that others have written. I do it very well, but as for coming up with something on my own ... well ... I just don’t know.”
“You’ll do fine, Mom,” Jake assured her. “Remember when we jammed at Bill and Sharon’s wedding? You came up with that on your own and you freakin’ rocked it once you got into the feel of it. You’ll rock this as well.”
“Well ... that was kind of fun,” she said, “but...”
“Let’s not worry about the solo just yet,” Bill said. “Remember, Mary, that you haven’t actually agreed to do this yet?”
“Uh ... well, yeah,” she said. “That is true.”
“So, this discussion about violin solos might be putting the confirmation of our hypothesis ahead of our empirical and repeatable evidence, correct?”
“Uh...” Mary said, looking over at Jake.
“Putting our cart before our horse,” Jake translated for her.
“Oh,” she said brightly, “I see. Yes, I suppose we would be doing that.”
“How about for this moment in time,” Bill suggested, “we just concentrate on the basic composition of the piece and worry about the solo if and when you decide to commit to the project?”
“Well put, Bill,” Jake told him.
“All right,” Mary said. “I find you make a good argument.” She looked at her son. “Why don’t you run through the whole tune for me and we’ll go from there?”
“An outstanding idea,” Jake said.
He began to play. His mother and Cynthia listened.
Once they started, all five of the musicians, as well as Sharon, the sound technician extraordinaire, quickly lost focus on everything else around them. They ran through Insignificance for the better part of an hour. Jake played it all the way through on the clean output of the Les Paul and then Mary slowly, hesitantly began to accompany as instructed on her violin. She played softly as Jake sang, and then stronger, with more emphasis on the notes, during the changeovers, utilizing the basic notation of the tune that Jake had quickly penned out for her on a piece of scrap paper. They left out the solo for now, although everyone could tell that it was high on Mary’s mind. Everyone agreed that they were definitely onto something.
They then moved onto one of Celia’s songs, a piece that would require both piano and violin. It was called This Just Can’t Go On. It was one of the tunes Celia had sung for Jake during their drunken jam session prior to the Grammy Awards ceremony several years ago, the time they had truly bonded together as musicians. It was planned to be one of the more radio friendly songs on her upcoming album.
“Okay,” Celia told the ladies after she and Jake ran through the basic acoustic version. “I know we don’t have the bass or the drums here, but we’re going for a four at one hundred ten per minute with a few tempo changes down to ninety. Our key is G-major. Everyone got that?”