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 …      

I want to play, but there’s no room …

I’m sitting in a coffee shop listening to music playing in the background.  Usually it sounds good, sometimes the mood is inappropriate, sometimes it hits dead on; I suppose what hits you as good depends upon your life condition at the moment.  I’ve been in more than a few coffee shops, many of them Starbucks, some of them not Starbucks.  I’ve never seen a band play at Starbucks, but sometimes I’ve been able to get a sense of the adrenaline rush that comes from hearing good LIVE music in a setting where it is worth being.  I loved going to the Hotel Café in Hollywood before it was ruined by the publicity Carson Daily brought to it; no matter I wasn’t in Hollywood when that day happened, and maybe if I move back “home” someday, the place will fit again. 

I have no place to play music at the moment; it’s winter, and the back seat of my car is a limited space.  Over the summer, I managed to play in the park nearly each morning, going through a routine of scales and chords and trying to get what I call “on top of the instrument”.  On top of the instrument means that the brain processes the notes and chords and the sound that is produced and projected at whatever speed you are playing.  In sports, it’s called “in the zone”; even when I was more a sports participant than a musician, I believed that it was possible to practice to the level where “in the zone” was a natural state of mind achieved through effort, repetition, and focus.  There were days when I was younger when I was able to hit a baseball from in the zone – I spent two whole seasons hitting near “.500”, but then I lost my ability to do that and turned to golf, where I learned how to think mechanically about body motion at a speed faster than the brain could tell the body while still thinking that the brain was telling the body.  Playing music is like that – it often is happening right in front of you at a speed you couldn’t really comprehend if you weren’t in a form of suspended mind body connection that is akin to muscle memory.  You’re really hearing a voice tell you about what your body has already done, but you perceive it as being simultaneous.  Hopefully, the audience will hear what you think you hear – as that is the test. 

That sound, that connection, that is the source of the adrenaline rush – for the listener & the player.  It’s worth a cup of coffee … and a place to play in a “music city” …    

Market Share

This morning I was reading about market share; the story started out talking about how Wal Mart had taken nearly a quarter of the market in the U.S. in one of the aspects of its business which was an expansion of its core business, retailing.  Immediately, I began to think about the Music Industry.  People say that the Industry is more open than it ever was before because of the Internet and the various ways to distribute music digitally.  Actually, I’m one of those people who believe that you can make your way in the music business without having to really work inside the industry corporations.  I believe it only to the extent of some severe limitations.  You can play the note, and maybe you can make a living from it, but the industry is going to be playing the chord, and somewhere you are going to intersect. 

Sometimes people who don’t want to get involved with the Corporate politics of the music industry bounce their way directly out to the non corporate industry path.  The trail they take isn’t taken because of money issues or opportunity issues or personality disagreements, it is taken because they just don’t like corporations and the idea of the system skimming from the artist.  That is a valid point of view, as far as it goes.  It is like a note in a larger sound.

Corporations in music do more than just publish music and skim profits.  There really is a whole industry of support structures and opportunity creation that exists within the various Corporate structures of the media and entertainment Corporations.  Many of the Corporate people don’t know much about music at all.  They know accounting and insurance and publicity, not music.  The development departments are structured to ensure that they develop artists who can produce product that sells consistently.  That is “one note” – make money is the goal.

The real problem in the way the music industry development professionals present themselves these days is twofold.  First, the development is aimed at the youth market – because it is assumed that once you’ve passed high school, you’ll never want to learn music well enough to publish.  Second, and this is the bigger issue, EVERYTHING the corporations support seems to turn out to be “pay to play”.  Pay to play is a huckster method of getting money up front for a service that might or might not be completed.

I know from personal experience that the music industry is almost exclusively a “closed shop” operation.  There are a few “open mic” nights and “send us your tape” indies, but when it comes down to developing the interest in the foundations of music – teaching the fundamentals that run through all the levels of professional music from Classical to genre – the one road in, if you can make it further on up the road, is a pay to play road.  This is not shocking when you think about the way that education has been treated in America.  Education has been made increasingly expensive even in the public sphere, despite the widespread claim that “knowledge is power” and “education is the road to knowledge”. 

When I was very young, I had two sources of music education that stuck.  While I could also count the two classes a week in Elementary school, and they really should count, I actually group that class with the “public” education I received from my home city’s Symphony Orchestra.  That part of my education was brief – if I slept hard, I’d probably forget that I received it; somehow, I remember.  I remember the place where the education was given, and I remember that I was dropped from the classes because I was too young to know that I was supposed to keep up by making classical music my only real goal in life.  It would have meant practicing two or three hours a day when I was not yet 10 years old.  The instruction was designed to tell me what it took, what was in it, and then to leave it to me to figure out how to implement it.

