Category Archives: music - Page 6

A Quick Cover

Posted by on December 28, 2009 4 comments

I have always loved the song “Here Comes The Flood” by Peter Gabriel. The version on Robert Fripp’s Exposure album. Jason and I talked about covering it a few times and I tried like hell to work it up on my own. During our recent recording session we did it up and were almost happy with it. Since that was a big “almost” we went back into our separate studios and did some Internet enabled asynchronous recording. The results are pretty keen. Take a listen and enjoy!

Here Comes The Flood by Peter Gabriel

Some New Music

Posted by on December 22, 2009 2 comments

My buddy Jason and I get together irregularly to sit around my living room, talk about music, and record whatever it is that we do. The results are often startling to us. Some things are just really good and some things, well, they’re fun. And funny. I edit out a lot of talking. I think that there was at least 30 minutes of recorded banter on the session from this past Sunday.

The results of our “work“ include:
        Perfect Sonnet by Bright Eyes
        Big Empty (country style) by Stone Temple Pilots
        Sparrow’s Wings an original composition with lyrics by our buddy Duff

If you have any trouble getting to the tunes, just hit this directory for scary stuff (updated sporadically): http://othertime.com/toxic/

The Things We Love

Posted by on November 28, 2009 4 comments

Everything changes. The things that we love today are gone so quickly. And by “things” and “love” I mean the pastimes and activities that we use to define ourselves. So much can be communicated about one’s character by simply giving the title of a favorite book or stating a passion for a particular kind of music. These are the loves that fill in the gaps. The thoughts that cement the routine together. Certain songs on the way to work or a book after dinner gives meaning to the mundane. To see the way they have changed and will change can be disconcerting.

I have a library. It isn’t an Umberto Eco library but it’s a pain to move. I love books. I usually can’t leave a book store without dropping $30 to $50. In a good book store like Prairie Lights in Iowa City, Iowa I can walk in and simply let the shelves speak to me. There is always something. I reach out to the shelf and pick it up. It’s there in my hand. I can feel the weight. The physical presence of the object tells me things. I know how many pages are in it and can guess at how long it will take me to read it. I can flip through it and skim a bit. There are margins for doodling and, after I have purchased it, a receipt to fold up and use as a bookmark. But it won’t be like this for long.

When I was in high school in the late eighties and early nineties, things had already changed in the way I listened to music twice. Music went from vinyl records to cassettes and then from cassettes to compact discs. (Note: I’m leaving out the almighty 8-track because, well, we should pretend that some things didn’t happen.) There are some records that by the time I was a senior I had purchased three times! And with each change in medium, something was gained and something was lost.

A record had liner notes. There was a jacket with a huge piece of cover art. The art said nothing about the quality of the music inside, but it was an integral part of the experience. People born after 1980 will just have to take my word for it. Records also enforced time limits. Only so many songs could be on a side. And there were two sides! An A side and a B side. Most of the heavy hitting material was on the top of the album with some often times less heard material on the back. So many great songs were relegated to the B side. I was going to say that the entire B side of Synchronicity by The Police was excellent stuff but I think that that particular album reaches into the future. I’ll get back to that momentarily. The medium dictated form and forced artists to make decisions about their material. A record was a piece of art because of what it was physically.

But records could be scratched and broken. They could melt. And they couldn’t be played in cars. Enter the cassette. There was still some cover art, but it was all but lost. It’s impossible to appreciate a Yes album cover shrunk to that size. It may as well not be there. There was still an A and a B side so the album format was maintained. It was the first step to making music portable and giving us choices. We could listen to a particular tape in the car or on a portable stereo anywhere. We gained something important and lost something important. But it was nothing compared to the next step.

My first CD player was a Sony portable unit with detachable speakers. It had dual cassette decks for making mix tapes and it was awesome. By the time CDs had come into vogue, my record collecting days were over. I had piles and piles of cassettes that littered my vintage ‘84 Ford Escort. I was even beginning to lose some interest in things that made records so important in terms of form. A cassette can be run in fast forward to skip a song. Skipping a song on a record is work. Skipping a song on a CD is nothing more than a single click of a button. The attraction was strong.

