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…
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)
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,…
