Accept Yourself, Accept the World

You do need to accept yourself as you are. If you do, then you won’t waste your time and energy on punishing yourself for having messed up at something, and you’ll be able to move on from the negative experience further.

Same with the World, the Planet. Yes, it can be, it is a nasty place, but it is what it is. It’s been fucked since the beginning and, really, it ain’t anyone’s or any system’s fault. If you can accept it as it is, and very likely will always be, then you and I can start tweaking it, improving it forward in small ways.

Of course, we are all, mostly, Pacifists, but what do you do if someone slaps you in the face, do you turn your face like Jesus, for another slap, and end up crucified, like Jesus did? Don’t ask, don’t expect Wars to end any time soon!

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Where I’m coming from musically; where I am at.

I’m now working on my next song which I’m producing as a kind of “ZZ Trap” LOL. It’s called Whole Lotta Trouble.

To understand this, you have to understand where I’m coming from musically, my influences: Led Zeppelin, CCR, The Doors, Lou Reed, Johnny Cash, James Taylor, Chris Isaak, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and… my secret vocal influencer: Billie Holiday (a little bit off on the timing and sliding into and out of notes ahhhhh heaven). Oh, of course, there was Milton Nascimento & Wayne Shorter “Native Dancer”, more heaven.

Of course, there was all them jazz cats, but those are more “second order”, as we say in science, influences.

I’m telling u this, so u know where (and when!!) I’m coming from musically. And also, I read music score (from my classical guitar days) and that’s how I compose, even for beats.

The style I’m pursuing, then, is taking all of that stuff and huh add current loops and grooves (EDM, Tropical House, Hip Hop, Trap, anything, say clubby…)

I’m horrible, I have no patience, no enjoyment for making my own beats. So I buy loops and apply, edit, mix different ones, until it sounds right, feels good.

Voilá! This is where I’m at – this is the Cindo Santos style. [
But wait, there’s more! Better left for later posts]

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Realizing the Obvious

I just realized (actually, a couple years ago in an accidently-unpublished Post) that most times I have some big personal realization (insight), it’s been right there all along, I just hadn’t realized it before (pun intended).

No, those are not my hands! Yes, that is my face and glasses! :)
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Constant Social Media Connectivity is Messing up the Brains of Older People More than Young People!

Wow, that was an old post draft – I wrote it June 2020. And it’s so darn true!!!

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Why don’t I ever see the glass is half empty?

You know, I’ve noticed that I have some kind of a filter that only allows me to see the good things that happen to me in life. I tend to disregard what goes bad, to see only new opportunities when something appears to deters my plans, and I easily forget the bad things in the past – I mean, sometimes, really forget them!

Today I realized – having made it back to the US from Portugal just one day before flights were barred from the EU due to our Great Leader’s Decree regarding the Corona virus – that the reason I only see the full half of the glass is because, well, it’s visible; the empty half is, well, invisible – how can I possibly see it?!

Portuguese Sardines & Scottish Single Malt Whiskies
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What do young people have in common with old people?

Neither gives a fuck!

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California Dreamin’ or Oblivious & Delusional

I’m on my way to Cali Dec. 14th to Jan 5th to finish recording and producing my next and final four songs for my EP 2020 (out hmm around March, 2020, duh). I realized something odd, all the people I communicate with in LA – without exception, do not mention, not even in passing, the fires that are ravaging California!

So, I have a broader comment on human beings: we are both delusional (which I knew) and oblivious. OK, let me bring this down to Earth here. We humans are built to react, and quickly too, to immediate threats (the lion attacking, etc.); we are built to think about this crop this season, this year, maybe; and at least 50% of us do not even think that we gotta put away some nest eggs LOL for old age – shoot, until the 19th century (the industrial revolution), most of us didn’t even live to old age!

Protecting my Takamine Santa Fe guitar from rising pool levels in the DR. April, 2011.

This is why there is a climate change calamity coming up. The socio-political arena we are facing – that we’ve always faced! – is that different people have varying levels of obliviousness and delusionalsness. And, Friends, Followers and Fans, in a Democracy, you got accept this, you got deal with it, and ooh, you got learn to compromise, and not put airs of I-know-more-than-thou! It’s the only way people. So, vote your say on Nov. 3rd, 2020!

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Yes, I absolutely want it badly!

I remember reading a year or two ago, while I was still questioning, was unsure of jumping fully into this music business as performing artist and all that, that one of the personal ingredients you really need is wanting it, really, really wanting it badly. And me thinking, well, I don’t really want it that badly, I mean, I can live without it, and still be happy and all.

Guess what? Today, November 25th, 2019, I know for damn sure, 100% that I really, really, want it badly! I got have it! I got have success in music!

You might ask, of course, what do I mean success in music? You can succeed with a small niche group who enjoy your style of music, bla bla bla. No people! I want massive success. OK, but let’s be specific, I don’t need Top 10, I just want Top 100 on the Billboard. I don’t need to be up there with Post Malone, Travis Scott and all of them, but I want Top 100.

