The Light of Day

Sampling 101

Congratulations to long-time Handyfan Jeremy C. Ellis for submitting the closest (a.k.a. “only”) guess as to what my next video would be about! I hinted that the first two letters were “S” and “A”, and Mr. Ellis ventured “salad“. In a way, Jeremy is right… if you think of it as a salad of sampling!

The two main ingredients in this week’s salad are: a set of orchestra bells, and a common rubber band. (Learn the trick that sets the pro ‘bandists apart from the amateurs!) It’s topped off with a dash of my odd personality and musical know-how-what-when-why. (And it took way too long to edit — but hey, all’s well that ends well.)

Jeremy: you have until midnight 6/20/07 to claim your prize. What? That was last week? Ah, better luck next time!

Happy 100 hits, “Soul Peer”

Thank you, hundredth viewer of my Soul Peer demo/performance on YouTube. See, it pays to whine now and then. :)

I know 100 people could fit in the room I’m sitting in (well, not comfortably, and not without breaking fire code regulations), and I’m sure a few of those are multiple views from the same people (which is fine too) — but every power of ten, every digit, that’s one order of magnitude (I think — I don’t know the exact definition of “order of magnitude”, but that’s what I like to think it means) in the right direction. And when you’re a reclusive hermit doing original music in a saturated market, each new digit is a milestone. Next destination: a thousand. And so on. Toppermost of the poppermost and all that.

I was almost about to comment on this as I saw it getting close, but I didn’t want to be one of those annoying punks saying “go to such-and-such site and vote for our band”, as if whatever other bands they were up against weren’t human beings with friends, families, or genius of their own.

Of course I’m already a multi-thousandaire (and have been for some time) in the classical genre with Moonlight Sonata. It seems to be a hit with guitarists, many of whom apparently want tablature now, which I don’t even know how to do with all those bends and glides. So if you’re reading this, you’re a guitarist, and you like transcribing half-improvised lead guitar performances in tablature format, please go for it — the demand is there.

My expectations for the most recent “what I do in my studio” video were quite low, since I didn’t figure watching reels of tape being threaded would be terribly visually appealing, but apparently some people are making it through all three parts. So I’ll continue to do stuff like that, including my forthcoming secret surprise. I already told you it’s about something beginning with the letter “S”… well, the second letter in that word is “A”.

Sentimental treasures

While you’re waiting for my next exciting instructional video (I won’t tell you what it’s about yet, but it’s something that begins with the letter “S”… What? No, not “sex”, you moron…), I’d like to point you to a May post I just found on Matrixsynth that whisked me back to a personal yesteryear. Someone named Ron has posted the audio from several “soundpages”, the thin, flexible records that were included in issues of Keyboard Magazine in the mid 1980s, right around the time when I was reading it fervently.

I used to make mix tapes from these records, so I could listen to them more passively, and give some of the weirder and more experimental stuff a chance to inject itself into my subconscious. Although any collection like this is bound to be incomplete, there was a lot more overlap than I expected between what’s here and what I remember. A few of them are B-sides featuring ads for Kurzweil and Kawai instruments, which are fun in an “OMG the 80s were actually quaint” kind of way. Do you remember when announcers didn’t all sound like vomiting teenagers on speed? (Incidentally, last I knew — back when I watched television — Paul Shaffer was using that Kurzweil on Letterman’s show.  For its time it was admittedly pretty hot… but one of the demos here, subtitled “Rock Block”, features some of the least-convincing “guitars” I’ve ever heard.  Ah, who cares, rock was dead anyway.) One of the soundpages even featured my favorite columnist, Freff, whose way-off-topic articles on creativity I still keep copies of today — although, truthfully, that particular record is kind of corny, and I cringe a bit to envision it as your introduction to him.

If you want to hear these, but don’t like Windows Media files, let me know, because as soon as I downloaded them I immediately converted them to mp3 and gave them proper tags. Now if only somebody could post that mix cassette I stole from a house party in college, declared to be “stupid”, and promptly became addicted to, until it found its way into the laundry, care of a careless family member who shall not be named… sigh… they do hand all that stuff back to you when you check into the afterlife, right?  (Uh, Keith… no, not if it was stolen. HTH.)

P.S. - If you want one more hint about the upcoming video… it’s sort of relevant to this post… in a way.

Geeky “what I do” video

Heads up: you can now watch parts one, two, and three of my newest YouTube experiment, in which I demonstrate how I restore an old multitrack recording. There should probably be at least one more part forthcoming, when I put the final touches on the song.

The guinea pig for this experiment is Nicole’s Thoughts (featuring Kim Pinegar), the final track from my rock opera, Through Forbidden Black Doors. There’s no particular reason I chose it for this presentation, other than the fact that it was one of the remaining few that had not yet been transferred from the original reels into the computer. When the remixing is done, I’ll upload the song too, to give some context to all those little fragments you hear in the video.

