This is music city, right?

Each day I get just a little more amazed by the experience here.  This is “music city”, right?  Well, I was confused before I came here, but not in the way that many people are.  I knew the politics of the music industry, and I knew what the potential was for the political crossing between “Church politics” & “industry politics”.  I knew what the upside potential was, what could be if the industry was deserving of the type of money and cash flow that was being attributed to it, but I didn’t know if they were actually doing the things that seemed obvious to me.  I knew that my musical friends in Los Angeles – where I’d been involved enough in the music & religion mix in the 1980’s to understand what I didn’t know – weren’t going to be interested in changing something because it was the right thing to do, the moral thing to do.  I don’t mean that in a bad way, it’s just real.  The money in the Los Angeles music scene is driven by the money and the money only, and moral attachments are a question that just aren’t linked, unless they are linked [primarily to income stream], but that might be another question, depending upon whether you have a patent or a valid copyright on that process to make money [in which case, we’re all ears .) ].

Music is viewed as a disposable income business by people outside the industry itself.  This is news to those who are making money in the business, but the distance one is from the music business, the more disposable the product is, particularly when it comes to the question of say eating or paying for housing, or music(?).  “Why gosh, I’m broke with no place to live, I think I’ll spend my last $100 on a new Epiphone guitar”.  The question regarding “why is the music industry worthy of any income stream” is a valid question, except for those who sit in the mid-levels of a protected space in the music industry.  In the beginning, music was worth something because it was worth something – even for those to whom it was just a job that fit into their lifestyle when they didn’t know what they were going to do with their life, [and even more so “to honor God”(?)].  Non Christians generally might miss the “in the beginning” part there, but I’m fairly certain those who have at least read the Bible know that “in the beginning” was a major story told twice … .

Really, what is not a disposable income industry in cities?  People get lost to the idea of how hard it is to feed, cloth and house billions of people on Earth year after year ….  So what good is music?  Sure it’s nice entertainment.  Entertainment is not enough.  The entertainment business has to be something more than just keeping eyes glued to the latest marketing gem or the worst rated network talk show in prime time on cable ….  There is a network, and a product, right?  Only we lose sight of that product the deeper we go into the cities, and the bigger the city is, the harder it is to see out into the rest of the world, where there is simply no interest in that product [name whatever product you want].  Music without music education is just more marketing noise; but that’s what is driving “Music City”, no?

What is music?  It seems like a simple or an idiotic question at first, but like I said, I‘ve not been confused by the same things that others have been.  I thought that music to a lawyer for instance was billable hours …, or for a Surgeon Doctor a long but simple surgery ….  Music for a Church Music Director is apparently entirely involved in the Church Choir, unless you happen to choose a “contemporary worship service” where the music could be on your k-fish station [or possibly your k-frog syndicate, unless cancelled by Marrissa Mayer in her attempt to drown Yahoo in so much debt and confusion that nobody can figure out why the Yahoo pages and services aren’t as good as they used to be].  Launchcast, gone because it isn’t turning a profit?   Music is many things, have a baby, send the baby to a swing set a few years later and see if that doesn’t create some music ….  “Swingtown, Wi-eee!!” [I don’t want a divorce, Susan].  Happy or sad music director at the Church?  I moved to Nashville, “Music City USA” because there is only one place in American Music development where the crossroads between God & Music as Industry cross with the outcome being Music no matter what happens.  Music is the noise that makes you happy while you try to swing over the bar on the swing set.

I keep hearing the haunting echoes of the last few weeks of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson – and that would be either the Johnny Carson who worked beside Mr. Ed McMahon, or the son of the father of a child born while John F. Kennedy was President – and I know that something is missing.  I loved the education I received from “Johnny Carson”, all the way down to the night he brought the silver anniversary show to Burbank, and considered announcing his retirement live on the air as a surprise gift for NBC ….  And then there was the chance to do it again, “just for Hollywood”.  I know, I was there, I saw the light.  “Here comes that rainy day”?

