I haven’t done it, but I suspect if I went back and took a look at past blog posts I’d find a lot of “I set out to do this, but then this is how it actually went.” This, here, is another of those posts. This may just be my pet theme…
This time, I set myself a schedule to write six songs over the course of January: one every five days. I came up with the first two songs…
“It had that perfect commercial combination: startling originality and easy classification.” — Sarah Bakewell, referring to the first published version of Montaigne’s Essays in her book How To Live, or, A Life of Montaigne.
I’ve been thinking a lot about style and arrangement lately. In fact the closer I get to wrapping up the composition phase of this album, the more important it seems.
I’ve gone about this album in an unconventional way. First of all, it’s an album…
There is no one who, if he listens to himself, does not discover in himself a pattern all his own, a ruling pattern, which struggles against education.
– Michel de Montaigne, quoted in How to Live, or, A Life of Montaigne by Sarah Bakewell (translation: Donald Frame)
For a few years prior to putting out Java St Bagatelles in 2006, every time I ran into my friend Ryan Goodman he would ask me how the album was coming. It was coming slow. As I’ve said elsewhere, I wasn’t even necessarily planning to make an album until, probably, 2005 — I was just practicing. And recording. It was a great feeling not to be rushed. I didn’t feel like there was anything that I had to…
Last time I mentioned that I was going through my collection of “ideas,” looking for the start of the next piece for my fourth album. I have a nice stockpile of them at this point, and was homing in on a few, but instead I started working with a little riff that came up one morning when I was warming up.
It was like putting months into wooing a woman only to abandon her because some new pretty thing passes…
…the enjoyment, both in Pickwick and in Huckleberry Finn, consists essentially in the anecdotal episodes. Both are great works of art: unplanned, rambling, artistically irresponsible, and chaotic. They work, and work superbly, because of the authors’ inventive genius and sheer creativity. … In the end, creativity is what matters in art.
– Paul Johnson, Creators (Harper Perennial, 2007)
I mentioned Mr. Johnson’s book in an earlier post — at that time I found…
I’ve only managed to square away an hour a day lately for my music work — not enough time, but it’s better than nothing. Even one hour a day allows some momentum to build.
This morning, as in the past seven or so mornings, that hour has been spent half on blues-rock patterns I haven’t concentrated on for 20 years, and brushing up on some of my Jimmy Page too. The other half was given to reviewing old work cassettes…
I’ll tell you, some guys can make so many chords it don’t sound good. They’re making too many to put into one place — you know what I mean? You take another guy with one chord — only one chord. He just hold one chord, and everybody looking at him all day. One chord can kill a man dead. One chord and hold it there, you can kill a man dead.
– David Honeyboy Edwards quoted…
…John McLaughlin was another hero. Day-in, day-out, I tried to play like him, and I couldn’t come anywhere close. I saw a concert with Shakti in the early 70s, heard this incredible stuff coming out and it was this moment of despair. I realized I’d never be able to do that. I wanted to quit. Then the next moment it was like, “Thank God that’s over with, now I’ll deal with what I’ve got.”
– Bill Frisell,…
You may have noticed that I’ve been updating the blog more frequently this week — I’ve been making an effort to put something up daily. I just think blogs are more effective when they’re daily. And by effective, I mean that they are more successful in drawing, and maintaining, a readership. And hopefully some of that readership is converted to a listenership. It’s more enjoyable to make music for people than it is to just make music. And since I’m…