But there was another button on my CD player that changed everything for all time: shuffle. Yes, shuffle. I could click a button and it would play the CD in a random order. I didn’t have to listen to it as the artist intended. The machine could mix it up so that it was new every time. The implications of this simple action are huge. It negates years of experience in ordering tracks for dramatic effect. Imagine if The Beatles had put the tracks of Sgt. Pepper in alphabetical order. When I was first playing around with the shuffle function, it was hard to know why artists wouldn’t start doing just that. I believe that this has led to the front loading of albums in a shameless sense. Most albums today have the singles dumped up front and everything else just follows.

The other enormous change was having only one side. Looking back for a moment to Synchronicity, I think that this could very well be the perfect CD. The tracks flow across sides beautifully and since almost every song on that album was a single, having it run straight through or in a random order produces excellent results. But having a single side and treating an album as a collection of songs exposes the filler tracks for what they are. This should raise the bar for song writing, but sadly (or not), CDs weren’t the end of the road.

Today we have fully digital music that requires no physical media at all. Why buy a CD when I can jump online, click once, and have it on my iPod? Nothing to clutter my shelves, no broken jewel cases, and no plastic platters to crack. Oh, and none of those filler tracks if I don’t want them. That’s right, I don’t have to be forced to choose between buying the full item or the singles that a label chooses to sell. I can take any song or songs I want and leave the rest to rot.

What has digital music brought me? Well, for starters, two weeks worth of music on a device that is the size of a pack of cards, acts as a phone, checks my email, and keeps my to do list all while playing video golf. I can have an enormous collection and order it any way I like. My music is entirely about me.

What have I lost? In some sense, the intent of the artist. There’s no limit to how many songs can be in a collection. Album art is all but dead. There are no cool liner notes with inside jokes and crazy nicknames. I don’t have to abide by the order the artist applies to the songs. She may as well not bother. I have also lost context. Is a gentle introduction with a delicate guitar figure going to do well on the heels of “The Ace of Spades”? What is it doing there anyway?

Has any of this ruined music for me? No, but it has changed it dramatically. The evolution of the media that brings me my favorite songs has forever changed my relationship to them. There is no judgement made here, it’s simply changed.

What does any of this have to do with books? I ordered an eBook reader. My reading will no longer be tethered to a specific physical object. An entire library could someday fit in that device. I won’t know how many pages are in a book anymore because I will be able to change the font size on my reader. Pages will cease to have meaning. Will the focus shift to words? Can I retrain myself to think that way? How will publishers present this to me? Will the cover of the book slowly die? Will I read more because I will have one-click access to books? Will I miss the turning of the pages the way I missed the crackle of the needle on turntable only to have it pass away into memory as something that was important only once it was gone? What will the eBook do to the form and format of the novel or books in general? Will it destroy our notion of the book the way mp3 files have killed the album?

The changes to my music collection happened slowly over time and more importantly, when I wasn’t paying attention. With eBooks I am hyperaware of what it means to make this change. And I care.

We change. So do the things we love.

singing

Posted by on November 5, 2009 No comments

I’ve been working dilligently in the studio but neglecting the blog for a while due to illness. When the head is stopped up with nasty stuff there isn’t much to say that’s worth typing. Things have picked up this week and there’s a lot of cool stuff going on in the studio. What’s not going on is what I had intended.

When I completed Nothing Of Consequence I assumed that I would be able to put away the electric guitar and pick up my fingerstyle acoustic tunes that I’d started before the summer. That didn’t work out. It seems that there is more to be done along the lines of what I just finished. There were more songs bubbling and in cases like that, there’s only so much fighting to be done. I pushed things for a week and at the end of it was pretty disappointed with the results. Time to follow the gut.

The track I’m working on now started as a series of wildly textured layers. I was using a technique that has served me well in getting things going. I hear a song and try to reproduce it in the studio. I never end up with what I start out to make. So I built this entire song around the idea of another one but I doubt anyone would be able to relate the two even if they were side by side. It’s been stuck in my head since and that’s a good sign. It’s also where things got weird.

When I got home last night, I had a raging headache. Pulling into the driveway I was struck with a lyric. I wrote it down when I got into the house. I should say that in high school I could churn out song lyrics like a machine. All that mattered was that the words had to rhyme and have some deeper meaning (an allusion to something from English class was always good). Big words were a bonus and if the listener (or singer) had to look them up, so much the better!

