MikeRobinson
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Posts posted by MikeRobinson
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Never be arrogant as long as you must depend on other people to buy you a beer.
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"No Customer Revenue(!) Increment!"
End of story.
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"Don't quit your day job.™"
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"Pursuing this same thought ..."
If you were to ask me, "what is 'the number-one misconception about The Creative Process?™'" then I would answer: "Venus."
I mean, "there she Is ... absolutely beautiful, absolutely starkers, popping up from nothing more than an oyster shell on the beach."
If only it were actually this easy.
The actual "creative process," I think, is a process of decisions, all-but-one of which are destined to remain invisible to the audience so that the final work-product will indeed appear to all of them to be: "magic."
Also: as an "original creator," you in fact probably will not turn out to be "the last creative contributor" to the version that finally hits the streets. You simply have to be the bringer of the first original spark ... and, in doing so, yours is a priceless and original contribution. (Be happy, therefore, to freely share that spark, when and if the time comes.)
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Look forward to hearing the "repair." I think you've got a really great track going here.
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"Rogers and Hammerstein," say.
One type of musical genius could come up with melodies more-or-less continuously.
The other type of musical genius could come up with lyrics to match.
And ... both of them, together, could concoct music for an enduring Broadway Show!
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First of all, I always have my (i)phone with me, and whenever "a tune pops into my head," I find some not-so surreptitious way to fire up Voice Recorder and "hum a few bars." Each and every one of these is carefully backed-up and kept forever on my Macintosh's Time Machine.
When I then sit down to "write a song," trust me that I have no idea "what will happen next," but, by gawd, "I shall capture it!" (And, having captured it, I will never entirely discard it.)
Then, the work part of it begins. Going through the stuff (regardless of "when it came to me"), I look for "various somethings, wherever they might be," that I think that I can maybe use to assemble(!) "a new song" out of. Most of those "assemblies" wind up in "the not-named-Trash folder that is never emptied." But, a few of them make the cut. (Probably, several candidate versions. Always room for one more.)
When I finally arrive in this way at "a song outline" that seems worthy of further development, I give it my very best technical treatment, trying to find whatever best serves the musical idea that is now racing around in my head. ("Seems to be going nowhere? Okay, bump the version-number, carefully set the existing files aside (never to be discarded!), and try something else.)
Does this "creative process" sound like it has no "creative inspiration" at all? Precisely!
Consider this: at some indefinable moment in history, Michelangelo was staring at a block of marble. Perhaps he saw David at that prescient moment. Most likely, he didn't. But, he went through a creative process that culminated in the famous sculpture that we know today ... and then, vacuumed up all of the marble chips! (And, in so doing, making "the very-dirty process of chiseling and polishing stone," appear to be "magic.")
Actually, Michelangelo made decisions, every step of the way. Maybe he stumbled-upon a really ugly-looking bit of rock and had to change his plans real fast. Maybe he agonized over the character's face or hand-position before ... committing to ... "one" thing. All of this decision-making is now lost to history. All that we are left with is the sculpture, itself. And, lo and behold, "it looks like magic."
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"How did they achieve that magic?"
Shhh... they didn't. What they actually did was "to do a damned good job of getting rid of all those marble chips."
After all, what does a museum patron actually want to know about carving marble? They want to think that it's magic.
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Your problem, at least to my ears, is that the drum hits, specifically at 0:29, do not "hit" at the correct beats. Instead, they appear to be exactly one beat out-of-sync.
As early as its introduction at 0:37, we can hear that the piano and the drums are out-of-sync: the hi-hat beat is striking on the off-beat, rather than the on-beat as undoubtedly intended.
... and, in fact, when you present the drum-part ... that cymbal-hit at 0:28(!) ... isn't that entire line of cymbal-hits out-of-sync with the timeline established by the bass drum?
When, after soloing the drums, you try to bring them together, I hear a distinct competition (never resolved) between all of the various parts ... piano, and the several components of(!) the drum line ... as to exactly where the "on-"beat is supposed to be. It appears to my ears that several of them are off by exactly one beat. Hence, they are working against each other, leaving the listener (and you ...) confused.
Fortunately, "easily fixed."
