144. VIDEO: Orchestrations

My friend Paul — he who so sturdily up-armored the drum and cymbals foot pedals — has furthered Gus’s musical career yet again.  I told him my aspirations for a bicycle-horn holder that could attach to the Sweet-Ass bandstand, and he devised the perfect solution. 

Onto a piece of two-by-four, he seated a firm but flexible rubber housing for the base of a CB radio antenna; into that he vertically inserted a thin fiberglas-plastic rod (such as homeowners use to mark the edges of their driveways for the winter snowplows); and at its top end, he attached a stub of PVC pipe and clamped on a new, plastic, hot-pink bulb horn that squeaks like the loudest and most obnoxious dog toy imaginable.  He even drilled a small hole through each end of the rod and used little cotter-pin devices to prevent the rod and the horn from twisting or spinning.  It’s a MacGyver of beauty.

And Gus loves it very much.  I wondered if he might at first be alarmed by the horn’s squawk being so much louder and more sudden than the old horn’s, but I shoulda known:  when he’s the one causing the noise, the brasher the better.  I still like the classic lower pitch of the old horn too, so I’m dreaming up ways to mount that one next to the new one.  And to teach Gus yet another conductor’s hand-signal to differentiate between the two . . .

[Here's one 90-second video, if you

prefer that to these staccato snippets...]

At this point in our studies, we’re pretty clear and reliable with the downward-pointing arm for stepping on the cymbals pedal and with the slow horizontal arm for playing the keyboard.  He’s still keener on stomping the pedal, so usually we start our “mi-mi-mi” warmups with him ignoring my keyboard signal and instead just pounding away on the cymbals.  But soon we get into sync, and the concerto begins to take shape.

Of course, any orchestration requires not just notes but also rests (unless it’s by Philip Glass, whose music beats any psy-ops torture at inducing abject, driveling insanity).  And no artiste can segue between “Flight of the Bumblebee” and “Sabre Dance” without risk of seizure or syncope.  Therefore, especially given Gus’s near-obsession with his music, I feel it important for his health and welfare to ensure that he take a breather now and then.  Since he’s an expert at backing up for the cha-cha and he’s an old hand at “the grownups are talking (so just stand still and be patient),” I can ask him to step away from the bandstand and then invite him back to it with a modicum of calm and control.

For directing Gus to the horn, my thumb-and-fingers squeeze gesture is still a work in progress:  I need to learn where to place my hand so that Gus can see it beyond his enormous snout, and Gus needs to learn that it’s not an invitation to nuzzle my hand for a treat.  He also needs to firm up his understanding that the bulb is the part of the horn to bite, rather than its flared bell.  The shriek of this new horn seems so gratifying to him that I’m confident he’ll learn these finer points in no time at all.

Next, watch for video of our newest instrument:  the jingle bells.