I have absolutely no idea how boring this ultimately is; all I know is that filming it was extremely challenging on many levels, including (but not limited to): keeping busy with the camera breathing down my neck, speaking coherently while in my “flow state”, whittling the hours I spend on this kind of thing down to a digestible half hour, and managing to edit it in a way that helps you understand what you’re looking at, what you’re hearing, and what I’m doing with it. (Oh, yeah, and holding the camera steady too — thanks for pointing that out, Mom and Dad.) I’m not sure I succeeded at any of this.

It’s not totally dry, mind you; in fact, it kind of reveals how “by the seat of my pants” my working process is. Problems arise that might not have if I were more self-disciplined in the first place, but I deal with them — okay, I eventually deal with them — and move on. In that sense, there’s a wee bit of the human factor. That said, though, I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone who didn’t at least have some interest in the tedious realities of recording.

So who am I to tell you not to watch it? Enjoy!

The barbed wire fence stretches on

Apologies to anyone (particularly myself) whose sensibilities are being tested with my recent rant and subsequent follow-ups. Let me make this clear: I’ve never wanted to “rise above you”. I want to take you up there with me. A good thing becomes a bad thing if it’s not in a good place, so I’ve shifted my concern from the work itself to its context, or environment, which has been neglected. The where, as opposed to the what. It’s just hard to discuss this without making a zillion little disclaimers for everyone that’s out to seek and destroy prima donnas.

An angle I still haven’t mentioned with regard to the barbed wire fence of fame (I can’t call it a “wall of fame”, because that has an entirely different meaning — which is fine, because I’m burned out on the “wall” metaphor anyway) is how it impacts our relationship to music itself. Correct me if I’m wrong, but we seem to have a much easier time forming a relationship with music when we don’t have a real relationship with the people who created it. I don’t know why that is; maybe knowing the person kills the mystique. Maybe it’s because we feel safer surrendering ourselves to music when we know it’s in a “fixed” state, because otherwise we’re afraid we might influence it (we don’t trust ourselves). Or maybe it’s simply that fully forming both relationships, to the person and their music, is overkill, and too much for any person to handle. Yet again, maybe all of this was a lot less true when music was live and communal, and didn’t magically spring forth from electronic boxes. In any case, the detachment from the person seems to actually help the music to shine through.

Wouldn’t anonymity help even more, then? Apparently not — even though the artist must remain untouchable, we have to form the internal hallucination of a relationship, a sense that we “know” the artist; but this apparent relationship is just our concept of the artist, which remains entirely under our control. It helps that we can easily overlook his worst characteristics. If we hear that the artist is rotten to his spouse or children, we can write it off as defamation from a vindictive journalist; and then when we hear that the same person has done something noble, we take it as fact. This is a lot harder to do when you live with someone and see that person every day.

What we really want to do with music, whether we’re the creators or just the listeners, is surrender to it. We’re handing ourselves over to it and letting it have its way with us, and this is an extreme act of trust. Otherwise we’re just hearing sound, which is outside of ourselves, and has nothing to do with us.

More on “the other F-word”

As little things come into my life and my mind that feel like positive or hopeful responses to the fairly dark emotions I had while writing my “fame” post, I’ll do these little updates. Hopefully they will be helpful to more people than just me.

1. I’m not having another “dark night of the soul”. Not that you could tell just from reading that I was actually worried about going there, but I already went through that in the early 90s, and the only thing I can experience now is occasional re-living of certain feelings. Flashbacks, you could call them.

2. What triggered this, besides all the obvious time on my hands, was re-watching the Brian Wilson SMiLE documentary, and then watching part of the Led Zeppelin DVD to snap myself out of the empathic descent into Brian’s mental instability. The reason his name didn’t come up among the others is that it’s impossible to feel envy for a life like his. There are probably similar reasons why I shouldn’t envy anyone else either.

3. Something that didn’t come up in my rant was my frustration that there has always appeared to be an invisible barrier between the people I normally interact with and the people who have had so much influence on the musical end of my life. The fact that my heroes are untouchable and unknowable beyond everything I’ve already taken from them on the CDs. This would seem in direct contradiction to my “they love people” statement, but I think what I mean is, for purely a reason of numbers, they do have to go to greater lengths than the average person to keep whatever parts of their lives they choose private. And also because of those numbers, as much as they “love” their fans (when they do), they can rarely form more than a one-dimensional concept of the individuals that form that cloud. Which kind of leaves you feeling one-dimensionalized.

