waking up
So Damn Insecure
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Today, I finally jammed with the electronic musician. He also plays drums. And he plays pretty well. But he didn’t really understand where I was coming from. I tried my best. I can hardly believe I’m saying that I had trouble communicating with someone.
For him, everything was a simple “good” or “bad,” sounded like it was a rip-off, or was great, needs some stuff in the higher register, needs a lead part… And the whole time, I was just so uncertain, so unsure of my music… to the point where I try not to put any expectations on it or define anything. I couldn’t answer any questions about where a particular song was headed, what kind of instrumentalists I needed to find, how much structure I wanted in my music, how much electronic stuff has a part in my music… in the end, he said I was giving him a weird vibe… as if I wasn’t feelin’ it and didn’t have the heart to tell him.
This is the consqeuence of my insecurities. There they were, coming right up to the surface. I am really angry with myself. God, I should know… I have worked with people who never seem to know what they want… and they ask you for your opinion on every little decision they make, even if it is completely their responsibility. It’s so frustrating working with them. They can’t make up their minds on anything, even if it is little stuff. They need to be told constantly that it is okay for them to make decisions, and to take responsibility.
I am not used to taking responsibility for writing music. I am so used to looking for perfection or garbage in everything I listen to, but I am not used to making decisions about the music I make. For years, I have just stuck with the same crap… worship music and rock/blues/folk shit that is just easy for me. I am just so scared to actually own up to my gifting. My character is more solid than it was before… but can it contain this? All the criticism, expectation, and demands that people will put on my music?
In general, I think I handle criticism well, but when it comes to music, I can’t even believe in myself when I create something good. I will immediately latch on to the negative things people say about my music… but the positive… I find myself disregarding compliments habitually. How did I get so fucking crazy?
The other day I remembered something that transpired between my brother and myself when I was in junior high, I think. We were having a heated discussion about me showing off on the guitar all time in front of friends at church, and not being humble. My brother simply wanted to teach me not to be so cocky about my music or insecure about people liking me for who I was. And I couldn’t handle the criticism, so I cried. I cried really hard that day. I’m pretty sure I was only 13. I understand now what my brother was trying to tell me… but man, I took it in the worst way possible. The emotion is so freshly present now… this desire to bury my talents, afraid that I had somehow sinned greatly by playing music for people. Settling for teaching and leading worship… musical yes, but not really playing MY music. So sad… I made up my mind that day that I would only play if people when people wanted me to, not when I felt God was birthing music through me.
But now, looking back… it’s not about playing music at all. It has nothing to do with that. It’s about the heart… and when I was showing off, my heart was pining for the affection of my friends, or girls, or whatever. Receiving God’s affection while playing music though… that is something I need to grasp. I need to bask in the acceptance, the Biblical truth that He is all I need, and that all I need, I already have through faith.
There Will Always Be an Earthquake
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…or a fire, or a flood, or a hurricane, or a typhoon, or a tsunami. Yet often times, we live as if catastrophes are some foreign thing, and as long as we remain unaffected, we shouldn’t change anything about how we live.
I read a teacher’s blog today (she is a friend of my friend’s), and it talked about how one of her former students was just shot and killed, and how it never really hits home that these names we hear on the radio are real people with real stories and real interactions with the people and world around them.
These are connected… death and disaster, pain and discomfort, the unexpected and the dreaded. And what connects them is this thing we call reality. Life has pleasant and ugly parts to it, and often times, we are just trying to comment on the good, while staving off things like negativity and cynicism. But how often do we just take a step back and acknowledge that this is the true nature of things as we know it… terrible and beautiful. No, I don’t believe in balance or a great “Things simply ARE,” as if we should be content to detach ourselves from the way things are and somehow rise above all feelings. I believe in the human spirit: one that is proud and needs to be taught how to reach out for God again, one that is perverted by consumerism yet capable of benifecence. I believe in dreaming of a better world, and helping to create that within this mess.
We cannot stop natural disasters or gang violence, corrupt politics or wayward philosophies, but what we can do is think and act out a new way of life. This path stands on knife’s edge, between communism and capitalism, between legalism and hedonism, between detachment and cynicism, and recognizes the value of the human spirit… that recognizes the Spirit of God working to cleanse of our depraved minds and hearts and being us into a deeper communion with the God who made us, and still longs to not only bring relief, but execute justice and mercy in the now and the future.
There will always be an earthquake until we see everything in life is screaming at us, “CHANGE, CHANGE, AND TURN TO HIM WHO WILL RESTORE ALL THINGS.”
