Chapter 15: The Sound of Wood and Wire
Sunday, May 24, 2015 (Evening)
Michael is in his makeshift studio, bathed in the bluish light of the screen. You've just made your decision. "Star Shopping" will be the next song.
It feels good. It feels like the next logical step in your story. The small victory with "Ghost Boy" had shown him that his plan was not crazy. There was an audience out there, even if it was just one person, who understood their language.
With a confidence he didn't have a few weeks ago, he invoked the System interface and opened the song guide.
There he is. The lyrics, rhythm guide, and MIDI file of the main melody.
He opened a new project in Ableton. He named it Star Shopping_v1. It felt almost professional.
'Okay, let's start with the heart of the song.'
Dragged the guitar's MIDI file to a new track. He opened his folder of pirated virtual instruments, the arsenal he had downloaded during his sleepless nights. He selected the best electric guitar plugin he had, one called "Virtual Stratocaster".
He adjusted the tempo of the project. And he hit play.
The melody was correct. The notes were there. But the sound that came out of his headphones was horrible.
It was a metallic, thin, lifeless "plink-plonk." It sounded like the ringtone of a cell phone from the early 2000s. It was a digital, sterile sound that had nothing to do with the memory I had of the song.
'No. No, no, no.' He stopped the music. The sound was offensive.
He remembered the original song. The guitar on "Star Shopping" wasn't aggressive. She was a dreamer. It had a chorus effect that made it sound watery, as if it were floating. Had... soul.
What he had on his screen sounded like plastic.
'I can fix it,' he thought, trying not to get frustrated. 'Like I did with 'Ghost Boy.'.
He dove into his effects folder. He added a generous amount of reverb to it. The plastic guitar now sounded like it was in a plastic cave.
He added a chorus effect. Now it sounded like an 80s cell phone tone.
He tried adding a little tape saturation to it to "make it dirty". The result was a muddy mess.
He leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes. The problem was fundamental. On "Ghost Boy," the guitar was a background element, drowned out in effects to create an atmosphere. He could hide his flaws.
But in "Star Shopping", the guitar was the protagonist. It was up front, clean, carrying all the emotion of the song. There was nowhere to hide.
If the guitar sounded fake, the whole song would sound fake.
He realized that he had hit a new wall. His ingenuity with software had reached its limit. A virtual instrument was not enough. Not for this song.
He needs a real guitar.
The idea was terrifying. The download. He didn't have a guitar. I didn't have an amplifier. It didn't have a cable to connect it to the computer. And what was worse: I had no idea how to touch it.
This changed everything. His plan to save for the Neumann microphone would have to wait. The song was more important.
He looked at his bank balance on his phone. The money from his last check from the Burger Barn was there. It was barely enough.
He was faced with a choice. He could give up and choose an easier song, one that he could do only with the laptop, like "Sodium". Or I could take on this new fucking challenge.
He thought of the Soundcloud comment. "You're not alone."
He knew he couldn't give up. If I was going to do this, I was going to do it right. The song deserved a real sound.
Ableton closed. The silence in the room felt like surrender. But it wasn't. It was a change of strategy.
He opened Craigslist in his browser. His mission had changed. I was no longer looking for plugins. I was looking for real and cheap hardware.
He wrote: "Used Squier Stratocaster pack". "cheap guitar amp".
I needed a guitar. I needed a cable. I needed an amplifier. And I needed to learn how to play it. All for a single song.
'This is going to be hell,' he thought. But the alternative, that lifeless plastic melody, was worse. The hunt had begun.
…..
Monday, May 25, 2015
Michael didn't go to school. It was a holiday. I didn't have to go to the Burger Barn either. For the first time in weeks, I had an entire day to himself. But it was not a day of rest. It was a mission day.
He pulled out the cash he'd cashed from his last check. Two hundred dollars. It was the money he had been meticulously saving for his next microphone, the Neumann.
'The microphone can wait,' he thought, stuffing the bills into his jeans pocket. 'Not the song.'
He didn't go to a fancy music store. He knew he couldn't afford anything there. Instead, he drove his Corolla into a part of town he used to avoid, an area filled with tire shops, liquor stores, and pawn shops.
He parked and entered the first one he saw. "Pawns Star". The place smelled of dust, old carpet and despair. A bell jingled above his head. A burly man behind an armored glass counter looked up from a newspaper and looked at it without interest.
"How can I help you?" the man growled.
"I'm looking for an electric guitar," Michael said, trying to sound like he knew what he was doing.
The man pointed his thumb toward the back wall. "There they are."
Michael walked to the wall. It was covered with hanging instruments. Acoustic guitars with missing strings, oddly shaped basses. And in the middle, a handful of electric guitars.
He didn't know anything about brands, but he recognized the shape he had seen in his pirate plugin. The Stratocaster. There were several cheap copies. He saw one, a black Squier Stratocaster. The paint was peeling on one edge and had a couple of deep scratches, but it looked complete.
"How is this?" asked Michael.