4. Ask this question: without asking for specific feedback, in general, how would your heroes feel about your right to at least try to build on what they’ve done and take it to the next level? Some might feel very clingy to the status that they’ve attained for themselves, in which case, they’re immature and you should stop giving them the time of day. Others might be indifferent — they did it for the money, they got their money, you do what you want and good luck. Others still might actually hope that people like you are out there trying to do that, and would feel honored to know they not only achieved some name for themselves, but were actually able to contribute something even larger to the world by way of passing on the torch, regardless of how seemingly obscure your current role in the universe is. Even if you don’t know which of them fall into which category, doesn’t it make sense to assume that at least some of them fall into the third — and in those moments where you’re too discouraged to press on for yourself, press on for them?

A friend of mine just shared the “Who’s Next” edition of the Classic Albums series with me, and this comment from Pete Townshend struck a helpful-feeling note with me:

Won’t Get Fooled Again was not a defiant statement, it was a plea… it was a plea. Please don’t end this story, please don’t feel that because you’ve come to this concert, because you’ve come to this place that you’ve got an answer. Please don’t make me on the stage the new boss, ’cause I’m just the same as the guy who was up here before. You’re in charge.

(Several instances of “y’know” omitted.)

Kind of reminds me of Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

First reflections on the “fame” post

I need to write this follow-up because I don’t want this site to hang on a downer for too long.

I’m not really retracting what I said. On re-reading it, I do think I covered the bases and backed up the emotional aspect of it with some meaningful analysis, on both ends of the fame-obscurity spectrum. One person’s daring confession is often no big deal to everybody else. It was a little uncomfortable to write, though, and in the end I felt more raw than cleansed. As in, this is something I need to do something about. For real.

What I was most afraid of was that it would sound like I’m begging for attention, and maybe I am. On the other hand, I want to contribute something to the world, and it’s hard for that to happen if the world is already saturated with what I’m offering.

Because my attention is split between not one, not two, but several album projects, it’s a challenge to get any one of them in the can for an official release. (This includes things that were at one point finished, but found their way into the remix queue.) So perhaps instead of waiting until one is finished before submitting it to something like Magnatune, I should put together a relatively quick “best of” type compilation album. The material for it would have to meet two criteria:

• Be really, really, really good.
• Be done. As in, now.

I think this is do-able. Certainly not an enormous investment of time, money, or energy (apart from what’s already been invested, which I’m just “sitting on”). I’ll meditate on possible titles. Something a little more clever than “best of” or “greatest hits”, obviously, but still making it clear that these are windows to a larger pool of material. Of course there are already a shitload of clever titles out there, but either you’re going to be among the clever, or less clever, so you might as well be in the “among” group.

Confronting my arch-nemesis: “fame”

I have mixed feelings about posting this. I know how it could come across. That’s all I’ll say for now…

-

Hello, “fame”. (Asshole.) Stop pretending to be an innocent lamp post. I know you’re there. And I know that you know I’m here. There’s some extremely dysfunctional relationship between you and me, some heavy long-unresolved issue. The very fact that you exist fills me with rage. It disgusts me that I have to write about it, which I hope I only have to do once — and it will disgust me again every time I re-read this.

So according to you, not only will I never be in a league with the Beatles or Led Zeppelin, which is fine, but… here, let’s scale this down gradually: never in a league with King Crimson. Scale down a bit more: never as well known as the late Kevin Gilbert. No, scale down further: never as well known as The Shaggs, or my ex-girlfriend’s husband, or any musician that covers any of the above. Never as famous as Numa Numa kid, Nora the piano-playing cat, or any random person between the ages of 18 and 24 that lights a fart or flashes a tit, however unremarkable said tit (or fart) is. On YouTube, my wild mouse Ralphie gets twice as many hits as any of my original songs, and all he does is twitches his ear and scoots off. (That said, if you go by the total for all four songs, I do whoop his tiny rodent ass. You know what they say about “lies, damn lies, and statistics”.) Here on this site, it’s a good day when I get double-digit page views. If you’re reading this, consider yourself elite.

Several years ago, when mp3.com was the place to promote original music, I received special mention for being in their “bottom ten”. A writer for Spin contacted me to do a short email interview as a result of this, aghast that everyone wasn’t downloading Have You Heard The Good News?, but when I tried to follow up to see if anything became of that, I never heard back from him. You can’t blame me for feeling like there’s a conspiracy.

My claim to fame is my immaculate lack of it.

There’s something psychological going on here. It’s not just the world — it’s me too. On some level, in some way, I am unconsciously doing everything possible to avoid the tiniest shred of exposure. Sure, I make a ton of music available to y’all (though maybe not in a consistent way), including this “open source” blogging, where I take the screws off the bottom of my muse to show you the gears inside. But in some way I sabotage it from there.