More New Stuff 10.21.07
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Today was a good day… well, you be the judge.
I think I had a good day. Who cares what you think, actually. I hope you like it anyway.
*Music geeks: that second chord is an Adom9
Sports Action Team
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Has anyone seen this show yet? I haven’t heard ANYTHING about it, but I saw it tonight after the Broncos/Steelers. Very funny. It has an Arrested Development/The Office/ESPN commercial-vibe.
Demons
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I completed a song, I think.
It’s called, “Demons.” Yes, Robert also wrote a song called Demons, so I am already a biter. Or maybe I am a trend-setter?
Anyway, please comment!
E-mail me for the lyrics.
The Music Industry is Changing
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This is a bit DUH right now, but I have been thinking about the music industry in the context of Spider/Starfish metaphor… the idea that power can be concentrated in a few individuals (Spider–Big Record Labels), but how people fight this by taking power back into decentralized organizations (Starfish–BitTorrent/KaZaA Lite), and then in the end, how it will inevitably flip-flop again.
So a bit of history (from Spider and the Starfish): Even as early as a hundred years ago, all the best music in the West (and therefore, what people paid for) was found in a few travelling musicians, with their promoters making the money. But as soon as records were invented and became addordable, the power of the few was drastically
shifted to small record labels, independent and local–a shift from centralization of power to de-centralization.
Then the independent record labels found that they could save money and maximize profits by consolidating into big music houses… Thus, the Big Five in the 1950s. Now we have EMI/Capitol, Warner/Chappell… huge conglomerates determining what the masses hear. MTV and VH1 were somehow supposed to be authorities on good music, making extremely expensive music videos the standard way of promoting artists… But now, like the invention of recording equipment, the Internet has changed everything. People don’t want MTV and Warner telling them what to listen to anymore, and the average consumer gained a huge advantage with the advent of filesharing.
Of course , Napster was taken down when the big guys fought the litte guy (and that’s because Napster made one big mistake, which was having a central server which pointed directly to its founder, Shaun Fanning). But then along came eDonkey and KaZaA, Audiogalaxy, and Morpheus, and their even more anonymous offsrping, eMule, LimeWire, KaZaA Lite and BitTorrent. Now the de-centralization has shifted completely back to invidual internet users.
This is the purest form of de-centralization the music industry has ever seen… to the point where iTunes and eMusic and Amazon are all trying to gain the customers’ trust back by offering cheaper music and making it more readily available with greater benefits like bonus tracks and videos, digital artwork and giveaway promotions. We are seeing a rise in Indie Rock (what I sometimes call the New Alternative), and with Podcasts and Daily Motion and YouTube, independent film-makers are producing more intimate, high-quality performances in familiar settings, à la Take-Away Shows, and with very little or no money-exchange. Music is once again becoming a thing for the people. This is working, for now.
Meanwhile, blogs like Stereogum and Pitchfork have become the bibles of Indie Rock fans, and are making more and more money for these sites, and companies like Dell are starting to hire these filmmakers to shoot for promotional material. You can see where this is going… Pretty soon, I believe we will start seeing the clout that these blogs can muster will be scary… to the point where a bad review from any of these big blogs can ruin any artist’s career. This is when the blogs get bought out by Google or Yahoo! as cash-cows and everyone realizes that money makes people sell out, and power was never meant to be centralized in a few individuals. Music will de-centralize again in some other way.
Remedy Tour Comes to San Francisco
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So the David Crowder*Band played at the Fillmore… I really didn’t think it was possible, but they blew me away. To think, a week of listening to In Rainbows and thinking there was no one else that might inspire and stir up wonder and awe through music for a long time… I was totally wrong.
Man, they did “A Beautiful Collision”… I was so freakin pumped when I heard Jack and the new kid play those beginning few notes of the overlapping guitars. They opened up with “I’m Trying to Make You Sing”–God, that one was freakin great. I felt like it cut through all the fake-ness of Christian music with those lyrics:
And I’m trying to make you sing/From inside where you believe
Like it’s something that you need/Like it means everything
And I’m trying to make you feel/That this is for real
That life is happening/That it means everything
I’m just trying to make you sing
They extended it and I wanted to sing my lungs out… but I felt very restricted emotionally. I think the other bands sorta made me tighten up (didn’t really connect with them), and I have been really frustrated about some things lately.
