sitting

Posted by on March 23, 2010 No comments

pipes
Most nights when I’m in the studio I have the laptop open and everything gets recorded. I’ve been pretty successful with that approach for some time now and it’s a great way to capture things that I don’t necessarily want to take the time to write down. It also creates a lot of scrap files that I can play with later. It’s a great habit and maybe the only one that I would wholeheartedly recommend to any musician or composer. Just record it all. The flubs and everything. It works.

But sometimes I’m not in that head space. Last night was one of those. Instead, I sat on the floor of my room with a guitar and noodled. The room was lit by a nifty little nightlight. I learned years ago that practicing in the dark is good for the hands and ears. It’s still true today.

I picked and strummed for just under an hour. Long enough to get my fingers moving but not long enough to engage anything serious. Like meditation, I left the room feeling lighter and more focused. When I record tonight I’m sure the work will be better for it.

focus

Posted by on March 22, 2010 No comments

There is something very therapeutic in working on a very specific and detailed task for a period of time. My example is any kind of woodworking that involves carving or a hand plane. I spent some time this weekend working on my new guitar. I made a mistake in the second step of the entire instrument building process and it has taken about three weeks to unscrew it. In any case, I got back to some forward motion on Sunday and noticed how good it felt to sit on the floor of my studio and carve while my son made crazy noises with my synthesizers.

The immediacy of a very sharp blade under pressure in close proximity to one’s flesh conjures a different state of mind. Thoughts wander less and I wonder if extreme focus like this doesn’t actually give us more rest than it burns. Of course since I’m not getting paid to do it, it’s recreation instead of “work” so it must be restful! Right. Anyway, the nuanced tasks are the ones I hate and love the most. And it’s in the middle of them that I feel most like the fairy tale definition of a craftsman. Whether it’s removing small amounts of material from a guitar or practicing a phrase until it flows, the details make it fun.

I’m thinking about details more and more as I get ready to start the next big project. There are a few ideas that are very nuanced that I might finally take the time to explore. With two weeks left in the first quarter of the year and my major quarterly goal taken care of (Thought Music) I feel like I can take some time to really think about what’s next. And that feels great!

something cool

Posted by on March 19, 2010 No comments

So yesterday as I was pimping my new collection I heard about a really cool new project from some friends of mine. They’re using Kickstarter to get funding for a project. I’m intrigued by Kickstarter in that I’ve seen it work for a novel in progress by my buddy Johnny. Anyway, this Kickstarter thing is pretty cool but what’s cooler is that it provides a framework for people to do things like this:

The new face of Canadian Science Fiction!

You have to check out their video and premise. You can hit their Kickstarter page and follow them on Twitter.

I’m not going to lie. I love science fiction and I have a bit of a crush on Canada. Growing up in Ohio and having lived in Minnesota means spending some time with our neighbors to the north and their quirks. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. What I’m talking about is the chance to help a project with a lot of promise get off the ground. I’ve known two of these folks for a long, long time and even collaborated with Duff on a project or two. He provides lyrics for Jason and me on a semi-regular basis and we turn them into tunes. These are good writers with a lot of drive. I’d be quite excited if I could get a the couple of people who read this blog to click on over and at least check out the project. It’s good stuff! Even if you can’t toss ’em a couple of bones you can always retweet their stuff or pass on a link, right?

It’s nice to know people who are taking risks and, better yet, putting some muscle behind their passion. Thus endeth the promotion.

By the by, is there some new law that says that every time I talk about something cool on my blog I have to say that I’m not getting paid for it? Screw that! People know better than to think I get paid for anything on this site.

new tunes: Thought Music

Posted by on March 17, 2010 No comments

There is nothing more reassuring than having a plan. Stepping into a studio space is a daunting task. The possibilities are limitless but time is not. Anything can be done, but only a few things will be. That’s why little notebooks are so amazing. They hold ideas and possibilities. I keep a pile of them. I re-read them weekly. I look for plans and see how solid they feel after some time has passed. It’s also good to see how much progress I’ve made. But the best thing about a plan as it relates to artistic endeavors is that they all go out the window when something cool happens. So my belief is that the plan exists to get me into the studio so that cool things can happen – whether or not they agree with any stated objective.

