Songwriting Again

Inspiration

2012-02-12T18:08:00.001-06:00

Hey followers whom I have let down.

Sorry.

Please excuse my absence. Life again.

I know you're probably waiting on the edge of your seat for the return of The Walking Dead, but let me pull on your coat a second.

I just want to hip you to some kick ass records that came out in the last month that you need to purchase. NOW.

First, Hello Cruel World by Gretchen Peters.

Second, Long Ride Home by Darrell Scott.

Also, I was recently turned on to the poet KIm Addonizio. You should go get some of her stuff. I'm really enjoying her book about writing poetry: Ordinary Genius: A Guide For The Poet Within. Get it. Learn it. Become Disciplined.

That's all.

This....Two Months:

The two albums mentioned above...obviously.

Got a job finally...that takes some of the pressure off....beats waiting for JG...

My son's Chirstmas bike was stolen. People are assholes.

Still repairing that Gibson LG-2.

Haven't written much...but the ordinary genius book is inspiring me to get off my ass again.

In Defense of the Blues

2011-11-27T16:07:00.001-06:00

Hey there 7 followers....long time no type....again.

...yeah...

Sorry bout that....life...you know?

Anyway, I've been thinking about the usual: what it means to devote our life to music in an economy that has largely made music have almost NO monetary value.....but I think I've talked about that enough lately....so I started thinking about something Townes said. He said “There are only two kinds of music in the world: the Blues and Zip-a-dee-doo-da.”

So it occurred to me that....I don't really LIKE happy, positive songs. I know. I sort of gravitate towards the real...things that are sad and melancholy have more resonance to me...The Truth of Suffering is
more apparent to me than pretending everything is ok.

Thats probably part of the reason that I drift to poets like Bukowski...there is always unvarnished REALITY hidden in the lack of structure and simple language...and there is no bullshit.

Which basically gets to the crux of why positive songs annoy me: there is something inauthentic about singing about how great things are...something that fails to come to grips with the “full catastrophe.” Typically, when I come across these songs on the radio or something....it strikes me as pablum. I mean, the last thing I want when I feel like my life is falling apart is a song telling me how great everything is
and how things have turned the corner. That just shows me how out of touch people can be.

Maybe a parallel can be drawn to comedy. Comedy works best when the comedian is outside the
power structure and speaking truth to those inside that power structure....when those that are IN power try to be funny....there is a disconnect between the ability of the person in power to speak TRUTH....so I think that in the same way, when you are writing about how great your life is, when the VAST majority of other humans on the earth CANNOT relate....you are doing them a disservice...

This Week

Darrell Scott
Tom Rush
Danny Malone
Jeff Black--he has a new album "Plow Through the Mystic" --GET IT

Oh! Guess what? I finally finished the Mysterious Recording Project. You can find it on iTunes! Search for Rachel Rea!

And, as always, you can still buy Jodi Ann's Album, "A Brief Moment in Time" from her at jodiann.bandcamp.com or you can get a physical cd at jodiannfanclub@yahoo.com

I'm going to try to keep a regular schedule again. Fair Warning...:-)

So until next time: write somethin', will ya? (as long as its not a disingenuous positive song....write some blues...)

Errata

2011-10-31T13:10:00.002-05:00

Hey there followers.

Long time no type.

Just a quick one this week: do yourself a favor and go read this review of the Lou Reed/Metallica collaboration: Injustice For All

He has a great deal to say about the current state of the music industry in this review. It's very good.

This Week

Almost finished with the mysterious recording project. Listened to some of the stuff I recorded a few years ago, thought I could do better now, and started remixing some of it.

David Wilcox
Josh Woodward
Waylon
They Might Be Giants

Happy Irish New Year.

....we are witnessing the end of Metallica....

Crossroads

2011-10-19T11:49:00.002-05:00

Hey all!

Hope everything is going according to plan this week.

This one's gonna be short and way late.

This post is going to be another short one, just some thoughts that occurred to me after having been to a publisher pitch session this last week.

If you're in Nashville, you probably should try to make it to Jason Blume's free workshops at BMI. They're free, you just might learn something, and every month there is a publisher pitch.

This week I went to one of his publisher pitches. It was interesting. The publisher was Nathan Nicholson. He was honest and up front and told us that he was looking for contemporary country songs for male singers. He also told us that he probably wasn't going to take anything with him unless it was BETTER than what was currently on the radio. He listened to every song, most of the time saying things like, "I just don't think I could get it recorded." Or "Not that it's a bad song, I just think I'd have a hard time getting it cut."

Sometimes there would be a really great song, but not "contemporary enough." In other words, maybe the song would sound like it was from the early 90's and therefore be out of place in today's contemporary country market. And then I started thinking: everybody that I like, and I'm talking about Guy Clark, James McMurtry, Lyle Lovett, Hayes Carll, Dylan, John Prine, Joni Mitchell--I don't think any of them would be able to get a publishing deal today.

So here's what I arrived at: I think everyone comes to this point in their songwriting development where they have to either take the fork in the road that heads to Commercial writing, for money, for the business of it....or take the other fork...that leads to Art...and truth....

So which one are you? Which fork are you going to take?

Sorry this is so late, but hey, there's some life that's gotta happen in the midst of all this.

This Week

Jeff Black
Hayes Carll

....yeah I realize it's a false dichotomy. You can probably do both...but it seems like all the songwriters I admire have chosen to eschew the commercial game for something more transcendent.

write somethin' will ya?

Slipperman's 10 Commandments of AE Beatdown

2011-10-10T08:52:00.001-05:00

If you have done a bit of audio engineering, you may have come across a huge amount of discussion fora on the subject. Most are full of people that talk as if they have a clue, but actually do not. There is one shining exception: the World Of Media Boards, or the "Womb." If you haven't checked them out, by all means do so. Here's the Link: www.thewombforums.com. They were started by a guy using the nomme du plume, "Mixerman," to disseminate ACTUAL knowledge from ACTUAL PROS about how audio engineering ACTUALLY happens in REAL LIFE. Mixerman recruited some of his Audio Engineering colleagues that were fed up with the normal trolling and flame war BS that typically happens in fora.

One of these colleagues is a guy whose handle is "Slipperman." He has a huge amount of experience running a high client recording studio on the outskirts of NYC, and on the WOMB, you will find his amazing narratives about Audio Engineering as a Life Pursuit, and his hilarious take on the way the music business is crumbling. He has a huge treatise in which he goes over his methodology for recording LOUD, HEAVY, DISTORTED GUITARS and he also has several podcast-sized audio files in which you can hear him go off about things in highly entertaining ways.

I was reading through various posts one day, and I came across this piece of Slipperman wisdom that has stayed with me...and although it is titled "Slipperman's 10 Commandments of AE Beatdown," I think it applies to ANYONE in the music industry IN ANY CAPACITY. Enjoy.

Slipperman’s 10 Commandments of AE Beatdown

1.) Expect nothing other than a long litany of suffering. You’ll be less disappointed. In fact, soon you’ll learn to LOVE the suffering, and will become, for all intents and purposes, indestructible.

2.) Attach some sort of price to EVERYTHING. Things that don’t have a price attached to them are usually perceived as worthless, no matter what their ACTUAL value is. It’s human nature.

3.) Realize that, with the best of intentions, the nicest people in the world will hurl you under the bus if they have something/someone else who holds more REAL(usually $$$) sway over them. Get over it. Get used to it. Cover yourself accordingly and feel no guilt for doing so.

4.) Assume the worst at all times... then multiply that by 3.

5.) Expect that, when the brass tacks are down, your worthy competition, often posing as good friends... are going WILDLY out of their way to shit talk you and your work. Ignore it and refuse to return the favor. Let your work do the talking. You will suffer IMMENSELY in the short run for doing this. Refer back to 1.) and 3.).

6.) In the words of the immortal Rev. Billy Milano: “If yer doing me a favor... you’re NOT doing me a favor”.

7.) Stop expecting to like your own work in the long run. If it ever happens, be very concerned, it usually means you’ve peaked, and worse yet... yer probably in decline.

8.) Everything matters. Everything. HOW MUCH it matters, and what you do with that hard earned knowledge is what separates you from the rabble.

9.) Everybody knows a little bit of something. We’re all pretty silly and small in the face of God. It’s a good thing. Your failures, and HOW YOU DEAL WITH THEM DEFINE YOU. Nobody ever learned SHIT from THEIR OWN successes. Resist the impulse to examine them... they are nothing but smoke and mirrors. In the same respect... Feel free to make as many mistakes as you like. It’s all about graceful recoveries and a steadfast determination to not make the same mistakes again.

And finally, and MOST IMPORTANTLY:

10.) Accept all the above and refuse to let it alter your basic love for the craft and your desire to better yourself and your works. The fricative elixirs that surround you in the course of doing this as a LIFE PURSUIT will either be allowed to pool around you and EAT YOU AWAY as a corrosive agent... or you will learn to BURN THEM AS FUEL. It’s your choice. There are no victims who didn’t cast themselves in the role, knowingly or unknowingly.

Pretty great.

...and I think it can be applied to be many more things than just music....just a nice set of life lessons.

This Week

This week, I've started mixing the mysterious recording project, but I think I have one more guitar solo to record.

I am also almost finished recording the song I wrote last week, and I have another cool idea...but it's a funk tune....so I get to pretend I'm James Brown....

...we are witnessing the end of Metallica...expect it....

Write somethin' will ya?

Music Theory: Part Six! (The Last)

2011-10-02T23:11:00.000-05:00

Hey there seven followers, I hope the week has proven to be productive and song inducing....

Let's get right into the final post in the Nashville Number System/Music Theory Introduction Series:

The Last Page

The last page is so unbelievably simple, I don't think I even need to scan it and upload it. Here it is in its entirety: 1 6- 5 4 repeat until the fade out. Since you've been keeping up, I'm sure you've figured out by now that in this key, D Major, that progression is D Major, B Minor, A Major, G Major. Repeat ad infinitum, or until the drummer passes out....

How about in Bb Major? Bb Major, G Minor, F Major, Eb Major.

Simple, right? I invite you to try to make some number charts of your songs as you write them--it's funny--sometimes, even in GoogleDocs, I write out a number chart in the margin, so i can link the progression with the song, so i'm able to remember it for later.

Nobody guessed, what this song is. Surely you've heard it. I KNOW at least three of you have heard it. Anyway, I'll tell you what it is...in bit...

Why are we doing this to ourselves again?

So again: Why it it useful to learn the Nashville Number System? I think there are several reasons to do this to yourself.

First, it will allow you to write charts that Nashville Session Musicians will understand. Even if you aren't in Nashville, competent session players at least have a cursory understanding of the number system.

Second, the number system sort of bypasses the fear of sight reading that most musicians have. It allows the player to be creative within the context of the groove and the chord, without having to adhere rigidly to the written notes.

