The Dreaded Banana Song

Oh no! It’s time to talk about the dreaded “Banana Song” again!

If you have been fortunate enough to only recently been following my blogs and Facebook posting you may not know about the contentious, growling, drooling, smelling beast I lovingly call the “Banana Song”.

Its full title is: “Actually That Is A Banana In My Pocket (But It’s Always Good to See You)”.

I don’t mean to imply that this horrible music. It’s actually pretty friggin cool, especially if you’re a geeky tweaky music-head.

Yeah, it’s a little self indulgent, but it is the only tune on the album that is. It’s good to haul off and kick some ass on once in a while.

Like the Rach 3, it’s only a nasty work of music if you’re the poor sucker that’s got to play it.

That would be me.

No sympathy please, I’m also the sick bastard who wrote it.

I have literally been wrestling with this sucker for years. It has slowly evolved into esthetically and academically interesting piece.

A piece that I can almost play!

The technique I use is physically very different from normal bass playing. It’s basically taking my fingertips and striking notes directly on the fingerboard like a piano instead of plucking with one hand and fretting with the other. I can’t take credit for inventing it but I have definitely created my own spin.

You will be able to see it in the video I’ve posted at the end of this blog. I

Forever it seemed, I couldn’t play the Banana song all the way through without making a big mistake.  No matter how many times I played it and practiced it, I would find some new way to get it wrong.

I would practice it for a while, rearrange some things, add a part, take one away. Then in frustration, boredom or plain old ADD impatience, I’d shelve it for several months, even years in some cases.

Eventually I’d get a bee in my bonnet, dust it off and give it the old college try once again… For a while.

After several cycles of this with little progress I said: This is ridiculous! I am going to tame this beast once and for all no matter what it takes!

I sat down, cracked my knuckles and started working at it long and hard. Two months later, even though I had used warm-ups and took frequent breaks, my wrist was in a brace and it was painful to move my fingers.

I was also sick-to-death of the friggin’ Banana song!

Back on the shelf it went. The bass got stowed for a few weeks as well.

Several years after that and about a year ago from this writing, I decided I needed to have “Actually, That Is a Banana In My Pocket” on my album and as a Youtube performance video. It would turn heads and show what kind of agility is possible on my favorite instrument.

If I did it right, it could just be my fifteen minutes of Andy Warhol!

I took a slower and more careful approach to the tune this time. Maybe I shouldn’t try to kill the monster, just tame it a little; make it my bitch.

I snuck up on it slowly. Starting at a painfully slow seventy beats per minute and gradually working my way up, faster and faster. I would stop playing for days, or even weeks at a time to let my hand and tendons rest.

I discovered I always played the piece best for the first time after a break of days or weeks. My performance was still far from good enough to record for posterity but the biggest leaps in progress were always when I was hitting it fresh.

Once when picking the piece up fresh, I thought I kinda nailed it. I’d better try to record it, I thought. I got set up, warmed up, hit record and started playing. This was, however the second time I’d played it through not the magic first. Even though it was quite good, there were obvious problems and mistakes.

Not a keeper.

I tried it again. There were different problems this time. Each take after that seemed to be a little more fraught with stumbles and missed notes. The recording session devolved into a rehearsal until it was time to rest my hands for a few days. You can imagine my frustration.

I have taken those lessons, both of my wrist injury and how well the piece seemed to progress after some down time, not to mention the addition of some needed patience and consistency. I now know more about my own physical limitations and my style of learning.

If you remember from my earlier post about my learning ‘disability’, my brain works a little different from most other folks.

I have heard ADD best described as being like the mind of a predator, stalking and hunting prey: My senses scan the environment like a police scanner; never holding fast to any one stimuli but monitoring everything on a momentary basis. Any snap of a twig or flash of something shiny (oh look!) until I lock onto what I perceive as ‘prey’; a good song idea, a story, my wife making the perilous journey from the shower to the bedroom. When I have located ‘prey’, all my other perception fades into an abyss of nonexistence. My focus and energy engage in an intense super human pursuit.

That level of energy and super-humanity are not sustainable though. After a while, if I am not dinning on the freshly killed carcass of a great and realized idea or I have managed to wrestle the towel away from my wife, my energy and focus will run out and I have to lie down under a the shade of a ____ tree panting and sleeping for the rest of the day.

I might lick my crotch too but, fortunately (for you), this analogy has already been stretched beyond its limits.

Most people’s methodology is more ‘sensible’. Like a farmer, people plant seeds and nurture their growth with consistent watering, weeding and, with patience, harvesting.

Or…

Go to college, get good grades, get a good job, work hard, retire.

It’s no wonder the farmer shakes his head at that artistic dude sleeping under the tree trying—with no success—to lick his crotch.

If he only paced himself he’d have a full crop too. Or what I was told in school, you’re so smart; if you’d only apply yourself.”

The hunter/farmer analogy may have some scientific teeth too when you consider that Asians have the lowest incidence of ADD. Asians have also had an agricultural-based society for roughly six thousand years. While they were patiently yielding crops and raising domesticated animals, the rest of the World was still chasing down wild game and trying to lick things they oughtn’t.

While it can be said that ‘hunting’ takes patience, remember, farming takes seasons not hours or days.

Back to the “Banana Song”:  It going to take both a farmer and hunter to take this puppy down.

I have learned that I have to respect my natural temperament to attack this project with brief and effective bursts of speed followed by long periods of rest. I must also wash, rinse, repeat until I’ve mastered this tune.

Just as a hammer cannot push a nail into a board or, in most cases, pound it in one blow, I must use the rhythm of my own nature and develop better consistency to see this difficult task through its complexity and its physical demands.

On a side note: this method just doesn’t work to loose weight and get in shape.

I’ve tried it…

…and so have you!

With modern recording and editing capabilities I can still record it without being perfect each time. I can Frankenstein several takes together and no one would be the wiser.

The video has to be real though. I refuse to “finger sync” the bass part to an pre-recorded track.

I have no trouble believing that, with a little promotional help from my friends, this sucker will go viral, at least among musicians.

So you can see what I’ve been going on about ad infinitum about I have produced this practice version video. It’s not perfect yet, but it’s come a long way.

Enjoy: