Posts Tagged ‘music’
I Wanted
I wanted to be a recording engineer. At least, I thought I did, back at the time of my life when I was feeling pressure to pursue an education beyond high school. With no strong drive toward any particular career and no interest in committing money to a general college program, I considered vocational training.
My passion was music, but it seemed like a 1-in-a-million long shot to become anything more than a “starving artist” if I started down that path. I landed a full-time job in a record store after high school and mulled over what kind of schooling might suit me best.
With little confidence or drive for the struggle toward making a living off performing or writing, I decided to look into the production side of the business. Brown Institute on Lake Street in Minneapolis was well-known for cranking out broadcasters and disc jockeys back then, and I discovered they also offered AA degrees in Electronic Technology that incorporated a multi-track Studio Recording elective.
Sounded good to me (regardless the fact that was a pun). I dove into the program, quickly discovering the basic electronic curriculum was easy for me to grasp. I had no idea. My impression of the guys who knew electronics was framed by images of NASA flight control engineers with white shirts, pockets of pens, and tape holding their eyeglasses together. I had zero practical experience with wires and transistors. This was unfamiliar territory for me.
Uncharacteristically, I arrived late on the very first day at Brown, interrupting the instructor to walk the length of the classroom with all eyes judging my late arrival and my “not-an-engineer” appearance. Much later, I enjoyed hearing the honest perspective of a significant number of classmates as they admitted to first impressions that I was likely a loser who wouldn’t last the year.
The math and electron physics turned out to be easy for me to grasp and I led the class in test scores. I’d found a good fit. After a year of basic electronics, we were able to choose from a variety of electives. I was there for only one, Studio Recording, and actually considered cutting the program short after I got what I wanted. It only took one presentation from the school to alter my thinking.
They laid out our options, boasting of the 3 potential job possibilities they knew about for local recording studios, and the hundred-or-so opportunities for general Electronic Technicians. On top of that, the starting salary possibilities for Technicians were eye-opening and beyond my expectations.
It changed the course of my future. I did learn to splice tape and clean heads, coil cables, run a huge multi-track sound board and produce a recording session. Massive fun, but like my songwriting and guitar performance, it would ultimately end up playing out as a hobby-level pastime.
I thought I wanted to be a recording engineer, but my pragmatic tendency to choose a course with safer probabilities has paid me back handsomely. Happily, my eventual career path through industrial electronics manufacturing didn’t end up diminishing my love for music one bit.
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Don’t Miss
If you are a fan of popular music and the art of multi-track recording, don’t miss this documentary currently showing on PBS!
We stumbled upon the second episode last night and became instantly entranced. I always marvel over seeing that someone made the effort to record video —and subsequently save for later discovery— of surprisingly authentic moments of activity, like musicians working on a song.
Who thought to record video of these bands before they knew the group would turn out to be worth the effort?
This show renews my appreciation for the amount of creative manipulation behind all the recorded music we get to hear. It’s something that is too easy to take for granted.
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Birthday Bob
Happy 75th to Robert Allen Zimmerman today.
Bob, I would’ve performed more of your songs over the years if I could have mastered the art of remembering all those lyrics.
I’m inclined to agree with pretty much everything I’ve heard from Bob Dylan. Luckily, I started paying attention after all the drama of his transition to using an electric guitar at concerts. By the time I was listening, the songs he was writing and music he was making seemed like a perfect fit.
I avoided all the fan angst.
I always appreciated that he somehow succeeded in performance despite violating everything a choir director would demand from a vocalist. It is a small minority who are able to make imperfection work and not simply sound imperfect. Obviously, the appeal isn’t universal, but based on the number of fans and longevity of Bob Dylan’s career, there is a large majority of listeners who “get it.”
The flaws become the features. I don’t know how it works, I just know that I am drawn to certain imperfect vocalists, and repelled by much of the rest.
Unfortunately, it has never been something I could harness for myself. I never mastered singing with that “imperfect” kind of character to a level that ascended beyond what repels me. I tend to flounder in the “almost there” category most of the time.
As a result, I relish the opportunity to enjoy professionals whose off-center vocalizations are good enough to succeed in the industry. I love the sound of a well-slurred word or phrase, and it makes me laugh to imagine a vocal instructor ever confidently endorsing such a thing.
It seems to me that the first time I ever attended a live performance by Bob Dylan was 30 years ago, when he was touring with the Grateful Dead and Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. They came to town for a show on my birthday and Cyndie bought tickets as a present.
My life-long pal, Paul Keiski, made me a custom shirt for the occasion. Then 4-days before the concert, Cyndie unexpectedly gave birth to our darling daughter, Elysa, which led to Cyndie handing her ticket off to her brother, Ben. Ever since, I have endured endless good-natured ribbing for going to that show without her.