It’s not that I do mediocre work. Sure, I’ve been raised to be pessimistic, and told over and over again to disregard my own opinions because everybody thinks they’re good. (To give you some background here, my father doesn’t like attention — he doesn’t even want people to sing “happy birthday” to him — and I think he projects that onto me, or I project it onto myself.) So let’s say for shits and giggles that they’re right, and that only outside opinions matter. Again, confusing, bewildering… when there is feedback, it’s gushingly positive. (Great direct response, just no viral spread.) Other musicians even come to me for help and advice. So, unless that feedback is part of my hallucination, I don’t think I’m delusional about the music being good.

When I look at naturally charismatic rock stars like Paul McCartney or Robert Plant, it seems that part of their talent is the capacity to love complete strangers. They’re not afraid of people, or even annoyed by people — they bask in people. I suppose I could, hypothetically, walk out to the front entrance of my building and somehow form connections with all the people walking by on the street, but that mental image doesn’t click for me.

Then again, you don’t have to love people to become famous. When I look at truly creative acts who managed to pull it off (I hate the phrase “make it” — too much erroneous subtext packed into two little words) without the charisma, like Pink Floyd, I see that there’s a disconnect between what they’re famous for and what they actually did. In Pink Floyd’s case, they may have broken ground in presenting rock as a form of art, but they wouldn’t sell nearly as many records if they weren’t perceived as a “drug band”. So their unwanted association with getting high is their charisma to a lot of people. In a way, this applies to the more charismatic acts too: In Led Zeppelin’s case, the mythological association with Satanism, as well as the romanticizing of substance abuse and sexual recklessness, didn’t hurt. It’s as if you have to be equated with a vice before masses of people will latch on, even if what you do is great.

You could say the Beatles cheated by securing fame first and then pulling out the creative stops — had they kickstarted their career with Strawberry Fields Forever, they would have died a quick death right out of the starting gate — but I don’t think that was planned. Radiohead seemed to follow a similar path, but in a more condensed time frame. Commercial success isn’t always so helpful in facilitating creative growth, but it can happen.

An unhealthy aspect of over-thinking all this, without truly dealing with it, is that I have not truly made peace with the reality of my life, and what seems to be a disproportionate degree of obscurity. A part of me is saying this is unacceptable, and that once it is completely turned around, and I’m “on the map”, I can breathe easy. That part of me is absolutely terrified of the idea that THIS IS JUST HOW IT IS… the end.

By most standards, my life should be more than acceptable to me. I have nice toys, a nice family, I eat every day, I’m not crippled, I’m not homeless, I’m not a hostage, I’m not getting beat up or shot at (although some people tremble with concern that I don’t have or want a television). I should be up to my eyeballs in gratitude.

So there are a lot of questions I need to ask myself:

• What do you really want? Having a vague feeling that your work should be “out there” and “a valid part of what’s going on in the world” is not a clear goal. Would you rather have a million people tossing your stuff on in the background, or five people getting shivers down their backs? Do you have to choose one or the other?
• Do you actually deserve recognition? Just because you do something well does not mean you’re contributing something to the world that it needs. There’s already a ton of good stuff out there, and maybe all you’re doing is funneling it down to fit your personal taste.
• Besides the above, why do you instinctively feel like you just plain should be famous? Why does it feel weird to you when anyone makes you repeat your name? Do you imagine that you were a famous person in a previous life, and are now being punished for abusing your fortune?
• Would anonymity be fine as long as the music was being heard? What about posthumous fame — creating for the audience of the future?
• Since you often say it’s not you-the-person that you want recognition for, but rather the fruits of your labor, is there an aspect of your work that you’re holding back on, something that you haven’t done yet that will make it suddenly “make sense” to everyone? If your music is the marshmallow you’re working too hard on, and you’re neglecting the rest of the s’more, what would the chocolate represent? What about the graham cracker? (Don’t ask.)
• Is there a reason you avoid exposure? Is there a symbolic link between your agoraphobia — fear of going out, literally translated to “fear of the marketplace” — and a fear of marketing? Are you afraid that other people will contaminate your work? It certainly is luxurious that you can still revise your old stuff in privacy — but even if everyone out there had old versions of your songs, would that stop you?
• Do you feel ethical confusion about the deliberate pursuit of an audience? Is it that you want to have one, but insist that “just sort of happen”, because you’re afraid that to make it a priority would force you to compromise some other principle?

