I love you,

Mark

If you are a musician and play for the music, not fame, glory, or women, then you will recall listening to a tune or piece of music and dismissing it out of hand as “commercial”. I remember.

My buddy Victor Moreno loaned us Jazz by Ken Burns and I was pleased to see that this practice goes back many decades.

Real musicians versus profiteers.

Which isn’t to say that commercial music is always without musical merit, but mostly is.

When I was jamming back in the eighties the commercial music scene was far more wholesome than today’s, and yet we true musician’s still puked at the thought of producing such crap. So we don’t.

And are happy musicians. But out there somewhere, is someone who will say, when listening to our tunage. . . “commercial”.

Final analysis and Off Every Day’s reason to be, it’s the music.

The player doesn’t like this file Why I Don’t Know

[audio:2007_08_16_why_I_don’t_know.mp3]

The last music posts that were rough recordings of My Favorite Subject by Off Every Day is something new I am trying out, largely as a motivator I must confess, but should prove to be interesting.

Before I forget I did want to point out one of the most incredibly consistent observations I’ve made about musicians and how the public relates to them. Any aspiring musician is the subject of criticism from virtually anyone. The interesting thing here is that the general public will not criticize, in general, a published artist or more importantly a well known artist. What would have been “you should do this and you should do that” becomes “not my bag, but I respect what they are doing”. Not everyone is like this, least of all me and my favorite subject, I’ll relentlessly criticize anything, music most of all. I am not an aspiring musician, I am one.

Back to the topic though.

What I am doing here, is to publish, after each session hopefully, a rough mix of that night’s work.

These first two are actually writing sessions, where I play the song over and over experimenting with lyrics and melodies. Since they are solo performances they take on certain characteristics that will be nothing like the finished product. Of course I will publish solo versions of everything as well, but the interesting thing here should be for all the OED fans to see the evolution first hand. Probably stupid to do in that one gets to see all the weak performances as well but fun nevertheless.

The goal of phase one is what I call a pilot track. Normally I wouldn’t do this, I would repeat until I had the final arrangement, write the drums, record the drums and go from there. Problem being that you can’t drum to a guitar track after the fact and since I never used a click track or metronome I always laid down the drums first. But now. . . I am using a metronome in Acid Pro 6.0 so I can do the opposite. Giving it a go anyway.

Pilot track in the works.

Wellp. After updating to Acid Pro 6.0d because of repeated exception errors I blew my time, which is an illusion. So I whipped out Vegas 7.0 mistakenly referred to as 6.0 and laid what I hope to be the final arrangement in a decent performance.

One of the things that will become evident to fans is that these performances are not in fact performances in the sense that a live performance would be. You mix it up when playing solo to help kill the repetition doldrums. But a pilot track, that can be really boring. If you want to try out harmonies and such the melody has to be exacting, no mixing up. This is unfortunately more like a live performance. Anyway. Probably the last pilot post.

[audio:2007_06_28_My_Favorite_Subject.mp3]

Me.

[audio:NHM_My_Favorite_Subject_06_27_2007_Take_3.mp3]

For all you Off Every Day fans here is a rare opportunity to hear a work in progress.

Very in progress.

Take a hear.

[audio:My_Favorite_Subject.mp3]

Speaking of tools.

Just perusing a piece in emusician on cd sweetening by some dude who gets paid by the major labels to tighten up performances. Great junk.

Amazing tools, that allow you to pretty much meticulously completely re-perform a performance in a sense. Now, yes, crappy singers with star quality can be made stars after all.

Not really down on the notion but if you spend any time recording at all it only takes a small amount of studio sweetening, necessary usually, to realize that if you had just learned your instrument and performed worth a damn in the first place there wouldn’t be half as much work fixing the junk. The other angle on that of course is to say you did it on purpose a la Nirvana.

Still, these tools allow the art of recording, and mixing and producing a CD to reach new artificials heights, furthering the road braved and paved by the Beatles.

The rest of the issue really focuses on software and hardware tools of the trade. You begin to realize that this industry is more and more focused on the studio side and less and less on the skill and performance side. Of course, that is what an emusician does, still, the lack of organic people is pretty clear. I sure don’t miss it though.

What comes through today more than ever is the complete lack of skill in the modern pop musician at performing an instrument. You don’t see the virtuosos as readily, though, yeah they are out there, mostly not in pop. More and more, mediocrity is not only acceptable but popular. Then take out the creativity and what you have are some really well produced and doctored recordings.

I came to the realization not too long ago that the only ones pushing the envelope were the rappers. I don’t know why I would say this having really only listened to Brotha Lynch Hung’s Season of Da Siccness but this was honest art. Now, I guess they too got sucked into the glossy commercial machine that is so much fun to punish and purchase. Girl sings, dude raps, repeat. But the Brotha, he was honest back then.

So back to the tools of the trade. I suppose I just wonder what happened to music for the sake of music, the bard earning his dinner and giving the folks hope and diversion. Music was free, you didn’t charge per se and you sure as hell didn’t expect to be paid forever if you happened to make a recording.

Another topic, the advent of recording, the piano roll and the droll end of open music.

There is no substitute for flat out virtuosity.

Shut up and play yer guitar.

Well. OK. This is a pretty common theme, and we all know and love the hook.

You don’t have to have a hook of course, but they sure are a fun goal to be reached as the lyrics progress.

