"Muse" - ings on Rock & Life

Well, I didn't quite make it in the end.  I sat down tonight to see if I couldn't finish off the rest of the music for my February EP.  I wound up getting all of the music for one of the songs down (with the exception of a third chord in one line). As for the rest of the record, the general feel of the songs is in place, but the progressions remain unfinished.  It's frustrating because I've got a good number of the chords in place that raise the tension of the progressions, but I'm struggling to find the right release point for them that will lead me into the choruses.  I just haven't written enough songs in a long, long time.  I'm positive that, with this month's effort getting me back to the enjoyment of writing music again, I think that I can continue this momentum into March and finish this thing up at some point this year. Wound up at Half Price Books tonight with a friend from Waterloo, and ran across the CD Maxi Single (remember those?) for ...

Today was filled with a lot of musical stuff, but not all of it was expected, or even what I had hoped for at the start of the day.  I got a chance to spend a chunk of time this afternoon working on the record.  That chance afforded me to find the song I spoke of yesterday, the "missing one" that I knew I needed in order to possibly have enough songs to meet the 35 minute requirement of the RPM Challenge.  Was I able to start working at 9:30 this morning and put in a 12 hour "work day?" Not even close.  That said, my goal by the end of tomorrow remains to finish off all of the music for the project.  If that means skipping out early-ish on dinner with friends to accomplish something I really want to get done for myself, then so be it.  If it means dashing home after my shift to work out some chords between 5 and 6:30 when we meet for dinner, then bring that on too.  I will find a way to get this done.  I may burn the candle at both ends to make ...

Got up early enough today to make a bit of progress on the record before work.  I'm really trying to iron out/finish off the chord progressions for the songs I have started already.  I'm pretty sure I got one of them done today, which is awesome.  In the end, it might not be enough, but it's still a step in the right direction. Also tonight, I got to take home a couple of in-store plays that had gone off sale, or "expired," if you will.  I ended up with Nick Lowe's latest record, and the Steve Earle album that came out last year.  That Steve Earle was on display almost literally forever .  Almost to the point where I forgot I had my name on it. Picked up Blue Valentine by Tom Waits as well.  When you can get a record by a guy like that for $7.99, you take advantage of it.  One day I will end up with his entire discography.  Whether or not I'll be able to assimilate all of it into my brain without it exploding from awesome is another story...

I finally got all the way through Some Nights on my way home from work.  There's a little too much auto-tune in the last third of the record for my usual taste, but all told, I enjoyed the new record.  There are a few moments that really jumped out to me, and I am definitely going to enjoy dissecting their song structures, as they can be a bit complex in certain spots. I didn't get much of a chance to work on the record tonight which, admittedly, is probably not good, but I still have tomorrow morning and all day Tuesday to get things done with this thing.  If you want to be technical, I've got Wednesday night after work to play around with also.  In short, the next three days will be focused in on finishing off whatever I can in that time. If I can get up early enough tomorrow to get some writing done before I go in to work, that will be a big step in the right direction. Short tonight, I know, but I vow to do better tomorrow.

So, I spent the afternoon sorting out where I stand with the record that I have four days to finish.  The rules say that you've got to get either 10 songs or 35 minutes of music during February.  At this point, I'm thinking I'll fall short of the 10 songs, but the 35 minutes seems completely attainable. I've got 6 songs partially finished.  Yes, I realize that I would have to have the average song length be somewhere around five and a half minutes for this collection of ideas to be enough to meet the criteria.  There will be at least one more song added to the mix, however, that I know for sure.  I'm pretty sure that even with this addition, I can still finish off the music between now and Wednesday.  It's the words (as always) that have me concerned. It's not that there's a lack of lyrical material to pick from by any stretch, the last 4 years has given me plenty of grist for that mill, it's more a question of getting the words in shape enough t...

So, I got a couple of lyric lines this morning before work.  It always feels good to dash off a couple of lines before having to run off for the day. Picked up a couple of small things at work today.  Payday and a change in plans for the weekend will do that to you.  New issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine, the highlight of which may well be the transcription of "High & Dry" by Radiohead. I also snagged a couple of soundtracks that were in the $7.99 bin:  1) Eddie & The Cruisers 2) Eddie Lives! Not sure that all of the music John Cafferty had on those records will be genius, but the first one will be worth it for "On The Dark Side" alone. Also, I just spotted a trailer for a Butch Walker documentary called Out Of Focus .  This looks AMAZING!  And while I know it's a long ways away from coming out on DVD, I really hope it does, because I'd buy it in a heartbeat. No plans for tomorrow, other than working on the record.  While part of m...

