Epiphanies are hard to come by so when drops in for a visit, I take notice. It was a big goal for me this year to release a song a week on ye olde blogge but what I have come to see is that it takes longer than a week for me to polish something to the state it needs to be in for public consumption. I’m often surprised by the positive feedback I get for what I feel are unfinished tracks and it leaves me feeling a little weird. Either I’m too picky or folks are just being nice. Either way, it’s not good and I’m not feeling good about the work I’m releasing, aside from being able to say I put something out. Where does that leave me?
What I really want, and have always wanted, are songs and pieces that connect. I like thinking of “the album” as a larger form and individual tracks as movements that exist within it. It’s really difficult, though not impossible, to have ten or twelve songs relate to one another in a meaningful way and, more to the point, in the age of the iPod and the death of continuity that is “shuffle” I want to produce tracks that compel the listener to follow that development. In that vein, I’m going to pursue the idea of the EP.
With six or so songs in a unit, I think I can produce several of these in a 12 month period (where several > 2). Maybe even 1 per quarter. Maybe not. But the point will be to have a unit that is polished and released with no regrets. That might be what I enjoyed most about Nothing of Consequence: no regrets and it shipped on time. I still think it sounds great. Download it here: http://www.othertime.com/musicblog/?page_id=377
So there you have it. I have some collaborations going on right now that will require their own vehicles, but for me, I will be focusing on the EP for the foreseeable future. This means, sadly, that I will have to come up with useful ways to elaborate on my progress here on the blog both for accountability and to keep the six or seven people who read this with any regularity coming back for more. I might even go back to my exercises (one complete piece written and released in one sitting). They keep me sharp and happy.
My focus is getting tighter and it feels good. More music soon.
Over the years I have tried to write some kind of artist’s statement. I’m not entirely sure why but this academic pursuit seems to be a really, really good idea. There’s something about writing down where you started, how you got to where you are and where you want to go from here. If I had written it ten years ago it would have been entirely different. It’s that realization in part that is motivating me to do it now. But the process has gotten away from me and it reads more like the skeleton of a memoir of my life with composing and playing music. I mention all of this here because it was my intent to write about my new guitar; the one I built.
Last night I took my studio time (still sans headphones) to sit and play. No direction or recording. No motive other than to run my fingers over the strings and enjoy whatever presented itself. Playing has always been a meditative practice for me. Nothing takes the edge off quite like an hour with my guitar. In times of crisis when I need to focus I head for my six string.
I sat and played for a bit. This new instrument has an amazing sound. It has a touch more high end than I’m used to but the bass still punches through (not bad for an OM style and I honestly think some of what I’m getting is from using strings I’ve never used before). The fretboard feels good. It’s wide, more like a classical guitar. There’s plenty of room between the strings for me to get some good tone (I’m a finger picker). I still can’t get over how good it feels. It has plenty of flaws and it isn’t very attractive. But there’s a beauty in its tone and imperfections that inspire me. That’s it more than anything, isn’t it? An instrument that inspires me to pick it up and play is worth one hundred times whatever a “perfect” instrument that sits in the corner costs. This instrument inspires me. Maybe it’s the who knows how many hours I spent on the slow and staggered construction during which I thought and learned. The guitar is the end product of one process and the beginning of another.
I’m not one to wax poetic over instruments (often) but my wife caught me saying things that would have gotten me slapped had I said them to another woman. I guess it’s harder to get upset over a piece of wood.
As I played I remember what it is that makes me such a horrible performer. Playing is a meditative process that I do for myself. I don’t like being watched, I guess. I wonder how someone who meditates or prays would feel about doing it for an audience. That sounds like hyperbole I’m sure, but it’s true. As a result of this practice I don’t much care for learning other people’s songs and I spend most of my time improvising or formalizing an improvisation. Some might call that songwriting but as a composer I feel like it’s more of an approximation than a composition. I mean, when I hand a piece of music to a performer I expect to get more or less what I gave them. In my case I sometimes write down a tuning and a tonal center and maybe a lick or two. Most times I can’t reproduce what I did without a recording but I don’t care so what does it matter?
The statement I’m working on (or through) reminds me of these things. I’m reliving a lot of what brought me to music and what it meant to me versus what it means to me today. There isn’t quite the gap I might have expected but the differences are stark, not subtle. I’ll likely post bits of it here as it develops.
And yeah, no music yet. Tonight I’ll have to really pull it together and get something down. Likely a quick jazz tune for a buddy of mine to record some vocals over. We’ll see how the new guitar does on a recording.
