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…
The general fact is simple. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite… The poet only desires exultation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.
– G.K. Chesterton, from Orthodoxy
These concertos [Nos. 11, 12, and 13] are a happy medium between what is too easy and too difficult; they are very brilliant, pleasing to the ear, and natural, without being vapid. There are passages here and there from which the connoisseurs alone can derive satisfaction; but those passages are written in such a way that the less learned cannot fail to be pleased, though without knowing why … The golden mean of truth in all things is
…
Apropos of my last post, here’s what Ursula Le Guin wrote this morning in “The stars of modern SF pick the best science fiction” at The Guardian (thanks to mysterious Facebook algorithms and Oliver Arditi for the link).
Genre is a rich dialect, in which you can say certain things in a particularly satisfying way, but if it gives up connection with the general literary language it becomes a jargon, meaningful only to an ingroup. Useful
…
As I mention up there in the header, I’m working on my fourth album. It’s going to be very different from my first three — I thought I’d tell you a little about what I’m planning.
My first three albums were mostly experimental guitar music. A lot of improvisation. The compositions themselves were — in many cases — built from recorded improvisations looped and layered on top of each other. There were a few left turns: the classical solo…
This is my final post for now about dealing with time management. For the earlier posts see: Switching Gears, Part 1 and Switching Gears, Part 2.
Now to talk a little more about time spent on craft. Personally, I need to work on my music every day in order to stay on good terms with it. I mean that I need to keep my chops up, but it’s also a mental thing. It’s about momentum. One or two…
Back to time management. Actually, I wish there were a better term to use than that — it’s so business-y and one of those terms that future generations will snicker at as being so “turn-of-the-century.” But it’s the best shorthand I’ve got at the moment, and I don’t mean for these posts to be real long, so shorthand is a plus.
Should it seem that I’m writing from some position of wisdom about managing time — maybe just for writing…
I’m a musician; there are four things I need to pay attention to every day. 1) craft, 2) career (i.e. audience), 3) job(s), and 4) personal life. All of these require specific skill and attention. But what I really need to get a handle on — more than any one of these areas — is how to fit them all together. Time management.
I could be better at it. I tend to go through phases — sometimes a couple of…
