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 …