So what stopped Johnny Carson from stopping the show right then?  I thought they’d know when we found the Nashville Rescue Mission, but apparently, well, there you go again [local]:

“People Of Earth” … ….

 

 

 

 

 

       

      

   

Thinking Backwards–Music From the passion play [golf ball included]– [does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind?]

Since it was announced that President George W. Bush will be on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno on 11/19/[13], I began wondering, as I often do, about the intentionality of “art” and “broadcasting”.  Is former President Bush making a statement, that “there was one 9-11, and it was bad luck”?  Perhaps it’s a coincidence.  Perhaps it is “God”, also a “United Methodist” at work, or at least an artistic social secretary for either the President’s club – “we’ll give you three days warning Mr. Kennedy” – or simply a Tonight Show booker who knows the irony of it all in the aftermath is just too much for some people to understand.  Maybe God makes it all different when he does his annual review?  That is a concept that makes the release of the 2nd volume of the Beatles Live at the BBC – with its “new material” – such a treat to ponder in the music and broadcast business.  How do you get to the English Garden anyway?  Take the Broadcast Syndicate [TBS?]  “People of Earth, NBC has made me so filthy rich that I don’t care if there is another network show that interrupts my life with my wife or not, but I cannot say that Tonight, at least not without consulting with Late Night host Jimmy Fallon ….  Jimmy sent me an email [suspicious domain] that said”:

Sitting in an english garden waiting for the sun.
If the sun don't come, you get a tan
From standing in the english rain.
I am the eggman, they are the eggmen.
I am the walrus, goo goo g'joob goo goo g'joob.
Expert textpert choking smokers,
Don't you think the joker laughs at you?

And then it all went “Live from …” ?  Music is odd when it comes from the real place, or the studio where Milk & Honey merges with the best dulcimer player we can find on the streets of New York, today, right now, before the sun sets. 

People of Earth, you are current ….

Thus I Heard; Music Linguistics and the Small C catholic church

I’ve been part of the dialogue about music now for well over thirty years – the dialogue on the professional level, the part that includes advanced music theory on “faith” and “belief”.  There is one core element that many musicians seem to find hard to get past initially when they are taking part in the discussion about this specific area of music theory: “God”.  The Buddhism of The Lotus Sutra & the great teacher T’ien-T’ai, and the Buddhism of Nichiren Daishonin all lead the musician involved with certain specific advanced music theory concepts to the questions, “is there God” & “do Christians recognize the living God” [the transcendental].  The whole discussion will [I hope] be opening up soon, as I am personally in need of a “real job”, or should I make a better cause and say “real employment”[?], but here below is a part of a piece that I hope will be “part of a straw that stirs the drink”:

 

Music Linguist as conduit for Church Participation

The idea of a music linguist is somewhat hidden in latent structure of the foundation of music. The equal temperament “Western tuning” standard is thousands of years old. The base structure of “the Church Modes” is standard across music theory as the core foundation of the dialogue that occurs inside the music vein of living. The “Circle of Fifths & Fourths” is a standard that exists across all forms of music genres that fall within standardized Western music – “Eastern music” generally uses Western forms, but can also add dynamic elements to tuning which complicate the theory [One explanation of "1 cycle [resolution]" tone differences  {Michigan Technical} ] [ Another explanation of tuning {Wiki-pedia} ], but return into “the fold” at certain levels of advanced dialect upon the theory. There are three basic levels of “linguist orientation”:

1. Object oriented whole process – the 1-7 chord function and theory at whole octave state.

2. Note Function process – the theoretical language of the notes of music [in music state].

3. Note object function – the “language” of the notes in their relative object state [music function, language function, relative object function].

These functional design objects are really much simpler than they sound at first. When reaching out to a base audience, and particularly for the purpose of outreach and education, the objects are things like genre, emotional theme, and rhythmic function orientation. While the first and most basic level is “simple”, the complex levels are more deeply involved in the application of advanced music “theory”, recognizing that the motivation for this specific path of education outreach is specifically for the purpose of broadening and deepening active faith based participation in music as a link between [cultural] arts & [cultural] science. If we are not teaching how to “see” the science in the art, we lose some if not all of the relevance of the art. The art itself is an aural communion, part of the science of the teachings of God, who is “heard”.  At least, “thus I heard” ….

