People ask me ‘Gray. How do you play bass, with those ever moving notes, and sing at the same time?’ My reply? ‘I just kind of ‘do’. I suppose what they mean is, separating the voice and hands. What seems, as a non-musician, to be complex actions being produced. Even one hand strumming and the other holding down a chord or three can seem complicated. Trust me. My limits with a six string guitar is strumming, humming or singing and keeping time by think-tapping out metronome time in my brain. A silent ever present brain metronome is a blessing really. Hands thinking of what you’re playing and voice channeling different rhythmic melody become rote after a while.

Singing and playing bass? As said ‘I kind of just ‘do’. There are music limitations that I cannot fathom out. Piano keys, their simple black and white keys that I cannot command spatially and using both hands individually in the complex patterns required. Both the visual placement of placing fingers on a line of white and finding separate digit movements? Nope. It’s all so far beyond my scope. Musicians? I really admire drummers and keyboard players especially.

I’m writing this because of a phone conversation with my guitar playing brother last night. He is going on a jam session next week with our friend John, the drummer I played alongside in Team 23, and my brother’s old work colleague friend who he played alongside in a band. His friend is a bass player and vocalist. I asked my brother if he would finally sing himself. At least some harmonies. He has never done this in all the time he has played guitar. Certainly never in our first band Soft Ground. That was in early teenage years. So decades upon decades of him never using voice and guitar together. He is a lead guitarist and damn good too. So there is a complexity in his playing. He said ‘I tried once when we played Gloria by Van Morrison. When I sang the single ‘Gloria’ harmony…..I stopped playing the guitar!’

He’s going to give singing a go again he says. Just a bit of practice separating your mind’s focus a little and, Bam, off you go. Like learning how to ride a bike or swim.

It isn’t like rubbing your stomach and top of your head in clockwise circles with a hand on each and then changing one of your hand directions to anticlockwise. That blows your mind. Impossible. And. It’s not like choosing whether to buy a mint chocolate chip or salted caramel ice cream cone. You don’t buy the two and finish one and start on the other afterwards. You don’t take a bit of one, scream ‘Lovely jubbly!’ And then a bit of the other and scream ‘Even more lovely jubbly’. That doesn’t work musically with voice, guitar, voice, guitar stop and starts. Basically. You shove both in a bowl, mix them up and produce a unique synergy of taste. Don’t eat it too fast either. Just enjoy the process. Too fast at eating? You get a huge dose of ‘brain freeze’ and become ‘the ice cream screamer’. I suppose you can sing and play guitar like that. In my mind it’s called thrash metal. For myself, it’s nicer to chill your beans at times and just enjoy warbling along and enjoying the taste of the ice cre…., sorry, music. I mean music. The taste of what the music gives.

Brain freeze should be avoided at all cost. Or, as my nurse days’ learning knew it, Sphenopalatine Ganglioneuralgia. Where basically, a bunch of nerve ganglions at the back of the nose get overexcited when the roof of your mouth gets hit with sudden excessive cold temperature blasts. Vasoconstriction and then Vasodilation causing brain response havoc. Ironically. There is something poetic in the paradoxical juxtaposition of either singing gentle harmonies when playing guitar to produce calm. Or, in other words, enjoying the slow eating of ice cream. Or banging out thrash metal riffs and screaming until your voice cracks. Or, in other words, shovelling ice cream down your neck at a rate of knots.

Currently? I just enjoy picking up the guitar and singing and playing my self written melodies that rise deep from within the whole gamut of a complex cluster of many nerve pathways. Therapy? Good for putting off possible future dementia. Well, hopefully, yes. Music and especially playing it yourself, provides hits to many physiological parts of the brain. The auditory cortex (understanding melody, harmony, note pitch, subtle tone, etc.), the motor system (finding individual rhythms in voice, hands, feet, etc.), the limbic system (emotional responses), frontal lobe and prefrontal cortex (anticipation and evaluation of various sequence structures), the interactions between auditory and motor actions (do you dance to the music when you play air guitar and sing?)….and of course using both your left side and right side of the brain working in harmony and body movement. My gosh! Aren’t we all a bunch of fine complex creatures.

Some decision making, like playing piano, drums, the left or right side of a forked pathway, at times are simply impossible. Maybe some people can achieve that. I never could do that in a month of Sundays. A lifetime of Sundays even. A gentle life of bobbling along is a fine groove to belong in.

When I wanted the perfect chill out and groove vibe…..I wrote this one. I brought the xylophone sound more up in the mix on this version. I just played a shuffle acoustic guitar rhythm and then layered various keyboard melodies over it. Basically made the melodies up and interwoven as each one was captured. An example of letting your brain find little tuneful adventures.