“Make Good Art”

I came across a short video this morning, and I found it to be both funny, and touching. The speaker is author Neil Gaimen, and he is speaking at a commencement ceremony of an arts college:

When I was in my early 20′s, I lived with the illusion that I could only make good music if I was going through some kind of traumatic experience, or if I was depressed, or emotionally charged about something. As I’ve come to learn more about myself and my craft, I’ve learned that I can make music anytime I sit down and concentrate on working on music. The saying that 80% of life is just “showing up” is very much the truth. But if I can make that time more conscious and inspirational, by shelving the distractions away, my mind becomes freed from its suffering and I dwell in a place that’s a little bit more beautiful.

So the truth behind anguish and art is not so much that the anguish is inspiring the art, but that the overwhelming anguish reminds me to step away from my suffering and try to get some perspective on it, namely, by doing something that I genuinely love. Maybe the anguish becomes the subject of the art, maybe it doesn’t. The point is, if life gets hard, show up and make some art. Nowadays, I do it whether I’m happy or sad.

I believe everyone has a creative impetus at their core. It’s a crucial part of what makes us human. Art is a term used very broadly, and I would define it as the act of changing one thing into another thing. Art can be cleaning, blogging, writing a letter to a friend, cooking, taking a photograph, painting a picture, folding paper, building furniture, sweeping your patio, planting something, pruning a bush, repairing your bicycle…I could go on. Making art is mundane sometimes. Try editing out the breaths and pops of a recorded vocal line sometime and you will see what I mean. Life is mundane sometimes. I try to find pleasure in the mundane. Admittedly, I don’t always succeed in that. But as the years go by, it gets a little easier.

thoughts on the ‘pursuit of art’

“When I taught in a boy’s prep school, I used to talk to the boys who were trying to make up their minds as to what their careers were going to be. A boy would come to me and ask, ‘Do you think I can do this? Do you think I can do that? Do you think I can be a writer?’ ‘Oh,’ I would say, ‘I don’t know. Can you endure ten years of disappointment with nobody responding to you, or are you thinking that you are going to write a best seller the first crack? If you have the guts to stay with the thing you really want, no matter what happens, well, go ahead.’”

from Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers

I came across a quote from Joseph Campbell this morning that I wanted to share because it really rings true to me right now.

I’ve been at this music thing for over 12 years, and I’ve still yet to write a bestseller. But the nice thing is, that after 12 years, writing a bestseller has become the farthest thing from my mind. When I was 19 and starting out on this path, I remember that I definitely had the idea in my head that I wanted to be famous, and tour the world, and write pop songs that would make me loved by everyone. I am so grateful that I was never able to accomplish that goal!

Over the years, I connected with a handful of people through the music I was working on. But for the most part, my life has taken me in directions that had little or nothing to do with writing, recording and performing. I’m 32 now, and I’ve lived a life that is nothing like the one I imagined at 19. But through it all, I’ve always kept writing and developing my craft as a musician and writer. I’ve learned new technologies and learned to record myself. I’ve developed a point of view, and an opinion about the kinds of stories I want to tell.

The funny thing is, that my delusion to be famous is what took me down this path in the first place, so I am also grateful for that. I had to first experience delusions of grandeur, so that I could come to a place where I create music simply for the love of creating music. I do it because it’s fun, and it helps me connect to a higher spiritual plane. This is especially important because I am not a religious person.

Over the past couple of years, there’s been an increasing number of people who have heard my music, and for some of them, it’s resonated with them. This is great, and I’m happy for that. It encourages me to actually take further steps to polish the productions up, and make more of them available. But I now write for myself, without the pressure to share or perform, and to me, that’s bliss.

Fade Away

Yesterday I received one of those rare gifts – a fully born song. Fade Away is the first song ever that I’ve sat down at the piano, wrote, recorded and then shared publicly a full song in less than 24 hours. 

I’ve been so focused on life lately, that I haven’t made as much time for music as I like. I’ve been in a bit of funk lately because of it. I’ve been working on a lot of new material, but can’t complete any of it. I’ll get a good idea, sketch it out, and then not know what else to do with it. That’s not unusual, and certainly not a bad thing. Sometimes songs take many months (or years) to be fully manifested. In honesty, though, a big part of finishing a song is just sitting down and making the time to finish it.

The inspiration came yesterday morning. I was thinking about my grandma, who passed away this time of the year a couple of years ago, and the mantra came to me to “pick a reasonable goal, and complete it.” What if I died tomorrow and every piece of music that I’d ever written died with me? I figured I could at least complete a song I’ve been working on. I didn’t have an inspiration of any particular project to work on. But I opened up a blank session on my DAW, and wanted to make sure everything on my signal chain was functioning properly, so I started noodling on the piano. Very quickly, the idea for the song started to come.