New issue of Guitar Techniques came out today.  It's one of the treats I allow myself every month, and so, I picked it up. So, today was supposed to be the glorious day that I got done at 3:30 and came home to work on the record for the better part of the afternoon/evening.  The joke was on me yet again, however, as I wound up working until 6:15 covering for someone who needed to attend to a family emergency.  I'm happy for the overtime/chance to (maybe) leave early tomorrow, but I've got to admit that I'm really starting to feel as if February is conspiring against me, or at least the last half of February anyway. Maybe I'll be snowed in tomorrow and unable to make it to work. On the plus side, I'm making slow and steady progress through the Fun. record.  It's not quite as good as their first record, at least at this point, but I am definitely enjoying it.  A definite progression from the first disc, though.  Lots of new sounds and artistic growth th...

I got through a couple more of the tracks on Some Nights on the way home from work tonight.  Through what amounts to an album and a half, what I can say definitively about Fun. is that they are consistent in the way you hope a band is consistent.  Their arrangements are inventive, and their music is, well... fun. I needed that tonight.  A record with some chanted choruses and interesting parts happening in the background.  In light of my current level of stress, and how much I could really use a vacation I'm not going to get, or even a glorious 4 day weekend so I can make a concentrated dash toward a completed record in February.  I know I'm not getting that either, though, regardless of how awesome it would be. So I lose myself in the one thing that can take me from the admitted grouch I was the last hour of my shift tonight to the more relaxed, more human, more me self that sits here at the close of the day, acknowledging that he didn't get enough writing ...

Up before work today in enough time to spend fifteen or twenty minutes working with the chord I stumbled onto yesterday.  I was successful in my attempt to find a few chords that worked with it.  I've got verses for it now, and a definite lead-in to what will become the chorus. The only other real music news to report today was that Some Nights, the new record by Fun. was released today, and so I picked that up.  I really loved what I listened to in the car on my way home, but considering that I only got through a couple of tracks, I should be able to give a more complete review when I get through it all.  Likely this will happen tomorrow.   That's really all I know tonight.  I'll do better tomorrow, I promise.

Another day with some work done in the morning (before company arrived from the UK).  I found another chord progression that I know will work for the record. This thing is building slowly, but it is building, and that is what's making all the difference for me.  The ideas are coming easier than they did at the beginning of the month, which is, I suppose, a product of actually sitting down and trying to write something every day.  Nothing bad can possibly come of that. Other news on a musical front includes three things today: 1) I got a bunch of classical music from my brother in the last couple of days.  Haven't yet sorted through it all and put it into iTunes, but it's there waiting for me nonetheless.  This is awesome, as I've needed more classical in my life for quite some time.  It was, after all, one of my listed blind spots from that NPR article a few weeks back. 2) I went out looking for a paper shredder at Best Buy today and came home with ...

Another semi-quiet day.  Crazy busy at work, but in between all the madness, I managed to find a couple of NOOK Apps with musical significance.  One of them is called "Capo Bull," and helps with transposing chords between keys/with a capo.  I downloaded it, but haven't used it yet.  Apparently it also lets you email yourself the chords you transpose and subsequently print them off.  This could well be a cool purchase.  The other one, which I haven't purchased yet, was just called "Guitar Study HD."  I'm not sure what all it does, but I'll definitely investigate it further. I'm getting to the point where a bit of worry is starting to creep in over the album-in-a-month.  My next two days off (tomorrow and Saturday) will be filled with amazing fun that won't leave a whole lot of time for random acts of music.  If this is to get done, it's going to be all about making the best of every single spare moment that I have between now and the end...

I got up somewhat early today.  It gave me a chance to do a little playing before I had to go to work.  The chief result of this playing was my discovering that I actually still liked the work I had gotten done last night.  That happens with me a lot, where I'll find an idea I like one moment, and then later discover that I don't like it half as much as I thought I did.  It's actually a chief reason why my lyrics are in a perpetual state of "undone." The cool thing about this morning is that it represents progress from the last time I worked on songs for this project.  Last time, I woke up the next day and hated nearly everything I had been working on the day before.  No, I think this time I've got myself a solid group of three or so ideas, with maybe a holdover from the previous writing session that still hasn't quite sorted itself out yet.  I know that leaves quite a bit of work still to be done, but in all fairness, I haven't had this much progr...