If it’s any consolation, even the most famous people are unknown to the majority. A double platinum record reaches less than a third of a tenth of a percent of the global population — for every album sold, at least three thousand people did not buy the album (of course, this comforting rationale backfires if I do the same math on my own stats). Most of my coworkers at my former workplace would never have picked up on any music references I could have made, so I didn’t bother. Likewise, when I’m oblivious to their favorite television shows, I know I’m not the only one. When I was in high school, I felt compelled to evangelize the music I liked, and actually turned quite a few people on to it (and was grateful for other people who did the same for me with their favorite artists). So I felt a responsibility to the already-famous people, keeping their music alive and propagating it. This is not the earmark of a jealous person.

The best I can do at deciphering what my crackly, static-y, early days of radio-ish voice of reason tells me is: “okay, good, you’ve said it, you’ve gotten it out of your system — now quiet your mind and focus on enjoying what you do.” I guess that’s all I can do, because thinking about it just makes me feel immensely powerless and frustrated, just as it would if it were any other topic I had no control over. And while I don’t know exactly what I need, I know that something will make me feel genuinely better about things.

Maybe I’m not alone in this. I’d like to meet more people who have this “problem”. Perhaps we could form a support group — People Who Are Addicted To The Fame They’ve Never Had — with the overt purpose of “getting over it”…

…and the covert purpose of sneaking off from the meeting one day to pull some outrageous publicity stunt.

-

So let’s just say I owe you one neatly wrapped-up ending.

The continuing stooooory of a *track* that’s gone to the (over)dubs

You can tell me to STFU with these “clever” post titles any time now. :)

Here’s your next opportunity to micro-manage my deeply personal creative progress on What Do You Think Of Yourself (from last chorus to end this time):

0:17 - distorted rhythm guitar with wah-wah. This whole section will have more layers of vocal improv going on, and is supposed to have a “gospel-ish” sound. Maybe even some tambourine and hand claps. I’m almost embarrassed that I did too good of a job simulating Jesus Christ Superstar with the piano riffing. I’ll try less hard next time. :)

1:04 - sampled Chamberlain (same thing as a Mellotron, different make) strings enter here; it might be a few seconds later before you can pick it out over the other stuff. The whole point of these eight bars is to extend the previously repeating B/C#/D/E “rising” chord progression to B/C#/D/E/F/G/Ab/Bb so that it “keeps going all the way up” until it hits THE BIG C that kicks the next section off. And to help over-dramatify the second half of that…

1:14 - sampled trumpet. Love it or hate it, it does sound damn real, and reminds me a bit of some of the stuff Christy listens to, like Polyphonic Spree and Robyn Hitchcock. If you do hate it, it’s only there for ten seconds.

2:19 - doubled lead guitar, in left and right. I will probably have it a little quieter when it first comes in so we’re not quite so “power ballad”.

2:26 - Chamberlain strings re-enter.

2:54 - I just want to mention that hearing the Chamberlain really quiet behind those piano chords makes me feel like I’m in a movie theater, watching something with a lot of sparkly stars (the in-the-sky kind, not the tabloid kind) and magical glowing things in it… possibly an alien type flick, where a little boy is peering into some cosmic portal, and you can see that it’s shining bluish or greenish light on his wide-eyed open-mouthed face. But I’m visual that way. :)

Possible future installments for the “So you want” series

Here are some ideas I’m thinking of for future installments in the So You Want To Make An Album series:

Follow-through - is your flow on album #1 stifled by your refusal to touch album #2 too soon?

Meta-rhythm - swimmers (and other non-dead people) know it’s okay to breathe out into the water, as long as they breathe in from the air above. How do you synchronize music to your life for the best inflow (inspiration) and outflow (expression)?

What is originality? - is it pulling something brand new out of thin air?  Or is it drawing from a larger, more varied, less predictable pool of influences?

What Do You Think Of Yourself? (demo, 4/6/99 8:11 PM)

Here is something straddling the line between demo and song-skeleton: What Do You Think Of Yourself. Thanks to Garrett’s verbal time-stamping, we can now pinpoint the exact year, day, and minute that the acoustic demo was originally recorded. The funny thing is, I forgot we ever did record the song, and it was a delightful surprise to find it intact when I was inventory-ing my reels a few years later. The drums (for part of the song) had already been played by myself in a separate session, and I had to do some time-squashing of our demo to fit it to the tempo of the drums.

Apologies for my out-of-tune vocal, and for, uh… Michael Bolton. That will be cut at the last minute, but I’m keeping it in the working version because it’s a cheap laugh. :)

Oh, I almost forgot the reason why I’m posting this now: I just used Da Hornet (plus a Leslie effect) to make the “spinning” chord for the intro (0:58 - 1:39).

Whenever all the noise dies
Behind the lids of my eyes
It’s never hard to give rise to a “me thing”
But when I see the whole earth
I wonder how much I’m worth
Or if I even deserve to be breathing

People pay a pretty penny
Collecting clowns to criticize
People love to make a fool of
That reflection in Bozo’s eyes

Have you noticed when you’re looking
At squirmy worms that crawl the ground
Squirmy worms are less repulsive
They look up while you look down

What do you think of yourself?