With time and experience came the realization that there is only one Neil Peart and what I was trying to do was pretty cringeworthy. I can’t help but pick through some of my older notebooks and stare in awe at my pretention. But it was pretentious with conviction! That’s the youth that is wasted on the young. That complete belief in one’s own abilities. I can’t wait to see my son get there.

What was written in the little notebook wasn’t all that bad. Very simple. No big words. Nice and declarative. A little sad maybe, but not the kind of sad where I’m writing in black ink on black paper (credit: H. Rollins). All in all, they were pretty spiffy.

Since they were now in my notebook, I decided to step up and sing them. Wow. That is one seriously unpleasant experience for me. I’m too picky to like the way I sing and lack the talent of someone who can afford not to be picky. I have nothing but respect for people who convert themselves into singers. It brings to mind cousin Dave who has done some really great singing lately with The Gary (check ’em out!) I’m not really sure did much singing before his stint with the band. Correct me if I’m wrong Dave! The point is that it wasn’t easy and anyone who is hoping for a link to last night’s efforts is going to be disappointed. Ain’t no way. It is completely experimental and highly toxic at this time. But I’m willing to put in some effort to see if I can make a go of it for a track here and there. No delusions of grandeur or assumptions that I’m good enough. The goal is to do it with conviction. If I can convince myself that the track sounds like it was sung by someone who believes in it, I will release it.

Otherwise, I’ll just put an over the top guitar solo over it and garble the voice with effects until it sounds like a malfunctioning tape deck.

practice

Posted by on October 28, 2009 No comments

After completing my first full project with Logic Studio 9 I was going to write up a review. After some thought, it occurred to me that what Logic did best was stay out of my way. Its highest virtue is what it is not rather than what it is. Logic is not needy and it does not crave my constant attention. For the way that I work, that’s a blessing.

I should also say that the presets to their guitar sounds and any of the mastering settings are well thought out and require minor “to taste” tweaking. Having played in some really great spaces, I have low expectations of what can be simulated. Logic takes it from acceptable to pretty darned good. I’d still prefer to have a good amp mic’d up in a great hall, but in lieu of that I’ll take some factory plug-ins. The work I’m doing now is all acoustic and a little more demanding on that front. I wonder what my opinion will be when that’s over.

The coolest new features in Logic are supposed to be the way you can beat up audio tracks and adjust them to perfection in minute detail. I have two problems with this. One, perfection is really, really boring and completely flat. Two, if you practice you don’t need to tweak things anyway.

I have a really bad cold right now. Probably the flu. It’s hard to say. With that in mind, I beg the reader’s pardon for any half-baked invective that may follow.

I’m sick to death of pitch correction. More so of tweaking rhythms and the quantization of audio. Here’s the deal: if you can’t play in tune or in time you should practice until you can. This goes for people who have been playing for a year or fifty years. The idea of saving something in the mix or removing an imperfection is ridiculous.

Before I go too far, I will wholly embrace the idea of a sound recording as more than a document. If the subject of the recording isn’t a live performance (which should never be altered save to iron out defects in the method of collection) then any kind of alteration could be fair game. There is a lot of art that is made by tending to the nuances. With that out of the way, I’m speaking more to the person who puts a mic in front of an instrument or plugs it in with the aim of recording a part.

I don’t splice my takes. I give them three tries and that’s it for the night. Given that I stick to my one hour per night ritual, it can be painful to screw something up and have to move on to something else. But if I can’t do it right with three tries at this stage in my life I’m either not practicing regularly or don’t know the part well enough to merit recording. It comes down to the following decision: would I rather do it right in one take within the confines of the time imposed by the song (real time) or potentially spend hours making a quilt out of bits and pieces from multiple takes?

In my studio I play many roles. I’m a composer, performer, engineer, and designer. Sometimes I’m a luthier or an acoustician. I’m pretty good at most of those but what I enjoy is playing an instrument. It frees my mind and gives me a sense of peace. When it works, it’s one of the most beautiful sensations. And when it doesn’t, well, it still beats sitting in front of a monitor, splicing up waveforms, and hoping that the judicious application of various effects will hide the scars. So I tend to practice. It’s easier.

Read that again: it’s easier to do it right the first time. This applies to almost every endeavor.

So I may never use some of the more highly touted features of most DAWs and in fact my needs could likely be met by a simple multitrack recorder if I had infinite synthesizers and effects processors. And if all of this equipment were small enough to fit in my bag, that’d be great too. I’ll stick with Logic. And practicing.