The journey to the hook, or refrain, is where creativity can really be a blast.

Using lyrics and context the most enjoyable twist is bringing the meaning back to the refrain in the new context of the line.

Ultimately the song itself works the circle and completes a cycle ending where it started.

Musically the same thing happens.

Rock and Roll.

I am not.

But I’m a decent mimic. And I have a pretty decent ear. I also don’t really dig emulation which gives one the vain attitude of only really being into doing one’s own thing.

Yeah.

One’s own thing.

The way of knowing things.

My favorite line from The Last Wave starring Gulpilil.

Dreams are a shadow, of something real.

So my buddy, Adam Clark, gets a hold of me cause he’s taken up guitar and can’t figure a chord from a tune he wanted to play. After I mocked him sufficiently for even wanting to play someone else’s tune I took a listen, and couldn’t tell him the chord.

Like I say, a musical genius I am not.

Jack of all trades, Master of Known.

Sometimes I reflect on the concept of ignorance is bliss as applied to the creative process.

Ignorance of how its done or how it should be and so on can open the door for very creative and unusual compositions. Think Paul McCartney not wanting to learn to read music to stay pure.

Dumb. Actually.

The reality of the situation is that a tool is just a tool and creativity is a mindset and way of being, the way of knowing things, the way of arranging things, the way of expressing things.

The tools used, such as knowledge of music theory, knowledge of song structure, a hammer, make no difference to the truly creative mind.

Create, by any means necessary.

Rhythm is part of the addiction and desire for repetition.

This is known as meter or timing. Drummers used to have to be good at it, to lay down a foundation the rest of us could follow. Ended up doing it myself most times.

The human heart beat is the cliche metaphor to explain the need to drum.

When a drummer lags, the world is put on hold, but like the locomotive with momentum eventually you cross that bar.

Today is the day I wore all black at school in 1980.

My idol had been shot and killed the night before, John Lennon.

I cried all night long I think, and many times thereafter. What an emotional wimp. When my friend Dave Koch called and told me about his death the day of, I was hopefully dubious and asked him repeatedly if he was joking. Judy came by too. What a drag to have your idol gunned down. Strange too how not one kid at school seemed to give a crap, and none of the teachers either. I must have been out of it and missed something I hope. I had my guitar with me for some unrelated reason, to perform in class, nice company for the occasion. Got a lot of very strange looks.

I wanted to visit Lennon when we went through up state New York back in the seventies. I was not entirely suprised that wasn’t gonna happen. A standard kid fanatic.

I couldn’t listen to the Beatles or Lennon for a long time without serious pain. Funny considering I never knew John Lennon. I feel really strange about this fame thing that he had and how us fans somehow identify with Lennon and feel we have a clue when clearly we do not. Or any famous person for that matter. Fame, bully for you, chilly for me, got to get a raincheck on, pain. David Bowie, John Lennon.

Time counts and keeps counting and the pain went away, and the awareness of Lennon being human dawned and the lustre of his magic started to fade. I still feel the magic, Hey Bulldog, I Found Out, I Am The Walrus, Come Together and on and on.

But the magic, the wild abandon, is so easily forgotten, so easily let go, unwittingly banished. Hold on. Living isn’t only loneliness. Off Every Day.

Lennon sang he didn’t believe in magic once, but he was magic, and a person, just like us all.

Remember. . . . the 8ee8th . . . of December. And the day after.

Well as many of you don’t know, composing music is kind of like breathing. You do it without really being aware, always, and you sometimes mess it up and lose you breath.

Dumb metaphor.

Let’s try composing music is like meditating. Yeah. Better. Sometimes you can die happy, sometimes you can’t.

So sometimes when I listen to my songs, music not usually words, sometimes the music hits me in a way that reminds me of life, the perpetual motion of life, the stillness of life, in essence the law of inertia.

And sometimes my music reminds me of a locomotive, very difficult to move, very difficult to stop.

When I listen to music, I look for the riff that is to die for, like a lot a Jimmy Page’s early work, Lennon has some, DiMeola and others.

When I hear those, I understand that an achievement such as that, leaves one little need to ever achieve anything else.

A die happy performance.

And then, inevitably, the opinion changes, about oneself, and the quest continues.

Happy Birthday John!

Yeah he’s dead, but the perspective lives.

What of the mind of the man? Nothing is real? And nothing to get hung about?

My kind of guy.

Miss you Mr. Lennon, selfish yes, but the truth.

Wanna Die

If I ain’t dead already, girl you know the reason why.

John Lennon

Creative outlets are somewhat like water behind a dam finally breaking out, or not.

I have seen playing guitar, composing music and recording as sort of the rain falling.

Man, its been raining a long time.

Then I see the dam or levee breaking as sharing all that with others. I certainly haven’t wanted to but. . .

If the rain don’t stop the levee’s gonna break.

Testing this freaky thing with jonezingtheflow.

copyright 2005 Mark Stamas

[audio:jonezingtheflow.mp3]

Today I would like to take the opportunity to reflect on original music.

There seems to be some sort of misunderstanding regarding originality.

From my perspective music is a bizarre controlled conglomeration of sonic vibrations that can elicit a trained response in humans.

Or is it trained?

We’ve all heard the infamous classical music study where plants died under the influence of rock and roll and thrived under the influence of classical.

The researcher must have been under the influence.