I have kept up writing with frequency. For seven years now, I have participated in National Novel Writing Month and now have three novels in first draft form under my belt. I write poetry, I write plays, I write essays, I write abstract theater pieces. I write blogs! There has never been a time when I've entirely put aside writing, even if it has not been my main focus.
Being a rock star, however, has often taken a back seat.
When I was in seventh grade, I saw the Trans-Siberian Orchestra perform live. TSO, if you don't know, is a metal band (offshoot of Savatage) that mainly does Christmas music and classical pieces. All of their albums are concept albums--three are Christmas stories and one is about Beethoven--and they meld traditional music with heavy metal in astonishing ways. Their Winter tour is structured in two halves - the first half is the entirety of the album "Christmas Eve and Other Stories", fully narrated, and the second half is more traditional rock concert. The first concert I saw was at the Carpenter's Center, the smaller concert venue in Richmond, and was actually relatively small for their shows. (Later, I would see them in Richmond Colesium with pyrotechnics.) I was sitting up in the balcony before the show began (it was just me and my brother), and I saw this white, pointy instrument and I gasped, "IS THAT AN ELECTRIC VIOLIN?!" As a confirmed metalhead in my second year of orchestra, I'd heard of mythical things called electric violins but had never seen one in person.
Indeed, it was an electric violin. Played by the master, Mark Wood.
Let us observe Mark Wood in his rock star glory:
That kick at around 1 minute? Epic.
That particular violin in that video is one of Mark's personal collection and is called the "Spaceolin". Mark Wood makes his own violins, and, indeed, has his own violin line. I discovered this shortly after the concert. The white violin I saw was the Viper violin.
The Viper violin is the ultimate rock star violin. It's shaped like a flying V electric guitar, comes with up to seven strings, with or without frets, and has a unique shoulder support system so your neck is entirely free, allowing you to sing and play at the same time. With seven strings, you can play lower than a cello. Frets are great for both the look and for extremely fast playing in strange lighting situations. For me, it was love at first sight.
I wanted one. I wanted one so badly. I wanted one so badly that I pestered my parents all the time. In the epic battle that was the cleanliness of my room, this conversation came up multiple times: Me: "You know what would get me to clean my room?" My Mother: "We're not buying you a Viper." I became an active member of the Wood Violin forums, to the point where when I met Mark Wood in the autograph line after the TSO concert I went to in eighth grade, he recognized me from my username. I would sit in class and calculate how long it would take me to save up my allowance to buy a Viper. I think it was generally about five years.
My dream Viper had frets, and six strings. I was not opting for the seventh string because of how wide that makes the neck and because you have to use bass rosin on the bow because it's so thick. Six strings would do just fine. I never quite solid on color. For a long time I thought black, but since I was wearing all black at that time I realized it would blend in with my clothing. For a while I thought electric blue. I think I eventually "decided" on blood red... with a bit of a fade in from black effect.
As I got into theater, the rock star plans started to fall to the wayside. Many of my middle school friends are surprised that I still don't have a band. But I would continue to go to TSO concerts. I went every year from 7th grade through 11th grade. A Viper violin still remains, almost as a recurring joke, on my Christmas list.
Mark Wood has started an "electrify your strings!" program where he comes around and does workshops with schools. He was coming to a middle school near me my senior year of high school... the middle school I would have attended, in fact, had I not gone to the "gifted" program. One of my best friends from middle school's mother worked at that middle school, so she talked to the orchestra teacher and got us in. I skipped show choir that day (with intense explainations to Becker about how important this was to me), to spend a day with middle schoolers and Mark Wood. It was phenomenal. After the master class, all the middle schoolers left to catch the bus, so my friend and I helped strike and hung out with Mark Wood for a good while, just chatting. When I explained to him my obsession with his violins, he said, "Oh man! I wish I'd known, I would've had you up here on an electric!" He also gave me advice on taking the violin on a plane, as I was flying with my violin to New York that weekend. ("Yeah, I've always taken it as a carry-on and they've never questioned me. And I look a lot more suspicious than you.")
When I saw TSO again my freshman year of college, I thought, "Why isn't theater more like this? Why isn't theater as exciting as a rock concert?" The theatricality of rock concerts fascinates me (my love of Alice Cooper) and thrills me. I just got my ticket to see Trans-Siberian Orchestra on Long Island in December. I'm thrilled. I will probably scream my voice out. This is a big deal as I've ALWAYS been paranoid about vocal health. When I wanted to be a cheerleader in 4th grade (I bet you never thought you'd see me type THAT!) I wasn't allowed to because of the screaming. And while I will work to keep my voice supported... I will also probably go crazy. (Especially because Chris Caffery knows how to work a crowd.)
I once went to see a show entirely because it was a musical done by GrooveLily. The lead singer/violinist plays a Viper, so I'd known of GrooveLily for years because of my obsession with these instruments... and then GrooveLily got into doing theatre. Awesome. I e-mailed her about how excited I was to see a Viper in a theater piece, and she was enormously sweet both via email and in person.
