In a Yellow Submarine

 Yesterday, Beatles

In contrast to the sound of kids playing in the previous post, we now dive deep into another acoustic space! If you have ever driven south on Hurontario Street out in Mississauga you likely will have noticed this distinctive yellow submarine parked in front of Mississauga Diving Services just north of the Lakeshore. How could I resist enquiring as to whether it would be cool with staff to record in this unique acoustic space?

Atypically early for a sudent out at the Mississauga campus of the RCM, I inputted the number of the dive shop as I drove past and called them on a whim. The employee pictured here said that he would need to check with his boss and would get back to me. “Right”, I thought, “This is going nowhere.”

But lo and behold, the phone vibrated minutes later with an open invitation to record in the submarine assuming I could get there within the next hour or two, since they were actually about to change the lock on the hatch…if I had of phoned even one day later I would have been shyte out of luck by the sounds of it. It just goes to show you, you never know when you will be given a green light for something totally wacky!

If there ever was a time when I wished I played more by ear this was it! So the pressure was on to locate a Lennon/McCartney anthology with, well, one specific tune: Yellow Submarine. Thankfully there are a several guitar shops on the Lakeshore strip across the street from Revolution Audio, and within 15 minutes I had procured my very own Beatles anthology!

After I had introduced myself in person and squeezed through the small hatch into the enclosed cockpit, I realized that my problems didn’t end there: the batteries on my recorder were low, hence the abrupt ending to my singular performance of Yesterday, the Beatles’  bittersweet melody! I love how the swoosh of passing traffic adds harmonic ambiance to the sound of my flute-playing.

Note: Some of you might recognize my fire-red Brodie by now, leaning up against the hull of this submersible!