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Sometimes, I've got a lyric. Sometimes, I've got a tune. Rarely do I have both at the same time. But, capture every single thing.
Later, you might see that a bit of this tune, coupled with a bit of that one, can mesh perfectly with a bit of this lyric, and a bit of that one.
What almost never happens, if at all, is "Venus popping out of a clam-shell, fully formed (and, totally starkers!)" on some beach somewhere. Inspiration might provide you with raw material but you make what comes out of it, through a series of decisions.
Don't throw anything away. Draw a line through it and stuff it into a "wastebasket box" that you never actually empty. Go through its content from time to time. You might find in it the answer to your latest musical conundrum.
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"Naah, Rob, it was a w-e-i-r-d movie ..." Probably, IMHO, one that never should have been made at all. (And, "reckon I can say that," because I live less than a hundred miles from where it was made.)
Go ahead and try to tell me that "the banjo player in that clip" was anything other than "a very s-t-r-a-n-g-e stereotype of <god-knows-what>." (Even though I think that the actor in question turned in a very-stellar performance ... just watch him go! ... given the very-strange(!) strictures of his character.) The whole movie was like that. With the exception of the Protagonist, who (of course) was inserted into "this very-strange situation," I don't think that any of the purported inhabitants of that "very-strange situation" was ever intended to be a real human character. I frankly think that "the whole movie, from beginning to end, was 'a very cheap shot'" against the actual culture of the area – which the screenwriters apparently made no particular effort to discover in the first place.
The movie-going audience "panned it," and ... IMHO ... good riddance.
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Ray, I think that the current crop of "military industrialists(!)" rather dearly hope that no one within the sound of their voice associates "the flag-raising on Iwo Jima" with anything other than ... "a glorious flag."
You say: "More recently we have seen enough body bags, coffins and flags from the conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan on the news and other media to put anyone with half a brain off war for an eternity ..." But, is that actually true? No, it is not. Even though "military transports stuffed with coffins" have been arriving at Edwards Air Force Base every night for many years now, today these transports land on empty runways.
Very quickly, the Military Industrialists(!) realized that the American People have no(!) objection to "War." (In fact, they spend billions of dollars a month on it, entirely without objection.) Their only objection was to the military draft. As soon as they knew that they could never be "called up," they were perfectly content to allow wars to be fought by ... "them." The under-class. In other words, the expendables.
A generation later, they calculate, "the flag-raising on Iwo Jima" is ... "just a (glorious) flag." Like all the other symbols that they now use in their advertising, it's all just "a symbol." A symbol of a thing that has nothing at all to do with ... dying.
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But anyway, "yeah, that's what this Song is About." Now, I just gotta orchestrate it.
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I think you have to have Flash Player installed to hear a song on MacJams. In the future, I will be posting it to SoundCloud and other places.
The inspiration for the song came specifically from the billboard that I show in the photo on MJ, and several others like it which are being promoted by the US Marine Corps. It was a very "dark and stormy night," and in the short distance I saw "that billboard." Other advertisements in the same series display a young black man standing in his best dress blues. (My original title was "Black Men, White Gloves.") Others show armored personnel carriers, with hatches open, driving down a beach. Others show the flag-raising at Iwo Jima ... minus the hail of bullets and mortar shells that killed most of the young men in that photograph. Others show an intricately-decorated sword that is "Earned. Never Given.™"
In the MJ discussions which followed, I posted another image – of a toddler in a Marines uniform saluting his dead father's coffin –which as I say on MJ, speaks volumes. That is to say, the oh-so young widow's vacuous expression.
And the song is really – and, specifically – a protest against "sanitized, bloodless, war advertising." They promise young people, especially poor and disadvantaged young people, that they can be part of something greater and more heroic than their own lives will ever be. But, horribly, it isn't the truth. And, as the US Military well knows, their target audience isn't yet worldly enough to know, let alone fear, the truth of War.
In my copyright application, I offered an alternative to "Semper Fi™" in the words, "Do or Die," but my heart was never in it and I didn't sing it. Nevertheless: this song is not a protest against the people who serve or who have served the United States honorably in any branch of Service – specifically including the Marine Corps. Rather, it is a protest against those very-despicable (to me ...) people who attract young people to "the glory of War" using utterly false and deceitful pretenses.
