I am (hopefully) about to start recording my new solo acoustic album due to the prodding of some close friends who, for whatever reason, really love that part of my work. But each time I am about to go downstairs and set up the mics and get this thing going, one question keeps coming up, "Why?"
While there are some dark practical reasons to get it completed, there are no real valuable answers in the either which I shall tackle here in due time
Let me begin by stating a few personal observations about the world of being a musician in the 21st century:
TO BEGIN: Basic economic concept: The value of a product depends upon the desirability and scarcity of a product.
As has been stated literally thousands and thousands of times before, the digital age has made just about anyone able to record/have access to sounds and then edit it into some sort of shape at a quality, speed, and cost that only a decade ago was only dreamed of. The problem is that the unholy alliance of bootlegged software and bootlegged music has made matters exponentially worse. It has not made the playing field level, it has made it a vortex.
We seem to be at a point where the value of recorded music is approximating zero while the desire for music seems to be at an all time high, both points of which are a result of technology. Never before in the relatively short history of recorded music have we been able to carry with us so much music for our personal consumption. I say this only speaking of the personal storage devices. Once the Digital Cloud becomes the norm, all bets are off, the game is over as access to almost anything will be available to anyone with the right technology that will only come down in price over time. I find this to be both depressing and a tad scary for every creative thinking person out there.
Years ago, only the few record/CD collectors of deep obsession could have collected enough recorded music as to outweigh the amount of time they would have in their theoretical lifespan to listen to it. Now, that is commonplace. People I know download complete catalogs of artists in no time at all from bit torrent sites. years and years worth of an artist's work collected for free within less time than it takes to heat a Pop Tart. See the problem?
(I am no expert on this, so please feel free to consult the work of John Berger and the like, but here goes...)
The history of Music (using the definition of- rhythm, sonority, and silence) is, at the very least, as old as the human race. The female voice is (approximately) one octave above that of the male and the child's voice an octave above that. Any melody sung by the three at the same time would be within that octave "harmony". 2000 B.C. is where the first music notation starts and it takes about 3900 years before the recording of music starts. With sheet music/notation, the best one can get is an interpretation of what the original composition sounded like. With the recording, one can hear exactly how the performance sounded.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh, now thanks to the digital age, the triumph of mathematical perfection, and cost effectiveness over human inconsistency, the reality of what is consumed as music has been bent at a right angle. The performer of the music has become merely the clay of the product, not the finished stone. And to all my recording brethren out there, allow me to state the following: WE ARE ALL GUILTY! I have used pitch correction tools to edit the living hell out of my own and others performances. Why? Speaking only for myself, two words: TIME and MONEY. It was cheaper for me to have the under rehearsed singer do a mediocre job and edit it later than to spend weeks getting it right when there was a cheap option available that has become the industry standard.
Oh yes, the "Industry Standard".
99.9% of all music heard these days is computer corrected. The artificial has replaced the human as the standard. No, really. Pop musicians (which means "popular" which means "consumed and accepted by the masses") either are singing along to pre-recorded back-up tracks live or are being auto-tuned when they perform live. The standard is no longer analogue, but digital. Human performance is no longer acceptable.
In the documentary "Sound City" all of what I am talking about is played out and discussed by those who made their career within the time of analogue gear. It is an amazing documentary about how digital technology transformed the art of recording music. I cannot recommend it enough to everyone who cares.
One thing I found stunning was about how, in the old days, the goal was to find "The magic take", the performance where you get "lightening in a bottle". You see a young Tom Petty go bonkers in some home footage after doing a song over two dozen times (or something like that). Even better is Dave Grohl talking about the recording of Nevermind, which was done at that studio and how he loathed using a click track to record the song "Lithium". While there were overdubs, the music was recorded by human beings who could do the performance. This is the former generation.
I asked a high school age guitarist this past week about recording his music, as well as that of other bands. He says he has never used any whole takes and did not record more than one instrument at a time. Even then, he just edited the takes to make the finished piece. This is the new generation.
If something is constructed by a machine to the point of mathematical perfection, can it exist as a piece of art made by a human? Is there a balance? Well, sure. I am not anti-synth or anti-Protools. My favorite example is Trent Reznor who has been using computers to make his music since the beginning of his career as NIN. The man uses a computer to make music and it is stunning.
Maybe it is all in the vocals?
The human being reacts most strongly to another human being. The voice, even without language (or with pseudo-language as in the case with Sigur Ross), the ear perks up and finds the human connection.. (I think the sales of music with voice/vocals as compared to instrumentals will back me up on this.) And how many instrumentalists can you say you can pick out by ear after one listening? Eddie Van Halen, Michael Hedges, and Jeff Beck come to mind about having a truly unique tone and there are others. But vocalists have a way of just putting a tractor beam on the soul.