If you played the guitar in High School during the late 80s and early 90s like I did there is an excellent chance that you were in a band. Somebody had a drum kit. Somebody played bass. And somebody screamed into a mic. Maybe there were keyboards (Yamaha or Roland only, please), maybe not. Odds are pretty good it was a four piece and you played pretty loudly. Loud is a really good definition of bands at that stage and in that place in time. I know my band was loud. Really loud. And we played pretty fast. Most songs sat around the 138 bpm mark or higher and moved at a good clip. Did I mention that we were loud? Especially in my mom’s basement or in our singer’s garage. Really, really loud.
While setting up for practice or tearing down there was always at least one 10 minute break where the “what ifs” broke out and we’d go on at length about how cool it would be to get a record contract and tour. How much money we’d have. How many guitars I would be able to go through in a show. How we’d remember the tough times and help bands like us make it big. We’ll set aside the “rough life” of living in a college town in northeast Ohio for a little bit because, well, with nothing to compare it to your first bite of caviar is just salty sacks of nastiness.
Since those days in the basement I have learned that life as a touring musician isn’t for everyone. It’s hard work that requires dedication and sacrifice. My life took me to different places and my journey with music was on an entirely different track from that of the kid wailing on his Strat. I’m glad I did what I did. No regrets there. But something that I have come to realize is that the dreams of that era are fading into myth and legend. Record contracts don’t work like they used to (or like we imagined they did). Touring isn’t about private jets and fancy hotels (not that it ever was for most bands). The time of the megadeal is dying out. Things are smaller now. The world is a different place.
At 16, I dreamed of being on a stage in a huge stadium with tens of thousands cheering for every guitar solo I tore through. Today, you couldn’t drag me to a stadium to hear a concert. It’s crowded, noisy, and generally not fun. It’s a “me media” world now and artists have to fight for space on an iPod and not for top billing at a show. There are many who disagree with that, but among the people I know (my tribe if you will) this is exactly the case. When I release a sketch or an album, I’m hoping for a person to listen to a tune all the way through and then toss it into the vast random shuffle of his or her music library to be doled out in the context of playlists or at the mercy of random. On occasion I’ll go to hear a good band or to support someone I know. That’s cool. It’s usually a smaller venue and a good time is had by all. There is a connection that carries the experience. It’s good. It’s fun. But the big Rock-with-a-capital-R shows are a dying breed and will be all but gone in five years’ time.
This isn’t a lament.
Someone mentioned to me the other day that if Back to the Future were made today, Marty would go back in time to 1980. That was a kick in the head. In 1980, no one that I knew had even heard of the Internet. Well, my dad did, but he wasn’t talking about it. No browsers. No “social media.” None of that. There were cultural gatekeepers everywhere. Today? It’s all but gone. Get some free web hosting and jump on the site of the minute and you’ll have a platform for your work. And that’s any work. Books, music, paintings, sculpture, crafts, all of it. Of course, that means that everyone gets a smaller and smaller slice of the attention at large. That’s great if you have adjusted your expectation.
There aren’t many seats at the table for bands like U2. Who is the next U2? Will there be another U2? There’s an entire industry hoping that there will still be a table at all, but for msot musicians I don’t think it much matters. If you can be content to have listeners who number in the hundreds, you’re doing very well. Get to the thousand mark and maybe you can make a living with your art. I wish you luck! I’m aiming for it myself in a skewed sort of way. But the big rock and roll dreams are all used up. It was a powerful and wonderful time, but check that verb tense. It’s in the past and that’s OK.
There are some simple pieces of equipment that make my musical life possible. My instruments, of course, and my computer are the key players in the game. Without those I’m stuck. But it’s never the guitar that fails, it’s the cable, right? well, since my son showed up the most important piece of gear in my studio would be my headphones. I’ve had my Sennheiser HD-25s for a long time. Close to 10 years, actually. They were brilliant right up to the end. A short in the cable coupled with something that I can’t quite diagnose has brought their demise.
This is a hassle.
So I ordered up a new set being as I live in the 4th largest city in the United States and for some reason can’t find the cans I want. And now I wait. If only I lived in Austin or got out that direction more often I could have access to great stuff. As it stands I am a hostage to the internet and various shipping companies. Of course if these are the height of my complaints it’s all just whining. And it is.
That isn’t to say that I’m not working. I have plunked out a few things but I’m feeling nervous about hitting my weekly recording. If all else fails, I will pick up my 12 string, hit record, and hope for the best. It’ll be like an open mic night but with only one musician in the room.
There’s a lot for me to say about my new guitar (it sounds great!) and the instrument building projects I have coming up. I want to make some gifts for friends and a recent twist of fate put me on track for just such a venture. More on that soon.