I developed the song while pacing around in the War Memorial (Auditorium) in Nashville, TN, an oddly sepulchral place that tries its best not to look and feel like a gigantic tomb – and fails. My original rendition of it included a fully-orchestral overture to back the incessant military drum, and my orchestral treatment of it is even more so, expanding on the gap between the "AB" sections and also trying to find a musical treatment that matches the changing emotions while also musically emphasizing the contrast between one section and the next.
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Deliverance was a very weird show, dripping with useless stereotypes, but it did have a few very good musical performances ... which, today, are pretty much the only things for which the movie is now remembered.
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Actually, Ray, I'm not persuaded that "the Moguls" that you speak of have nearly the power and the influence that they once did – because, today, you can hear what you like. Streaming services, "Internet Radio," and many other avenues now exist for getting your music directly into the hands of your audience.
The problem that "the Moguls" always had was ... vinyl. And CDs, and all the other physical things that stood in the way of getting "my" song into "your" ears. They hedged their bets by creating "genres," currying audience expectations to fall predictably into one-or-more of those genres, and creating "stars." Nonetheless, only a few "stars" ever made it. And, for those Moguls, the economics haven't really changed much. Don't ever expect to see much diversity on your XM Radio.
Today, performers can reach audiences directly – and, audiences can (and do!) reach back! Performances are counted. Royalties are paid. Furthermore, the "cost of goods sold" is virtually zero so that even a small profit becomes a big deal. If you pay $1 per unit for something that essentially cost me $0 per unit to produce (after certain fixed costs are amortized, obviously), then nearly all of that dollar is mine. And, it takes a whole lot less dollars coming in to equal the same net profit that a much apparently-bigger and more-glamorous-sounding conventional deal would have earned. I can afford to experiment, because I don't have to "print plastic and put it into a truck, then a warehouse, then a store" to find out if my experiment worked.
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... and it would do well for any hopeful composer of Music to study these "two-and-a-half minute wonders" m-o-s-t carefully!
Listen to them ... trust me, trust me ... over and over and over again.
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The royalty checks come through just the same ...
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Identify every piece of material that anyone remotely could consider to be "their property."
Now: "show utter respect to their Intellectual Property (IP) rights," to an obsequious degree. Contact the representative of every single IP-rights owner, and document(!) every step of your so-called "due diligence." Keep a thoroughly detailed record of exactly how you determined who the potential owners were. Then, exactly how and exactly when you contacted every one of them. Exactly how they responded, and exactly when. How you followed-up with anyone who failed to respond, until every single one of them did.
Only then do you publish your piece ... anywhere.
You have both "covered your a*s .. I mean, bases," and you have shown that you were aware of everyone whose rights you might possibly have touched-upon, and pro-actively did something about it.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T.™
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Have you ever written a song that you just can't let go of? Or, that just won't let go of you? Just such a song, for me, is called Young Men, White Gloves. The song is a different sort of war-protest song. Specifically, it protests the well-oiled marketing engine that tries to make "war" a thing of honor and adventure. It appeals to young men, especially from poorer families, by promising them a sense of belonging and of pride the likes of which they may have never known, along with a military uniform that might be the nicest piece of clothing they have ever owned. But it doesn't tell the truth. Iwo Jima becomes a glorious flag placed on a hill – not a bloodbath that killed or wounded over 26,000 Marines including most of the ones who raised that flag in the picture.
You can hear it here on MacJams, but I was never satisfied with that version. For one thing, when I started peeling the layers back off of it, I found that it contains a lot of musical mistakes. So, I've started over. This time, I'm writing for a full orchestra. Some of the elements will remain the same – the piccolo, the general structure (with an added Interlude) – but I'm going for a much richer musical texture. And I'm beginning my (re-)work with a dedicated open-source music scoring program, MuseScore. And here is how I'm proceeding.
The first thing to go down is the melody, which is one line with lyrics. (This becomes the "lead sheet" that will be needed for US Copyright registration.) This then becomes the basis of a vocal guide track, which will be in the singer's headphones as he sings. Just before the start of each new phrase, the first note of the phrase is included (more quietly) to cue the singer of what note is coming next. In recordings, it is muted.