Adele comes to mind here. When she opens her mouth, God enters the room. Look at the video to her Bob Dylan cover of "Make You Feel My Love". She does not lip-sync the video, she actually SINGS in the video. I have been blessed to know people who could and can do the same. One of those people, Steve Hajdu-Nemeth was in my bad The Post-Modern Tribe until he passed away from cancer. Susan Shaughnessy is another who has shared the stage with me who can do the same thing. Mary Ann Wilson too. And there are others. Like I said, I am one blessed man.
Which leads me to this beautiful topic: So if I were to record the acoustic album, spend hours and hours of my life alone in my studio then spend about a thousand dollars mixing and mastering it to a professional level,..... then what?
Don't everyone yell at once....
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
"Why Don't You Teach Music in Schools?" (or How I Haven't Been able to Live with Others)
Two (or more) Masters and the Pesky Problem of Physics
"Why don't you get a job teaching music in schools? You're a great teacher and you could do your Music there and have a steady paycheck."
If I hear this statement, or a variation on it, one more time, I may snap and go Fed Ex on someone. (I say Fed Ex because I am not sure, when you read this, if the Postal Service will still be in business.) More times than a freshman girl gets offered a Long Island Iced Tea at a frat party, I have been told by people that I, a guitarist and composer by training and vocation, should get a job as a teacher in the bureaucratic machine of the public school system. All of these people, so open to guiding my soul have one thing in common: NONE OF THEM ARE MUSIC TEACHERS WITHIN THE BUREAUCRATIC GRINDER OF THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM! NONE! ZERO! THE VOID!
I have met many a high school and college music teacher, and many of them are wonderful people, more patient and kind than I could ever be even if I were given a daily regime of Xanax and absinthe. They work hard and have to put up with the living hell of attempting to have a beautiful garden grow within the Psychological Super Fund site of the contemporary childhood/adolescent life.
Every one of them seems to have a look of longing and weariness. When I tell them I teach independently and have put out six albums and am continually writing, their eyes grow cloudy. They are all people who want to compose their own magnum opus but cannot find the time due to the insane demands that their career takes upon them. If I could translate that look in their eyes into eyes it would say one thing, "One day. Yes, one day I WILL write that piece, that concerto, that album. Maybe he has...... but I have health benefits! AND PAID VACATION! THAT IS JUST AS GOOD AS WHAT HE HAS!"
Here's the catch,:I STILL haven't written my magnum opus and I do not have any paid days off!
The dream goal of the independent artist who is able to do whatever they want whenever they want does exist, but has the rarity of say, something between the number of quality Christian Slater films and the number of left handed unicorns. Almost all the arts have the strange default scheme where the artist, unable to get enough money from simply creating, must teach. The less commercially successful but more respected the writer, the better the odds that they will be stuck with making lesson plans. J K Rowling and Erika Leonard will never set foot in a teachers lounge, for professional reasons at least. Trust me.
There is nothing wrong with teaching. It is, at best, one of the noblest professions out there. The presence of some teachers has changed the course of my life and help me realize what my potential I had. Some were horrible. Some were forgettable, but the ones that resonated with me could never be replaced or replicated. The point here is that only one teacher I had, the late great Noel DaCosta, did not seen to complain about his lack of time to write. I could see that he wished he had more time, but he was such a generous soul and dedicated teacher that he just wrote when he could. The other teacher, James Oestereich, is finally starting his first album of original music after decades of composing and performing his own scores for theater over the past three decades. The fact that he himself is finally working on his first "solo" recording also shows that there is never enough time for anyone.
Annnnnnnnd then there is the story of minimalist composer Philip Glass who worked blue collar day jobs such as taxi driver and furniture mover for many years. How long did he have to do this work? The true legend of him driving a cab after the debut in November 1996 of his influential opera "Einstein on the Beach" hits the mark. He made time to write when he could until he could live of commissions and royalties.
At the end of the equation, composition becomes a job like any other. You have deadlines to meet and egos to stroke and immature people with your paycheck that can make you feel like a circus bear being led around by a string and conductors who feel they know the piece better than you and the wonderful wonderful musicians who feel your music is beneath them and are only doing it for the paycheck and so on and so on. It can become a disgusting process of which I have only given you the barest of details. (If you care to see how getting grant money is, please watch the movie "Fight Club" while drinking Mescal or "Million Dollar Baby" while drinking Tab till you pass out.)