This mix is a little rougher than I’d like but I know I’m going to add vocals to this one and I need to work out the lyrics before I decide on the final structure of the tune. I like the textures even if they are a bit on the heavy side. So yeah, it’s a rough cut. I’ll smooth it out later. This blog is all about work in progress so I guess making excuses is kind of silly.
Cool new stuff will be coming to the site shortly. In the mean time, enjoy this cut.
It seems to me that now would be a great time to unplug from the Internet. I guess I’m falling for whatever the name for the slow information movement is. The more I’m deluged with RSS feeds and blogs and podcasts the more I want to put my head someplace else. But that’s not really feasible on many levels. The fact remains that we are an information based society. If you haven’t heard the latest from the Twitter stream then you’re completely out of the loop.
I think about my vacation strategy at times like these. I used to select where I went on vacation by the amount of connectivity it had. If I could find a hotel with no phones I would take it. The fewer cell towers the better. Now that’s almost impossible despite what the major carriers say about one another. The fact is my phone will ring in most places if I let it. What I think a lot of people are seeing now is that in the same way that I want to control access to my time while I’m on vacation we all want to control access to our attention on a daily basis.
It seems like a silly problem. It’s really, really easy to put the computer down or turn it off. We don’t have to surf from our phones while at lunch, but we do it anyway. It’s a habit that needs to be broken. I truly admire the remaining holdouts who have avoided falling into the pit. That said, it’s serious business.
All day long we hear (and read) about how the Internet has changed everything. You can’t exist without a web presence. Worth is measured in social networks and “followers.” Having just finished American Gods I find that amusing. And forget trying to be a creative person without a dozen ways to make yourself and your work available to as broad an audience as possible. These challenges cut both ways. I want everyone to look at my stuff but I want to control access to my attention.
What am I doing? I’m paring down my feeds. I’m getting really, really selective. It’s high time for an information diet. More time with my head in a book and less time with eyeballs glued to the screen. And much more attention to building instruments and making music. Hell, the Internet could wash away as long as I have a good six string.
None of this will stop my blabbing on this blog twice a week of course. This is quality content!
Another simple song that needs vocal. I’ve been working up a lot of material lately that is going to have some singing on it. Fortunately for me, I have suddenly come into a surplus of singers. Well, not a surplus necessarily but a pile of talented folks who want to rock out. Good for me!
I spent some time with my electric guitar putting down layer after layer one night without paying much attention to where it was going. After an hour or so, I listened to what I had and I was pretty excited. A couple of days later I got out of my car after work and was hit with some really simple lyrics. I tried singing them and that just didn’t work. So I sent them to my buddy Jason and he did them for me.
This is a draft and the final mix will be done when I have some additional things in there. But for now, it’s a fun listen. Enjoy!
Here we go! Back to the “one new track per week” plan again. This year, I’m all over posting sketches and anything that is in progress. The track for today will (someday) have vocals and some other niceties, but I feel that it works pretty well as an instrumental.
For the past few months I have been all over the place stylistically and in this instance I am back in my acoustic guitar comfort zone. Have a listen and drop me a line.
Maybe the one thing that the Internet does well is put people with a purpose in touch with one another in such a way as to allow important things to get done. For me, important things are almost always related to music. I’m doing a lot of work now with a friend who is a short drive to Austin away and another who is up in the frozen hinterlands known to the locals as “Canada.” I’m shuffling a lot of bits back and forth across these intarwebz and actually seeing some promising results.
Working with people at a distance on something as temporally volatile as music isn’t ideal. I much prefer sitting on the couch in my living room with the people I’m playing with so we can build something up and enjoy the give and take. A little eye contact to see when things are going to get quiet. Or watching hands to see what I just screwed up so I don’t do it again. It’s instant feedback and everything is so malleable.
Playing with a recording is like playing with a ghost. But playing with a ghost is better than being alone. Unless you’re in a “Poltergeist” movie. Or that one movie about the house that dripped blood. That was gross.
What I mean is that it’s difficult to play off of that wall that is the recording. It can be unnerving, that lack of responsiveness. Music is all about give and take and that constant flux. It isn’t all lost in a situation like this, but it’s harder to see it that way. What slowly changes is the way what’s played relates to what is recorded. Imperfections in the recording take on a different character and define what comes later. And in the give and take that happens over hours or days the natural cooling off period allows for a more critical eye. In many ways dragging out the process can improve it.
That sounds like a great way to dress up the fact that my friends don’t live next door and that I can only record at weird hours anyway.
There are a couple of things underway right now and hopefully there will be tunes to share in the very near future. I’m slowly becoming OK with sharing things that are in progress as a way of keeping myself honest. It doesn’t have to be finished, it just needs to be done. Watch this space for more tunes soon.
