Category Archives: accountability - Page 3

Have A Plan

Posted by on June 7, 2011 No comments

The odds are very, very good that I will never be a master luthier. If I ever build a truly magnificent instrument, it will likely be a function of luck and repetition. But that has nothing to do with my quest.

I don’t want to buy the perfect guitar. I do want to have it. I want to play it. I want to know that it’s mine for a while. But buying it seems like a cop out. Building and playing shouldn’t be related in any way, because they aren’t, but that’s the quest. I believe that we create our own challenges – if we didn’t, what else would we do?

I look at my workbench every day when I pass through the garage and I think about the things that I could do on it. I think about the half finished guitar in my studio closet. I run my fingers over the plane on the bench and consider spending an hour or two on finishing up that OM. Then the sweat begins to collect on my spine and I remember that it is 100F outside and probably warmer in the garage. I abandon the thought, or try to, and go inside.

Recently, a chunk of my time was spent looking at guitars. Flipping through the portfolios of great builders and digging through the catalogs of different companies. The price points are painful. All of the instruments that I identified as being in my range were serious compromises. For example, I don’t want any plastic on my guitar. That’s a tough one. A lot of bindings on instruments under $2000 are plastic. And no composite necks. One piece of wood, not fragments, please. For a quarter of the price of an instrument that barely meets my specs I can have the makings of one that has no compromises in material – but I have to build it myself. That is to say, I get the enjoyment of building it. That’s still only half of the quest.

I can picture very clearly tuning up the guitar that I’ve built myself. I can feel the strings. I imagine the action of the instrument. The way the neck feels as my thumb slides over its length. It is perfect for me in every way. The most important detail is the flare on the headstock. The indicator that it is my instrument. Made with and played by my own hands. That’s the quest. It’s important.

Why is it important? Because it’s the sum of all the traits and desires that make me who I am. There are thousands of reasons not to do it, but ignoring the urge won’t make it go away. I like to think that everyone has that itch somewhere and that we all take a swipe at scratching it. I shouldn’t be so optimistic, maybe, but as long as we’re alive there’s a chance.

So I have a quest. It’s now a plan. I’ll start my next instrument in September. By then I will have all of the bits and pieces necessary for the project. The important thing is to remember that this is The Plan. No more catalogs or reviews. No more day dreaming about a custom Collings guitar. There’s only me, some wood, the tools, and the time. That’s The Plan.

No Fear Here

Posted by on May 23, 2011 No comments

Fear is a topic that is floating around the blogs of a number of people that I respect. Fear of doing The Work. Fear of success. Fear of the unknown. What I find interesting about that is the climate that it creates. If enough people are talking about the fear then that means that a significant number are feeling it. And that’s the precursor to great things.

I’m ignoring my fear. In reframing my work and my outlook on life, in some simple and not so simple ways, I’ve decided that the only thing to fear is rejection. If you choose your audience carefully, there is a lot less risk.

What does that mean?

It means that I’m really only interested in about 200 people. Most of my collections of songs have been downloaded by 200 unique persons. Or to 200 unique devices. It’s pretty consistent so that tells me that there are some folks who actually care about or enjoy what I do. That’s my audience and they are the ones that I need to please. Bringing it down to 200 from, you know, THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF THE INTERNET seems to take the edge off.

Besides, I don’t have time to deal with fear. My only real fear now is not getting The Work done. I have two projects right now that can’t die. That’s about all that I can juggle and I’m not doing a fantastic job of it yet. Still, they are alive and well. As long as there is meaningful motion, the is room for great things.

Managing My Expectations

Posted by on May 18, 2011 No comments

Having a little writing project is fun. It’s keeping me busy and satisfied with myself as we work our way through the early months of my daughter’s life. My wife and I have worked out a schedule where she gets two nights a week to do what she wants to do and I get two nights. It’s far from ideal, but something that I’m learning (again) is that the less time I have to do my work, the better and more productive the time I spend on it is.

That makes no sense at all. But maybe it does. I think about music all day long. I have a non-stop stream of melodies, harmonies, and rhythms in my head. I whistle and hum when I’m alone. Stupid things like harmonizing with the drone of my tires on the road or whistling against the sound of the air conditioning. It passes the time and feeds that place in my subconscious where the good ideas start.

This constant thinking about the thing that I love doing also makes that little time that I have more precious. I go into the studio tired and worn down from my day but then I accomplish something, even something small, and I come out feeling like a million bucks. It’s great! And when I’m in the sketching stage of a project, this kind of schedule is perfect. It would be hell if I were trying to get a tune down for release. For that, I need concentrated stretches and many nights in a row to get something consistent. So it looks like I’ll be sketching for another month or so. Works for my family, so it works for me.

The other thing that I have going for me is the Korg iMS-20 app for my iPad. Wow. Tons of analog synth goodness with the added beauty of the Korg Kaos pad. That right there is worth the price of admissions. I find myself sitting in the coffee shop or wherever just noodling away with different timbres. Moving patch cables around with no rhyme or reason. It’s the sonic equivalent of doodling – something that the iPad does very well. It’s a shame you can’t create with that device. It’d be neat. Oh. Wait.

So with my reduced time, I’m making up for it with things that I can do away from the studio and with a baby in my lap. That means a lot of reading, Boggle, and tapping away on my angry little manifesto.

For those who care (all 6 of you), there will be tunes soon. I have a few experiments that I’m trying to make into something worth sharing. The rest of my time is devoted to generating 9 songs and lyrics for a project that I’m putting together with some folks who don’t know about it yet. They’re busy and need to be surprised.

What’s the Problem?