In the same way that a baker cannot wait until the perfect birthday cake is made, the working composer cannot wait until something is "perfect". Normally there is a due date where, by the time it arrives, you have cursed God's Holy name and redden your garments, your soul so broken by self doubt and sleep deprivation that you are ready to work changing oil rather than have to do this all over again and IT IS ALMOST READY! ALMOST! JUST ONE MORE DAY! HOUR! MINUTE! SO CLOSE!
SO!
DAMN!
CLOSE!
Duke Ellington said, "Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn't do nothing." So there you go.
The 20th century composer Charles Ives should stand out as an anomaly within all this, but, alas, does not. For the uninitiated, Ives was, to make a very long story short, the owner of a successful insurance firm as well as a composer and church organist. He seemed to be able to juggle all the pieces of a "Normal Life": wife, successful career, children, etc, as well as be a be the composer without compromise. Throughout his life, however, had a series of nervous breakdowns, which his family called "heart attacks". While he had one of his most prolific periods after this, it is interesting to note that he created arguable his most well known piece, "The Unanswered Question", just two years prior. He would wind up having breakdowns many times over the course of his life until finally in 1927 he just stopped composing at the age of 53. "Nothing sounds right." he said to his wife with tears in his eyes. Alas, not even he could keep the balls of a normal life and the Muses in the air.
One of the last patron saints of the art world, the late abstract expressionist Agnes Martin, said that the best job for an artist is a dishwasher because it takes none of your creative soul away in the process. She was not taking in theory, she WAS a dishwasher for some time as well as a teacher and the keeper other jobs. When she had enough money to do nothing but paint, that was what she did.
I had come to this conclusion years ago but nobody believed me. I spent twelve years working as a landscaper at a cemetery and it was the best job I could have imagined. (Well, almost. My homophobic, racist, anti-Semitic, and all around evil boss for seven years of it tended to make it a tad rough.) The work itself was physically taxing, but mentally and emotionally it was an open slate. I even wrote a rock opera in my head over the course of a season that wound up becoming the completed work, "After the Valentines" with my band The Post-Modern Tribe. My body was being molded by the Spring, Summer, and Winters of New Jersey, but my mind was in an entirely different world.
I have been a private guitar teacher for many years now and have seen the decline of the popularity of the guitar as well as the corporate world turn rock music into nostalgia and music education into a hellscape of underpaid off-tour musicians create "bands" with strangers of kids and make them grind through some songs that will please their parents' hopes of some sort of return on their investment. But the corporate model does not care about the individual's unique pros and cons, nor does it care about any individual style. Contemporary non-classical music education will be what dance schools are for little children, only there will be teenagers on stage going through the motions instead of seven year-olds.
You should never go into teaching for the money. Ever. You should go into it to be the best teacher you can be and to emulate those teachers who inspired you. If you go into it for the money, at least two things will almost invariably happen. One, you will think in any way possible to kill the lesson time so you can get paid and care less and less about finding a proper pedagogy and two, you will realize that there is no amount of money you could be paid for having to deal with a student who is a human piece of apathy and you will resent them for the fact that they hold your paycheck and the relationship will turn into Nevada's dependence on gambling.
I have seen immense talent almost ruined by teachers that were so ill qualified and apathetic that they should be taken out and have their fingers broken.
If you have a day job you can tolerate and does not suck your soul out, please just get on with your creativity in your downtime. There is no great moment of clarity other than when you first see that you have your own voice and begin selling your work. If you have a great passion to be creative, remember that the word "Passion" means "to suffer". You cannot get one without the other. And suffering will always be there, regardless of whether or not one aspires to great heights of artistic expression.
If you are a parent, be an amazing and loving parent above all else. Don't make me go off on the DESPERATE COSMIC NEED for better parents rather than better artists!!!! One of the few pictures of Rothko smiling is when he is holding his young child. Same for Bartok and his children.
And to all you caring and teachers out there, I tip my hat to you. Be good and caring teachers because you never know what impact you may have.
Now stop reading this and go make something Beautiful.....
.
I have met many a high school and college music teacher, and many of them are wonderful people, more patient and kind than I could ever be even if I were given a daily regime of Xanax and absinthe. They work hard and have to put up with the living hell of attempting to have a beautiful garden grow within the Psychological Super Fund site of the contemporary childhood/adolescent life.
Every one of them seems to have a look of longing and weariness. When I tell them I teach independently and have put out six albums and am continually writing, their eyes grow cloudy. They are all people who want to compose their own magnum opus but cannot find the time due to the insane demands that their career takes upon them. If I could translate that look in their eyes into eyes it would say one thing, "One day. Yes, one day I WILL write that piece, that concerto, that album. Maybe he has...... but I have health benefits! AND PAID VACATION! THAT IS JUST AS GOOD AS WHAT HE HAS!"
Here's the catch,:I STILL haven't written my magnum opus and I do not have any paid days off!
The dream goal of the independent artist who is able to do whatever they want whenever they want does exist, but has the rarity of say, something between the number of quality Christian Slater films and the number of left handed unicorns. Almost all the arts have the strange default scheme where the artist, unable to get enough money from simply creating, must teach. The less commercially successful but more respected the writer, the better the odds that they will be stuck with making lesson plans. J K Rowling and Erika Leonard will never set foot in a teachers lounge, for professional reasons at least. Trust me.
There is nothing wrong with teaching. It is, at best, one of the noblest professions out there. The presence of some teachers has changed the course of my life and help me realize what my potential I had. Some were horrible. Some were forgettable, but the ones that resonated with me could never be replaced or replicated. The point here is that only one teacher I had, the late great Noel DaCosta, did not seen to complain about his lack of time to write. I could see that he wished he had more time, but he was such a generous soul and dedicated teacher that he just wrote when he could. The other teacher, James Oestereich, is finally starting his first album of original music after decades of composing and performing his own scores for theater over the past three decades. The fact that he himself is finally working on his first "solo" recording also shows that there is never enough time for anyone.
Annnnnnnnd then there is the story of minimalist composer Philip Glass who worked blue collar day jobs such as taxi driver and furniture mover for many years. How long did he have to do this work? The true legend of him driving a cab after the debut in November 1996 of his influential opera "Einstein on the Beach" hits the mark. He made time to write when he could until he could live of commissions and royalties.
At the end of the equation, composition becomes a job like any other. You have deadlines to meet and egos to stroke and immature people with your paycheck that can make you feel like a circus bear being led around by a string and conductors who feel they know the piece better than you and the wonderful wonderful musicians who feel your music is beneath them and are only doing it for the paycheck and so on and so on. It can become a disgusting process of which I have only given you the barest of details. (If you care to see how getting grant money is, please watch the movie "Fight Club" while drinking Mescal or "Million Dollar Baby" while drinking Tab till you pass out.)
In the same way that a baker cannot wait until the perfect birthday cake is made, the working composer cannot wait until something is "perfect". Normally there is a due date where, by the time it arrives, you have cursed God's Holy name and redden your garments, your soul so broken by self doubt and sleep deprivation that you are ready to work changing oil rather than have to do this all over again and IT IS ALMOST READY! ALMOST! JUST ONE MORE DAY! HOUR! MINUTE! SO CLOSE!
SO!
DAMN!
CLOSE!
Duke Ellington said, "Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn't do nothing." So there you go.
The 20th century composer Charles Ives should stand out as an anomaly within all this, but, alas, does not. For the uninitiated, Ives was, to make a very long story short, the owner of a successful insurance firm as well as a composer and church organist. He seemed to be able to juggle all the pieces of a "Normal Life": wife, successful career, children, etc, as well as be a be the composer without compromise. Throughout his life, however, had a series of nervous breakdowns, which his family called "heart attacks". While he had one of his most prolific periods after this, it is interesting to note that he created arguable his most well known piece, "The Unanswered Question", just two years prior. He would wind up having breakdowns many times over the course of his life until finally in 1927 he just stopped composing at the age of 53. "Nothing sounds right." he said to his wife with tears in his eyes. Alas, not even he could keep the balls of a normal life and the Muses in the air.
One of the last patron saints of the art world, the late abstract expressionist Agnes Martin, said that the best job for an artist is a dishwasher because it takes none of your creative soul away in the process. She was not taking in theory, she WAS a dishwasher for some time as well as a teacher and the keeper other jobs. When she had enough money to do nothing but paint, that was what she did.
I had come to this conclusion years ago but nobody believed me. I spent twelve years working as a landscaper at a cemetery and it was the best job I could have imagined. (Well, almost. My homophobic, racist, anti-Semitic, and all around evil boss for seven years of it tended to make it a tad rough.) The work itself was physically taxing, but mentally and emotionally it was an open slate. I even wrote a rock opera in my head over the course of a season that wound up becoming the completed work, "After the Valentines" with my band The Post-Modern Tribe. My body was being molded by the Spring, Summer, and Winters of New Jersey, but my mind was in an entirely different world.