Sometime last year, I was obsessing over Wood Violins again. I was seriously getting back into playing violin, but I was at a pause because my violin, the same violin we rented back in middle school, was crap. It was good for a beginner's instrument, but advancing any more would be next to impossible - something the orchestra teacher at that middle school confronted me with when he tuned it for the master class. He refused to hear my excuses about not being able to afford a new violin, because if I was serious about this, I would get a better violin somehow. And I realized that if I'd been serious about it back in middle school, I would've had that Viper by now. Then, poking around on the all-too-familiar Wood Violins website, I saw a new violin.
WHAAAAT?!
Well, not exactly new, but a less expensive version of one of his other violins, the Stingray (which was always my second choice after the Viper). It's called a Stingray SV4, and it's an entry-level electric violin. With violins, electric or otherwise, I'd shy away from anything "inexpensive"... except that having been so intently into Mark Wood's company for so long, having talked with him, I know that he would not put his name on something that was not quality. Period. The Stingray SV4 comes in either black or red, it has four strings, no frets, so it's more basic. The Stingray SV4 kit comes with the violin, a bow, a case, an amp custom voiced by Mark for electric violin, a wah-wah pedal also designed by Mark... all for $800. That's actually unreal, and again, I trust Mark for his quality.
So I said to myself that by the end of the next school year (this year!), I would have this violin. I gave myself a deadline or else it wouldn't happen. I've been hoarding money ever since.
I'm sound designing a show this semester (what? Me, sound designing? Never!). We were preparing for an upcoming workshop, which was basically a run with limited tech. One of the requirements was that all of the sound had to be made live and in the space - no prerecorded sound. This piece includes short dance sequences, we needed sound for those... so I became a bit of a one man band. I actually learned how to play a small bit of electric guitar for this workshop. (I hope to never play guitar again - I think it's the most miserable thing in the world and I don't know why so many people voluntarily do that to their hands.) I also played my (crappy) violin. (No, really, it's bad. Even violinists who are significantly better than I am sound bad on this.) As I was lamenting this when we pulled it out for rehearsal, I said, "But by the end of this year I'll have an electric violin. Wish I had it for this show!" and then the director's ears perked up.
Basically. If we decided it would be really good for the show, he would be willing to pay for the violin, provided I paid him back since I was already planning on buying one.
After the workshop, we decided that it could really really help. We're adding prerecorded sound back in but largely playing with the contrast between live sound and prerecorded sound, which has been part of our discussion from the beginning, actually.
Researching now, though, I found out that this particular violin was in high demand, most people were awaiting new shipments of them. The Wood Violins website said only a handful of dealers had them. So I prayed and hoped that of all the dealers, Sam Ash in Times Square would have them.
Sam Ash in Times Square is huge. I walked into the Guitar/Keyboard section, asked where I would go if I was looking for electric violins, and he told me, "Across the street."
Yup.
At the other part of the store ACROSS THE STREET.
I saw it in the window as I jaywalked. And when I asked the lady at the counter about it (making sure it was a Stingray SV4 instead of a normal Stingray), she asked me if I wanted to try it. And I tried REALLY hard to remain cool looking. I'm not sure how successful it was. But here's the thing:
I've come so close to playing a Wood Violin before. There was the master class, and also a friend I met on the Wood Violin message board back in middle school is a year younger than me, owns a Viper, and now goes to NYU. We met awkwardly in person at a dining hall last year, and I've never had the courage to ask if I can try her instrument. There's always been this reverence and therefore fear about it.
I tried to stay cool. I tried to pretend like I was actually testing things instead of just marveling at its tone quality. And when I talked to the woman, I asked really intelligent questions from my nearly 8 years of obsession over violins such as these. Then I told her I'd probably be back the next day, handed the violin back, and raced downtown to the design meeting that I was late for (but with blessing because I was researching options for the show).
Today, I dressed in my best rock star outfit (yes, I have rock star outfits. Don't judge) to go uptown to purchase the violin. It ended up coming to about $640, which is PHENOMENAL for everything I got. I then proceeded to take it down to my studio to tune it and nuzzle it. It's actually an extremely nuzzle-able violin.
In many ways, I'm still in shock. I've been playing around with the amp and effects (it goes to 11!), working to learn the different vocabulary of an electric instrument, and it's phenomenal. Being outside of this world for such a long time, the transition into it is so much more magical. Facebook exploded with my announcement, with friends from middle school and the Mark Wood forums sharing in my joy. It's very much like I have a child... and I generally have little to no motherly instinct. I don't squeal when I see babies. But I don't want to let this violin out of my sight... not because it's an expensive, well-crafted piece of equipment, but because of all the history, all the build up for pretty much half of my cognizant life.
She's beautiful. She's mine. Her name is Mary, but she goes by Ax. We're learning how to work with each other. And I was right... the feeling of pulling a bow across the strings and hearing it reverberate in its distortion long after you've stopped the bow IS as cool as the rock stars make it seem.
THIS IS MY SERIOUS ROCK STAR FACE. RAWR.
Wow. "Ax Mary." Reminds me of Lizzy Borden. She IS beautiful, though.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations!