That’s right, communication with my special other has been completely rehabilitated… no more “Communication Breakdown!” That sure feels GOOD, now I can focus on music again.
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Single Release on All Platforms on Nov. 3rd!!
Never mind an earlier post: Family is Happening Again!
Posted in Insights: Personal & Social
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Girl from Ipanema in São Paulo
Well, having fun recently:
Check your ego occasionally or you’ll start believing your own BS.
No explanation needed.
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Having serious family issues
Hi dear Blog readers. I apologize for not having posted anything lately. The reason is that I’m devastated with the total Communication Breakdown I’m having with my wife; we’re talking the big D here! I actually don’t know what’s going to happen but I believe there’s a 50/50 chance of divorce. It’s a very sad situation, this one of not being able to communicate, of the smallest phrase turning into an argument – really. This is of course a good opportunity for finishing the lyrics for my song Communication Breakdown (I’ve had the melody and chords for a while). The problem is, as some blues player once said, you can’t write about the blues when you’ve got them!
Can You Tell a Person by What Sequencer She Owns?
Happy New Year All! I just ran into a colleague at my daytime job who is a very important go-getter department manager and a great musician and songwriter. Now that he is such a big shot and very busy we rarely get to talk much about music. Because he did several back-up tracks for his brief performance at the Christmas party the company had (I wasn’t there but people told me it was great), I asked him if he was still using the little multi-track from some 10 years ago… No, of course not, he has been using GarageBand and now… he was upgrading to Logic – Logic 8 mind you, and predictably, immediately put on that attitude that I should try it. I told him I was a longtime Cubase user and had absolutely no reason to switch, that Logic was just huh, too logicfor me, besides, what sequencer you use does not matter – it’s about the music, stupid. I’m just a meat-and-potatoes kind of recordist: open a track, record something into it, do something to it, mix it with other tracks, ah, kickback and enjoy!
Then I realized, yes, he is a manager, technocrat andcool person, it makes some sense he would be using an Apple and Logic, doesn’t it? After-all, Logic people – and power people – claim it’s all about the control. (Would you believe that I still don’t have an iPhone, or a Blackberry, for that matter…)
One Reason we Make Mistakes
For efficiency and speed, that’s why! The faster we want or need to do things the higher likelihood we make a mistake – like running too fast over rough terrain, or playing your instrument at speeds beyond your current capabilities. So, sometimes we come to conclusions too fast because it would just take too much darn time to come to the, say, right answer. Better to just go for it and hope for a probability that you are right, otherwise, oh well, you made a mistake. So don’t take yourself or others too hard when making mistakes – be forgiving. This actually is at the root of common wisdom like “better to love and … then…”; “to err is human”; “take chances”; etc.
What Michael Jackson Did for Recording
Just read today in Sound on Sound mag. an interview with the engineer Bruce Swedin and two things struck. MJ would: (i) completely memorize the song lyrics before singing in the recording session and (ii) he would have his vocal coach on hand for a one-hour warm-up session right before. BTW, one of his coaches was Seth Riggs, who has a book out with two CDs – good, but kind of challenging stuff http://www.sethriggs.com/.
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More Staten Island, NY
Just saw a movie on DVD by that title. It was actually quite revealing of the place, with mobsters, people being kind of slow-in-the-head, looking for fame and social upscaling in this forgotten, ugly city sister of Manhattan. It made me think of how some places and people just cannot evolve when they’re in the shadow of a successful or much desired city or person. Think of a child growing in the shadow of a famous parent, a spouse lacking confidence living with successful spouse, a start-up artist…?
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Staten Island, NY
Just read that Cornelius Vanderbilt, the risk-taking financial mogul, was born in “a Staten Island, N.Y., farming village in 1794. How about that? I lived in the Seventies in Staten Island with my parents, in a little one-bedroom apartment! My song Seven Hours Ago refers to an incident, in 1975, when my girlfriend Sally and I were going to meet and take a bus to Washington, DC, and protest tuition hikes in college. I waited and waited, obviously, for less than seven hours, and went alone, heart broken. “Seven hours ago, was waiting for my baby, but she didn’t show.” And then I “Checked the train and the Greyhound too, checked in the Ferry and the Staten Island Zoo!”
Posted in Breezy & Consequential Songs
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Are crowds wiser?
“We think usually that crowds–on average–can be wiser than individuals… most people got it wrong because whenever we are in an irrational, exuberant bubble, people fail to think correctly.” Nouriel Roubini in Newsweek, May 4, 2009. Same goes for democracy: on average we get it right… obviously, not necessarily! Just because we are all momentarily blinded by, say the orderliness of National Socialism, the egalitarianism of Socialism, or the justice provided by Religion, or the wealth of an ebullient Market, does not mean at all that we are wiser or right; it just means that the will of the majority gets affirmed. Democracy is not about being right, or wise, it’s just about expediency and giving everyone a chance to be part of the decision-making–it does not ensure the correct decision, nor that everyone will participate. Nothing wrong with that, in the absence of a higher authority, “thinking correctly” is in the eye of the beholder. In other words, I would rather be free to make a wrong decision, than be forced to make the right one… on average, that is.
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