Ty and I were just talking about this.
I'm pretty sure that the fundamental reason I am driven to write music and write is so that when I'm dead, there's a massive body of work for my kids to sift through to really help them understand who I am.
That's about it. It's really that simple. I don't care if I ever make money, or make fans, or play shows or am ever appreciated (yes, those things are wonderful, I am not a robot).
The point is, I won't ever be discouraged from creating things because the primary number one goal is to leave behind a body of work.
That way, my great-great-great grandson "Zorcon 5" can understand a little better where he came from.
So I have 3 unfinished tracks that I sort of work on simultaneously when I sit down to produce.
That's the normal mode of operation for me, but it is slow and kind of distracting. This new track has totally taken over and I think is one of my best. There's a particular 8-bars that I'm really happy with, and it might be my best 8-bars ever.
Last night Anna and I had friends over, Karl Travis and family. Karl and I go way back, we used to run around town 10 years ago causing problems and desperately hunting for our artistic voices. Karl and I have always appreciated eachother's creative efforts (still think Karl is the best drummer I've ever seen play in front of me...he's unreal) and he wanted to hear my new track.
Normally, I don't let people in to my process, but Karl is an exception because that bond of trust and understanding runs very deep. Our oldest kids followed us to my computer, his daughter is six and Coleman is going on three. First, Karl listened to the track and declared that it was his favorite I had ever written. Karl's heard a lot of tracks of mine and isn't a "fluffer" so that was a good sign. Karl's daughter then listened to it.
I was truly afraid of what was going to come out of her mouth. She is VERY honest and says things without considering how it's going to make other people feel...PERFECT for finding out if a track is good or not! If it doesn't pass the kid-test, forget it, delete.
Jesus said to be like the little children and I think I understand what he meant. So if the little children don't like the music, I figure at best, I'm not touching on anything universal and at worst, it just plain sucks.
Karl's daughter listened to it and I was shocked at how afraid I was at what she would think, her opinion really mattered to me because I knew it would genuinely be her opinion. She listened, she liked it. She asked to hear it again a little later...sweet.
Then it was Coleman's turn. Coleman has advanced in his awareness lately and in the past week we've been having full blown conversations with eachother. It's so cool. Two days ago we were listening to my favorite internet radio station (Limbik Frequencies) and he asks, "Dad. Did you make this music?" I was trippin that he now understands my music's style enough to know that I potentially would make something similar to the track on the station. "No," I said. It was our first conversation about music that was in context and brought up by him.
So it was Coleman's turn and I've tested tracks on him since he was a baby. He's saved me from a lot of embarrassment I suspect. When Coleman doesn't like it I instantly abandon ship, run fast. Shitty tracks are kept but buried in folders on my laptop that tend to never see the light of day again. What's funny is that when Coleman reacts, he tends to just verify what I already know, so in a way he's really taught me to trust my ear and I've slowly learned how to look at my stuff from a 3rd person point of view thanks to him. I think when you really understand that you are writing garbage, you have the ability to really make something sing.
Coleman liked the track, eyes wide with a little grin under my AKG headphones.
Sweet. We got something. Consensus with the little children. That's all I want.
About TIME!!
I just finished working on my first new track in 3 weeks and it slipped out wonderfully. Currently working on new material for the CAMMIES electronic music showcase.
My peers nominated me again for the thing (thanks for that if you are one of them).
I'm not going to play a show until then but hope to bring it strong and fresh for the show on April 10? I think that's the date.
I haven't been writing music for quite a while now. Just writing words, poetry mostly. I've been reading William Blake and Carl Sanburg and made a book of poems for Anna.
But, I feel it brewing. Music is bubbling just under the surface. Creative ideas take "creative idleness" and instead of vomitting up embryonic ideas all the time, I find they come out much more whole if I let them incubate and rest under my soul for a while. Watching blue-jays with nuts in their mouths and wondering what I sound like to them, watching the American flag wave on a bank that took our money yet refuses to lend it.
Taking the time to really perceive and feel until I end up at a place of a calm, deeper truth of some kind. Writers block is just a way I'm being told to shut up and listen for awhile. I love writing poetry and when it's on it's on. I mail things off to literary mags, I write every night in five different journals, I write stories on my laptop and my midi-controller leans up on the side of my bedroom wall next to the TV collecting dust.