‘Tuning Sharp’ Is Like Jamming ‘In Tune’

Perhaps there is a secret; I’ve often wondered why I see other musicians “retuning” their instruments – and here I am talking mainly about guitar – when there was nothing in particular that would have changed the tuning.  I think we sometimes hear the harmonics in motion, but I have no proof of it, although, that is kind of one of the points of ‘sound in motion’ & “controlling it”.  We want to hear so specifically when we are playing the stringed instruments that we start hearing the reverberations more than the whole tones, and our tuning sense starts to grow “sharp”.  The natural tendency when this happens is to tune the instrument “up” a little, like disciplining, like tightening a belt to hold the pants closer to the hip. 

In some senses, there is little importance to “being in tune” with the whole tone frequencies, the pure sound of the Western Scale [equal temperament] that we know and base so much of our music upon.  The guitar is tuned “relatively”; as long as the strings are in the right relationship, the sound can be made decent.  If it is a band, and they tune relative to each other and in the same relationship, there can be an additive element to being “out of tune” together.  Still, there is the natural artist guitarist/musician living within; it is hard to believe that the sound is right when it is not “classically tuned”. 

There was a time in my life when I used to wonder which way the frequencies were going to go; I had to think, if that sound is “below” this sound, I need to tighten/loosen the string to find the right relationship.  I used to be amazed when I was often wrong even though I thought I understood tuning the instrument.  What I found out over time was that my ear developed toward a few cents sharp, and when I was tuning, I often wanted to tune to the next harmonic sharper, even when loosening the grip was really what was needed.

I think tuning sharp is a somewhat natural thing for tightly wound musical artists, but I don’t know for certain because I have had so few opportunities in my long pursuit of professional level music to actually sit and discuss experiences and theory with other players, particularly opportunity where there isn’t a fight going on over what is right or wrong, just a discussion of what “your experience” is.  I’ve heard countless players in my days in Los Angeles, Denver, & Nashville with whom I’d love to talk about their playing, because I think I almost hear something, but I know from hearing them talk, from hearing them present their playing [& writing] that there is a strong likelihood that as soon as we started to talk about my experience questions, the barriers would go up as they try to protect the ways they justify to themselves the ways they have adapted to cover their pursuits as they are, not as they could be in music.  There is a wall, a decision barrier which protects them from having to break down their thinking so that they can open up their feeling and become more conscious of their “sharp” playing.  Tuning sharp is like jamming out in tune.

I began to think about all this pretty seriously this past month [after I was recovering from some surgery, and perhaps a small dose of fever/cold which was influencing my hearing?] when I finally “broke” the neck of a favorite guitar.  I was doing a little cause and effect investigation – I was playing in a different tuning environment than normal [a different room with different acoustic properties] – and I was still using a tuning fork as my guide, but I noticed after the neck broke, first, the guitar, which I had been using for well over a decade, had always been at risk for a neck break because the grain of the wood at the tension point was wrong for high tension tuning; second, I noticed that when I have “a cold/flu season ear”, I tend to ramp up even sharper ….  I know this is something that I’ll have to protect against in the future to diminish tension on instruments [and budget].  I had known from the start that I was stressing the strength construction of this guitar, but it had been years since the wood in the guitar had fought back by saying “I’m not that strong”.  I hadn’t even broken any strings in so long that I couldn’t recall the last time I had done that, although when I first had the instrument, that was an issue as I “wound tight”.  Part of the reason there had been no broken strings was because I’d learned the limits of the instrument and the amount of tension that the instrument could take.  In this case, the strings didn’t break, the grain of the wood gave way and the neck broke at the headstock.  It could be repaired, but there are issues, obviously.

Still, I am left wondering, do the frequencies play with us  -- “the spirit world” – or do we play with them?  It is a wondrous thing tuning sharp …