Crowder busted out with some piano skills with a tap-tempo delay. B-wack had a glockenspiel along with his Ableton Live setup. Hogan had his turntables, violin, and laptop as well. Mike D used some toy piano for some really nice parts, and Jack used a Rhodes and like five guitars.
They also did, “Here is Our King,” “O Praise Him,” “No One Like You,” “You Are My Joy,” and “I Saw the Light.” As for the new ones, they did, “Oh the Glory of It All,” “Can You Feel It?” (SICK live, they had some freaking weird instruments on stage including a theremin and some box Jack used to create the dopest effects… all that and a rare guitar solo from Jack), “Everything Glorious,” “… Neverending …” (with a freakin modded Guitar Hero controller hooked up to his Mac), “We Won’t Be Quiet,” “Never Let Go,” “Remedy,” and they ended with “Surely We Can Change.” Crowder and Jack were exchanging the usual ridiculously funny banter, and talked about how being people of faith who appreciate how amazing music and life and God is, should really live like we sing. They have been taking a collection of towels and socks for the local homeless shelter (notified people through their e-mail list).
They did absolutely nothing from All I Can Say or Can You Hear Us?. I didn’t care much. This concert is going to be very hard to top. 14 songs!! That is almost U2 length (well, not really… 18 songs with two encores would take it).
Funeral Song
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Something I did on Friday after a student didn’t show (gave me a reason to explore a chord I heard a few weeks prior that I really liked)… You can right-click to download it.
People have responded do it differently… someone said it was pretty muddy and “eh,” but the majority like it a lot. Some people think it is a great rough draft want to see how it develops, some are waiting for lyrics, for others, it evokes visuals, and some thought it could use some more layers. I thought this was weird, because I felt a pretty big sense of accomplishment, having written something I think has been a pretty courageous effort compared to my previous stuff. I felt done. Haha… maybe I am right, maybe they are right, maybe maybe we are all right, maybe we are all wrong.
Since In Rainbows, I have posted on Craigslist with my decision to start an experimental band… experimental in the sense that I want to engage with the creative process without any expectations of genre or traditional instrumentation (e.g., drums/bass/guitars/keys). Not to say it won’t end up sounding like some other stuff, but that it isn’t gonna be based in anything other than collaboration with someone else whose sensibilities complement mine. I also wanted the first person I started writing/playing with to be an electronic musician, since I have no clue about that stuff. I have gotten several replies to my ad on CL, one from a guy whose work sounds pretty promising.
Here’s the link to the song again, in case you missed it way in the beginning.
But perhaps the best thing to come from my recent adventures is this gem of a conversation:
calvin: quite a good title for the song
very funeral-ish
feels like it should be in some cinematics or soemthing
me: cool
other ppl said the same thing
like what kind of cinematics
i didn’t really mean anything by the title
calvin: with your power and nates combined
me: other than to remind myself what it soudned like when it started
calvin: you can make CAPTAIIIIIIIIIINNNN PLANETTTTT
me: lol
u ass
In Rainbows – A Quick Glance
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Taking them the last two years to complete, Radiohead has finally come forth with what people have been waiting so long for. The result–In Rainbows–is hauntingly beautiful. Having been free from the pressures of their six-album EMI contract, putting the record out on their own time-table, in true artist fashion have described this process of writing and recording this new album as “both liberating and terrifying.” Not really that it needs repeating, but Radiohead has continually sought ways to grow as artists and anyone who listens to their work can see the progression… and this album does not disappoint.
Thom Yorke’s voice is clear and present, yet not without copious amounts of reverb mixed into sweeping string-arrangements, ethereal synth work, glockenspiel, and chilling background vocals. Nude, All I Need, and Weird Fishes showcase masterfully-layered arrangements, rich with complex harmonies and nothing but the finest attention to even the smallest, most transient details. Meter is something they continually play with as a band, and 15 Step and Faust Arp are great examples of this. And the album wraps up with a version of Videotape that is nothing short of enrapturing.
Personally, I have finally been pushed out of my perfectionist, fearful, skeptical self by the unrestrained creativity I heard on this album… when I finished listening, I simply shook my head in disbelief for minutes, with no words to do it justice. I moved right to the computer to put an ad on Craigslist to start an experimental band. I’ve gotten six replies in less than a day. I’m genuinely looking into this one guy who is into programming and electronics… sounds very promising. CL and this guy couldn’t have made it easier for me to step outside of my comfort zone. I hope for the best.
I don’t necessarily know my voice in my music yet, but damn, I am going to find it.
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