I worked steadily through the day, and several times almost stopped to go run errands. But I pushed through and completed the song around 9pm last night. I only stopped once to eat.

The production inspiration comes from my recent experience singing with a community choir. I grew up singing in choirs, but have been focusing on my solo projects for the past 10 years. But I’ve had the itch to sing with other people for years, and in January finally made the plunge. It’s been a lot of fun, and the process is getting me brushed up on singing harmony, and learning to blend with other voices.

I’ve also been listening to Enya over the last year, and the idea of producing a “choir of one” has been a concept I’ve toyed with quite a bit in my recording. However, I don’t take the multi-tracking to the extremes that Enya does. I love her sound, but I’m trying to create something more grounded in this world. It also would take FOREVER to track my voice that many times, and it’s just me doing all the work behind the mic, and the consul. At it’s core, though, the song is just a voice and the piano.

I really allowed myself, for once, to not over think too much, and to just “go with the flow.” I allowed myself to not be too critical or second guess myself. It was liberating to just trust my instinct. The hardest part for me, after finishing it, was not having anyone to share it with. The last year has found me single and living alone – not a bad thing. But the loneliest part of being single is not having someone to share my enthusiasms with. So I figured I’d be open, and just share it with the world. Maybe this is a crazy idea, but I’ll experiment and see how this goes. Let me know what you think!

Storytelling

My head has been muddled, and things have been confused. I haven’t done the things I know I can do to feel and think the way that I know to be best for me. But perhaps that has been for the best. My kind have a tendency to think that comings and goings must be events. Some of us think it is all random, while others think or feel that it must have some kind of deeper meaning. Within this framework, there still exists those that think it is all for the best, or all for the worst. It isn’t our desire to give meaning, or avoid meaning, that makes us particularly special – or functional. Nay, it is our ability to experience the horrific and the wonderful, and say when it has passed, that it was all for the best or it was all for the worst. The pessimist, or the optimist. Depending on the culture and time we live in, the benefit of either mindset can be elevated as the correct way of thinking.

Our philosophers declare that it is the act of examination that is the foremost in importance, not so much the conclusion. The act of science demands that we make a conclusion, then set about disproving that conclusion. It is that which makes us one step above being more than alive. Everything that exists in this reality is alive, indeed, and is in the continual act of composing or decomposing. Some of my kind never get much further than this idea. I’ve been in that spot myself. Obsessed with not being obsessed about my own impending destruction. Searching for fame, money, love and the amazing. It still comes upon me sometimes, when I have been careless with my thoughts and the body that I am living within.

There are so many temptations in this lifetime that I can hardly see through the haze. Mind altering states can be accessed without a moment of preparation. What was once a sacred rite has become the ordinary. We have been granted access to substances that can turn it all on, transform the mundane into the profound. Or we can instead try to turn it all off, and take prescriptions that numb our thought patterns into gentle ripples on the shore of quietude. But regardless of the choice, mind altering states are incapable of lasting. It is our folly to think that they will. And in the moment that the present comes to our awareness, either we are ready to accept it, or try some other panacea so that we can return from whence we just came.

Autumn

It’s been a whole season since I last updated, but the turbulence of the last 5 months was unexpected and frankly, not something I wanted to talk about on the public forum of the internet. To summarize simply, I’ve been through the end of relationship, starting of a new job/career, and moving out of my apartment/recording studio.

Any of these things would have been a challenge, but they all happened at the same time. Worst of all, my computer was down for two months and I wasn’t able to record. Now that I’ve got it back up and running, I still don’t really have a recording space, but I am making do with what I have. Namely, the guest room of my brothers house. My palette of keyboards are in storage, but I still have a guitar, a couple of harmonicas, an old rhodes piano, and my voice. I’ve been writing through it all, and hopefully some of these new tracks will come together in way that I will be comfortable sharing. 

Until that time, though, I want to share something new-ish. “Sonoran Sunrise” is a track that I was working on before my computer crashed and my personal life fell apart. It’s just a rough demo version, but it conveys the feeling I was looking for well. It’s significant because it features the last vocals I recorded in my old studio space. Every space has its unique sound and feeling – this song captures that. It was reluctantly that I left that space and life, but I came to a moment where I realized that in order for me to move forward in my life, I had to get away from the dishonesty and discontent that surrounded me. This song represents, to me, the quiet before the storm.