At the beginning of the year I said that I wanted to release three collections of tunes in a combination of solo and collaborative efforts. In the middle of some very heavy work in February, it occurred to me that smaller collections with a wider variety might be cooler than the traditional album format. Something not quite an EP was attractive. With a pile of work in place, it is easy to see where some things might fit and where there are still gaps. As I was noodling with something to use as mortar for a collection, I had a pretty good improvisation session. By the end of that night, I had three tunes that stood very well on their own. The next night, I took some other things and did one of my exercises where I make a piece of music in a sitting. But I did two. By a wonderful twist, the five pieces worked together in a series. The collection sort of completed itself. Not at all what I had intended and yet exactly what I wanted. Nifty!

These are improvisations composed and recorded over two nights. There is no editing of material and very little processing for tracks that are solo guitar. The tracks are arranged in a particular order and it would be great if folks would play them in order just once. I’m old fashioned like that, but not enough so to make them all one long mp3 and force the issue. It’s also the first time I’m exposing the world to what that guitar I built sounds like. This is it.

Please download, enjoy, and share Thought Music. Thanks!

Thought Music

Thought Music – J.C. Wilson

1. A Kind of Theme
2. Interlude
3. First Variation
4. Transom
5. Another Variation

The entire collection in one pile: ThoughtMusic.zip

All songs written, performed, engineered, and produced by J.C. Wilson. All instruments built by J.C. Wilson!

Creative Commons License
Thought Music by J.C. Wilson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.othertime.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://othertime.com.

colors

Posted by on March 16, 2010 No comments

My last entry may sound like I’m completely pleased with my little project and that in 15 minutes I churned out a work of Art-with-a-capital-A. I have some delusions, sure, but that ain’t one of them. If this were 1970 I might have a chance of taking a tiny video like that along with its soundtrack and getting some serious attention due in no small part to the technology and techniques used. But this is 2010 and the bar is a little higher than that on most days. I did say most days.

The exercise revealed a new color for me. I don’t know that I have a really good analogy for it aside from the ham-handed “imagine that you’d never seen the color green before and then it magically appeared in your field of vision.” It’s exaggerated. It’s silly. It’s not the point.

Playing around with the video gave me a chance to see what I could do with very little time and knowledge. If I equate this to building a palette or tool box, I’d say I have crimson or a hammer. Having those things is essential. It’s a place to begin. The next time I sit down to work on something I will know that I can do what I did last time. Nail? No problem! But not every problem is a nail and unlike Picasso I don’t think that anyone is going to give me a period to experiment with only one color. Sad, but true. The thing to do now is take that tool and find more. The color analogy works better here. With crimson and white or black I can really start to do something. If I spend a little time and discover my yellow or blue, I’ll really be on a roll.

My goal for this week is to record some things and really abandon my expectations. Play a little bit with what I know won’t sound good and figure out if it’s my expectations or the actual outcomes that lack. By the end of the second quarter of the year I should have some good stuff to show for it. What a good idea! This can be my experimental quarter. I’ll keep some notes and post some sketches. I’m sure at least an EP will come of it.

With the first quarter of the year coming to a close, I’m hurrying to complete a five song EP for release. The working title is Thought Music and it’s the result of a one night recording session that lasted less than an hour. All of the material is improvised. It’s taking a chance with the way I have mixed the material for the collection. Simple solo guitar and heavily processed material co-exist. I think it works. It will certainly be complete by the end of March but I would expect it to show up sooner. I’ll do a big post about it when the time comes and pimp it heavily on facebook and twitter as is my custom. Watch this space and all that jazz!