I have been a private guitar teacher for many years now and have seen the decline of the popularity of the guitar as well as the corporate world turn rock music into nostalgia and music education into a hellscape of underpaid off-tour musicians create "bands" with strangers of kids and make them grind through some songs that will please their parents' hopes of some sort of return on their investment. But the corporate model does not care about the individual's unique pros and cons, nor does it care about any individual style. Contemporary non-classical music education will be what dance schools are for little children, only there will be teenagers on stage going through the motions instead of seven year-olds.
You should never go into teaching for the money. Ever. You should go into it to be the best teacher you can be and to emulate those teachers who inspired you. If you go into it for the money, at least two things will almost invariably happen. One, you will think in any way possible to kill the lesson time so you can get paid and care less and less about finding a proper pedagogy and two, you will realize that there is no amount of money you could be paid for having to deal with a student who is a human piece of apathy and you will resent them for the fact that they hold your paycheck and the relationship will turn into Nevada's dependence on gambling.
I have seen immense talent almost ruined by teachers that were so ill qualified and apathetic that they should be taken out and have their fingers broken.
If you have a day job you can tolerate and does not suck your soul out, please just get on with your creativity in your downtime. There is no great moment of clarity other than when you first see that you have your own voice and begin selling your work. If you have a great passion to be creative, remember that the word "Passion" means "to suffer". You cannot get one without the other. And suffering will always be there, regardless of whether or not one aspires to great heights of artistic expression.
If you are a parent, be an amazing and loving parent above all else. Don't make me go off on the DESPERATE COSMIC NEED for better parents rather than better artists!!!! One of the few pictures of Rothko smiling is when he is holding his young child. Same for Bartok and his children.
And to all you caring and teachers out there, I tip my hat to you. Be good and caring teachers because you never know what impact you may have.
Now stop reading this and go make something Beautiful.....
.
Saturday, September 22, 2012
They Shoot Illusions, Don't They?
At some point in this life or the next, if I ever meet the bastard who started the concept that the life of someone trying to live a life based around being originally creative was full of opium, wine, getting laid every day by different and attractive women, and eventual mind bending success, I will do them as much harm as I can. I am not sure if one can cut the legs of of a spirit in the afterlife, but I will certainly try to re-enact as many scenes from "Pulp Fiction" as I can upon them.
On the verge of trying to get a book published, releasing an ambient CD, AND trying to complete a rock-based band album, I have officially had it with the myth that this life is anything but one long uphill stone rolling contest. At the top, just before your stone rolls back down the hill, Sisyphus is there and asks you, "So, um, I got punished for trying to escape the Underworld so I could feel joy and love again. And, what are you doing here?"
Before you can answer, your Visa bill arrives and you realize you have not paid off the the gear you bought to record the album you still have yet to turn a profit on and, THUNK!, the rock goes tumbling down the hill with you wondering how you are going to afford the new computer you need to get your website THAT much better because you are SURE that you will get more paid downloads that way. YOU.ARE.SURE.OF.IT.
This blog is dedicated to the story of those of us who have slugged it out in the swamps and crappy clubs and crappy galleries and twelve seat theaters though we have done everything to move up the existential ladder. But we get out there, step up to the plate, every morning in front of the canvass, the computer, the instrument, the dance studio... WHEREVER and we give it our best shot.
This is my call for the assignation of the stereotype that our life is easy, or perhaps my nailing of my Ninety-Five Theses for the Light of Truth to be seen. Whatever. Here is the life of an artist from the inside.
Here goes.....
On the verge of trying to get a book published, releasing an ambient CD, AND trying to complete a rock-based band album, I have officially had it with the myth that this life is anything but one long uphill stone rolling contest. At the top, just before your stone rolls back down the hill, Sisyphus is there and asks you, "So, um, I got punished for trying to escape the Underworld so I could feel joy and love again. And, what are you doing here?"
Before you can answer, your Visa bill arrives and you realize you have not paid off the the gear you bought to record the album you still have yet to turn a profit on and, THUNK!, the rock goes tumbling down the hill with you wondering how you are going to afford the new computer you need to get your website THAT much better because you are SURE that you will get more paid downloads that way. YOU.ARE.SURE.OF.IT.
This blog is dedicated to the story of those of us who have slugged it out in the swamps and crappy clubs and crappy galleries and twelve seat theaters though we have done everything to move up the existential ladder. But we get out there, step up to the plate, every morning in front of the canvass, the computer, the instrument, the dance studio... WHEREVER and we give it our best shot.
This is my call for the assignation of the stereotype that our life is easy, or perhaps my nailing of my Ninety-Five Theses for the Light of Truth to be seen. Whatever. Here is the life of an artist from the inside.
Here goes.....
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