Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2010 November 24 • Wednesday

While ransacking my closets and shelves for some old movie memorabilia (a Five Million Years to Earth press kit) I came across this score that I wrote last century.

The G, B and D stand for guitar, bass and drums. There are four lines for each of them. This would be the conductor's score, a reminder of those years of my adolescence that I spent sitting in the last chair of the second violin section of the Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, eating M&Ms while sawing my way through Bizet.

I have almost no idea what I thought this should sound like.

"ABT" might stand for "A Better Tomorrow" and could indicate a feel similar to that of the main title music from that movie.

"ARA" in the second line of the drum part surely means Ara Babajian, the excellent drummer who played with me many times in the 1990s. Why I needed to write his name in that one spot when he's playing throughout is a mystery to me.

"FC" in the second line of the guitar part means, I think I remember, "Find Chords". Usually you would have found the chords when you were writing the chart, possibly even before you wrote the chart. (Some of the real pros work that way.)

The rest of it is baffling. I might know what the title means, but of course it doesn't have a title.

I eventually abandoned this approach and started writing standard notation, or trying to. My collaborators on the At Sunset recording were very kind and gently pointed out how such and such should have been written or politely inquired whether this or that note was really what I meant.

Now when I write music I can take some comfort from the fact that my scores are not quite as maladroit as they used to be!