Third, it allows for quick and relatively painless transposition. Let's say you're Don Felder, and you just wrote and recorded a demo of this great chord progression on the guitar in E Minor. So you bring it to Don Henley, and he takes the demo tape home over the weekend and writes some lyrics and a melody to this progression you've written. When you reconvene in the studio on Monday, Don tells you he finished the song, but he has changed the key. Acting like it's no big deal, you ask Don what key this new song is in, assuming he has changed the key by one whole step at most. Don replies, "B Minor."
THAT'S A FIFTH HIGHER!!! Now you have a BIG problem, if you have already written charts in standard notation. either you have all the players look at the chart as you have written it, in E Minor, and THINK "B Minor," or you re-write the chart, causing you to waste time and money in the studio. With the Nashville Number System (and some session players that are familiar with it), the player would just make the adjustments mentally, and you're off! "Hotel California" is recorded with no new charts having to be written, and the players don't have to perform the odd mental gymnastics required when you are LOOKING at an F#, but THINKING C# (get it? a fifth higher).

Fourth, everybody gets the same chart. Since everybody is sort of improvising their own parts within the confines of the song structure, the key, and the groove, there is no need for SPECIFIC charts. We're going to TRUST THE MUSICIANS.....I know, but it's just a song, it's not like they are going to date your daughter....

So there.

This Week

Wrote a new song, completed the recording of the background vocals for the ever enigmatic recording project.

Need to play out more. There's a weird dynamic when you play things only for people you know. If they're your friends, they tell you the song is good even if it sucks. Even if you play songs for someone you don't know, and it's one on one, they are most likely uncomfortable criticizing you to your face. When you are playing for a group, you can usually tell whether or not your song is ok by their applause. Then, if no one approaches you afterward to compliment your song, you know you have a dog....but if they do approach you after you're finished playing and compliment your songs...you might be on to something. Just saying. Maybe you should make that your goal when you start to write; "Man, this time, when I play this song at the Joe Blotz's Terrible Open Mic Night, people are gonna come tell me how much they like it."

No....don't do that. Write the absolute best song you can that comes from an authentic emotional place, with detail and imagery that exemplifies the emotional sentiment of your song, and don't settle for anything less than the BEST you can pull from yourself.

Hayes Carll
Will Hoge
Jeff Black
Justin Townes Earle
Then there's this song on John Denver's "Aerie" that I keep going back to....it's called "She Won't Let Me Fly Away" the groove is better than it has any right to be on a John Denver record...

Oh!

it's "A Little Bit Stronger" by Sara Evans, but you probably figured that out, right? Go buy it. Play along with it.

Write somethin' will ya?

See ya next week.

Music Theory: Part 5

2011-09-25T18:09:00.001-05:00

Hey there seven followers!

I hope everything continues to go well with you out there in internet land.

Page 2

This week, we're going to wrap up the strangeness that is the Nashville Number System. We have covered the first page of our chart, and I hope you went through it in both D and Bb, so you could get the hang of transposition. Now it's time to move to the second page, where we will find new things to confound us. Have a look:

As you can see, there are a few new elements that require some explanation. We can see that the first twelve bars of the "Chorus 2" section are almost identical to the first chorus. We encounter a different chord in bar twelve: in Chorus 1, this chord is 4, or G Major in this key, and here in chorus 2, the chord is 6-, or B Minor in this key. The next three bars are sort of a transition to the bridge, complete with specific rhythmic notation. All pretty straight forward.

Flats and Diamonds

The bridge, as I continue to maintain, is the part of the song where the TRUTH of the song, or the MAIN THEME is revealed. Also, since it is a new section, it should do things harmonically or melodically--or both, to differentiate it from the other sections of the song. This Bridge does all of those things...and leads to a Broken Down version of the chorus, where the listener is forced to listen to the words and sentiment of the section.

So let's take the Bridge bar by bar, shall we? The first three chords we have seen before: 4 (G Major in this key), 5 (A Major in this key), and 6- (B Minor in this key). The last two bars of the Bridge is where we are introduced to our new elements. These bars contain the b7 Chord. This chord is a "borrowed" chord, because it is borrowed from a key outside of the one this song is written in. In this case, this chord is borrowed from the key of G, but thankfully, we don't really have to know that to play through this chart. all we have to know is where the seventh of this key normally is--and in this case you should know that the seventh of the key of D Major is C#. So for a b7 chord, we simply lower the seventh one half step, to C, and play a major chord based on that note. So in our example, when we see the b7 chord, we know to play a C Major chord. It should also be noted with some makers of charts, this chord may be written as 7b...but...I went to Berklee...so I never refer to that chord as "Seven Flat," but always "Flat Seven."

So what do these diamonds mean? The diamonds are basically tied whole notes that the whole band stops on in unison. So we're going to hit the chord and hold it for eight beats. So after leaving us suspended in mid-air at the end of the Bridge, we land at Chorus 3...softly...with stripped-down instrumentation.

Chorus 3

So Chorus 3 in our example breaks down to just a few instruments: mandolin and maybe a pedal steel guitar playing a pad-type figure. You'll notice that there are more chords in this chorus...probably to provide contrast and give this chorus a feeling of forward motion...impelling it to the end.

There are lots of split chords in this section, with the 1/3s leading both towards and away from the 4 chord. Again, this section ends with a diamond over 4...telling us that the band is holding that chord for the full four beats.

So, again, try to play this page not only in D, but also in Bb. See if you can make it through. Next week, we'll look at the final section of this song, which is on page 3. and then I'll tell you what the song is, so you can buy it and play along!

This Week

This week, I've been listening more. I've also been comping, editing, and tweaking vocals on the mysterious recording project...also doing a little bit of mix prep, trying to make some notes about how I want it all to fall together.

Jamey Johnson
Hayes Carll
Justin Townes Earle
Pink Floyd
Symphony of Science

And again, you really should buy Jodi Ann's Album, "A Brief Moment In Time." You can download it at jodiann.bandcamp.com or email her here jodiannfanclub@yahoo.com for a physical CD.

How long until we have self-repairing cars?

Talk to you next week.

Write somethin' will ya?

Music Theory: Part 4

2011-09-19T13:53:00.002-05:00

Hey there seven followers!

I hope all continues to be well with you.

Last week, we went over the Nashville Number System in a basic way, using this chart:

...and I gave you an assignment: to try to play through Verse 1 in D Major, which is the key indicated by the chart, and in Bb Major. Do you do it? I hope so, it will make going to the studio and writing out your music easier, and probably save you some expensive studio time.

If you were ambitious, maybe you read ahead and looked at the "Chorus 1" section, and discovered there was something in there that requires further explanation. Let's check it out:

The Chorus and Inversions

The first six measures are pretty straightforward, no huge surprises here:

The Chorus starts with the "4" chord, so in the key of D Major, this is a G Major chord. This G Major also lasts through the first three beats of the second measure. The last beat of the second measure is a "5" chord, so in the key of D Major, this is an A Major chord, and from the rhythmic notation above this measure, we are told that we play this chord for the SPECIFIC duration of one quarter note.

In the third measure of the Chorus, we are going to play a "6-" chord, which in the key of D Major is a B Minor chord. The B Minor lasts for the whole measure. The fourth measure returns to the "5" chord, or the A Major, for the first three beats, followed by the "1" Chord, or, D Major (obviously) for the SPECIFIC duration of one quarter note.

The fifth and sixth measure are easy, two bars of "4", or G Major again. The seventh measure contains the chord that demands explanation. The first two beats are simple--the "1" chord, or D Major again. The last two beats of this chord look like a fraction: "5/7." This is called a "split" chord, and the way you say the name of this chord in Nashville is "Five split Seven." So what does that mean? To answer that, we have to talk about Chord Inversions.

Inversions

Normally, when we write out chords on the staff for theory purposes, we write them in a form that is called "Close Voiced Root Position." This means that the notes of the chord are stacked on top of each other in order with the root, that is, the note that the chord is named after, on the bottom. In the key of C, from low to high, this would be spelled C E G or Numerically, 1 3 5. There are two other ways to organize these notes, in a close way. if you simply move the bottom note up an octave, the spelling of the chord becomes E G C, or numerically 3 5 1. This chord is said to be a "1st Inversion Close Voiced C Major Chord." If you take this 1st Inversion C Major chord, and again take the note on the bottom and move it up an octave, the spelling of the chord becomes G C E, or numerically, 5 1 3. This chord, with the 5 on the bottom , is said to be a "2nd Inversion Close Voiced C Major Chord." Here's how the three different inversions of a C Major chord look in the Staff:

In the Nashville Number System, the chord is assumed to have its root in the bass, unless otherwise notated...and the way they notate that is with "Split Notation." So here are the chords again, this time with their Nashville Number System Notation:

So the "1" is assumed to have its root in the bass. "1/3" is a "1" chord with the "3" of the scale (in this case "E") in the bass. "1/5" is a "1" chord with the "5" note of the scale in the bass. Pretty simple, right?

Let's move on to the chord and inversion in question in this particular chart. Since there are also 3 notes in the "5" chord, there are also 3 ways to spell it. If we spell the Close Voiced Root Position 5 Chord in the key of C, it is a G Major spelled G B D, or numerically, 5 7 2. When the root of this chord is moved up an octave, we get a 1st Inversion Close Voiced 5 Chord, spelled B D G, or numerically, 7 2 5. When that 1st Inversions lowest note is also moved up an octave, we get a 2nd Inversion Close Voiced 5 Chord, spelled D G B , or numerically, 2 5 7. Here's how they all look in the staff, relative to the key of C Major:

So in the Notation of the Nashville Number System, these inversions look like this:

So a "5" chord is assumed to have its root in the bass, the "5/7" chord is a "5" chord with the "7" of the KEY (in this case the key of C major). So the 7th note of C Major is "B." Therefore, the "5/7" chord in the key of C is a G chord with a "B" in the bass. Similarly, the "5/2" is a 5 chord in the key of C, or G Major, with the "2" of the Key, or "D" in the Bass.

Let's apply this to the chart:

Since our example chart is in the key of D, the "5/7" is the "5" chord, or A Major, with the 7th note of the KEY, or C# in the bass, so a "5/7" chord is a 1st inversion A Major chord. Mystery Chord Demystified.... albeit in a long-winded way.

So in this case, the seventh and eighth measures, when translated from Nashville Number System to normal chord notation, becomes this:

D A/C# Bm A

...and the rest of the Chorus is pretty straightforward. Try it. Try it in Bb. Try it in A. Try it in G.

Next week, we'll wrap it up and go over some more examples of how the Number System handles things like Stop Time and more specific rhythms.

This Week

I apologize for posting this late, but my son had to get 3 stitches in his foot last night because he stepped on some glass....yikes!

Still working on the recording project, got vocals recorded this week, just have a bunch of editing to do.

Just got an awesomely MESSED up Gibson LG-01 from the 50's, for 75 bucks....now I have a new extra time consuming project!!

Not much listening again.

See ya next week...

Again, please go to jodiann.bandcamp.com and download Jodi Ann's latest album "A Brief Moment In Time."

Write somethin, will ya?

.....still no guesses about what this tune is?

heh

Music Theory: Part 3

2011-09-11T14:12:00.001-05:00

Hey there seven followers (and stealthier types)!

I hope all is well with you.

I think this week we'll get to the point, finally!

