DPD

My beloved Pamela has a very unique singing style - she really has a sweet and powerful voice, but suffers from what I like to call DPD, or Disassociative Pitch Disorder. What this means is that she starts on a certain pitch, and does a phrase pretty much in key... but then starts the next phrase in an entirely different key, and then sings THAT phrase pretty much perfectly, then the next phrase is in a different key again...

It makes singing along with her quite an exercise. Make no mistake, I love to hear her sing, and she can attack a song with quite a bit of gusto... but the DPD is there.

We were watching American Idol tonight (out on a date, at Big Bowl, sitting at the bar), and I discovered that DPD is pretty common actually - along with GWP (General wobbly pitch) and LF (Lyric Forgetfulness). I can't imagine wanting to watch the show in a non-tryout context - watching warblers go at standards is a bit much...

Now I'm going to go on a tangent...

I can't help but think that my old friend Mike from my musical adventures could walk in there and blow them all away. And he'd make it to the final round, and I'd see them ask him to do some country or something, and he'd just walk away... He could win it - no doubt (especially after I saw him last month - he keeps sounding better and better), but there's no question, the man would not want to win - it would just be a compromise.

I sometimes think the same about my songwriting - more than once, I've had a perfect pop song written, ready to make a demo and have it sent off to my friends in "the business"... but when I sit down to start to put it to tape... well... just about everything in the world seems more interesting - organizing my taxes, anything.

My friend Paul and I have almost started a dozen companies, and we have watched as a year later, somebody with the same idea gets millions in venture capital. But each time we're able to say "that wasn't what we wanted to do". Heck, we're smart - if it was just about the money, we could go to law school and learn real estate law. We want to make it... on our terms.

So just like Mike could probably win American Idol if he wanted to, I know I could have made a venture or two fly too... but it's not what we wanted to do. That's why I'm pretty excited about BrainReady: It's something Paul and I just enjoy doing - we have no grand scheme, no prospectus, no plan for venture capital. Just a website and some creative things we've made.

And we got over 100,000 visits in December, and our mail list grows by a hundred a day, and we have a book for sale, and 2 more products in the hopper, and guest bloggers starting up... and this just might take off, in it's own sweet time. And it's FUN, and it's what we want to do right now.

If I was a newspaper columnist or a preacher, I'd find some way to bring this back around to DPD, and I probably could if I worked real hard at it... but I think I'm happy with this post as it is, so let's just leave it there.