Then, an accompaniment guide track which is the leading and most-featured note line within the accompaniment. This might be a counter-melody to the melody. In the case of YMWG, it is basically the piano part that you first hear in the overture. This guide track will be muted.
Most intricate is the chord guide track, written-in by hand using some suitable keyboard-like patch. This is a block-chord arrangement of the entire chord structure that will be played by any piece of the orchestra. The chord structure begins simply and becomes more elaborate and forceful with each go-round of the verse so that the song builds to a climax. First, select and position the main chords, which I somehow refer to as "landing chords" or "thump chords." These are the chords that the accompaniment "lands on," and uses to step from one point to the next to the next, with anything in-between being more or less window-dressing. The chords are suitably decorated with 7ths, 9ths and so-on.
The song should now sound very good using just the guide tracks. You really want to perfect the chord-guide track because this will dictate everything that the audience will hear any instrument play, no matter what instrument plays it.
The next step is to partition those guide chords among the various instruments, once again bearing in mind, "don't give it to 'em all at once." Instruments have different flavors, tones, and power – and, weaknesses. Starting with a simple mix of instruments, later on in the song you add more instruments and tones to the arrangement. All of the tones that you select should come from the guide. The chords that are played are those in the guide. How those chords are played is up to you.
Also, an ensemble of any size sounds best when there is overlap in time. Instruments might arrive at the thump-chord points at different times and by taking different paths to get there. This creates the luxurious musical textures that good ensembles are known for.
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Agreed – the recordings are clean and clear, and the videos are imaginative for the purpose intended. Especially in the second case, I felt that I was walking through a well-curated photographic exhibit at an art museum while I listened to an interesting piece of music by an artist whose voice (and, songwriting and performance sentiments) remind me strongly of Chris DeBurgh.
Most importantly, both lyrics (and their accompanying musical presentation) kept making me think. This is a series of very interesting observations about the human condition (if you will pardon that hackneyed expression), cleverly told, and accompanied by visual images that also support the message.
In short, I think that you well deserve to be very proud of what you have accomplished here.
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"And, as for 'gear,' don't let 'em talk you into spending too much!" The music-equipment industry is always geared towards making you feel dis-satisfied about anything that you own, and maybe to feel a little-bit guilty that "you, you poor thing, couldn't afford to" ... (never will they say, "chose not to!") ... spend more money. You spent your money wisely and you came up with an excellent, very professional result.
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If possible, at least once a day. Sometime, several times a day.
My iPhone ... and, thus, my Mac ... is full of "Voice Memos" of various inspirations that have wandered past my brain. And, in the very best tradition of every field biologist, I have "stuck a pin through each one of them, and speared them onto a board."
I plug in my phone next to my bed, and, whenever I am half-awake from a dream and reach for it to record "another something" even while I am half-awake, my wife graciously pretends not to wake up. (As do I, when she does exactly the same ...)
Each of these in due time gets "at least, the preliminary 'treatment.'"
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"The Most Lifeless Lyric On the Planet: PLEASE Don't Write Another One!"
Okay, here it goes:
"The Girl is Gone.™ The Boy comes back to <<an empty apartment | an empty hotel room | retreating tail-lights>> and realizes that he has irretrievably f*cked up his relationship. (Optionally: insert one-or-more verses during which he reminisces about how great it all started, and/or how wonderful he [innocently] thought that his entire rest-of-his-life was going to be.) Usually, the Girl attaches some form of goodbye-note – to the front door, to the [red, of course ...] [pickup, of course ...] [truck, of course ...] that she thought he loved more than he loved her. And now, the Boy spends the remaining verses [with or without "booze, of course ..."] feeling sorry for himself, and nothing more.
Key Point: It is not "the corn-pone situation" that makes "this story-situation 'lifeless' and therefore uninteresting. Rather, it is "the complete lack of story."
The entire third-paragraph of this post was – and is – "nothing more than a story-setup." It serves only to describe a conflict that has occurred in the recent past. (A "past-perfect(!) participle." She isn't going ... she's gone! A fait accompli.)
"The story ... if(!!) there is one ... begins here." The protagonist (narrator) is thrust into a conflicting situation. (And, of course, so is the Girl. It's up to you, the Storyteller, whether you bring her on-stage or not, or if you refer to her more-obliquely.) This is the starting point of story: it is not a story, by itself.