Last week, we went over the construction of chords and the four basic types of triads. To quickly review:

1. Triads are built from two stacked thirds.

2. The Four basic triads are Major, Minor, Diminished, Augmented.

3. A Major Triad is built by stacking a Minor Third on top of a Major Third.

4. A Minor Triad is built by stacking a Major Third on to of a Minor Third.

5. A Diminished Triad is built by stacking Minor Third on top of a Minor Third.

6. An Augmented Triad is built by stacking a Major Third on top of a Major Third.

Harmonizing the Major Scale

If we were to take our old familiar C Major Scale:

...and build triads based in each degree of the scale, here's what we get:

In the above graphic, triads with an "M" above them are Major, triads with an "m" above them are Minor, and the lone triad with a "D" above it is diminished. Explicitly, these triads are as follows: C Major, D Minor, E Minor, F Major, G Major, A Minor, B Diminished, and then C Major again.

So, you may be asking yourself, why isn't the triad based on D a Major triad?

The answer is that we are constraining ourselves to notes only found in a C Major Scale. When you build a triad on the second degree of the C Major Scale, you have the notes D F A. From the previous blog posts in this series, you will recognize that the interval from D to F is a MINOR Third, that is, one and one-half steps. The interval from F to A is a MAJOR Third, or two whole steps. When a Major Third is stacked on top of a Minor Third, a MINOR triad is constructed:

When we analyze all the rest of the triads in the harmonized major scale, we notice similar things. I'll leave you to do that for yourself for E through A, they are either major or minor. For the triad built on B, we have a MINOR Third (F-D) stacked upon another MINOR Third (B-D): a Diminished Triad.

The Beginnings of the Number System

For centuries, Composers of Western music have attempted to define the sound of the Harmonized Major Scale by creating a numerical shorthand. They basically took the NUMBER of the degree of the scale upon which the chord was built, and paired that number with the QUALITY of the triad built upon it. In order to make this as easy as possible, they used CAPITAL Roman Numerals to represent the MAJOR triads, and LOWER CASE Roman Numerals to represent the MINOR triads.

Like This:

You notice the odd man out: the B Diminished Triad has the "vii" lower case Roman Numeral symbol, with a small "o" to signify the DIMINISHED quality.

The cool thing about this method of notation is that transposition becomes easy, as long as you are intimately familiar with the Major Scale.

Here's what I mean: as long as you have memorized the notes at every degree of the major scale, in all twelve keys, you are able to tell that the progression I vi ii V I goes like this in the following keys:

C: C Am Dm G C

Bb: Bb Gm Cm F Bb

F#: F# D#m G#m C# F#

This ease of transposition is what made session players in Nashville simplify this old classical shorthand and modify it to suit their unique needs.

So here goes:

The Nashville Number System

So Nashville session musicians use the same Numerical VALUES, but they use the ARABIC Numerals that we all use on a daily basis to notate the values. Also, they thought that is was easier to assume that the chord was Major, unless explicitly defined. That means that in the key of C, using the NNS, 1 is C Major, 2 is D Major, 3 is E Major, and so on, unless the chord is designated 3min, or 3-...then the chord, in C major, would be E Minor.

So the same I vi ii V I progression from above looks like this in the Nashville Number System:

1 6- 2- 5 1

Those are really the basics, let's see they look in a practical application:

Check out this chart:

Let's examine it piece by piece.

First, look at the upper right hand corner. In this chart, the upper right hand corner is telling us that the song is in the key of D and that the tempo is 90BPM. If there is no time signature designation, it is assumed that we are in 4/4 time. Notice that the sections have been clearly labeled. For now, let's confine ourselves to the Intro and Verse 1.

Intro

You only see two numbers in the intro, 1 and 4. In the Key of D Major, 1 would be a D Major Chord, an 4 would be a G Major Chord. In the Nashville Number System, the DURATION of the chord is assumed to be one entire measure, unless otherwise notated. So there we have it: one bar of D, one bar of G. So what about the ACTUAL RHYTHMIC FIGURE that this player is going to be playing?....well....that's up to the player....and that's kind of the beauty of the Nashville Number System: the player is allowed the freedom to create their own part, as long as it is within the constraints of the chart.

Verse 1

For Verse 1, we are introduced to a few new things. The chords are fairly straightforward, in the Key of D we have 1 (D Major), 6- (B Minor), 5 (A Major), and 4 (G Major). This section of the chart answers the question, "What happens if there is more than one chord in a measure?' This chart handles it this way: if there is more than one chord in a measure, that measure is bracketed by vertical bar lines : |.

Normally, if no specific rhythm is notated, is is assumed that, in 4/4, we are dividing the bar in half equally, so if there are two chords in the bar, we're talking two beats per chord. In the fourth bar of our example, however, we are given some rhythmic cues. Notice the slash notation above the fourth bar: we are given 3 slashes with no flags, followed by a flagged slash. This means that for the first three beats of this measure, you play the 4 chord (G Major), with whatever rhythm you're feeling, until the fourth beat, at which point, we play the 5 chord (A Major) with the SPECIFIC RHYTHM of a quarter note.

One more thing about the first verse: there are repeat brackets around the first six bars of the verse. Naturally, you would repeat these bars before moving on to the last two bars.

Try it. Try to play the intro and the first verse in the designated key, then try to play it in Bb Major.

We'll get through the next few pieces of this chart next week. Feel free to look over it, try to play it in various keys, but be mindful that there are a few "Gotcha" moments that I will explain in detail next time.

Bonus Points if you can figure out what song this is...it's a release by a major country recording artist.

This Week

This week, I've been recording guitars, trying to finish a song, new weird G4 Mac, that I installed Debian on....now if I could just get that pesky WiFi to work....and it's really difficult to find a modern browser that works on the PPC architecture...

Again, you need to buy Jodi Ann's latest release "A Brief Moment In Time." Download it here: jodiann.bandcamp.com or get the physical CD from me, by commenting here!

I think podcast is immanent, I just have a few things to worry about before that...like trying to eat, and feed my family and stuff like that, but stay tuned!

Not much listening this week, unfortunately.

Write something will ya?

Music Theory: Part 2

2011-09-04T16:42:00.001-05:00

Hey there SEVEN followers!

Hope all went well last week. Where was I?

Oh yeah...we just got through learning how to construct the Major Scale, and we're about to get into intervals and chords.

Here goes:

Intervals

When we build our Major Scale, each step of the scale has a particular name, and over the last 400 years or so, we have sort of arrived at a naming convention that is closely tied to the sound of this scale. Each step of this particular scale is named a MAJOR or PERFECT something.

In order, they go like this: Perfect Unison (the identical note played at the same time), Major Second, Major Third, Perfect Fourth, Perfect Fifth, Major Sixth, Major Seventh, Perfect Octave.

The thing about intervals is that they can be played MELODICALLY, that is, one tone after the other; or HARMONICALLY, both tones played simultaneously.

Here is what the intervals of the major scale look like when played Harmonically in the staff:

All these intervals have specific definitions, in terms of space between the notes. A Major Second, as an example, is defined as being an interval separated by one whole step, or two semi-tones. So, by definition, the note D is one whole step away from the note C. Another way to say that is to say that
D is a Major Second away from C. ANYTHING that is two semi-tones away from a particular note is said to be a Major Second away.

Here are some examples of Major Seconds based on several different notes:

Similarly, Major Thirds have a specific definition. Major Thirds are two notes separated by two whole steps, or four semi-tones. Here are a few examples of Major Thirds:

I won't bore you with the definitions of all the other major intervals, but I will refer you to wikipedia, as it is an excellent reference for all kinds of musical terms. Start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_interval

All of these base intervals can be manipulated in several ways, making the interval sound different and be called something different.

For example, any of the intervals, labelled "Major" can be flattened by one-half step, making them "Minor" and changing their sound accordingly. So, if you take a Major Second and lower it by a half-step, you get a Minor Second:

If you take a Major Third and lower it by a half-step, you get a Minor Third:

The "Perfect" intervals can also be manipulated. Each of the Perfect Intervals can be flattened by one half-step, causing them to be called "Diminished." Or you can sharpen the Perfect intervals, causing them to be called "Augmented."

Triads

For lots of reasons, Western Music and Western Harmony have evolved to use Triads as their basic building blocks. Basically, a triad is two Thirds stacked on top of each other. This means that there are four possibilities for stacking Thirds:

1. You can have a Major Third on the bottom, with a Minor Third stacked on top, Like this:

...and for reasons that are not altogether clear, we have come to label this type of triad a "Major Triad" or a "Major Chord."

2. You can have a Minor Third on the bottom, with a Major Third stacked on top, Like this:

...and for reasons that are not altogether clear, we have come to label this type of triad a "Minor Triad" or a "Minor Chord."

3. You can have a Minor Third on the bottom, with a Minor Third stacked on top, Like this:

...and for reasons that are slightly clearer, we have come to label this type of triad a "Diminished Triad."

4. You can have a Major Third on the bottom, with a Major Third stacked on top, Like this:

...and for reasons that are slightly clearer, we have come to label this type of triad an "Augmented Triad."

...And I think we'll stop there for this week...seems like a good place.

Next week, we'll actually get to the point of all this: the harmonization of the major scale and the Nashville Number System.

This Week:

I have been working on the production project and some new songs.

spotify.com

kentblazy.com

gretchenpeters.com

briannutter.com
...seriously, download "Red Sundress" it'll either inspire you or make you give up...

Podcast on the horizon...stay tuned....

How does it sound now?

Write something, will ya?

See ya next week!

Music Theory: An Introduction

2011-08-29T00:05:00.000-05:00

Hey SIX followers!

Hope you're doing well this week.

This week, we're going to start a basic theory series, hopefully, at the end of this series, we will understand how the Nashville Number System. In order to learn about the Number System, you are assumed to have a basic knowledge of the mechanics of music theory. If you already know this stuff, just bear with me this week, so we can have a common foundation from which to build. So let's start from the beginning, shall we?

The Staff

In order know about theory, we need to know about the way music has been written and thought about for about the last 400 years. Music is written on a staff of five lines and four spaces, usually with one of three clefs. Since I am a guitar player, I will speak about the "G" Clef, or "Treble Clef."

The G Clef is so called because the circular flourish at the end of the Clef Symbol surrounds the second line, which is where the note "G" is located. It looks like this:

If G is on the second line, the notes fall on the lines of the staff like this:

Usually people use some kind of mnemonic device to remember these when they are first using them, like "Every Good Boy Does Fine" or "Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge."

If those are the lines on the treble clef, the spaces look like this:

It's pretty easy to remember these notes, as they spell "FACE" from bottom to top.

These are all the natural note names of all the positions on the staff. Usually, though, composers need to extend the staff to positions outside the range of the staff. For this, they use "Ledger Lines."

Here are some examples of ledger lines that are being used to place notes beyond the range of the staff:

Accidentals

Also, if you know much about music, you know that there are not only seven notes in any octave, there are twelve. The notes shown above represent "natural" notes, that is, notes that have no "accidentals" or sharps and flats in front of them. A flat, which looks vaguely like a lower case "b," lowers a note by one half step, while a sharp, which looks like a "pound" sign ( #) raises a note one half step.