It’s the kind of thing a fan does for troubadour like Bob Dylan. Happy 75th old man!
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It’s November!
How many times have I written of my astonishment at the arrival of a new month? November is here. This morning there is a beautiful fire in our fireplace and the clocks have been changed back to standard time. The pump has been removed from our little landscape pond and the leaves covering the surface are locked in a layer of ice.
The garden hoses (we had a dozen of them strewn about the place) have all been drained, coiled, and stored. It feels like November. The one family on our country “block” that came trick-or-treating for Halloween last year, showed up again Friday night. Luckily, this year Cyndie had purchased candy, so we treated the one family, and yesterday I tried to eat all the rest.
“Oops, I slipped and another chocolate-almond-coconut concoction flew into my mouth.”
Cyndie recently coerced me to spend some time on a jigsaw puzzle by pitching in to spread out the pieces and flip them all face-up. Puzzling is both soothing and exhilarating for me, and it always evokes pleasant memories of assembling them when I was young. I find that dallying on jigsaw puzzles while listening to well-loved music tends to bring new depth to old songs. The music seems richer and the puzzling becomes doubly so. I finished the puzzle Friday night.
Yesterday, I drove the Grizzly around and collected all the stacks of cut wood that have accumulated from the trees that either fell in the wind, or were cut to clear trails and fence lines. There is no shortage of wood to be split and stacked in the shed. Meanwhile, there are still tree trunks under brush piles that remain to be sawed into fireplace logs, after I chip the branches above them.
Last night I had a dream that involved my needing to plow snow. As shocking as it is to accept that the month has already arrived, it definitely feels like November to me now.
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In Mind
Lately I’ve had Chastity Brown‘s music in my mind, particularly, her song “Lift Us.” It suits me. You know how I feel about love, that it certainly does lift us. I think she’s got it right with these lyrics, and every other nuance of this recording, as well. She wins me over right away at the opening guitar up-strums, but then the way the bass slides to enter with the drums; the background “ooo ooos;” the light balance, yet fuzzy substance of the electric guitar; the emotion with which she distorts the pronunciations –getting “lift” to sound like “leeeeft;” the rhythmic bounce that carries the whole thing all the way to the end.
I highly recommend you take the time to pay extra attention to the details as you listen, but be forewarned, when you listen to all the detail, songs have a way of burying themselves in your mind.
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I was heading down a road
Going nowhere
But I didn’t even know
Ya know I didn’t even care
But along the way
Came a word I was needing to hearChorus:
Love can lift us
Oh love real love
Love can lift us
Talkin ‘bout love real loveSo you say you’re all alone
Drowning in a sea of people
I will throw you a rope
Pull you to shore
So you can feel thisChorus
Talkin bout love
If you’ve ever been on the floor
Aint go no where to go
Just lookin up keep lookin upChorus
credits: from Back-Road Highways, released 24 March 2012
© all rights reserved Chastity Brown
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Can’t Stop
Okay, I admit it: we are smitten with my son’s new album. I awoke this morning with one particular song running in my head. I just needed to hear it again, and when Cyndie noticed the sound of it playing, she asked me to play it again, out near the kitchen, where she could hear it better, because she wanted to hear that song, too.
If you read yesterday’s post here, and didn’t want to explore all the songs on Julian’s album, I will promote one for your consideration. Listen to “Of Mistress, Master, and Malcontent.” This song includes vocals from Dave Marshall, Julian’s friend in Chicago, and the blend of their voices together is a joy to behold. They have created an arrangement in this song that is captivating, and I think deserves to be heard by a wide audience. I have submitted it to a local radio station for consideration.
Do you think they will be able to see past the gushing parents to take time to consider the music for its own merit?
I hope so. That would make today a real SUPER Sunday.
Enjoy the day!
Big Accomplishment
This past week, we received an email from our son, Julian, with the subject: “My album has been RELEASED!”
Even though some of my son’s taste in music is different than mine, I can’t stop myself from listening to the whole thing, over and over. What a parental rush!
You can read his descriptions of the What, Why, and How, and listen for yourself at the web site he created to share his music: jaywalkerbroadcasts.com.
I recommend you sample enough songs to discover the wide variety of voice and instrument he has put together.
Talk about highly capable, he wrote songs, played all the instruments, sang, recorded, found and financed a professional studio to do mixing and mastering, and then built the web site to distribute his product. And, he did this as a side project to his current full-time day-job. To say we are proud of him, and all he accomplished with this, is an understatement.
When I was young, and heavily interested in recording artists of the time, one thing that boggled my mind was, when individuals would play all the instruments at such an accomplished level, so as to be able to produce a marketable product on their own. Now my own son has done just that!
