I Liked How That Felt

In the wee, small hours of the last morning of the year 2010, I stumbled upon some old music videos and watched the legendary rock group Chicago play through their anthem-like power ballad, "Stay The Night." The 70's vintage Dodge in it reminded me of the example of the muscle car era with which I was personally acquainted, the 1968 Chevrolet Malibu my parents bought new. I only got to drive the car once, nearly fifteen years later, as a teenager under the watchful eye of my father. No, my memories of that car and its 327 hp V-8 engine were as a small child in the days long before seatbelt laws, and apparently before parents truly loved their little ones, because I recall crawling all over the vehicle: lying with my ear pressed to the floor to listen to hear the gears shift, crawling up into the space behind the back seats and under the rear window, or sitting on the storage compartment between the front bucket seats, begging my dad to let me shift the gears.

But it isn't much of a leap to go from thoughts of the Malibu to the jet black 1977 Camaro LT Dad bought later. It had a great "modern" feature, a built in cassette player! No doubt this car heard all of Chicago's old tunes on its radio as they were newly released. It also heard its share of Duke Ellington and Count Basie and Maynard Ferguson and Doc Severinsen and the other jazz I was just getting into when the car was purchased, to be sure, but by the time I got to drive this little black car with its bright red interior and molded fin myself, I had expanded my tastes to include the popular music of the day, especially Chicago because they had a horn section.

I'm sorry to say that I destroyed this car by driving it off the side of the road one night during my senior year of high school. But before it's untimely demise, there were a few wonderful memories associated with the car, not the least of these are the ones that revolved around my first official girlfriend, a dear young lady who lived on my street, who rode with me to band practice every morning, and who I saw in church every Sunday.

And thinking of her leads me to a memory of a specific moment with her, of sitting in that Camaro outside Fred Morgan's music instrument repair shop, and joking with her that if I could eat an entire Snickers bar in one bite, she'd have to marry me. This little moment, terribly funny to a couple of lovelorn teenagers, was also romantic enough in our own innocent way that she turned it into a poem, which I later put to music. Funnily enough, this song was just recently rediscovered, and by that I mean the original piece of sheet music I wrote it on in pencil. I've been reorganizing, repacking, and removing old boxes of music, scores, notes, method books etc., that have been languishing in cardboard boxes since our move over three months ago.

And I had a funny thought when I discovered it, sang through it for the first time in, well, decades. It wasn't all that great a song, not very dynamic. More of a still life than a street scene. But what it represented was a number of near-firsts for me, all rolled into one. It was probably one of the first times I tried to write something like a pop ballad. One of the first times I'd written something specifically for another person. Oe of the first times I'd written lyrics!

And did I say it wasn't very good? No, not really. Sweet, maybe. Simple, definitely. But not that great a song. Nonetheless, and this is is a key "nonetheless," at the same time I realized that, I also remembered how I felt around the writing of that song. I felt wonderful, that wordless, indescribable wonderful that you feel when you happily do something for someone else, when you get out of your own interior life and dedicate yourself to someone else's.

And you know what? I miss that feeling. I am - hopefully - a better writer of music now. But in choosing not to do as much writing, I have made myself go without that feeling, that feeling of being dedicated to making something artistic, something personal, something I know how to do, something useful, and, probably most significantly, something for someone else.

Which leads me to the specific case in point: it is time to bring those feelings back. There's a lot more to it than that, most assuredly, but at the same time, every enacted plan begins with a thought. And so it goes.

A Reminder about The Rule of Three

This is just a note so that the next time I write, I will write about a so-called Rule of Three in composing and arranging that might be useful in assuring that orchestrations sound full and one's ideas sound interesting. Sufficeth it for now to say that The Rule of Three simply points out that when three things are going on at once, the music sounds interesting, thought-out, complete, regenerative.

It also has visual analogies, but I would have to learn more about visual creativity before I could speak with any legitimate expertise on the subject (ha!). So when you think of point and counterpoint and then ensemble playing as two or three distinctive visual elements separating, returning, passing, chasing, blending, then perhaps coming together, then you have a chance of having both a way of hearing and "seeing" your structure at the same time.

