164. VIDEO: Finding the funk?

After a good 10 minutes of involuntary syncopations, it’s just possible that I’m finding my groove a tiny bit.  Since three times through the nerve-wracking slow torture of “Oh! Susannah” has me sticking straws in my hair, I switch to sampling one of the keyboard's rhythm backgrounds, which does help me feel the beat.  But Gus’s response is utter chaos and full entropy; his foot needs an exorcist as it flails the hi-hat pedal.  Until we return to “Susannah,” and he regains his focus, following his conductor with remarkable acuity:

If I can resist being driven ‘round the bend by its electronic inanity, I’ll try more “Susannah” again next time.  Anything for the donkey . . .

163. VIDEO: “Oh, don’t you cry for me”

In elementary school, I invariably caught the ear of every music teacher.  But not in a good way.  She’d slowly walk by the line of singing kids, with her head cocked and with a puzzled, queasy look on her face, and then she’d stop and point at me.  “You just mouth the words,” she’d tell me.  “You be a listener.”  She was a tad brusque, but she wasn’t wrong.  When I didn’t lose the tune altogether, I was always, always flat.  I don’t recall getting similarly gonged off the stage when we played simple percussion instruments, but I suspect I wasn’t much better with those.

Now many decades later, in a horse barn far away, when it comes to finding the (pretty much unmissable) beat of “Oh! Susannah,” I’m still no better than a braying ass.   And this particular ass sets the tone for our musical endeavors quite eloquently when his first gesture is to shove his hi-hat cymbals to the ground.  Nevertheless, I’m game to channel my inner tone-deaf child, and I start up up the music.  

Slowing the song’s pace seems to help us both.  Still, my struggle to give him his cue in advance of the beat, so he has time to lift and drop his hoof on the pedal, looks awkward and sounds worse:

 

162. VIDEO: Of sound mind

A couple of times, my friend Barbara has wondered aloud if Gus might enjoy real music, not just the random cacophony he produces himself.  So I unearthed a big keyboard that Sandy had found and stored in a tack room, because that one has some 40 songs and some 80 rhythmic backgrounds that it can play on its own.  The idea is to see if Gus would pick up on the beat of the sampled music and be able to clash his cymbals or honk his horn in anything like the same meter.

All the songs are electronic-sugarpop affronts to any ear, but we select a couple with simple signatures (“Sur le pont d’Avignon,” “Oh! Suzannah”), and we see how Gus reacts when they start hooting and twittering in his face. 

Sudden loud music?  Ho hum.  No concern shown, no offense taken.  All Gus wants is to play those keys, same as with his smaller piano.  Failing that, he grabs a nearby traffic cone and flaps it up and down — in time to the music?  nah, not really — by way of demanding a click and treat from me.

As with the boom of the bass drum, this twangy music leaves Gus utterly unfazed, green-lighting us for step two:  set the music going at a slowed-down pace, stash the keyboard out of sight, then present him with his regular instruments and try cuing him to stomp his hi-hat cymbals to accent the music.  The experiment begins . . .