I remember showing Julian a few things on my guitar when he was little. Then, he took up percussion in the school band, and off he went, playing guitar in rock bands, becoming an accomplished drummer, developing his singing, and developing skills on keyboards and bass guitar. Julian has performed live, in a variety of bands, in a wide range of venues. It’s the stuff that some folks dream of doing, and others actually make a living doing, but he has done it as just one of his many life interests.
Cyndie and I are always thrilled with the music our children make. I’m pretty sure we were annoyingly proud of watching our kids as marching band percussionists for many years. We drove Julian to ‘battle of the bands’ gigs back when he and his school friends didn’t have driver’s licenses. We were also fixated for quite some time on a video that Julian and friend, Dave Marshall, produced while Julian was living, and going to school, in Stockholm, Sweden, and Dave was back in Chicago. I’m including it here again, with Julian’s permission, because we still love it so much.
Julian has now gathered years of his music in a present day recording. He has included guest artists from high school and college days, and put together a legitimate album that he is distributing free on the internet. We think this is a really big accomplishment. I hope you will give it a listen, and then share it with all those who you know that have an appreciation for what he has produced.
If you agree with me, that his efforts are worthy, I invite you to post a comment at his site, or on any of the music sites he links, so he doesn’t just hear it from Mom and Dad. We all know, our support can appear to be a little biased.
Songs Sung
I’m in a bit of a fog, buzzing still from last night’s broadcast of the 54th GRAMMY awards show. It had me staying up a bit late for a night before my morning soccer. That, and from all the tributes being offered in memory of Whitney Houston over the weekend. The Grammy’s had so many live performances, there hardly seemed but a handful of awards presented during the broadcast this year. I think I approve.
What caught my attention? Opening song by Bruce Springsteen and his band. Paul McCartney performing, (how come it looked like he had no idea what the beat was when he clapped along to other people’s performances?). Foo Fighters. Chris Brown’s dance number and the creative graphics projected on the set. I didn’t know Bruno Mars before last night, what a cool performance that was. The Beach Boys together again! Adele’s return to singing after throat surgery. The tribute to Glen Campbell. It was a good year.
Let’s hear it for recorded music, old and new!
International Indie
There is a risk in posting a referral that already has millions of views (was over 9 mil, now almost 24M!), that the reading audience will have already been there, done that. In my case, I’m taking the chance that at least a few of the usual visitors here at Relative Something have yet to experience this one.
Several times in the recent past, my ear has been grabbed by one particular song on my radio station, 89.3 The Current. The artist is a Belgian-born Australian named Wouter “Wally” De Backer who performs under the stage name of Gotye. The song is, Somebody That I Used To Know, and features New Zealand singer/songwriter Kimbra.
However, they aren’t the ones who finally connected me with this song. That honor belongs to a group of Canadians performing as Walk Off The Earth, who have recorded a cover version of the song, with all five members playing the same guitar simultaneously.
Watch the video on youtube.
Take some time to explore the variety of videos that Marshall & Gianni and friends have posted at the Walk Off The Earth (WOTE) site. They demonstrate a good playfulness and fine sense of humor, a bit reminiscent of the videosong art of the duo Pomplamoose that I was shouting about last year.
Random Segues
Yesterday I walked in the door with the mail and found a $10 iTunes gift card I had ordered through exchanging points in my Recyclebank account.
I’d forgotten I ordered it, since it had been a couple weeks.
During the drive home from work, a song on the radio (that I was hearing for the first time) intrigued me enough to want to look it up when I got home.
That reminded me I had been meaning to search for a Levon Helm song I heard playing on the credits of a movie I recently bought.
Found Levon’s song, “A Train Robbery,” on the 2007 album, Dirt Farmer.
I listened to the samples for most of the songs on the album and liked them enough to want all of them.
Price of the album download on iTunes: $9.99.
Forgot about searching for the song I had heard on the radio.
For some entirely unknown reason, the Levon Helm songs brought to mind some Bob Dylan lyrics from his song, “When You Awake” that The Band performed.
Ollie told me I’m a fool. So I
walked on down the road a mile, Went to the house that brings a smile
Sat upon my grandpa’s knee, And what do you think he said to me?When You Awake you will remember ev’rything, You will be
hangin’ on a string from your… When you believe, You will relieve the only soul
That you were born with to grow old and never know.
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Snow’s gonna come and the frost gonna bite, My old car froze
up last night. Ain’t no reason to hang your head I could wake up in the
mornin’ dead. Oh! And
if I thought it would do any good, I’d stand on the rock where Moses stood..
That last line has rolled around in my head for as long as I’ve heard it, starting sometime in the 1970s.
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If I thought it would do any good, I’d stand on the rock where Moses stood.
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