The man approached, took her off the hook and passed her to her. Michael took it. She felt strange in her hands. It was heavy, solid. The wooden mast felt cold. He ran his fingers through the strings. They were covered by a thin layer of rust.
"Do you have an amp to test it out?" asked Michael.
The man sighed, as if he was asking for a great favor. He bent down and pulled out a small, dusty amp that looked like it was from the 1980s. He plugged it in and passed Michael a tangled guitar cable.
Michael plugged in the guitar. There was a loud buzzing sound.
I had no idea how to play. His fingers felt clumsy and stupid on the mast. He simply strummed the strings in the air.
A BRRAAANG! Horrible, metallic, and out of tune it came out of the amp, making Michael himself flinch.
"It works," the man said, impassive.
Michael swallowed. It was the ugliest sound I had ever heard. But it was a real sound. It was an electric sound. It was a beginning.
"How much?" asked Michael.
"The price says 120. I'll leave it at 100," said the man.
"I'll give you eighty," Michael replied, was his instinct.
"One hundred. And I'll give you the cable and a pick."
Michael knew he needed the cable. "Done."
He counted five twenty-dollar bills from his pocket. The money that had cost him almost two weeks of washing dishes. The man took the money, counted it, and then, unceremoniously, coiled the cord and handed it to him along with the guitar.
Michael left the store with his new tools. The emotion I expected to feel was gone. Instead, I felt a knot in my stomach. He had just spent half of his savings on something he had no idea how to use.
He drove home in silence, guitar in its cheap case in the passenger seat.
He arrived at his makeshift studio. He unplugged the microphone from the audio interface and plugged in the new guitar cable. He opened Ableton.
His first problem was immediate: tuning. The guitar sounded terrible. He opened YouTube on his phone: "how to tune a guitar online".
He found a video with reference notes. He spent the next hour in a hell of screeching sounds. He turned a peg. The grade was too high. He loosened it. Now it was too low. The metallic sounds were like nails on a blackboard.
Finally, after breaking the thinner rope with a SNAP! that almost gouged out one eye, managed to make the other five ring... more or less well.
Now, let's play. He opened a chord page. He tried to put his fingers in the position of a G chord. His fingers didn't bend that way. They felt fat, clumsy.
He pressed a single string. The pain was sharp, surprising. The metal rope felt like barbed wire against the soft skin of its fingertips.
"Shit," he whispered.
He ignored the pain and tried to play the simple "Star Shopping" tune in his head.
Plink. Bzzzt. Thud.
The sound was horrible. The notes did not sound. They were choking on a dull buzz because I wasn't pushing hard enough. When he pressed harder, the pain in his fingers was excruciating.
After twenty minutes, his fingers were red, swollen, and throbbing. He realized, with a sinking feeling, that this wasn't like Ableton. It was not a problem of logic. It was a physical problem. His body refused to obey.
This wasn't going to be a one-night stand. This was going to take weeks.
He looked at the black guitar, now leaning against the wall. It no longer looked like a tool. He looked like an enemy.
…..
Michael stared at the black guitar leaning against the wall. It was a strange, almost hostile object. His fingers throbbed with a sharp, dull pain. I didn't expect it to hurt so much.
He felt like an idiot. He had spent half of his savings on a piece of wood and rusty metal that he didn't know how to use. The frustration was so intense that he wanted to hit the wall.
He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. 'Okay. Failure is part of the process.' He rubbed his fingertips, which were already red and swollen. 'I don't know how to play. It is ok. But I know what I want to touch.'
There was a tool I had forgotten. The System.
'I don't need to know chords,' he thought, a spark of hope returning. 'I just need to know the notes of the melody. The 'Star Shopping' guide will give them to me.'
He felt a little better. He didn't have to learn to be a virtuoso guitarist. I just had to learn how to play a melody. It was a much smaller problem.
He sat down again in front of his laptop. He closed the tabs on "how to tune a guitar" and "chords for beginners." He summoned the System interface, cyan light filling his vision.
He went to his inventory. He selected the "Star Shopping" cover. [OPEN GUIDE].
This time, however, the System seemed to notice a change. The interface flickered for a second. A new text box appeared.
[EXTERNAL HARDWARE DETECTED: GUITAR (ELECTRIC)] [UPDATED GUIDE MODE: FROM MIDI TO VISUAL SCORE]
'Visual score?'Michael thought. 'Sounds good. It's probably like Guitar Hero or something.'
The guide opened. But it wasn't a Guitar Hero track with falling notes. It was not the simple and logical "piano roll" of Ableton.
It was an official score.
A series of five horizontal lines. A strange symbol at first that looked like a snail. And then, a series of black dots with sticks and flags, scattered along the lines in a way that didn't make any sense to him.
Michael stared at the screen, his mouth slightly open.
It was gibberish. It was an alien language. It was as if the System had given him an instruction manual in hieroglyphics.
Unfortunately, Michael could not read sheet music. In his past life, as a programmer, he read code. The code was logical, sequential. This was arcane art.
'Are you kidding?', he thought, a hysterical, humorless laugh bubbling in his chest. 'Really?'
It was the same cosmic joke, but worse.
First, the System gave him the recipe but not the ingredients. Now, she had given him the recipe, he had gone out to buy the ingredients by the sweat of his brow, and he realized that the recipe was written in a language he couldn't read.
It was the wall within the wall.
He felt completely defeated. It was as if the universe was actively taunting him, putting higher and higher obstacles in his way.
'What am I supposed to do with this?', he thought, hovering his mouse cursor over the incomprehensible symbols.
He was tempted to give up. Back to the plastic guitar plugin. It was easier. It would sound fake, yes, but at least I could finish the song.
But the thought of giving in, of taking the shortcut, turned his stomach. No. He had bought the guitar. He had spent the money. I was going to use it.
He closed the System interface in frustration. The problem was not the guitar. The problem was not the System. The problem was him. It was his own ignorance.
'Good,' he thought, his jaw clenched. 'If the universe wants me to learn to read music, then I will learn to read music.'
He returned to the browser. You deleted your previous search. Their new search was even more humiliating than the first.
"How to Read Guitar Sheet Music for Dummies".
The first video that surfaced had a thumbnail of a smiling man with an acoustic guitar. The title was "Basic Music Theory - Lesson 1!".
Michael looked at the length of the video: 45 minutes. And it was just Lesson 1.
He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his face with both hands. This wasn't going to be a night. Not even a week. This was going to take... time. A time I wasn't sure I had.
He looked at the black guitar, leaning against its cheap case. Then he looked at the laptop screen.
With a sigh that seemed to come from the depths of his soul, he picked up his notebook and his pen. He clicked on the video.
"Hello everyone and welcome to...", the man in the video began with a cheerful voice.
Michael pressed pause. And he began to take notes. The journey had just gotten much, much longer.
…..
The following week was hell. A different kind of hell than the Burger Barn, but a hell nonetheless.
Michael's life became a routine of self-imposed punishment. School, work, and then, the guitar. Every spare minute I had.
His first problem was the language. The score of the System was a wall of incomprehensible symbols. He sat down in front of the laptop and searched: "software convert score to tablature."
He found a free and basic program. With a patience he didn't know he had, he began transcribing the notes from the System's guide to the program, one black dot at a time. It was a slow and tedious job, like cracking a code.
After an hour, I had a translation. A series of numbers on six lines. Tablature. Something that, at least, I could begin to understand. 'Okay. B string, eighth fret.'
He opened YouTube again. "How to Read Guitar Tabs for Dummies." He saw a quick video. "The number 4 on the string of B... okay."
He picked up the guitar. His fingers felt like clumsy sausages on the mast. He put his index finger in the place indicated by the tablature.
He strummed the rope. Bzzzt. A dull, metallic sound. His fingers on the other hand were brushing against the other strings, drowning out the sound.
He tried again, pressing harder. The pain was acute. The metal rope felt like barbed wire against the soft skin of its yolk.
"Shit," he whispered, shaking his hand. The pain was real, it wasn't a mental frustration. It was physical.
And so the following week passed.
He would come home from school, throw away his backpack and take his guitar. His fingers hurt. He played dead notes for an hour, the bzzzt and thud repeated to madness.
Then he went to his shift at the Burger Barn. The hot, soapy water in the dishwasher was torture for his raw fingers. It felt like I was stuffing my hands into acid.
He was returning home at midnight. Exhausted. His body begged him to sleep. But stubbornness, that cold flame that the System had lit in him, kept him going.
He sat in his makeshift study until three in the morning. Over and over again. The same melody. The same eight bars.
Plink. Bzzzt. Thud.
By midweek, his fingers began to bleed. A small drop of blood stained the Sol string. He had to stop, frustrated. She looked for a band-aid and put it on. It didn't work, the band-aid drowned out the sound.
He searched the internet. "How to play guitar with sore fingers". The answer was unanimous: "Keep playing. Calluses will form."
So he kept playing, with the stabbing pain as a constant companion. Night after night, the cycle repeated. Failure, pain, repetition.
He arrived on Sunday night. He was exhausted. His fingers were swollen, the skin on his fingertips was a bright red mass. He had neglected work and had hardly slept.
He picked up the guitar for the last time that week. It felt heavy, like an instrument of torture.
He closed his eyes. He took a deep breath. He put his finger on the rope. And he played the first note.
Rang. Egg white. Cleaning.
He froze. He touched the second. And the third. His fingers moved with a deliberate, almost painful slowness, but they were going to the right place.
He played the first eight notes of the melody of "Star Shopping".
It wasn't quick. It wasn't smooth. It was slow, hesitant, each note separated by a second of concentrated silence.
But they were the right notes. Sounds decent.
Stopped. A slow and painful smile was drawn on his face. He looked at his swollen fingers. They were on fire.
But it had worked. He had bled from it, literally. And he had won.
It wasn't music. Not yet. But it was the first real sound he had created with his own hands in this universe. And that was it.