I finally got my chance tonight to sit down and work on the record! I hid in the bedroom, away from all of the distractions, and sat for about three hours with a guitar, a notebook, and some chord sheets.  Oh, and a pen.  After all, I had to be able to write down what I figured out, right? I didn't want to go into it with any sort of plan in mind, aside from getting things done, of course, so I wasn't concerned with what I ended up with, so long as there was something by the end of the night.  I found a couple of really cool chord progressions that seem like they are going to work for the record, and I tried to be objective about some of the things I had been considering earlier in the month.  Some of those things will make it, others will not.  I realize that I'm getting to the point where I can ill afford to be picky about what ends up making it and what doesn't, but still.  I need to keep reminding myself that if I can even get it all written during ...

Today didn't go quite as expected when it comes to scheduling.  Work shifted things around on me, and switched my shift.  I still opened, but the difference threw me off just enough.  What's the positive out of all of this?  I wound up noticing a book today that has been out since last fall and had gone un-noticed by me until today.  The book's called Drinking With Strangers, and it's by  Butch Walker.  Walker is one of those guys that has had a career in the music industry that leaves him respected and heavily involved without being known as a rock god.  He's been part of a band with an MTV hit (Marvelous 3's "Freak Of The Week"), a songwriter/producer for big time artists (Weezer, Avril Lavigne, Dashboard Confessional), and released 5 or 6 great solo albums.  There's also a wickedly cool cover of Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me." Granted, that means that I did more reading today than anything else, which isn't good for the ...

Having been out of town for the last two days, tonight was an exercise in reacquainting myself with the progress I've made so far on the record-in-a-month.  It's not nearly as much as I had hoped it would be by this point.  I've got 13 days left in February, and at this point, I'm thinking I'll be happy if I get the songs written if not recorded. The next seven days need to be spent really focused on finishing off this set of songs, whatever form they may take.  I've started the process of sorting out what I already have, and I know that I need to record the melody that I uncovered the other day.  Going in early tomorrow will (I hope) help my progress. I'm thinking I need to spend at least 2 hours a night, both focused on my playing and my songwriting for this (and the hard rock) project.  Tomorrow starts the crazy run to the end of the month, and seeing what it is I can accomplish when I hold myself accountable and put in the effort.  Good things happe...

So I know I promised more on the Grammys tonight, but I am up in Cherokee with SL, and have no internet access other than her phone.  The punctuation and the rest of my Grammy update will be added in tomorrow sometime, I promise. Okay, so I'm back in town... here's the rest of yesterday.  Today's update will come later on. I missed the Springsteen performance when it aired live (they don't mess around when it comes to starting the Grammys on time), but went back and watched it online after the performance.  It was typical Springsteen, high energy, and what sounds like a really good new song from Wrecking Ball , which comes out March 6th. I thought the Beach Boys performance was pretty sweet too, though it seems like Mike Love has lost some of his range.  And while Brian looked positively terrified, it was good to see him onstage.  I'm really curious/excited to see what their new studio record sounds like, whenever it is this year that it drops.  It wo...

First off tonight, I can almost guarantee you that some thirteen year old girl pressured her parents to go out and buy her a banjo today after seeing Taylor Swift rock one hardcore on the Grammy broadcast last night.  In case you haven't seen it, here you go.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SDXBz-T4HE . Watching her sashay down that flight of stairs, rocking out with a banjo was one of the coolest moments of the night for me.  I wanted so badly to not like her when she started out, and yet, slowly but surely her talent and her sincerity are winning me over a bit.  She'll probably be a "greatest hits" purchase for me at some point in the future. I'm not surprised that Adele won everything under the sun.  After the year she had, the girl probably deserved it.  And I still like her record, even after its general overplayed-ness.  Her voice isn't all the way back yet, but her performance was still solid, and she's obviously come a long way since her t...

