The right notes

I’ve always wondered when I listened to music that I liked, “what made it hit with me”  There is a rolling nature to the music that I really enjoy, and I ‘m not talking about the beat or the timing necessarily, because I’ve enjoyed my share of Brian Eno inspired dissonance.  What I mean is that the music, regardless of its rhythm, seems to roll through my brain with an ease as if all the right notes are being played.  Of course, whoever writes the music is playing the “right notes”, more or less, but when the music really hits, it leads and there is no particular moment when the listening process is interrupted by a thought that “gosh, that is the wrong note” or “are they in tune” ….  When I started studying music and music composition, part of the  answer to the question “how does music ‘hit’” became obvious; it is simple music theory in the construction, but simple theory is not enough.  A composer has to know when to play a note and when not to play it, when silence is better than sound, if this note should be for this or that length and should it be held or ‘hammered’, up or down, and how far, muted or full ….  These are all questions that go into the process of composing parts when playing music, but there is more.  There is something else that goes into playing “the right notes”.

I don’t speak for anybody else, or really from anybody else when I talk about what my composition process is.  I taught myself from the knowledge base that exists.  Yes, there are too many to mention influences, and I was not [necessarily] the one who invented “Western tuning” [equal temperament], but nobody ever told me how to go from knowing the notes to knowing which notes to play.  I feel that it is a process that all people who choose to compose music eventually struggle with, and they either master the process to their own satisfaction or they “flame out” – as one local composer once commented to me about it.  You can know all the notes, but you might not be playing all the right notes. 

As I’ve learned to become a better player – I still consider myself barely decent, not as good as I want to be, need to be, and am working to be – I’ve struggled with the process of learning how to know that I am playing the right notes without thinking too much about it.  There’s the level of playing where everything fits within the theory structures and appears to be “right”, but that is almost wholly dependent upon the composer having followed the rules and made it “easy”.  After it is easy, and maybe recorded, the harder parts come into play.  Is the recording at an accurate pitch?  Is the mastering level at a constant reference tone?  Was there something else in the writing which was “hidden” by the use of standard tuning and fingering of progressions?  It is these things that become important to think about, know and anticipate as the playing level – the improv & anticipation – increases.  Music construction is object oriented story telling.  Knowing which fingering position to be in and why can be an important difference when the time comes to “write now”.  Writing now is what makes a live band sound better than a studio band, or a studio construction more pleasing to the ear than a live band out of synch because the engineering wasn’t quite on the same wavelength as the playing. 

My goal was to move from teaching about music application in an education framework toward producing music.  Since I had come from a background where teaching the “object” included the need to “perform” – to demonstrate the object in use – I knew that it was important that I learn to play the instruments I was going to be discussing conceptually, and in theory.  This process of expanding the reach of the producers’ chair is not an easy one to master because there are so many other aspects of what have to be done to actually call yourself a Producer and to produce professional music that gets reproduced in media and paid money for performance, broadcast, and mechanical usages.  It’s a joke, really, to think that a Producer can master all that needs to be done. 

One of the things I’ve learned as I’ve worked on my playing – it was a hobby for twelve years before it became a passion and obsession for longer than that – is that in order to create “music that flows together” all the right notes must be all the right notes.  You really can’t pick and choose which position your going to play in, what notes in the “shells” you are going to play or leave out, or simply play at random if all of the notes you can play are not the right notes to be played to write what you are trying to “write”.  Every note must fit within the structure of the song.  While I know that there are those who say “it’s music, you can play what you want”, and I understand what they are saying, somewhat to a degree, but in the end, you can’t “play what you want” once you set the song off on a course that the music is “supposed to follow”.  You can play the dissonant note, but when you do you will interrupt the playing of the music as an experience for the listener, who is the audience for whom professional music is intended.  Playing the right notes is not only a matter of knowing which notes are “available”, but when and how to touch them for maximum effect. 

Gosh, it’d be so sweet to hear all the right notes again … .          

It Seemed Like Forever

It seemed like I was working to really understand the one point, the one note that leads to all the others “forever”.  I can say that it felt like a blood clot in my brain, stuck and causing headaches that I couldn’t fully understand; I can say that my memory wouldn’t stick because the “strokes” kept erasing the material that I had already gone over a thousand times.  Even so, even as my body starts telling me that it is moving more away from youth and toward something else, there are breakthroughs that come as the repetition finds its way to the right memory storage location – somewhat like a 36 year old beating a 46 year olds’ “standard of excellence” at the 46 year olds’ “tournament”, as happened today, although it is a “tie”, with ten years to go and some differences in quality …, but that’s golf.  Bears are bears, tigers are tigers ….  If you know the way that these global connections are created, then you understand. 

I don’t know how long it is supposed to take to master music playing; I doubt that I’ll ever be all the way as good as I’m trying to be at performance, but I know that as long as I keep pushing myself to stay on top of the instrument, the time will come when the next level gets conquered, and then the next and so on.  That is one of the most beautiful things about music, that it doesn’t get unreachable as you grow older, granting that you remain physically capable, it gets more coordinated.  I used to know what I “heard”, but I couldn’t pin point what it was; I used to know what it was, but I couldn’t explain it; I used to know how to explain it, if anybody cared, but I still would miss it as the mastery would slip in and out of my control.  It isn’t easy work, and nobody pays you, not for long anyway, until you are on top of the instrument, watching the boxes on the guitar, seeing the “shells” and the movements and the modes and knowing that this is the way that piece of composed music is supposed to be played, if you were saying this, or this way if you were saying that. 