Posted by on May 10, 2011 No comments

Because communication is no longer a problem in our culture, that is to say, access to a large audience no longer requires a large capital investment, there is a belief that any individual should be able to pursue their passion without compromise. This is false.

Life is a web of compromises. Dropping everything to pursue my dream of writing art music would mean sacrificing things that are just as important to me, if not more so, than The Work. That is, if I wanted to pursue my dream in its purest from.

My dream is to spend hours creating beautiful canvases of sound that follow organic forms. I want to explore the limits of technology and music. I imagine trying to capture the sound of Love or Death or Joy. The means exist. If only I could translate that passion and its product into food and shelter. Then I could live the life that is so obviously within my reach, right? And with blogs and the Internet, that’s a breeze, right? Problem solved!

And that’s the source of my frustration. Not every artist has work that can be monetized. And not everyone wants to monetize her work. Does that mean that The Work isn’t important? Does that mean that the artist is a failure? Does that mean that this individual will not contribute to the canon or to the cultural consciousness? Clearly not.

I have been reading a lot lately about creativity and how it fits into the world today. From writing a memoir with no intention of publishing it to finding ways of sneaking in bits and pieces of what we consider to be our calling into our daily lives it seems to me that there has been a demonization of The Day Job in the life of a creative person. As a result, I started writing something down the other day and it won’t stop pouring out. I struck a nerve and it turns out that my relationship to my creative work and what I do for a living is important enough to me to take the time to explain it.

There is a lot of ranting to come. My inner monologue is pretty high pitched right now and the six people who read this blog will be subjected to my manifesto soon enough! But for now, this is a public declaration for accountability purposes. Getting this thing down is important to me and maybe it will be to you.

In the mean time, I am back in the studio tonight and recording more tunes for an upcoming collaboration. Stay tuned!

Beginning Composition

Posted by on April 13, 2011 No comments

There has to be something about playing the guitar that brings on a unique state of mind. It cries out for improvisation. It can be rhythmic and driving or melodic and wandering. Not to be a jerk about it, but I never saw anyone improvise on an oboe (not to pick on the oboe, mind you) the way I’ve seen people strum at a guitar. And maybe that’s the key. The guitar is a very democratic instrument. It welcomes all comers. In a couple of days almost anyone can learn three chords. Add in some truth and we get Bob Dylan, right? The point is that it’s a short leap from playing other people’s songs on the guitar to writing original tunes.

I remember when the light bulb went on for me. I was learning “Every Breath You Take” by The Police. I took the picking pattern (which is pure genius) and tried it with some different chords. It sounded cool. But the patterns wasn’t easy, so I changed it up. After an hour or so I had something that could be considered for the category of “song.”

Now I have no idea how the tune actually went but I can bet on the fact that it was in the key of E minor and that somewhere it had a B7 in it. I know that last part because I played it for my guitar teacher and he told me that I’d stumbled onto one of the oldest “rules” of music. Rules? There were rules?

He pulled out some staff paper and started to sketch some triads. He explained some of the basic terms. By the end of 10 minutes, I had I – IV – V – I memorized. I had now unlocked “Wild Thing”, “Louie, Louie”, and most folk and rock tunes. When he added vi I was on fire. The 50s were mine!

When I found out that there were rules for putting these things in order and that Beethoven wasn’t just a master of great ideas but a master of the framework of Western Music ™ I was floored. A huge door was now open and I was staring into the bright light of day.

All of this played into my mother’s plan of training me on the classical guitar quite nicely. The etudes of Fernando Sor became very important to me. I analyzed them (before I knew that I was doing analysis) and tried to recreate them. I dabbled in variations. I made a lot of noise and maybe a little music once in a while. But I practiced and studied them incessantly. Odd stuff for a 13 year old boy to be doing.

The thing about writing music and being a “composer” that set in early was the many toothed beast. Yes, the piano. For a while I honestly didn’t think that I could be a composer without learning to play the piano. Fortunately, my laziness and complete lack of affinity for the instrument changed that. I couldn’t do squat at a keyboard (still can’t) so I made a go of it with paper, my guitar, and my mind’s ear. I lost the fear that I would never do anything of worth because I didn’t play the piano and pushed myself along under the tutelage of my superior teacher.

The rules came slowly to me. Wanting to break or ignore them did not. By the time I got to conservatory I didn’t much care for the idea of learning more rules and practicing them ad nauseum. I was a trial for my theory teachers. I still enjoy the sound of parallel fifths (suck it!) in my chorales. But I had the rules drilled into me and when I broke them I knew it and could point to it. A student that can accomplish that has a place to start.

Once the fire was lit, it was hard to control. Many late nights from that first guitar lesson until I had kids were spent staring at a piece of staff paper or working something out with a piece of notation software. And in those moments when my mind is absorbed in the phrase at hand, there really is nothing better. It’s like most creative endeavors. The state of flow becomes as much a goal as the final product. Being in the moment. Loving the work. Waiting for that moment when the ink is dry and the next sheet of blank paper is put on the table. The beauty of a never ending process.

It’s fun to look back at how it all started. The kernel of so many life decisions held up for inspection. And the wonder that it still drives so much of my thinking. It’s still so present. I’ve been through three lifetimes since I figured out that B7 to Em change. There are so many ways to make music now that didn’t exist then and my excitement for creating has only increased over time.

When this weird tear I’m on is done running its course I’m going to have some things to say about tools. I swore I wouldn’t write about software ever again because it always turns into something ugly for me, but I have a new toy and it has changed the way I create in such a positive way that it’s impossible not to share. More on that soon.