So, I know yesterday was a disaster for me musically, but today was better.  I sat down with some empty chord sheets and the notebook that I've been using for the album-in-a-month project.  I just wanted to see where I'm at.  It admittedly hasn't gone as well for me during the first two weeks than I had expected it to be. That said, I've got 4 solid musical ideas and the little bit of lyric that I got the other day.  There's melody associated with that lyric.  That's more than I expected to have, considering how it has worked out so far this month.  With some elbow grease tomorrow morning before work, and a bit of lyrical luck, things should be looking a little bit better than they do presently. I'm taking a road trip up north to see SL on Tuesday, assuming the weather holds up, that is, and I've started looking for road music for the trip.  I've been in a Gaslight Anthem kind of mood the last couple of days, so today at work I looked  for som...

I don't know what it is about my days off, but I always think they're going to be wildly productive from a musical standpoint, and lately they just never are.  I sat with the notebook for a while and tried to work on lyrics to no avail, and while I played for a bit, it didn't lead to anything that was productive. Closing in on the halfway point of the month.  If this record-in-a-month is going to happen, I need to start kicking some serious butt, and making bigger strides every day than I have been, that's for darn sure. Only other noteworthy musical story today is that Whitney Houston was found dead at the age of 48. Today was just a bad day musically for me.  I swear I'll have more to write about tomorrow, both in regards to my own efforts, and because the Grammy's happen tomorrow night!

I got up early enough today that I had some time before work to sit and play.  Or perhaps more accurately, sit with a notebook and try to work out at least a few lines of lyric, and (hopefully) a corresponding melody to go along with those lyrics. I was successful on both levels to at least some degree.  I've got 3 lines of what I presume will be an opening verse for one of the songs on the record.  Not much, I'll admit, but having not done this for myself in quite some time, I'll take what I can get starting out.  I'm pretty confident that once I get rolling a bit more things will start to come easier lyric-wise. I've also got melody line at least somewhat sorted out in my head for those three lines.  It dawned on me today that I ought to worry more about what the lyrics and the melody are in the initial writing process, and then try to put the chords behind the melody when I get to that point.  I haven't recorded the melody yet, but that is definitely...

Another night of playing around with chord progressions has gotten me a bit closer to a solid grouping of ideas that can lead to an outline of this record.  I'll admit that a lot of my posts this week are starting to feel a bit same-y.  I either need to start looking at lyrics, start recording, or find a few other things to write about in the next few days. That said, I found another set of chords that intrigues me.  I know full-well that it's a small piece of a bigger progression, but I like what's there.  This is starting to feel like the beginnings of the long-awaited power pop record that I've had brewing inside of  me. One of the things I know I need to do is start messing around with tempo.  I've got a bunch of small chord progressions that will lead to full songs, no question, but I need to decide tempo and flow of the record.  I'm also thinking a lot about acoustic versus electric.  I know it'll be a mixture of the two, and right now I...

Another night of sitting with the guitar, trying to find something for the record-in-a-month.  I had some success again tonight, finding something that will be cool, but it feels as if it might need one more chord to make the verses complete. Finding the chords has never been a serious problem for me.  Finding a way to put them together, on the other hand, has sometimes been a bit tougher.  It comes down, I think, to an issue of craftsmanship in instances like that.  What that means for me, I guess, is that I need to become a better craftsman.  I need to write more songs.  For whatever project they end up fitting into.  Or simply for the sake of the song.  They don't even have to be associated with anything in particular. I remember seeing a news story a few years back about a guy who wrote a song a day for a year.  I can't find the story I saw at the moment, but there are more instances of this sort of thing out there than I expected the...

Another day of playing around with different chord progressions, hoping for something to stick.  Still nothing definitive, but there are a few intriguing sounds that are sticking with me.  I need to be better about realizing that the songs aren't just going to fall out fully formed, not after all this time away from writing anything that might be just mine.  Any little blip, be a melody line, a lyric, or a bit of a chord progression is fair game during this process, especially considering that, as of tomorrow, I'll have 3 weeks to finish it all. What I really need to do is spend a serious amount of time at it either tomorrow night after work or Thursday night after work.  Probably both.  Part of my issue is that I'm not sure which direction to take the project.  Is it primarily acoustic, or is it electric in nature?  Either way, I'm running out of time to figure that out.  If I'm not careful, I'll spend too much time deciding and not enough time...