I set out to be a “Record Producer” somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty years ago now, and it is only now that I am beginning to fully comprehend what my job actually entails, at least as far as I envision this instrument in this setting in these times.  When I started, the choice was just one of many paths I could take.  More and more through time, I was shuffling around from dead end entry level work to dead end entry level dungeons; I felt farther and farther away from the point, and being more forced to battle a perception by people who don’t either know what they’re doing or are simply remnants of Darwinian thought processes who don’t care about anybody but themselves and their construction.  The point is creating music and art, not profit margin and slave driving, although there is room for discussion about both of those latter issues too.  The first part of the project is to know what you want to do; the second part is to know how to do it.  In the dead end world, they don’t know how to do it, and they don’t want to tell you what they know because that would reveal what they don’t know.  Revealing what they don’t know would end the production as they’ve done it ….  When you start a project, you don’t know more than a fourth grade elementary school child, who if I’ve calculated correctly would be about nine years old, in the springtime.  I believe Sir George Martin once recorded the concept as “Rock and Roll Springtime” ….  He taught me everything Wayne Shorter did not; between the two, well is there much?

When I was born, I would not have been allowed to learn from Wayne Shorter, not by societies’ standards anyway, no matter what his genius was/is.  The good fortune that “tied me to the bumper of a State Troopers’ Ford” is documented in Michelle Mercer’s book, which Doctor Shorter might or might not have agreed is accurate.  There was something in the Lotus Sutra that just wouldn’t let go, and it grew through the first decade of my life as the Civil Rights movement was hijacked by liberals with an agenda for retribution rather than a passion for a cause with an effect.  That’s another story, a story where people get passionate about their lies to the point of no longer listening to the sound or the silence.  Twenty five years from now, if I want to go see and hear Wayne Shorter, I’ll go to the wall, the Viet Nam Veterans Memorial Wall and I will remember.  I will remember walking into the ghost field at the opening of that Memorial tribute in our Nations’ Capital, and breathing the air of what the time of my childhood was, with all of the emotions that come absorbable in the events, the people, and the sounds and sights of the music of a specific time.  Life is Jazz music, but I am not a jazz musician, not a jazz artist, and not a Veteran, not in this lifetime anyway.

Something I learned while studying music composition construction was about Military Generals.  I can’t say why the subject came up, it’s not worth calling 911 over it.  The point I learned?  The only War a Military General who deserves the rank wants is the one to avoid Warfare.  Something else I learned:  Sound is the front line of all battles of thought.  It’s not a lie to say you hadn’t heard about what somebody else is telling you is their experience. 

George Martin was the “key music instructor” for me; his production of the Beatles is the centerpiece for me because it says “I understood this”.  When someone attaches themself to music, they are saying that they hear the rhythm of the sound.  If you’re good, you’ll hear the rhythm of the music; if you’re really good, you’ll hear the rhythm of life with the music; if you’re pushing that edge between accomplishment and greatness, you’ll understand the application of the rhythm in your life and works, and you’ll turn it into music, into a cause for others to hear, learn, and apply as well.  Someday, somewhere, people who were “with the Beatles” might say “George had nothing to do with that”, and he understood that ….

The problem with wanting to be a Record Producer in this time, with the advent of computer/digital recording and visual media overload is that just about everybody thinks they know how to do the job.  Schools race past the formula which has worked for thousands of years to push an agenda.  By the time the music reaches “speed”, the “pace of play” in the Entertainment Business, so many lawyers and attorneys have lathered up the grease on the wheels with things that are not necessary that the majority of “industry insiders” think that the Education system documentation is the measure by which music can be made “professional”.  Even since the 1960’s the railroad mentality of “if you haven’t done that before” [from “player insiders”] or “if you can’t show me your school credits” [from “industry insiders”] has grown to be such a repetitive bore that there is no train, rather than a slow train coming.

I love what we now refer to as “country music”, or as Whispering Bill Anderson recently said on the radio show he appears upon with some great regularity “what used to be called Country and Western music”, but the more convoluted the entry points become, the less I care to fight the owners of the show, the “collection” that was/is the REIT that “protects” the show, which once was something significant in American Music, but is now threatened with a type of extinction because they aren’t asking the right questions.  “What is Country and Western Music”?

In the Lotus Sutra, there is a story about enlightenment, and the Buddha who must go away from the people for a time, hiding unseen, until there is enough desire for enlightenment for there to be benefit from a return of the Buddha ….

Country and Western Music is a celebration of music, dance, and social kindness & trust.  It’d be a sad thing for that to be too gone for too long ….  There’s money to be made in music, but with the way that music is being marketed and promoted and the entry points being guarded, it’s like money that’s been taxed out of the desires of the wealthy and the knowledge base of the hungry.  Maybe those far off “professionals” know it all, but they ain’t sayin’ ….

The best thing anyone can do is to be ready, to stay on top of the instrument, to listen to what the composer and the players and the producers put onto the recording, and hope that the money doesn’t run out on those dead end entry level jobs before somebody, anybody with a conscience, notices that  it mattered …