Sorry I can't do more today. Today is dedicated to educating myself on the ins and outs of Social Science research for my "day job."

More later!

Writing Jazz

Was up into the wee hours last night working on a new jazz chart. Actually, "new" might be a misnomer. The initial idea for this tune was written on a piece of staff paper that has been floating around since college. Really. A couple of years ago I committed it to Sibelius, scored out about the first 45 seconds, then left it. When I updated to Sibelius 6.1 this June, I used it as the experimental first file to be opened with the new version.

Surprisingly, it has been coming along pretty well. I am eagerly experimenting with not using the piano to write this one, but simply using the notation program. So far so good. I'm finding that I am exploring different changes than I would otherwise reach for at the piano. Sometimes force of habit sends me back to the same changes because they fall easily under the fingers. When looking at the written page,  I tend to see a chord and think, "Well, what if we sharp that and raise the five?"

As for the tune, it's an easy swing, a lot of open 10ths at first. That was the original idea: to simplify. Nothing fancy, just swing. And while the harmonic language is a little more expansive now, I still want it to be a "toe-tapper." Also, I've come up with a new idea for a middle section at a slower tempo. I thought of doing this under a trumpet solo, and still will, but that solo will ultimately lead to a ballad section that reminds me a little of the third movement of "The Channel One Suite." Hmm. I should go back and listen to it again, to make sure it doesn't sound too much like Channel One. Anyhow, it sounded great last night.

I'll try to put up a screen shot, then maybe an audio file draft later. I've got lots of "Day Job" things to work on right now. We'll see what time allows. Bye.

Restart # ????

Hey there, it's been a while. Not much. How 'bout you?

To save time, let's get to the point. The keyboard is up on the main floor, the laptop, the Yamaha 8-channel and the mic are all I need. A new schedule allows for a set amount of time everyday for writing and recording (two separate activities, by the way).

So all that's left is to actually DO it. The plan is simply this: There is a certain set of tunes that I refer to as the "Better Late" album. These include "Charlie Brown," "Unfinished Business," and a host of unfinished tunes. All of them share this sort of starting over, not too late theme. I will take the day's predetermined time to write, and when that time is up, I move to another task. This is mostly an attempt to overcome that dreaded habit of having to reach a "logical stopping point" before I can feel good about leaving the project. Furthermore, it's this worry about reaching the logical stopping point that often keeps me from starting, as in, "I'll barely have begun when I'll need to stop, so why start in the first place?"

Let's see how it goes.

STUPID GADGETS REMOVED

I hate to be so terse, but the last post and the rotten little gadgets I uploaded are to be completely ignored. In fact, I removed the gadgets, as at least one of them had a bug that commandeers the browser window and involuntarily navigates you completely away from the blog and to a pointless and irrelevant pop up ad.

All my fault for thinking such a minor piece of distraction could stimulate any real insights into creativity whatsoever. Ha. What was I thinking?  

(Give one to the pop up ad guys for being creative with their piecemeal attempts to take all the fun out of the web.)

The Simple Joy of Experimentation For All

Nothing profound here. Most of my time recently has been absorbed by business school tasks, as this is Mid Terms week. Still, I did happen across a couple of mini apps - or Gadgets, as they are called here at Blogger - and I couldn't help but put them on the blog just to see if anyone is tempted to play with them.

They're simple, really. One is just an octave of the piano keyboard. A mouse click on ny of the black or white keys produces the corresponding tone. The other is a Mini Studio, where you can choose from a selection of a half dozen drum loops, bass loops, or effects (hey, all you math wizards who know what "n!" means, how many possible combinations does that allow you???).

I thought it might be fun to let visitors spend a few precious minutes of life in musical experimentation. By the way, you can use them in combination, by setting your groove accompaniment on the studio, then plucking out a melody on the keyboard.

Enjoy! If your computer has a built-in mic that can record your creations, let me know!

NOTE ON 3/15/10: please see the following post before searching for the above-referenced gadgets, as they have been removed.

The Secret To Rock Anthem Lyric Writing

Dana Carvey has known this all along ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO57XRDDodk