A story begins to take place when a character in the story a-c-t-s, and does so in such a way that "there is no turning back." (Or, the character is seen making an irrevocable decision to begin to act.) From this moment forward, the character's life will not be the same, and it is the character himself who committed himself to that change of course.
There is, also, "one more k-e-y player" to consider in this crazy songwriting game: "the audience member who is listening to your song!"
In the end, a compelling song is not about the fictional characters who are supposed to be involved in it. No, the song is about the listener, (him|her)self! (S)He is the person who must identify with one or more of the characters, who must identify with the situation and with the response that the character makes, and who is therefore swept forward by your purely-fictional creation: "Yeah! I get it! They're talking about me!"
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Actual songwriters are ... "fiction authors." They look for scenarios that "lots of people can identify with," and try to write a melody and a lyric that "clicks."
In other words – "they try to write the musical accompaniment to someone else's life," and, "to do it for a living."
But, the fictions that they strive to produce are exactly that: "fiction."
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"Given that this is 'your business(!!)'" do kindly remember that you are selling your product to a buyer who is ... at least, theoretically ... taking a rather-gigantic legal risk(!) by buying from you!
That "legal risk," of course, is extreme! It is the risk that "you, in fact, are not(!)
the lawful owner(!!) of the thing that you are selling!"
Potential purchasers mitigate that legal risk by first determining that "you, the seller, have indeed established a legal claim of title(!) to" this piece of intellectual property ... and by scrupulously documenting the "due diligence" process by which they arrived at that conclusion.
By doing so, they scrupulously separate their potential legal liability from ("sucks to be you ...") yours.
"If you, by submitting on such-and-such a date a fraudulent claim of copyright," then that is y-o-u-r prison-sentence! (And, yours alone.)
They can protect themselves from any allegations of "innocent" nor "contributory" infringement by demonstrating to the Honorable Court that they "minded their P's and Q's." (And "His/Her Honor need merely "surf to copyright.gov to prove it.")
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And, "no matter what country you live in, "always think like a Lawyer!" More-or-less, "the risks, anywhere, are fundamentally the same."
Since you are the seller, it is fundamentally important that you protect "the people who are eager to send you money(!)" from all reasonably-forseeable legal risks.
Pursue "your business" in a "businesslike way!"
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To me, the very term, "musical arrangement," implies and refers to a musical-pre(!)-production process that may or may not be relevant to your present situation . . .
. . . "but that, perchance, possibly should(!)"
Traditionally, "the musical arranger" plied his work, "entirely on paper," before a bunch of Union Scale™ Musicians set foot in a recording studio, staffed by Union Scale™ Engineers, at which moment the Union Scale™ Clock($$) would begin ticking($$) !!
His/Her job was to strive to work out as much of the performance ahead of "time as possible," so that the Expensive Musicians,™ and the Expensive Technicians,™ would waste as little "time (equals money!!) as possible in executing the intended performance." (And, "do please(!) note(!!)," at this point there was no(!) question(!!) "what the target song would be!")
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Even though ... ("of course ...") ... "the Artistic Exigencies Of The Moment™" ... "conceivably might" ... occupy several future complete issues of Rolling Stone magazine with regards to "y-o-u-r(!!) industry-reshaping breakthrough(!!!)," I would frankly argue that the actual odds are very-decidedly against it.
Insofar as possible, "try your very best to plan ahead." Try your best to pre-produce "your very best paper-product," in order to confine your "Artistic Exigiencies of the Moment™" to the narrowest possible traffic-lane ... and to preserve as best as possible "the good graces of" both your fellow performers and your financial backers. (Neither of whom particularly like "uncertainty," most-especially "at un-godly ... <never mind him/her, why are we still here> ... hours.")
Uh huh. Do your homework ... ahead of time. "Thank you!"
the lawful owner(!!) of the thing that you are selling!"
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Songs To Recommend To 15 Year Olds
in Musician's Lounge
Posted · Edited by MikeRobinson
"Aww, dad ... c'mon ... you are so l-a-s-t century!"
(Bah! Humbug! These kids this Century!")