Every day you let slip away from you
Is a day you can never retrieve
Twenty four hours of your past down the drain
Your future might as well just get up and leave
And when you choke your deepest desires
Your worst fears are guaranteed to come true
‘Cause really, isn’t your worst fear of all
That nothing good will ever happen to you?

Are you good or are you evil
After all is said and done?
Is your life worth watching over?
And I mean that in more ways than one

What do you think of yourself?

Edit 6/11/07: “What’s all that with just the drums by themselves from 5:49 onward?”, I hear you asking. That’s for a section of music that bridges What Do You Think into the next song. Fortunately for me, as I sit behind a drumset, I can hear all of my chord changes in my head. Unfortunately for you, you can’t hear all my chord changes in your head, so all you hear is drums.

New piano part to the rescue!

I put in way too many hours — yes, that’s right, you heard me, “hours” — on this new piano overdub over this past weekend. First, I played the grandiose dramatic thing from 1:18 - 1:52, as in actually played it on the keyboard, since I’ve played it thousands of times and pretty much knew exactly note for note what I wanted there. Since you can only play so well on a $100 unweighted keyboard, I did take some time cleaning that up in piano roll view: erasing mis-hit notes, quantizing rhythm, smoothing out volume (”velocity”) of notes.

Then I did the quiet part from 0:50 - 1:17, the same way, but separate from the quiet “guide drums” so they wouldn’t be locked into that tempo. Since it was a little shorter/faster than the guide drums, I lined it up with the next part, and then slid all that stuff to the left to line it up with the part before it.

For the “apocalyptic chords” (0:22 - 0:49), I knew what chords I wanted there but didn’t have a set way in my mind to play them, so I “composed” that whole part by drawing it in the piano roll view, working backwards from the end of the section so that it would lead into the next part as naturally as possible. (Kind of bends the definition of the word “naturally”, I realize.)

For everything before that, the “jam-out” part (which you only hear the tail end of here), I did a combination of actual playing and creative note-drawing, got too far out with it — to the point where it was getting in the way — and then replaced the most excessive bits with simple filler. One of the big differences between the me of today and the me of 1992-1994 is that I realize I have this tendency to overwrite, and know when to cut out a crazy measure and replace it with dead-simple quarter notes and triads.

Towards the end, when I only had a few measures left to fill in (0:04-0:18 on this mp3), I felt creatively zapped. I was ready to call it a night and go to bed, when I asked myself this awesomely powerful question: “what would you put in there if you had to quickly put something there and didn’t have time to think about it?” That helped blast that block out of the way, for sure. And I didn’t cop out on those measures — I did wind up putting some real “artistry” into them — but that was kickstarted by the “just do something” mindset.

“So what’s up with the piano all by itself from 1:53 to the end?”

Ah, another day… another day…

A (somewhat yesterday’s news) requiem for passion

In response to the positive feedback I’ve been receiving on the “So You Want…” series, I want to give a brief nod to a now-dormant favorite blog, which helped plant the idea in my head to actually write things that are helpful to you. Had I not been a faithful reader of Creating Passionate Users over its too-short two year and change run, I’d probably still be writing this whole thing in a non-inclusive artist-to-audience “please listen to my stuff” perspective. (Hint: you don’t have to tell people to listen. Just put it on the side somewhere like you’re hosting a party, and oh, by the way, there are snacks over there if you get the munchies.) Okay, so this site is still 90% vanity, but it’s a step in the right direction. I’m trying.

Visual aids in the above spirit were commonplace on Kathy Sierra’s blog, which was initially meant to be a group effort between her and the other co-authors of the Head First series of computer programming how-to books — none of which I’ve ever read, admittedly. Never once, though, did I ever feel out of place as a reader, because her posts were focused on more universally applicable ideas about how to captivate your audience, your market — whatever you want to call them (”users”). And what she hammered home more than anything was the need to provide them with the opportunity to have their own “I rule” experience, as opposed to focusing on how much the product or its maker supposedly rules.

Kathy called it quits a couple of months back because she started to receive some threatening and hateful emails and blog comments, as well as some anonymous obscene photoshopping of her face that was posted to a mean-spirited website. Considering the friendly nature and informal style of Creating Passionate Users, there was nothing controversial that could have incited anyone to want revenge. It could only have been a sick person picking an arbitrary target. In her last few posts, she explained that the experience was so terrifying that she could no longer continue posting in the public eye in the same way. She tossed out some ideas about ghostwriting or using a fake identity, or making the blog private, but I don’t know if she’s since settled on any decision as to how to go forward.