NPR's website had an interesting article today on musical blind spots.  Not necessarily blind spots when it comes to artists, because I have those: 1) The Grateful Dead 2) David Bowie That's just to name a couple.  But, no, the article had more to do with genre than it did with artist.  If I had to pick genres that fall under my musical blind spots, the biggest offenders are as follows: 1) Jazz 2) Hip Hop 3) Classical It's the last of these that could come as a bit of a surprise, given that I was raised in a classical music household.  My step-mom is a professional violinist.  I played violin all through school.  Classical music was around all the time.  Maybe I turned my back on it for that reason, who's to say.  Point is that I miss it, and I need to make an effort to bring it back somewhat. Jazz is a bit different.  It wasn't around at all as I was growing up, and while I took a class in jazz history in college that gave me an...

So, I started the process tonight of trying to work out this album-in-a-month thing.  Initially, I was messing about with the electric, but that changed pretty quickly.  When I switched to the acoustic, it started to feel like I was moving in the right direction, but I discovered pretty quickly that it's tough after spending so much time on the hard rock stuff to get back in touch with my own voice when it comes to songwriting. At the same time, it's exciting to feel like I'm in charge of the whole process again.  What I probably need to do is sit down with a pen and a notebook first and try to see what comes out lyrically.  I've always been torn about whether to start with words or music first, but really, when I'm trying to get a whole record done in a month, it doesn't matter where I start in, just so long as I do.  I'm fairly certain that, until I really find my groove with this, the songs will come in bits and pieces rather than in chunks or complete ...

So, last night I promised more on "American Pie."  I've scoured the internet in year's past for an explanation of the many details present in that song, who the characters are, etc.  Here's a link to a site I found tonight that does a pretty decent job of covering the basics, at the very least.  The link is amazingly original too, don't you think?:  understandingamericanpie.com Stopped at Half Price Books tonight.  Mom's been in town, and it's a ritual.  Cool thing was that I found the first 2 books of Berklee's Guitar Method (the first of which contains a DVD-Rom that has 14 HOURS of lessons on it!  How amazing is that?  Considering that the be-all, end-all goal of this blog is to get me to the point musically where I can audition and be accepted to Berklee School of Music in Boston, I figured that having the first two books of their guitar method can only be a good thing. Now that I'm 5 days into February, I'm thinking that I'm go...

February 3rd is here again.  Fifty Three years ago, the world lost three shining lights of early rock & roll.  Around 1 AM, just outside of Clear Lake, Iowa, a plane crashed and took the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. Richardson (A.K.A. The Big Bopper). In my three and a half years in Iowa, I have yet to visit the field where the crash took place, or the Surf Ballroom, where they played their final gig, and there's some part of me that feels like a bum for not having gotten there yet.  That needs to be on my list of things to do this spring. Last year on this date, I picked up the Memorial Collection.  a 3 CD set of Holly's music.  I'd owned a lot of it previously on various collections, but it was nice just to have it all in one place.  This year, I picked up the 3 CD set of rarities that his estate has released.  Both collections were released around the same time, and the coolest part of the rarities collection is that it inc...

Today was kind of a quiet day for music.  Then again, after all of the interesting stuff from yesterday, that doesn't surprise me.  Things tend to go in an ebb and flow kind of manner for me.  What I'd love to do is just keep building up and building up, so that each day crests higher than the one before it, but I'm not sure my senses could take it, so I'll settle for slow and steady progress over a period of time. Impulse buy today at work of a musical nature.  It's a book called The Art Of Practicing: A Guide To Making Music From The Heart .  I know I'm on a bit of a kick lately between this one and Guitar Zero , but these books look good, and they seem like they're going to be very insightful. Still kicking around the RPM idea.  I know that if I'm going to do this, I've got to stop thinking and start acting on it.  I need to sit with an acoustic tonight before bed and see if I can find a chord progression or a riff or a melody that will get me...

Lots to discuss tonight... or maybe it just feels like it.  Closed at work tonight, and open in the morning... which means I got to take home in-store plays and make copies of what I liked!  There are some perks of working where I do, and these nights have got to be up near the top.  The turnaround may not be fun, but the tunes make it more palatable.  Here's the haul for tonight: Human Again - Ingrid Michaelson For The Good Times - The Little Willies Selftitled - The Barr Brothers Casa De Amor - Armik Best Of The Best - Frank Sinatra Be The Void - Dr. Dog* The reason behind the * is simple: the new Dr. Dog record doesn't release until the 7th of this month, but we got our in-store plays early, and have been playing it in the store as a way to build excitement for the release, so... The other thing I want to discuss/debate/decide on tonight is this:  I was on NPR.com today, and ran across a link to one of their blog posts.  Here's what I spotted...