The Major Scale

Ok. Composers noticed that when you played the noted of the staff from low to high, it sounded a certain way. This is an arrangement called a "scale" and for about 400 years, this has been the basic building block of all western music. The scale used most in western music is called the major scale, and it is always arranged in a certain way. Here is a major scale built off of C:

When you play this scale, you should recognize the familiar " Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do" sound. This scale sounds that way because of the arrangement of the whole and half steps between each note. When we examine the arrangement of the whole and half steps between each degree of the scale, here is what we get:

So: whole step between C and D, whole step between D and E, half step between E and F, whole step between F and G, whole step between G and A, whole step between A and B, and half step between B and C.

With this formula, we can build a major scale off of any note, like A-flat:

...and I think that may be enough for this week, Next time, we'll talk about intervals, and triads, most likely.

This Week:

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

The 4 Hour Work Week

buildyourcnc.com

hackerconsortium.com

brianstephens.com

stevemoakler.com

Still working on the production project, got a cool new song in the works....

Remember, you can still get her latest album, "A Brief Moment In Time" by downloading it from

jodiann.bandcamp.com or, if you prefer a physical CD, and all of its inherent rights, you can email her at: jodiannfanclub@yahoo.com.

Have fun!

Write Something, will ya?

Random Thoughts

2011-08-22T00:49:00.000-05:00

Hey all!

I hope the last week treated you well.

This week is just going to be a sort of clearing of my mind of all the disparate thoughts about songwriting that have been accumulating as of late.

The first among them is this: are we at the beginning of an era in which songwriting becomes something like poetry. That is, something with which you can't really make a decent living. You remember my previous post about the Poetry Home Repair Manual, by Ted Kooser? Mr. Kooser made it absolutely clear that you need to write poetry to WRITE POETRY, with no expectation of being able to support yourself writing poems. I think we might be at that same place with songwriting.

The overwhelming majority of us are going to be writing songs for no reward other than the advancement of your own skill set.

That being said, unlike the majority of poetry, songs do not exist in a vacuum. For there to be a song, an audience is kind of a requirement. Writing songs for yourself is a sort of empty exercise. Unlike most poetry (obvious exceptions are poetry slams and their relatives), songwriting is expected to be a PERFORMANCE art. So, if you're a songwriter and reading this blog, you should be finding someplace to play. If there are no open mic nights where you live, MAKE ONE! Create your own community. Create your own opportunities. People need to hear your songs. New people. Not just your friends and family.

I guess that's the theme--make your opportunity. I've been reading, or rather, listening to The Four Hour Workweek, so I've been thinking about how I can make songwriting a viable and money making enterprise, so I've been thinking of ways to make my own community...ugh...that sounds like a Jim Jones kind of a thing...have no fear...I'm just trying to think of ways to get critiques without having to PAY some ORGANIZATION to do it. The community I'm wanting to emulate is the Nashville Songwriting community of the early and middle 1970's. In that community you had Guy Clark, Rodney Crowell, Townes VanZandt, Steve Earle, John Hiatt, Steve Young, and more. They would play songs for each other, and they would critique each other, and basically bring up the total quality of the aggregate. That's the kind of community I want to have. It seems like in recent years, NSAI, TSAI, and the Songwriter's Guild have taken the place of that kind of community. It's sad in a way, but I really want to cultivate a community that values good songs and camaraderie without having to pay dues, or pay for song critiques.....

Ok. That's enough ranting. I've noticed that I have been focusing on lyric writing lately, so I think I'll do a series in the coming weeks on basic music theory as it relates to songwriting, with a discussion somewhere in there about the Nashville Number System.

This Week:

This week I finished my song for this local contest, and it should be in the player in the upper right hand corner. It's called "On My Way Back." We'll see.

Also, I (sort of ) finished my super cheap telecaster body. It looks like this:

...more of an Esquire, really....but it sounds GOOD! (and that's the neck from my other Telecaster BTW, so it really needs one...and a pickguard...and a jack cup...donate please ;-)

Also, congrats to Jodi Ann for achieving her Sell-A-Band goal! WooHoo!

Remember, you can still bet her latest album, "A Brief Moment In Time" by downloading it from
jodiann.bandcamp.com or, if you prefer a physical CD, and all of its inherent rights, you can email her at: jodiannfanclub@yahoo.com.

Happy Birthday Mom. I love you!

Measuring is for children!

Have a good week! Write something, will ya?

The Case For Imperfect Rhyme

2011-08-14T23:16:00.001-05:00

Hey there 5 followers!

Hope all is well with you.

This week, I've been reading more of Jimmy Webb's book on songwriting, Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting. I'm reading it slowly and carefully, because I figure the guy who wrote "The Highwayman" has a lot of stuff to teach me. In my third week, I have reached chapter 3 (I told you I was reading slow). Chapter 3 is titled "It's Only Words," and he walks us through the Jimmy Webb process for crafting a lyric.

He starts with how he decides on a title that's worth writing about. Then he moves to a discussion of how he chooses a theme that best illustrates the sentiment of the title. In short order, he enters into a narrative about the different types of rhyming dictionaries and how to use them. Not long after that, in my opinion, he jumps the shark and starts into a section where he calls the imperfect rhyme a "mistake" and goes on to analyze some of the songs he has written, that in his estimation contain "mistakes." Apparently, Mr. Webb thinks imperfect rhymes are lazy and base, and he considers those that rigidly adhere to perfect rhymes to be True Artists.

I disagree. I'd like to outline why I think imperfect rhymes are perfectly legitimate, and why Jimmy Webb should lighten up.

The Definition of Rhyme

While most dictionaries would define "rhyme" as words that share the same ending sounds, I would define rhyme a little less strictly. I'd say that two words rhyme if their final vowel sound is the same.
This is where we get into tricky territory. Mr. Webb contends that his rhyme

I love you more than want you
and I want you for all time
and the Wichita Lineman
is still on the line

...is a mistake, because he should have come up with a perfect rhyme for "line."

I would argue that it does rhyme, for the following reasons:

1. The words "time" and "line" share the long "i" vowel sound
2. The final consonant sound in each of these words belongs to the "Voiced Nasal Consonant" family of articulation.

I would say that because the vowel sound is the same, and that the ending consonant sound is closely related, they create the impression of a rhyme in the listener....and that's the POINT. You want the words to have the FUNCTION of a rhyme, even if they do not strictly adhere to an archaic definition.

In the same chapter, Mr. Webb rightly tells us to avoid cliche rhymes like the plague, a sentiment I agree with. If we must adhere to his rigid rhyming guidelines, how are we ever going to rhyme "heart" without landing on a cliche?

According to Mr. Webb, this line from Don Schlitz and Paul Overstreet would be frowned upon:

It’s amazing how you can speak right to my heart
Without saying a word you can light up the dark

So, I guess because the perfect rhymes for the word "heart" have been used so much, "heart" is off-limits to serious songwriters for the duration of the life of the universe.

NO! I think most people writing songs today, and making money doing it, are using imperfect rhymes all the time to make their songs better and to avoid the dreaded cliche rhymes.

Rhyming As Cadence

There are other, more calculating reasons to use perfect and imperfect rhymes to advance an over arching feeling in your song.

Perfect rhymes can be used to emphasize a feeling stability, "landing on your feet," if you will.

But sometimes, at the end of a phrase, you don't want the feeling to be stable, you want instability to reign. This is the place for the imperfect rhyme. and the less perfect the rhyme, the more unstable the feeling.

Observe:

The sky was rolling, turning black
you kept the driver from turning back

The sky was rolling, turning black
the waves were crashing on the deck

The perfect rhyme seems more stable to me...the imperfect rhyme seems to magnify the anxiety in the situation.

Try it, see if you can use perfect and imperfect rhyme with INTENT to give the right feelings of stability and instability to your songs.

This Week:

Harry Nilsson
Jimmy Webb
David Wilcox

Also still in the midst of the new recording project!

You should really buy Jodi Ann's latest album, "A Brief Moment in Time." I co-produced, edited, arranged, mixed, and played all the instruments. You can download the digital version here: jodiann.bandcamp.com, or you can email her to purchase a physical cd:
jodiannfanclub@yahoo.com.

....oh, and there's this:

....you could donate so I can afford a neck! ;-)

The Weirdness of DIY

2011-08-07T13:51:00.000-05:00

Hey there 5 followers! Hopefully this post finds you well.

This week, I'm going to ramble on about what the DIY revolution means to music publishing and songwriting.

As traditional publishing gets weirder and tries to retain their "members only" mentality, the Do-It-Yourself path becomes a more and more viable option for the contemporary songwriter...it is not without its dark side, however.

What Traditional Gatekeepers Did

Before computer recording was ubiquitous, if the songwriter wanted to get a professional-sounding recording of their song, they needed to lay down a fairly sizable chunk of cash at their local recording studio. This was a rather high hourly rate that would pay for the tracking room, the audio engineer, the tape and the musicians. To ensure that they would not waste the studio's time or their money, the songwriter, ideally, would have thought about the arrangement, made accurate chord charts, and have attended a few rehearsals to run through the song with the musicians. If you were trying to do ANY of those things during the recording session, you were lighting money on fire.

So there were some barriers to entry for even being able to book the session: you needed to have the song written, arranged, charted and rehearsed, and you had to have the cash to book the session.

Usually, before it got to this point, you would have first played the song for your family and friends (who of course loved it, because they wanted to be supportive, while keeping their TRUE opinions to themselves) and hopefully, you would have played the song for complete strangers and had a good enough response to justify the studio expense.

If you were in one of the "Major Songwriting Markets," it was a little different. Normally you would try to get a meeting with a music publishing company to get some HONEST, professional feedback on the new "Hotel California" you've just written.

If you weren't that great, and you still needed to learn about the craft of writing songs that they might be interested in someday, they would tell you to join NSAI or the Songwriter's Guild, or some other organization that could help you to learn what publishers were actually looking for in songs.

If you showed a glimmer of hope, like maybe you understood how songwriting was supposed to work, but you hadn't written enough songs yet, they would refer you to a performing rights society like BMI, ASCAP, or SESAC, and tell you to go talk to the songwriting liaison there.

If you had written a song that was head and shoulders above everything they had heard in the last week or two, they would offer you a single-song contract and continue your relationship professionally. At this point, they would either record a demo to play for producers and artists, or start pitching the song directly.

So all of those are Gate Keepers. Their job is to weed out the people who aren't ready and only let the obviously talented through to the next step.

There are obvious benefits to doing things this way:

First, you eliminate the junk that is 95% of people trying to make music.

Second, you have a tiered, ladder-style system that can allow the untalented to develop their craft.

Third, songwriters can focus on the thing they SHOULD be focusing on: SONGWRITING. They do not need to be concerned with recording equipment or techniques of mic placement and such. They are able to devote themselves with limited distraction to their craft, and become better by WRITING GOOD SONGS.

But there are also problems. Chief among them is that corporate executive-types become the arbiters of cultural taste. I don't really want business people deciding that "good" is equivalent to "sell-able."

Also, it is entirely possible to discourage those that need encouragement and encourage those that need discouragement....so to speak.