Now, you might ask, why that level, why not the very top then? Because, I only want – and this applies to everything I wish for in life, have always wished for in my life, and I’ve always succeed at this, I only want and wish what I think, believe is actually within my capabilities, circumstances. And those indicate that my type of music is a bit hmm, not entirely mainstream LOL. Meaning, there’s a lot of “consequential” vis “breezy”; I’m just not willing to go all breezy at all. Furthermore, my style has a lot of background, multi-ethnic, multi-style elements, that, frankly, make for a difficult marketing pitch, an elevator pitch much longer than 90 seconds, and for very challenging, or impossible, listener segmentation.

The above paragraph became crystal clear today as I’ve received the first Crowd Review from ReverbNation.com ($35). It bruised my ego, that’s for sure! But, really, it exposed the difficulties I listed above. This particular kind of song Woke Up This Morning really splits tastes quite a bit in the 52 reviewers. It splits them on: i) the lyrics, some don’t like political lyrics, others don’t even understand what I’m writing; ii) the groove, is it Latin, not Latin, hmm what kind of Latin, isn’t there some 80’s sound in there?; iii) is it Pop? How can it be? It’s kind of folk… iv) The vocal, for sure it’s different, but maybe it’s just bad… too much Autotune, or Autotune not well done, or,some opined, it’s a great vocal…

See where I’m going with this? It will be absolutely impossible to get these different strands of people behind the same song.

However, grrrrr, the things that I know, and knew, are subpar with the song, reviewers overwhelmingly identify them. And that is the fuckin’ vocal!! I knew that and everyone else knows too! And a few other things as well.

So, the next songs will not be released unless I’m 100% satisfied with them. I cannot expect listeners to not feel when something is off. So I will be able to increase the amount of people who like the song. But I believe I will still be Top 100 material if I want to stay both breezy and consequential; if I want to keep my original, multicultural, multi-decade, multi-genre, very original sound imprint!

On a subsequent phase, let’s just say that I do reach Top 100 with one song. Well, then maybe I would set my sights higher. But at this point that’s a type of success way out of my reach – so I’m not interested in it. Period. However, the Top 100 is within my reach, but I got think carefully through the final production. And I want it badly, real badly, that’s for sure! And I got the stamina, the drive to work for it! Help me out dear reader, follower, fan. LISTEN, VIEW, LIKE, SUBSCRIBE, FOLLOW. Let’s make some NOISE people!!

Thank you, thank you very much.

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Your production quality is inversely proportional to the distance between your butt and the chair

I started working on my next (second) song Whole Lotta Trouble yesterday. Keep in mind, all songs I work on already have a finished lyric and music, it’s a question of producing them. And I’m backlogged! So, inspired by the reception of a live audience to my trap mix of Woke Up This Morning, on Oct. 26, I decided to make this next one, a what I’m calling, ZZ Trap. Just imagine a minor pentatonic guitar-driven track.

This song is very straightforward as a rock song, pretty brisk at 134 bpm. Also, very easy as a Trance a the same tempo. I know this because I have the folders with those basic draft mixes! But, you know, ya got be with the times, ya gotta have that 808, and that swagger. The mix has to start whimsical and then DROP that 808… and the electric guitar part. Oops!

I went through several, not many, loop kits. Just listened until the first one sounded right. Being lazy, sorry, I just don’t keep trying for something better. You can go on forever doing that. It’s like finding the right person to get married. Just get one that’s damn good and stop looking for others; stick to it and make it stick. Then, bam! I’m hit with a hammer, it just sounds impossible to wed – to keep pushing the analogy – the guitar to them trap beats and sounds. The thing with loops is that often they come kinda of mixed already, with their own space (reverb, etc.).

And we get to the subject of Today’s Post, today’s insight. Sitting in the studio, going nowhere, but just work on it nonstop (OK, so there are some benign stimulants involved, like a drink or two, every few hours). And finally, already close to midnight, after a few hours of tearing that loop apart, particularly the snare groove – how it interacts with the vocal, and it’s all about the vocal – I start getting it! I start feeling the natural high from accomplishing something, or seeing how it’s going to materialize.

May 1999, Connecticut Songwriter’s retreat with Pat Pattison

Then it starts raining and the water over the lake just puts me over the top of awesomeness. And then I realized, just like songwriting, my instructor in the songwriting retreat, Pat Pattison – back in May 1999 (Whoa, that’s 20 years ago!! Fuck!) told us that the quality of your lyrics is inversely proportional to the distance between your butt and the chair. Get it? If you don’t, think about it for a second, it’s worth the trouble.

The great insight for me personally – and I off this to you, is that, while I have firmly believed for a long time, without question, that this is true: to write great lyrics, you just have to spend a lot of time working them, and the more you do, the better they get, I had never believed this for producing a song. Wow, this gives me so much, total confidence from this day/night on: I will be a great producer. Just keep doing this inverse thing between my butt and my chair!

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