Summer Song

Drummer James Calbert and I were jamming together in the studio one day, when towards the end of the session we decided to mike up the old rhoades sitting dusty in the corner. James started fiddling about with some percussion and I just played around until a theme started to emerge. We pushed the record button and kept on overdubbing parts over until it seemed ridiculous to add anything more. During the mixing phase, the song had the temporary title “Peanut Butter Cups,” because that’s what James happened to be eating during the mixdown in the control room. It’s just a fun little song, but I love listening to it.

Acceptance (A Man Like That)

This song has always been kind of special to me because I wrote this song in about an hour, back in 2010, and then premiered it in front of an audience that same night. I’ve probably tracked the song about six times since then, never really happy with the outcome. One of the more recent tracking (an instrumental version) was featured on the Awakening e.p. that I released back in January.

The version featured here was tracked back in March live on the baby grand piano in one take. I added the vocals and strings a little later and this particular mix was done earlier this month. I really love how it turned out, I hope you all enjoy!

Surrender/The Boy and the Girl

Thanks to the work spent recording and mixing so far this year, I have a little something to show for it, namely a set of new songs that I’ll be sharing over the next several weeks. While the songs I’ve released to the public over the last few years have been “bedroom” projects, these latest songs are extra special to me because they mark the first time I’ve recorded live in a studio since 2002! And the first time I’ve ever recorded live with a drummer and a baby grand piano.

Back in January I had the great fortune to meet drummer James Calbert, and even greater fortune that he agreed to record some drum overdubs for me. After the work he did on over-dubbing The Boy and the Girl, I got this inspiration that it would be fun to play and record live together. I was also itching for an excuse to get my fingers on the baby grand sitting in the corner of the studio. The next week we got together and set up a full drum kit and the grand piano, and simply hit the record button. I got three great songs out of that first session, and in subsequent weeks, several more.

The first one I premiered last Tuesday, a song called Surrender that I started writing back in 2010. The previous versions of the song were much happier renditions, musically designed to entertain by detracting away from the rather morose lyrics. I used to play it live at my Carly’s Bistro gigs, and it always got a good reception. An instrumental version of it was included in the Awakening e.p. released back in January of this year.

The song premiering this week is a song that I wrote back in 1999, called The Boy and the Girl. It’s one of the oldest songs in my treasure chest, and I can recall performing it only once for a live show. At the time I wrote the song, I was getting some very personal stuff off of my chest, and for a long time I didn’t see the point in sharing it with anyone. Time heals all wounds, and the reality of that situation has long since passed into legend. What remains, for me, is a pretty melody line.

I recorded an a cappella version of the song in 2002 and sometimes included it in early demo’s that I used to give out to friends. This newest version began as an a cappella session that I sang along to a click track, then over-dubbed multiple unison vocals. I then created the instrument tracks, and finally had James Calbert record live drums. Start to finish it took about six months (with many breaks in-between), so I’m proud to be able to share it finally.

On an early May morning

The last month has had me occupied primarily with finishing up a series of recordings that I’ve been working on since the start of the year, and also working live sound at both a concert series and a musical. While I certainly like having plenty to do – combined with my money-paying-job schedule – it has left me feeling a little burned out. But I think the super moon we all experienced last Saturday gave me a super re-charge! The freak rainstorm that blew through the valley yesterday was also a refreshing interlude that is helping May shape up to be an exciting musical month for me.

Soundcloud.com (which is the website I am currently using as the webhost for my music files), has recently offered its contributing members a free download of Abelton 8 Lite for the month of May. I was excited about this because Abelton Live is a music recording software that I’ve had the opportunity to play around with several times, but never with any kind of depth. Its recording paradigm is quite different from that of the programs I’ve trained on (Logic, Pro Tools and Reason). It’s based on a system of layering sounds into loops, which can than be triggered and recorded in real time. This is more akin to how I performed my old live shows, using a keyboard and a single loop pedal to layer orchestration and vocals.

My immediate impressions are mostly positive. It’s a much more casual and creative approach to constructing a song, as opposed to the linear, “timeline” approach I’ve been working with. I can simply create a sound or pattern and play it non-stop, while I mess around and create other sounds and patterns that will be a good fit. While the lite version reveals some immediate limitations (hence the “lite” status), such as limits on the number of effects processors able to be used, and limits on the live audio recording parameters, I think it offers a lot considering it was free. Best of all, I can play with it a bit, and get used to it before making the decision whether or not I want to purchase the full $400 version.

I got it functioning on the computer yesterday afternoon, and got to spend a couple of quiet hours this morning playing around. Check out the results below!

release of new single today, “Surrender”

Today is the release of the new Wyly single, “Surrender.” The song was first released last December in a much different, instrumental version, as part of the Awakening e.p. The version here was recorded live in the studio this last March with Ben Sevier on grand piano and featuring James Calbert on drums.