The Do-It-Yourself Revolution

Computers have changed everything about music publishing, except in the rarefied air of major-label recording contracts. Now you can buy recording software for about the same price as it used to cost us to record in a nice recording studio for a few hours. Instead of jumping through the hoops of trying to land a publishing deal or a recording contract, you can spend some time recording in your bedroom and immediately upload your song, EP or "Album" (for lack of a better word) to iTunes.

Legitimately talented artists that are a little too avant-garde for the mainstream record labels can find an audience directly through small tours and nicely designed websites.

But has all this new found freedom come at a cost? While I admit, there has never been a time in the history of the world when it has been easier to self-publish your own music, I don't think that's necessarily a good thing. True, there is more music than ever available for us to consume, but at the same time, it also means that there has never before been as much terrible music to wade through.

And while in the former music business model, the artist was able to concentrate on being an artist, now the creative personality-type has to wear many more hats. Just to compete with the status quo, the independent musician must be the producer, engineer, manager, and booking agent all at the same time. Before, there were people whose job it was to be an Audio Engineer and that was their focus, to make instruments and voices sound good as an aggregate. Now those who can make their living as a dedicated Audio Engineer are becoming fewer and farther between. Same with producers, managers and agents.

In order to be successful, you are going to have to separate yourself from the chaff. So how are you going to rise above the 98% of the junk that is out there?

Here's what I propose: start a songwriting community in your area. get together once a week with other songwriters and critique each other's latest songs. Be nice, but don't pull your punches either. Then write and write and write. Keep improving your craft...focus on writing. Learn what good songs are. Improve your understanding with every song. After you've done that for a while, only record and distribute the ones that are GREAT.

This Week:

I've been trying to figure out what to do with my positive song...I think I need to re-record it at a faster tempo and do a quick re-write to get it closer to what I actually mean...not much time, though, I've got to get it in by the 20th or something.

Kris Kristofferson
Guy Clark
Darrell Scott
Jeff Black

I've also been producing, engineering and playing instruments on a new 5 song recording project!

Stay tuned!

...and if you don't have it yet, you should really buy Jodi Ann's latest album, "A Brief Moment in Time." I co-produced, edited, arranged, mixed, and played all the instruments. You can download the digital version here:jodiann.bandcamp.com, or you can email her to purchase a physical cd:
jodiannfanclub@yahoo.com.

...Masonite Telecaster?

What Fiction Writers Can Teach Us About Songwriting

2011-07-31T14:44:00.001-05:00

Hey there 5 followers (and Others)! I hope this post finds you well.

Recently, I came across the audio of science fiction author Cory Doctorow interviewing fellow science fiction author William Gibson. In fact, you can listen or download the audio from that talk here. At the end of this talk, they open up the floor to questions from the audience. Predictably, someone asks the obligatory "What is your advice for writers that are just starting out?" question. Here's what Gibson says:

Well, I mean, I always go back to this totally annoying advice that Robert A. Heinlein gave, which I still think is the best advice for young writers, and it's that, you know, you have to write, you have to finish what you write, you have to submit what you write for publication. While you're waiting for it to be rejected, you have to write something else. And, you know, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. If you don't keep doing that over and over, nothing will happen.

I thought that was brilliant, so I scoured the web looking for the actual rules that Heinlein wrote, and here they are:

Robert A. Heinlein's Rules For Writing:

You Must Write

Yep. I guess there's no way around it. If you want to be a writer of any kind, you have to write. I guess I would say that you can't be merely interested in writing, you have to be DISCIPLINED about it. You have to make distraction-free writing your priority.

You Must Finish What You Write

It's probably not a song until it's finished. How are you going to play it for anyone unless it is finished? Work on it until it is finished. Again with the discipline.

You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except To Editorial Order

Obviously, I vehemently disagree with this one. I feel that in songwriting specifically, rewriting is what makes the song HAPPEN. I've read commentaries on this particular rule, and they all agree that, a) Heinlein rewrote all the time, and that, b) he was probably talking about INCESSANT rewriters that rewrote and rewrote, never believing their novel to be good enough. I can understand that. Sometimes I have problems calling something finished when there are still things that bother me about it.

You Must Put The Work On The Market

We can tell from our modern vantage point, that Heinlein is in the realm of "Traditional Publishing" from this statement. He's talking about sending your manuscript off to publishers with the hope of landing a publishing deal. I think this is still a way to go, but it may not be for much longer. The analogue in the songwriting universe, is much the same: land publishing meetings so you can play several songs for them, with the hope of landing one of the 7 types of publishing deals.

You Must Keep The Work On The Market Until It Is Sold

Then you collect mountains, great large heaps of rejection letters, until someone finally "gets it" or is tired of being annoyed by your manuscripts littering their mailbox, at which point they offer you a publishing deal. In songwriting, I don't think it works so much like this. It's more like this: the publisher, during those meetings, will most likely hear something in what you wrote that they think is close to something they can sell. They will offer you re-write suggestions and send you on your way. Then it will be up to you: do you rewrite it to please the publisher, or do you shop it unchanged to other publishers? Maybe both...anyway, you keep working until it is sold.

...and though not in Heinlein's original list of rules, most people, including me, agree with Robert J. Sawyer's amendment:

Start Working On Something Else

This one can sometimes feel like juggling, trying to keep as many balls in the air as you can. After you consider your song "done," get on to the next one. Keep up the discipline. Don't give up. Keep moving forward.

This Week:

Still working on my "positive song." I have the form together, and a couple of scratch verses that I feel require a kind of heavy rewrite in order for the verses to "lock in" to the sentiment of the chorus. I recorded the whole song, but upon extensive listening, I feel the tempo needs to be a little faster...back to the drawing board.

David Wilcox
The Amazing Rhythm Aces
Gary Nicholson
The Bridge
Darrell Scott
Kent Blazy

The Black Company

I Should Be Writing

...I think I'm gonna start a podcast....but who would listen?

See ya next week.

Hell on Earth

2011-07-24T08:32:00.001-05:00

Hey there 5 followers!

This week I started re-reading Jimmy Webb's book, TuneSmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting. Here's what he has to say about the difference between professional songwriters and hobbyists:

So what is the primary factor that separates the rejected amateur songwriter from the accepted professional? Probably this: Most amateurs do not regard the writing of songs as serious hard work. Indeed, there are members of my family who believe that worrisome character flaws and much personal ruin have evolved from the fact that I've never had a real job. In reality, however, songwriting is Hell on Earth. If it isn't, you're doing it wrong.

I get what Mr, Webb is trying to say, that most people think songwriting is easy and believe it's not a big deal to put pen to paper and in an afternoon's writing session, come out with something that's not bad. His point, I believe, is that it almost NEVER happens that way. Making an effective song, not to mention one that has what it takes to become a "hit," requires wading chest deep into the refining and rewriting process, which at times, can make a root canal seem like blessed relief.

Even in my fair city, the capital of songwriting, there are people that think they will get cuts by writing songs that are "just fine the way they are." There are still people that believe that songwriting is easy, and that inspiration is enough to build song out of. So yes, they are hobbyists trying this "songwriting" thing out to see if they can cash in quickly...and then there are the rest of us.

We are song geeks. We are obsessed with well-written songs. We hold ourselves to an extremely high standard. We don't let ourselves use cliche rhymes, we rewrite and rewrite and rewrite. We write songs because we are always thinking about them, because we can't stop.

But Hell on Earth? Really? I remember an NPR interview with Randy Newman, where he said something along these lines (I'm paraphrasing from a rusty memory, so take it for what it is): "You know, it's real easy for people in the entertainment industry to whine about how difficult their jobs are, but let's face it: it beats laying pipe."

I think it's sort of like a jigsaw puzzle. There are some people who can walk right past a half-finished jigsaw puzzle that's laying there on the dining room table and never give it a second thought the whole rest of the day. Then there are those that walk into the dining room, look at the puzzle, pick up a few pieces, try to fit them in, maybe even put some of the puzzle together, but they reach a point when they reach their frustration threshold, and they walk away, claiming to have done "enough." Finally, there are those that, upon seeing the puzzle laying there in the table, will not get up until it is finished, or they pass out from exhaustion.

So would jigsaw puzzle people say that being obsessed with finishing a jigsaw puzzle is Hell on Earth? I doubt it. Probably most people would say that because both songwriting and jigsaw puzzle solving are voluntary acts they cannot be Hell on Earth. Whereas, to use Randy Newman's example, there are probably very few people who have an obsession with laying pipe (insert your own joke here). Most people who find themselves doing that job are doing it because they HAVE to (read: because an outside force is MAKING them: an ecomonic force, a matrimonial force, the force of obligation), making it exponentially closer to Hell on Earth.

So to Jimmy Webb, I say, "Relax!!!! You are one of the few to have a career in songwriting!" It may be brain-straining, mentally challenging, frustrating work, but it isn't Hell on Earth.

Write songs because you are internally driven to do so. Not because you think you should, or think you can.

This Week:

I finished my new song! It's probably playing right now! It's called "Checkin' Out." If it isn't playing, click on it in the player at the upper right-hand corner of your screen! Let me know what you think. Both of you.

I'm also having problem with Google right now, as they have pulled my AdSense Account and refunded all of their advertisers their money. Apparently you aren't allowed to tell people to click on their ads...a fact which you will not find explicitly stated in their user agreement. From perusing the complaints Google has received about this, it looks remarkably like they are using the "guilty until proven innocent" philosophy...just like the Chinese Government they fight so heavily against. I guess to Google, freedom is fine as long as it helps and does not hurt our business model....So here's the deal: not only do I explicitly advise readers of this blog not to click on ANY Google AdSense text ads, EVER on ANY webpage they may visit, but I also encourage you to use a search engine that does not gather information about you so they can exploit your search history to try and sell you things, like duckduckgo.com. And watch this space for further changes, since blogger and blogspot are owned by Google, such as a migration of this blog to a WordPress domain. Stay tuned.

If you want to help me out, I guess the best way would be to donate using the Google(doh!) Checkout button underneath the music player (I like how they let you get signed up to Google Everything before they pull the terrible business practices). But maybe I'll start sending out cds to those that donate, what do you think?

David Wilcox
Marc Cohn
Kris Kristofferson, still
James McMurtry
The Amazing Rhythm Aces
Todd Snider

...and if you don't have it yet, you should really buy Jodi Ann's latest album, "A Brief Moment in Time." I co-produced, edited, arranged, mixed, and played all the instruments. You can download the digital version here:jodiann.bandcamp.com, or you can email her to purchase a physical cd:
jodiannfanclub@yahoo.com.

You repair guitars?

Alliteration

2011-07-18T11:40:00.001-05:00

Hey 5 followers (and other, more stealthy, under-the-radar types)!

This week, I've been listening to Kris Kristofferson a lot, and I discovered something I'd never considered about a song I've listened to since I was about 5 years old.

The song is from an album called "Jesus Was A Capricorn" from 1972, and it's called "Out of Mind. Out of Sight." I had never really considered the alliteration present in this song--you remember alliteration, don't you? Let's go back to our 5th grade English class for a second:

Alliteration is the repetition of the first consonant sound in a group of words.

The classic examples of alliteration adhere rigidly to these constraints. In Shakespeare, you get things like this:

"whereat with blade, with bloody blameful blade he bravely broached his bloody boiling breast"
- A Midsummer Night's Dream

I think most modern interpretations would include stressed syllables in the definition.