I finish writing and feel completely whole and take a nice long drink of Bud Light out of a can. It's the same feeling I get when writing music when that's on.
But when it's off, I write garbage and I've been doing it long enough now to know right away if it's total garbage or has potential. When it's coming out with difficulty, I can it, walk away because my only real artistic fear is forcing out a constructed character of myself in the name of productivity. I've been really hesitant to play shows right now because of this.
Anybody need me for a poetry reading? I'm available.
The music though is coming. I'm at that point right now where I'm tapping the top of the bloated can and about to pull back the pop top.
So I just played at Valentine's Massacre over at TiON. I was really skeptical that the crowd would respond or even enjoy the kind of music I make. To add to that, I haven't been working on music for at least 3 weeks now, I've been way more inspired with writing. I wrote a book of poems for my wife and published a few copies of that. I got something published by Mothering Magazine...Hahahaha I know. Now I get to say that the first National magazine that did anything with my writing was "Mothering." So that's where my head's been at, I've turned down shows in March and I don't have any lined up after that.
Anyway, back to the Goth/Electro/Industrial show. I was surprised at how much the dark kids liked my set. I wasn't feeling it like usual though, and in the mix cut about 3 tracks out so I could be done in 40 minutes. I rolled out some oldies and ended the set with a trance track I wrote WAAAAAAAY back. So it was all good fun and I appreciate the gig but now it's back to sexy, quiet home production and poetry. I'll be working on music for Bumper Car City again without feeling obligated to a certain "type" of music fan.
In a strange twist of fate, I saw Raul and family at Ikea whilst looking for a rug to put in my new living room the day after the show at Tion. He's such a cool guy and it just feels good to be making music for his project. That's all I really want to do right now.
And I hear a friend was carried away in an ambulance. I hope he's okay.
So while hunting for a book of poems I wrote in a strange file format in 2002, I came across a CD I had burned right before my first music computer totally exploded and I lost everything (not backed up of course - we all have to learn that lesson once). The CD has 14 tracks of totally raw, Reason 1.01 produced tracks. They are the Neanderthals to my current production biology.
Some of them are kind of street, as I wrote them before marriage, living in downtown Sac in total squalor when I literally owned a laptop and a sleeping bag. I didn't have a pillow even. These tracks are PROTO Basic. I'm going to try to make them sound as good as I can and put them up on this site for download. Stay tuned for 14 free ghetto basic tracks.
Ty surprised me in producing this impressive video with an mp3 of mine he downloaded from commonpath. Ty's video work becomes more impressive every day and I'm really excited to say that Ty made my first music video.
<-- (Logan 5 & Basic with their racquetball fly girls)
So in my quest to become a better electronic musician and composer, I am loading my Macbook up with more RAM and getting ready to bust out Ableton Live 6 on the thing. Since I have no patience in my old age to completely relearn a new DAW all by myself, I have enlisted the help of Logan 5, a man of many talents who knows much more about the app than me.
In response to my request for help, he replied with a payment plan of sorts: racquetball, one time a week. I of course complied and am looking forward to these racquetball adventures although I've played the game once or twice in my life. Years of martial arts training under my belt has convinced me that I can handle this indoor flourescent lit game. Spending time with my fellow electronic musician, fellow dad, fellow married guy with 2 kids is bound to be a good time no matter how you slice and sequence it.
I requested that we wear short shorts with tube socks and headbands with the Atari logo on them with the cheesy plastic eye protectors. I'll be shopping for thrift store tennis shoes soon.
Game on y'all.
So Friday night I went over to Logan 5's new home studio he built in his garage. It is a proper set up indeed. Sound damping, thick walls with something called "green glue", a sound damping product apparently. The central core computer stands like an altar.
Logan 5 is an encyclopedia of knowledge on many fronts. Studio building, electronic music labels, DAW's --- he's a good guy to know for a guy like me. There are many things to learn from this man...the keeper of the Temple of Boom.
More producers need to show up next time. I hope some day that it will become the meeting place for an electronic sound terrorist cell where we can plan insurgent beats on open mics and concert halls.
... I was nitty-gritty beat editing now.
... I was wearing flip-flops.
... I could beatbox
... more people understood my motives
... I hadn't spilled coffee on my jacket
... Reason had direct recording capabilities
... my music was better
... I had studied music theory when I was 3
... cigarettes weren't so wonderful to smoke
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