I started reading CPU before there were more than a handful of people leaving comments (there may have been way more than that actually reading, who knows) and watched it grow into a “top 100″ site. Now I can’t bring myself to unsubscribe to the feed because, dammit, I miss it.

Da Hornet

While my unemployment funds do indeed cover rent, food, and other basic expenses, simple math tells me I won’t quite be able to work the $3695.00 for a Minimoog Voyager into my budget. In the meantime, I’m satiating my analog synthlust with a free plug-in that emulates the lesser — okay, much lesser — EDP Wasp. It was one of those butt-ugly, super-cheap looking things that I’ve always kind of wanted to play with anyway, just to see what it would sound like. (Hey, Duran Duran apparently used one at least once, so it can’t be that bad.)

The emulator is cleverly named (if you can’t tell by the picture) “Da Hornet”, and while it won’t quite do everything you would ever want a synth to do, it is quite analog-ish, quite fun, and quite available for both Windows and Mac (okay, I’ll stop saying “quite” now). Some free plugins are on sites that require you to register and log in; this one involves no such hassle.

You can’t tell by looking at it that there are 128 presets included (you have to click on the name for a context menu), five of which I’ve jotted down on a “gotta use” list. You can even have it generate patches randomly, if you need a unique sound but aren’t in a twiddling mood. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t discover any of this right away, because it forced me to figure out what all the knobs do.

Here are some other users’ reviews (some people actually bitched about the color), and here is where you can download it.

Edit 6/8/07: Here’s a short clip of some overdubs I just did, so you can hear how Da Hornet sounds:

Whatever became of “the hardest vocal part in the world”?

Remember this post from days long gone?

My goodness, will you look at how time has washed out all the color? I tell ya, you have to put those old internet posts in a climate-controlled vault, or they’ll put you in a vault… figuratively… okay, so they can’t all be clever, cut me some slack here.

I should probably assert here that I do, in fact, keep all these seemingly scattered sub-projects alive. It’s just that I’m cycling through so many of them, that from the perspective of a single task (look no further than my glacial one-overdub-a-year progress on Curtis for a glaring example) it undoubtedly looks like neglect.

So, kids, here’s how the vocal for This Is Your Chance is sounding today, all by its isolated lonesome (he says in a light-hearted tone, as if putting up an a capella mix doesn’t make him very uncomfortable and self conscious):

Well, maybe it’s not the hardest vocal in the world, but for me, it’s up there. I finished the actual singing shortly after that old post, and failed to tell you. Over the past couple of days I dusted it off and adjusted the timing on all the phrases so they would “lock together” more. I adjusted the pitch on a few notes, but not many. I still think some pitches could stand to be corrected, but in some spots it’s hard to tell exactly. Much of it has a very “clustered” sound still, because it is, literally, clusters: the pitches are so close together that it’s as if you played it on a keyboard with your fist.

I have an idea in mind for a way to cheat that, so it sounds a little more open — but I’m not going to explain that to you in detail, because I don’t want to make you cry. There’s been enough tears for one blogosphere lately, and now it’s time to be all “here comes the sun”.

Edit 6/4/07: not that you have a context without the backing track or anything to decide for yourself (yet), but do I think this song is something special to be worth the difficulty?  Actually, no.  I would say it’s not even in my top twenty.  To be 100% honest, the motivation for this one is the difficulty itself.  From a purely aesthetic standpoint, it didn’t need to be this complicated.  My intention is to get the final result to be so smooth that no one even thinks of it as difficult or complex.  It’ll be just another song, buried deep in the catalog somewhere.  A “deep cut”, as the radio peeps say.  I’m just getting off on the challenge, is all.

So you want to make an album? (part 14)

To read the entire series, go to the “So You Want…” category.

Installment 14: Installment fourteen is the new installment one!

Yes indeed, thirty is the new twenty, white is the new black, and now, installment fourteen is the new installment one. Since I have so much momentum going with this “so you want to make an album” series, where you would expect to find you everything you ever needed to know about cutting your own number one, it’s time for me to stop yakking about all the drugs I’ve taken and all the parties I’ve gotten naked at, and time for… reader participation!

If you haven’t started work on your album, I don’t want to hear about it. I know you’re confused, because you’ve been told all your life that the green light means go, and the red light means stop — but you’ve entered the bizarro parallel alternate world of recording, where things are different.

Yes, that’s right, red means “tape is rolling”. And in your case, tape is most likely a metaphor for hard drive space. But it’s also a metaphor for something much larger: your life. Your life is rolling. The red light on your life is always on. So the only reason for the red light on your recording equipment to not be on as well, is to maintain the comforting illusion that this particular moment doesn’t count.