So, I had just been blithely singing along and not thinking about the lyrical structure of this Kris Kristofferson song for 30 years, so I figured it was as good a time as any to start thinking about something. Here's what I noticed: the "Refrain" (for lack of a better term) in this song goes like this:

Buddy, tip your bottle back and climb aboard the bus
join your brothers in the band
if you ain't bombed in Birmingham, then you ain't one of us
we don't really give a damn.

So the alliteration becomes glaringly apparent when you see it written out.

Let's make it unmissable:

Buddy tip your bottle back and climb aboard the bus
join your brothers in the band
if you ain't bombed in Birmingham, then you ain't one of us
we don't really give a damn.

Nine stressed "B" syllables in four lines, not bad.

The danger, of course, is to use alliteration just to be alliterative, without saying anything. Sure it's easy to make up something like:

lately life loses its lightness
when laughing loud listening to Lou
and lovingly lilting to Lennon
is as close as I get to the blues

Right? ...but it probably requires more effort to come to this:

they paved paradise, and put up parking lot

So try that. Skillful use of alliteration, along with skillful internal rhymes, is what separates the ams from the pros.

There ya go. A late short one. But clearer. And less rambling.

This Week:

Almost finished recording my newest song, just need my amp to start behaving, and it'll be finished!

Kris Kristofferson, apparently.
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
Jonathan Coulton
Lyle Lovett
Marc Cohn
Metallica
James McMurtry

Jeep FC-150?

...and if you don't have it yet, you should really buy Jodi Ann's latest album, "A Brief Moment in Time." I co-produced, edited, arranged, mixed, and played all the instruments. You can download the digital version here:jodiann.bandcamp.com, or you can email her to purchase a physical cd:
jodiannfanclub@yahoo.com.

Happy Birthday Dad!

...try this one:

Take responsibility for your own awesomeness.

Perspective

2011-07-10T08:07:00.002-05:00

Hey 5 followers!

I hope all is well with you.

This week, while in the middle of all manner of financial crises, I've been writing two songs. These songs are making me think a lot about perspective.

Most of the time, I find myself writing in first person. You all remember this from your 5th grade English Class: the narrator uses I to describe things that happen to them. Using first person makes for an intimate, no nonsense kind of feeling.

This week, I've been writing a song in second person, as another exercise to force myself out of the rut I've been in for months. If you remember your 5th grade class again, second person is using the pronoun "you" to advance the storytelling. Naturally, I've been scouring my songwriting library to see what people a lot smarter than me have to say about second person.

Pat Pattison has a lot to say about it in Writing Better Lyrics. Buy it. Read it.

Second person is trickier than you would think. Simply re-writing a first person song in second person introduces certain problems.

Take this example:

I remember when I met you
I was sitting on the stairs
I was finishing my homework
holding my pencil in my hair

If you were to just sort of transpose this into second person, you would get something like this:

You remember when you met her
You were sitting on the stairs
You were finishing your homework
Holding your pencil in your hair

...it's Ok, but it suffers from a logical disconnect--the "You" that you are speaking to already knows all this stuff....so a lot of the time, in second person songs, you need to introduce some kind of literary device, or twist, to make the obvious exposition make sense in context. So, you'd have to make the "you" have amnesia in this instance, or something to justify telling them things they already know.

This also introduces another problem: as a listener to the second person song, you are always looking for the twist, as if you're watching some terrible M. Night Shyamalan movie-- you're always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

A lot of problems with second person can be fixed with a simple third person rewrite. As you will recall, third person is written from the outsider's point of view:

She remembers when she met him
she was sitting on the stairs
She was finishing her homework
holding a pencil in her hair

Second person is inherently difficult to write, because a lot of the problems that second person can introduce can be fixed by rewriting in third person.

Try it. Try writing in second person so that it sounds the best that way--so that if you rewrite it in third person, it DESTROYS the meaning. It's hard, but fun!

This Week

Lyle Lovett
John Hiatt
James McMurtry
Gretchen Peters

....and looking for a job....still.....

...and if you don't have it yet, you should really buy Jodi Ann's latest album, "A Brief Moment in Time." I co-produced, edited, arranged, mixed, and played all the instruments. You can download the digital version here:jodiann.bandcamp.com, or you can email her to purchase a physical cd:
jodiannfanclub@yahoo.com.

...12 years, eh?

Doesn't seem so long when I'm with you...seems like only yesterday you were smiling at me over fajitas!

A REALLY Quick One

2011-07-03T08:44:00.004-05:00

Hey there five followers!

This week's blog post is going to be short and sweet, seeing as how it's a holiday weekend.

What do you do when you get frustrated by the process?

As I start to work on a song, I have an idea of where I want the song to go, and I even have a pretty clear picture of the imagery I want to use and the feeling...but as I continue through the writing process, it usually gets WORSE! I then have to go through the song and re-write it using the process I described last week.

For me, this is the most frustrating part of the whole thing: trying to re-capture the picture I have in my mind.

As I've stated before, sometimes I put the half-finished song away for while--years sometimes, while I let the idea crystallize and solidify and become more clear...or more likely, I give up in frustration and banish the half-a-song to the wood pile, only to try and salvage it later.

Here's the reason I bring this up: I found a song contest I want to enter (don't worry, one that has no entry fee), there are no real requirements for the song, the theme just has to be positive, like things are looking up, or things are turning around.

So rather than having to create something from scratch, I remembered a song I abandoned years ago out of frustration, and went scrounging through the wood pile...and the frustration was born again!

I think writing is about learning to deal with your frustration...working through it, trying not to be beaten by it, learning to turn it around.

Maybe people who aren't very good at writing songs are just the ones that settle for "good enough" or get lazy and just go with their first impulsive inspiration...or maybe they meet their frustration threshold and can't step beyond it.

On the other hand, maybe constantly demanding perfection and measuring yourself against your heroes CAUSES frustration.

...anyway, I don't know what the point was, if I ever had one. I don't have any answers, either. These are just some things I was thinking about this morning as I sat down to re-write the positive song for the tenth time...and reaching my frustration threshold.

This Week

I've been working on two songs, writing guitar-related articles, editing things in Audacity, reading and listening to lots of things.

I think I should get the new book by the founder of cdbaby...but I have no means right now....

Oh! Here's something I made up this week (if I had a twitter account, I would've tweeted it):

The longer you are unemployed, the more likely you are to become a self-help guru.

Jonathan Coulton

Lyle Lovett

John Hiatt

...and if you don't have it yet, you should really buy Jodi Ann's latest album, "A Brief Moment in Time." I co-produced, edited, arranged, mixed, and played all the instruments. You can download the digital version here:jodiann.bandcamp.com, or you can email her to purchase a physical cd:
jodiannfanclub@yahoo.com.

See you next week!

Re-Writing the Wrong

2011-06-26T11:34:00.005-05:00

Hey there 5 followers!

This week I'm going to talk about the part of the songwriting process that separates the pros from the wanna-be's: re-writing.

Dump the Cliches

If you're like me, you have sometimes had to use "filler" lines in your songs for moments when you were not at your most creative. Maybe you had to resort to some cliche rhymes or cliche ideas just to get your ideas flowing out onto the page (or virtual page). Once you have your basic structure together, complete with the rhyme schemes, chords and verse/chorus or bridge chorus framework, it's time to dig in and get the thing finished...and that's usually the first step in the long and arduous re-writing process for me.

Line Up Your Verb-Tenses

After I have eliminated all of the horrible cliches and found better ways to say cliche things, I go through the song and make sure I have verb-tense agreement throughout the song. This can be a huge PITA, because verb-tense issues are not always obvious, especially in modern story songs where the first two verses are in past-tense and the bridge or the final verse is in present tense.

Tighten the Image

Once things are all lined up as far as tense goes, I start to go through the song and mercilessly eliminate all words that DON'T MATTER. Think of it as Strunk & White applied to songwriting.
Here's one of the things my father keeps repeating to me even though I've heard it almost every single week of my life: once you get everything in your song more or less where it's final position is going to be, "tighten the image" by getting rid of words, phrases, lines--even whole verses if they do not contribute to the clarity of the song (he didn't invent it--he stole it from Kris Kristofferson).

I think it would do songwriters a lot of good to revisit The Elements of Style. One thing I keep returning to in that book is the part where they tell you that adverbs will steal your soul (I'm probably paraphrasing).

Play With Pronouns

Once I have made it as tight as I can, I like to play the pronoun game. Luckily, this is really easy with modern word processors. You can do a simple search/replace with all the pronouns and see if your song feels better with "she's" in the place of "he's." Then just save the new versions with a different name.

Fun With Point of View

Another fun thing to do during the rewrite process is to change the point of view and see if that makes the song feel better or worse. For example, while I almost exclusively write my songs in first person, I will always do a rewrite in second or third person and compare the overall feeling with the original. It's a good exercise, try it, you might find new and interesting ways to say the same old stuff.

Even after I've gone through all these steps, I don't think I've finished. I don't finish songs so much as give up on them. Not really. But there can be things that bother me about particular songs for years, until in some moment of lucidity, I rewrite a verse or clarify a chorus and everything becomes better.

Try this stuff out. And get The Elements of Style. It will do you worlds of good.

Omit needless words.

(...sounds like Musashi)

This week:

Mostly listening to songs that are in various stages of completion trying to figure out how to...rewrite them...

Terry Allen

King's X

Metallica

John Prine

...how's that for diversity?

As always, you can buy Jodi Ann's latest CD, "A Brief Moment In Time" from her in downloadable-form here: jodiann.bandcamp.com. If you would prefer to have a physical CD, email her: jodiannfanclub@yahoo.com.

See ya next week!

Stumbling Blocks and Stepping Stones

2011-06-19T09:00:00.002-05:00

Hey there 4 followers!

This week I've been busy going through a bunch of my old lyrics and sort of culling the good stuff from largely generic and predictable stuff that's in my virtual notebooks. Do you ever do that?

Some of these things were written in some fit of inspiration, only to fade out the more I worked on it; some ideas were way too good for my skill level at the time; some are just fragments with no place to go.

I used to have notebooks full of this stuff: half-written songs, lyric shards, sketches, maybe just a mental picture of a situation I should write about, but I don't have any notebooks anymore. I've switched all the notebook material to Google Docs, so I never lose it.

Anyway, that's sort of been the process this week. Last week, I wrote about mostly a musical dry spell, or rut, but this week's topic is more about writer's block, for lack of a better term.

The Blank Page

There you are: in front of your blank piece of notebook paper, or your blank word-processor document, trying to write something amazing. I think that's probably the first mistake: expecting to write something amazing from the start. Don't be afraid to be terrible.

If you've been writing for a while, you should have a lot of "recyclables" laying around in notebooks and various documents. Here's what I do when I find myself wanting to be creative, but not really knowing where to start: I just randomly click through my title pages and my sketch pages, hoping that something reaches out and grabs me. Sometimes it does, and I get a song finished (or get it further down the road towards "finished"). Sometimes I beat my head against the same brick walls.

I have this specific song I've been working on for YEARS. It's an a idea that centers around Dumbo's magic feather. I've written two versions of a chorus, from two different points of view. I think I've settled on the version I'm going to use, the problem is this: the chorus I've written is one minute and thirty seconds BY ITSELF. Three choruses would be four and a half minutes long...without any verses...so I like the chorus so much that I can't bring myself to destroy in order to make it a reasonably listenable duration.

When I find myself staring at a blank document and having no good ideas worth committing to virtual paper (and also not following my own rule and being deathly afraid to be terrible), I revisit this song and see if I can make it work.

When I get tired of beating my head against that particular wall, I've been looking through the other half-finished songs I have in process at the moment and trying to work them a little further down the road to completion. Sometimes, though, this kind of interesting thing happens: I'll work on a piece of a song, a chorus perhaps, and I'll vaguely remember that I have a verse that may work with it hidden in the stacks of half-finished remnants locked away in the vault of misfit songs...and I'll put them together and in a sort of William S. Burroughs "cut-up" way. I've gotten really cool things to happen after some minor tweaking.

So I guess that's the point of this repetitive yet rambling missive: write a lot and keep EVERYTHING because you never know when a little fragment of a half-forgotten song can help you through a song you've been stumbling over for years.

Stumbling blocks into stepping stones.

This week:

It's been a whole year! Thanks Howard! O_o

Weird. I had a Guy Clark dream last night. What does that mean?

I have also been recording the instrumental I mentioned last week and going through the drums and bass on "Till You Come Home."

Storyville

The Bridge

The Band

Reading Some alternative history....yeah...Harry Turtledove...interesting.

Happy Father's Day Dad! I hope all is well!

Please go to jodiann.bandcamp.com and download her latest CD, "A Brief Moment In Time." I produced, mixed, arranged, and played all the instruments on it! If you'd rather have a physical CD, contact her at: jodiannfanclub@yahoo.com. I think you'll agree that her songs and her vocals are awesome!

Discomfort Zone

2011-06-11T13:27:00.007-05:00

I've been writing a lot lately, and I've started to notice some things about myself and my writing process. Here are some of 'em:

- I mostly write in 4/4...don't think I've even written a 6/8 waltz.
- I tend to write at tempi around 80 beats per minute.
- There are three or four chord progressions I use to the point of monotony
- I use similar rhyme schemes
- I over use "falling" imagery
- Since I have this great template in REAPER that I use as a basis to record all my songs, I tend to create arrangements that sound the SAME.

...there are more, but you get the idea.

What do you do when you get in a rut? I think one of the coolest things you can do is expose yourself to styles of music you don't normally listen to. So that's what I've been doing this week, with the help of Jamendo.

You've heard of Jamendo, right? If not, allow me to introduce you to this free-to-download Creative Commons music portal.

Jamendo

In this age of media overflow and an environment where ANYONE can make a recording and release it on the internet to be largely ignored in perpetuity, clawing yourself up and out of the obscurity hole can seem like a daunting prospect. Because there is so much music being released, music has lost much of the value it used to have...enter Jamendo.

Jamendo is a royalty free host for musicians that have abandoned the traditional music publishing model. Everything that an artist releases through the site is released under at least a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. This means that users and consumers are allowed to copy the work and listen to it on any device, with no further permission required. You may even redistribute the content as long as you correctly attribute it to the creator of the work.

This basically allows people to try out your songs for no risk and see if you are worth supporting. Pretty interesting. The music is sort of the "loss-leader" get-your-foot-in-the-door kind of advertising for shows or merchandise, or physical cds.

Basically, I went scouring Jamendo this week to sort of pull me out of my rut. I listened to all sorts of stuff that isn't generally the genre I write in most of the time. I listened to ambient electronic music, weird french folk music, some death metal, some blues, some new-agey guitar...when I found something I liked, I downloaded it and stuck it on the iPod.

I think it's an interesting experiment to do for those of us trying to make our way in the traditional music publishing industry: try writing some Creative Commons licensed music, and see if you fair any better while you're waiting for your songs to be cut by Rascal Flatts. I propose an experiment: I'm gonna try to record a fair bit of instrumental music that is more or less drum loop based and more toward the electronic music side, and release them on Jamendo.

It will allow me to do a few things:

1. Experiment with recording in Ardour, so I can get over the crazy learning curve associated with that program, and finally abandon the proprietary music software world once and for all (that's the real long-term goal)!

2. Experiment with instruments, chord progressions and arrangements I would not normally be able to explore in the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus song form.

3. Learn more about Audio in Linux in general. Learn how the Linux software synthesizers work, learn how the Hydrogen drum software works and learn about making drum kits and layered samples.

So there's the experiment to kick me out of my "Comfort Zone" and into my perpetual "Discomfort Zone" where I can force myself to be creative all the time, and not become stagnant.

This week:

Danny Malone
Josh Woodward - this is a find from Jamendo
Jonathan Coulton

I started a slow electronic-type piece this week, complete with synth bass, strange ambient wind sounds and Dream Theater-like guitars (without all the fast weedly bits).

Still working on a song called "Till You Come Home" programming bass and drums right now....soon to re-record acoustic guitars...

Don't Forget!!!! Jodi's new CD is available! I am the Co-Producer, Engineer and I played all the instruments! If you want to hear some awesome songs, and hear my production style, grab a copy! You download it here: jodiann.bandcamp.com, or you can order a physical CD directly from her: jodiannfanclub@yahoo.com. Let me know what you think!

Have lots of ideas for other songs...just gotta find time to focus on them.

See ya next week!

How the Demo Comes Together: Part 5 (the last!)

2011-06-05T07:39:00.000-05:00

Hey there non-followers (and new real follower)! We're almost done with this nonsense!

Last time, we got the vocals recorded, comped and tuned. Then we imported the tuned vocal back into our project and saved.

Now on to the last section, before we leave this topic for a while:

Preparing for the Mix

The very first thing I do when I have determined that I am not recording anything else--when the song is finished, the arrangement is more or less done and the I can't think of any more cool parts to interlace in between the vocals, I open the File Menu, navigate to the Save As... dialog and save the project as projectname.mixprep.

In this case, it is Blogsong.mixprep.

Now I can remove all the extraneous vocal takes and guitar takes and get down to the reality of the mix. As you can see, I have elimiated the original drum track, the MIDI track for the drums, the MIDI track for the bass.

Final Editing

At this point, I start to chop away all of the unneeded material: the noisy beginning, where I'm waiting to play; and the endings, where the bass (and all of the other instruments, for that matter) needs to fade to silence.

At this point I start to really think about compression, EQ, reverb and what I'm trying to accomplish EMOTIONALLY in the song. From the over-arching EMOTIONAL content of the song, I will get ideas as to what the compression, EQ and reverb are supposed to sound like.

Adding Effects

There are plenty of free VST compatible effects that work well with REAPER in Linux. REAPER also comes with a lot of effects. I'll show you the ones I use to get sounds.

One caveat though: if you're used to using expensive proprietary effects that used iLok-style copy protection on Windows...get used to disappointment. Anything that required an iLok will not work in Linux through WINE...no matter how hard you try....no matter what crazy copy-protection hacking you attempt...trust me. There are many forum posts dedicated to the woes of trying to use iLok effects in Linux. In short...YOU CAN"T. Now stop whining and make some music...

The scope of this post is to get a good basic balance happening...not an actual MIX (with automation and fancy bells and whistles).

So here's how it tends to happen for me:

Drums

I usually start with the drums. I use the Compressor that comes with REAPER and a little of the EQ that it also comes with to get something that really starts to resemble a Kick Drum, a Snare Drum, the HiHats and the OverHeads.

Like so:

Kick Drum Compressor:

Kick Drum EQ:

For the rest of the instruments in the drum kit, I'm basically using these same two plugins over and over again. REAPER makes it a little easier by having presets for each instrument that sound pretty good, but they ALWAYS require a little extra tweaking to get them to sound right in context--this is NEVER a "set it and forget it" type of a situation.

Bass

Again, I'm using the two REAPER-supplied staples most of the time. Let me stress that this is just for a good balance that I can put on my iPod to listen to for a while before I actually go in to do a FINAL mix.

And again, I'm starting with the appropriate Bass preset and tweaking it a little so that it fits well with my other tracks.

Electric Guitars

Next come the electric guitars. You guessed it: still using the built in compressor and EQ. Sometimes I use a stereo widener, depending on what I need these guitars to do. I also treat the guitars slightly differently, with slight differences in the EQ shape and the compression attack and release.

I also pan them to some degree. When panning, I think about whether I need the Vocal to be intimate or not-so-intimate, and whether there needs to be a sense of space in the middle of the mix or not. In this particular song, I'm panning the electric guitars hard left and right (to get them out of the way and to leave the middle open for the vocals and acoustic guitars).

Here are the effects on Electric Guitar #1:

The effects on Electric Guitar #2 are similar, but the EQ has more low mids boosted.

Acoustic Guitars

For the acoustic guitars, I'm using...yeah...the built-in compression and EQ with the acoustic guitar presets tweaked a bit to fit the song.

Also, naturally, each guitar is treated seperately, so there are slightly different settings on each guitar--a little faster attack on one, a little bit of a different EQ curve on another.

The thing that these two guitars share is a free stereo-widening plugin called, oddly enough, WIDE. I use this preset exactly the same on both guitars. It adds a nice "wideness" to the stereo image of each guitar. Makes the sound of the acoustic guitar to seem wider at the edges--like the sound is emanating from somewhere slightly to the outside of your speaker placement.

So here are the effects on Acoustic Guitar 1:

Compressor:

EQ:

And Stereo Widener:

For the second acoustic guitar, basically all that changed this time is the EQ curve. I won't bother showing you a screen shot, the EQ just has a little bump at about 10k.

Vocals

For the vocals, you may remember that I applied the effects at the end of last week's post, but I never told you which effects I applied.

I applied them at the end of the vocal editing so I could hear what I was working with.

I'm sure you could guess which effects I am using for this rough mix...yep...REAPER's compressor and multiband EQ again:

Sometimes, depending on the track, I use a free VST de-esser plugin from digital fish phones called Spitfish to tone down some of the sibilance in the vocal track. The vocals on this particular track were ok. No de-essing needed.

Reverb

For this rough mix, I'm not too concerned about any crazy awesome reverb layering and tuning. I'm just concerned with putting a general reverb on the band to make it seem like these virtual people are playing in the same room...together. I also put a little reverb on the lead vocal just to differentiate it from the rest of the band. Doing the reverb this way is good enough to listen to for a bit while you plan what you're going to do for your REAL MIX...

One of the cool things about REAPER is that any track can become an auxillary track just by way of routing. I make two tracks, one for Band reverb and one for vocal reverb. Then I send all of the tracks that aren't the vocals to the "Band Reverb" or sometimes "Guitar Reverb" track and use--you guessed it--the built in REAPER reverb with its "sweetverbo" preset. I set the room size to about 75 ft. I also do away with the early reflections that come form the "Echo Generator" section of the preset...I just don't think they sound all that great.

For the vocal reverb, I use the same preset, but I change the room size to 40ft.