Are you ready? That’s a trick question, and I’m only asking it because that’s the question you’re asking yourself. The answer is: you have always been ready. And also: you will never be ready. There is no such thing as “ready”, so purge yourself of this paralyzing concept right now.

Name any excuse why this is not a good time for you to put down a track, and I’ll tell you exactly why that makes it the best time to put down that track. At the risk of getting all “lemons to lemonade” on you, I sincerely believe that every perceived obstacle is really a gift to help us each find our unique sound — if we let it. Sore throat? You’re about to discover an interesting way of singing the melody. Injured left hand? Obviously that guitar bit is destined to be played with a slide. Power outage? That’s the pad and pencil calling your name. Malfunctioning equipment, or lacking a critical piece of gear? Congratulations, you’re an inventor. Broken string, and no stores are open? Fresh, “innovative” guitar part on the horizon, or maybe a keyboard part you hadn’t thought of. Bad mood creeping up on you? New song en route. I suggest you thank whoever or whatever is guiding you with these helpful nudges, and nothing says “thank you” like hitting the frickin’ record button.

How many songs need to be written and/or selected when you hit the button? Zero. Are you plugged in? When you hit the button, can you make a sound? Can you play just one note? Play it. Can you improvise well? No? Can you improvise badly? Do it. Nothing to sing? What’s in front of you? What’s to your left? Talk about it. Talk about how boring it is. Talk and talk and talk until something comes out that you like. Then sing it.

Creating is sort of like fishing. You don’t just magically burst forth with product. You simply elect to begin capturing what flows through you anyway. And unlike fishing (hence the “sort of”), the very fact that you’re doing it at all feeds back into your well of inspiration and accelerates your “magic moments”. Think about it: if you were an angel, seeking a worthy conduit for an awesome guitar solo, would you give it to someone with a long track record of avoiding the button?

You don’t need to have everything in place in order to start. You don’t need to know everything you’re going to do, or how you’re going to to it. You don’t need to read the rest of this series, or even the rest of this post. You can start with a click track, or you can use the internal sense of tempo yo’ momma gave you. You can have the levels set wrong. You can use a crappy microphone. You can play like shit*. You can have zero ideas. And no matter what winds up on that track, you might still find something on it worth using as the foundation for a great song.

*Sensitive readers: if you don’t like the word “shit”, be forewarned that I use it a shitload in the following paragraph.

So why doesn’t everybody do this? Well, because it’s about starting with shit and turning it into greatness. But in order to do that, you have to hear the greatness in the shit. As young people, we do this naturally, sometimes to the point where we don’t even realize it’s shit. But as we get older, we only hear shit as shit, as if resigning to its shittiness somehow makes us more sophisticated. The third level of awareness, the one I’m evangelizing, is to hear both the shittiness and the greatness. You need to be able to fill in the blanks in this sentence: “This is such a shitty ______, but it would be great as a ______.” Experience teaches you how to fill the blanks. The more recording you actually do, the more happy accidents you experience, thus the fuller your bag of tricks, and subsequently the keener your ability to perceive the greatness in the shit. The only way to kickstart that cycle is to hit the button.

Are you getting the point yet? If you still have no idea what to do, I’ll spell it out. Consider this a homework assignment. Pick an instrument that you feel most comfortable with. If it’s your voice, pick your voice (although when you read the rest of the assignment, you’ll change your mind). Set aside one full hour, including setup and wrap-up time, when you will hopefully not be disturbed; but, if you must be disturbed, then promise ahead of time to use that disturbance as a source of inspiration. Record yourself improvising continuously for at least thirty minutes. HOLD THE PHONE, BUSTER, I can hear you saying, I CAN’T IMPROVISE MY WAY OUT OF A PAPER BAG. Shhh, calm down, it’s okay. You can play one chord. Get a rhythm going. When you feel like changing the chord, change it. Pick one that you know will sound good, or pick one at random. Just go with it, and no matter how bad you think your choice was, play it as if it was fantastic and you really meant it. Go back and forth between two chords. They don’t have to be super-original. When you get sick of what you’re doing, change it to something else — change the feel, change the rhythm. Do strange things with your instrument to get strange sounds out of it. But whatever you do, don’t stop, for at least thirty to forty minutes.

Now for the hard part: listen back to the whole thing, either that same day or as soon as you get a chance. You may well hate most of it. But I guarantee there will be a minute or so somewhere in the middle that makes you think, “hmm, that part actually isn’t so bad”. Feel free to delete everything else, but preserve that one little bit. Now you can loop it, play around with overdubbing something on top of it, or just take advantage of your newfound courage and record something new from scratch. It’s up to you!

Your life is rolling. Hit the button. We’ll worry about “making it good” later.