Final Balance

From there, I just try to set the levels where they should be for the whole song. This is a ROUGH MIX. Its purpose is to give me something to listen to that I can use to plan the FINAL mix...complete with cool effects, cool panning moves, cool automation and a lead vocal that sits where it needs to sit throughout the song. So here I'm just trying to get everything to sound...well...balanced.

I also like to use a compressor across the master fader. I use PSP's Vintage Warmer. Again, because I'm using it in WINE in LInux on an ANCIENT computer with no 3d acceleration, the normal interface looks like this:

So...I have to use the alternate user interface that looks like this:

Here's what the mix window looked like when the balance was where I wanted it this time:

So there you go. My demo process. In five parts. Usually I can get all of this done in about one week, from writing to this stage (Mixing is a whole other animal). I think next week we'll get back to some songwriting issues...you know, all that stuff that comes before you press record.

This Week:

Been playing more with Musescore notation software. It's a really nice open-source software package.

I've also been threatening to do some guitar transcription. Been learning a Robben Ford solo using Play it Slowly. It allows you to play things back at any rate, but still keeping the pitches in the correct register.

Read The Dead and the Gone . Gotta love post-apocalyptics!

Been listening to The Homemade Hit Show. It can be inspiring.

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
Robben Ford, apparently.

Don't Forget! You can get Jodi Ann's Latest CD, "A Brief Moment In Time" here, if you want to download it: jodiann.bandcamp.com

or here if you want a physical CD: jodiannfanclub@yahoo.com

See you next week, for something about...songwriting.

How the Demo Comes Together: Part 4

2011-05-29T08:09:00.004-05:00

Hey there non-followers! As promised, this week we will continue the (seemingly) never-ending saga of how I produce my demos. Last week, we got all the instruments into a kind of arrangement, and got the drums and bass into more or less their final form.

Now comes one of the hardest things about my demo recording process: recording, editing and tweaking the Final Lead Vocal. <gasp!>

Setting Up the Vocal Track

Depending on the song, I will first try a few takes, singing the song all the way through. When I listen back to these takes, I will get a feeling about whether of not I should "comp" a vocal track. Sometimes, though, one of the few tries I have just recorded is good enough-- but that's rare.

Let's go through what happens if I determine that I have to "comp" a vocal.

Comping a Vocal

You have probably figured out by now that "comping" means "compositing." I'm going to record lots of vocal tracks and take the best pieces to construct a "Really Good" vocal track. Here's how it works in practice:

First, I set up twelve new tracks. Four of these tracks are dedicated to the verses, four are dedicated to the choruses, and four are dedicated to the bridge. Like this:

Second, I record each section all in a row--one after the other. Like this:

Third, I create a new track that will become the "Comp Vocal Track."

Fourth, I dig in for a tedious listening session with headphones, LINE BY LINE. I evaluate each individual line against each of the other three. When I find the one I like, I snip it out and copy and paste it into the new track, being careful to put it in exactly the same place in time as the original. After all the pieces are in the right places, I crop them and fade them in and out, like this:

Then I do it to EVERY SINGLE LINE in the song, until I have a completed "Comp Vocal Track."

Rendering the Comp Vocal

At this point, I have a vocal track that I'm basically happy with. It might seem like all of our hard work is done. Sadly, this is just the beginning.

The next step is to render the vocal as a 24 bit/ 48kHz mono file:

Why am I doing this?

Here's the thing: I am the first to admit that I am NOT a great singer. I acknowledge my limitations. I also understand that at this particular point in the music industry, bad pitch in your vocal is considered passe. So, just like the majority of major label recording artists, I am going to use pitch correction software to pull the notes that are REALLY out of tune back into pitch. Let's face it...it's easier than practicing... O_o

Transferring the File for Tuning

So I'm going to be using Melodyne for this. Since I'm using Linux, I have to jump through hoops in order to use this program. Since Melodyne was written for Windows, I have to use WINE in order to have it work in Linux. To get low latency happening in WINE, I have to use the software packages wineasio and JACK to get everything to work.

There's still a problem though: no matter what esoteric software hackery I try, I can't get it to work on my normal desktop workstation. Therefore, I have to use a pretty involved work around using Dropbox and my Google Chrome Cr-48 Netbook.

The Cr-48 Interlude

Yep. I'm one of those people. In December, I received one of the Cr-48 Netbook computers from Google. The people who got these things were basically Beta-testers, to see if the Google Chrome Operating System was ready for deployment into the world. I used the Chrome OS for about a month, but was frustrated that there was no way to work offline. Therefore, I took a drastic measure: I flashed the BIOS and installed Linux on it. After a brief relationship with Linux Mint Debian Edition, I came back to Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal. I installed all the usual suspects, and much to my surprise and relief, Melodyne worked. So that became my work flow: use the Dell desktop machine to record, and use the Cr-48 for vocal tuning, using Dropbox to transfer the files.

Anyway, here's what a Cr-48 looks like:

...and here's what the Ubuntu installation on my Cr-48 looks like, just so you know:

Pitch Correction

Then I use Melodyne to fix some of the "pitchiness" of my vocal performance, like so:

Melodyne is a strange animal. It is easy to overdo. My goal in using it is to make it sound like I can stay on pitch at the ends of phrases and to correct any notes that are crazily off. The ear can really focus on the things that don't sound natural, so it is best to use this kind of thing in moderation....with great power comes great responsibility...(sorry, since my son's favorite super hero is Spider-Man this week, he asked me if I could put something about Spidey in my blog....so there ya go). If it ever starts to sound like a robot, I undo it and try again. I'm going for pitch correction that is as undetectable as possible.

When I've spent two hours editing the pitch, I export the fixed track to Dropbox, so I can import it back into REAPER on the other computer:

Here's what it looks like imported back into REAPER:

...and here it is with effects applied:

Now just think: background vocals are exactly the same, but you also need to worry about how they match in TIME with the lead vocal. I don't think I'm gonna get into that in this series...it's gone on long enough as it is...

Next week we'll get to mix prep and the rough mix...and then we will be done with this nonsense.

This week:

New song started. Better than last week's...still not sure what to do about that mess....

Steve Goodman
John Prine
Michael Peter Smith
Todd Snider
Terry Allan

Musescore

Guitar Pro

Jodi's new album is out! Get 'em while they're hot!
Download here: Jodi Ann Cd
or order a physical cd here: jodiannfanclub@yahoo.com

See ya next week.

How the Demo Comes Together: Part 3

2011-05-22T21:25:00.001-05:00

Hey there non-followers!

...actually, I seem to have picked up a new follower this week! Thanks for following me!

Ok. This week we are continuing to go through my demo-ing process. If you haven't read the other two parts in this series, I suggest you read those before you read this one, so you're up to speed.

We left last week after I had recorded the "real" acoustic guitars, edited the midi drums and bass so they would fit together, and I recorded a scratch vocal, so I can record the electric guitars with everything in place (more or less).

Arrangement and Considerations

By this point, from listening to the rough renders I have been making to put on my iPod, I have the beginnings of an idea as to what I want to do with the electric guitars--what kinds of guitars will I be using? Humbuckers or single-coils? If single-coil, Strat or Tele?

I start to get a feeling for what kind of sound I'm looking for from listening to the song on the iPod....over...and over...and over...and over...

In fact, I listen to it and sing along so much that my son plugs his ears and runs screaming from the room every time he sees me ambling towards him, regarding him with a vacant stare, my green earbuds in my ears, and singing along with the
track he heard me recording just a few short days ago.

Before I record anything, I have a vague idea about what I think the arrangement should be. It's not rocket surgery, it's not brain science--it almost always goes like this:

(and yes, i realize this should probably go in part 1...apologies!)

Intro:
All Instruments (to get the listener's attention) usually with a solo guitar playing some kind of variation on the chorus melody.

First verse:
Limited drums
Maybe nothing but acoustic guitars for the first half, add bass for the second half.

Prechorus (or Lift):
Add sparse electric guitars.

Chorus:
Add Electric guitars. Drums change from high hat to ride cymbal...generally busier beat.

Second verse:
Drums are playing a slightly busier version of the beat they were playing in the first verse.
Acoustic guitars are like highhats with pitch...so they start to act like it...playing 1/8th note-centered rhythms.
Electric guitars playing, but still sparse.
If there's a piano or organ or electric piano, I tend to add it here...lightly.

Second Prechorus (or lift):
Busier bass and drums...big drum fill into the chorus.
Everything else builds to the chorus...more note density, everything gets louder, everything ramps up to the second chorus.

Second chorus:
Everything explodes.
Most electric guitars here.
Maybe electric guitar or keyboard fills when space is left by the vocals.

Bridge:
Normally, in my songs at least, this is where The Big Truth Of The Song is revealed....so here is where the CLIMAX of the song happens...kaboom.

Third Chorus:
Everything breaks down to one acoustic guitar (usually the one left, for me) and some "skeleton" drums...just the hats and a bass drum, maybe.
...at least until about halfway through...when it all explodes again with everything firing on all cylinders until the end.

So naturally...I have been thinking about this "Master Plan" all along....so when I come to record the electric guitars, I have the EMOTIONAL ARC OF THE SONG in mind, and I can tailor my guitar playing to suit it.

Electric Guitars

Now it's time to record. After I have listened to what I have so far and figured out basically what I want each guitar to do, and I've decided which guitar I'm going to use, I push the red circle.

For this particular example, I'll be using this Strat for both parts:

Through this amp, for both parts:

Normally, for one of the parts, I opt for a "chunky" 1/8th note type of guitar, just playing power chords and not really deviating from steady 1/8th notes. This guitar is normally using the bridge pickup.

For the second guitar, I pan it the other way and play more triads in the upper register. Sometimes I go for a more punk-inspired "Big Ol' Messy Bar Chords" approach. Just depends on the song. This song is using the triads, using one of the "in-between" settings for the pickup selection.

Here's what it looks like when the electrics are laid down:

After that, the next huge PITA is getting "real" drum and bass tracks.

Final Bass and Drums

See, after I'm finished with the electric guitars, I like to go in and add unique, custom drum fills for between each of the section, tighten up the relationship between the bass and the kick drum and the bass and the guitars. After I have the bass part pretty much figured out, I render it as a new take, so I can start treating it like audio and not MIDI.

So here's the bass before the render:

And after the render:

Then we do the same with EVERY INDIVIDUAL DRUM TRACK....the definition of tedium....

Before the render:

After rendering each instrument of the drum kit as a separate instrument:

And after exploding each instrument to its own track:

And naming them:

Now I can treat the drums as if they were an actual drum kit and not just MIDI ones and zeros!

Better end it here. Vocals are a completely different can of worms...whole new levels of tedium....stay tuned (hint, hint).

This Week:

New song...started recording it...started hating it....don't know whether it's destined for the scrap pile or not...giving it a couple of days before I listen again and make the final determination.

Danny Malone
Darrell Scott
Hoyt Axton
Jimmy Buffett
Alan Parsons Project-Tales of Mystery and Imagination

Jodi got her CD's!!! Woohoo!!! If you want to purchase one, and listen to what it is I do, download it here:

jodiann.bandcamp.com

or get a physical cd here:

jodiannfanclub@yahoo.com