The other source was a girl from up the block who used to “babysit” while my parents went to some social event.  She taught me everything there was to know about learning chords and scales, and she tried to teach me “House of the Rising Sun” which was a hit rock song at the time.  She was probably in high school at the time, and I was still in Elementary school.  Whatever she told me on Saturday night, I’d generally forgotten it by Sunday morning.  Still, there was a piece of what she told me that remained dormant inside my mind, in my memory. 

It wasn’t until I really made the commitment to music as my whole heart venture many years later that I started to look for schooling on music theory and music practice.  When I found a local music school in Denver – Swallow Hill Music Association – that took music learning by adults seriously, and made it somewhat affordable to me at the time, it was a totally new experience for me: Learning as an adult.  I had spent years working “around” musicians in Los Angeles, asking them questions and generally being an almost pest in my curiosity about what they were doing, and “what is the music business”, but I had never found a place like the Musician’s Institute – even though some of these people were part of the Musician’s Institute Programming, according to what I later heard.  I guess they just wanted to get away ….

From the beginning of my “music relationships” in Los Angeles, I had started focusing on the areas of development that might fit my skills.  I didn’t play an instrument well enough at the time to even consider the “talent” side of the equation; I was thinking about production, and how to tie what I was learning and studying at the time, which stretched from Nichiren Daishonin’s Buddhism, which I basically remember, to teaching and learning theory, which is mostly a bundled blur.  It took me fifteen years to make the whole connection – from philosophy to “kyo” [sound or “teachings of the Buddha”].  When I finally did make the connection between what I was seeking while buzzing around those professional musicians in the 1980’s and the “whole heart commitment” to music as a career, I realized that I needed to play an instrument well to demonstrate what it was that I was talking about, if I was talking in a “teaching mode” as a Producer or an artist.  For the next decade, I tried to practice as much as possible – two, three, four hours a day.  I went through the peaks and valleys, forgetting just about everything, then remembering what had driven me forward in my learning.  Perhaps I wasn’t organized – I was not in a school – or perhaps I just needed to pound the information into my brain.  It was the opening of the “caged method” that came and went – the closer I stayed to understanding by practice in the C-A-G-E-D system of chords and scales, the more my playing reflected what I wanted it to project.  That chord and scale system is “Classical music”.

As I’ve searched for a way to make a career in the music business, I’ve increasingly found that there are few inroads to employment that don’t involve pay to play.  Even the companies that offer “introductory programs” start making demands about qualifications for employment that involve having spent money, an education, or certification before being considered.  Companies that should be developing from within aren’t – a lesson I learned this past year which opened my eyes to how closed the shop is.  Everywhere I look, you must pay!  Want to network to write or pitch songs?  Pay to join an Association – and maybe that could happen ….

Problem with all the pay to play angles?  When you’re not making money, and you’re doing jobs to get to the next level of learning on your own, eventually, you’re so far marginalized in terms of employment [“the note”] that you can’t reach the chord [“the Corporations” & the industry].  Development is a growth  industry in the music business, if you can get the job.

Perhaps when the shop is closed is the time to start looking for market share …, despite the laughter [and silence] on Music Row. 

Talking to the right person …

I had a moment of clarity, and then it was gone again, into the ether where I apparently keep it or where clarity is kept. For a moment, I knew why I wanted to teach music, with a view toward education and spiritual awakening, directed toward building a functioning production system with active participants in what would be a business. I knew how I could explain it, and then the doubts arose again. There is too much information, and people’s patience demands the quick answer when the quick answer is not available. I have been studying many quick answers, and it is the sum of those answers which add up into the starting place of what I am trying to create.

There is an age group that needs to start. I have studied how to start, and how to approach teaching how to start. The younger students must start at the beginning because they do not have the residual knowledge base to construct from within the frame with missing pieces between. It is called building from a foundation, and all good architecture starts that way. I know how to start from the foundation, but how deeply into the construction must we and/or should we go? There is a solid starting point in just getting to know how to play the instruments, without going into all of the “tricks” and secrets that will come out in time about the instruments.

I envisioned finding the spot where the instruments “cross over”, where the playing starts to be both the playing and something more. I am a storyteller from the ground, from the Earth, but I am also a spiritual being, and I work in the spiritual realm as well. I work in film as a film director, I work in music as a sound director, and I work in education as an educator. The music is the learning instrument. Without the instruments, the film is an image in an imaginary space, as are all of my “movies” so far, as none are published and I have not been to film school, although I have studied. I am not a cinematographer, and I am technically not an engineer, but I have studied sound, and I know how to lead an engineer to the right questions, and I know how to teach somebody to think about the right questions if they are a sound engineer. I have learned how to teach, but I have not really taught, because teaching is learning, and the opportunity to teach should only be accepted when it is at a stage where learning is part of the teaching. These are simultaneous cause and effect relationships.

I love the technology we have now, that allows us to isolate objects, even objects in sound waves, so that we can follow how the path of the cause enters into the field as an effect. I love the idea of setting up a production company that is responsive, that can help people grow to understand their personal mission in life, and to better see cause and effect as they fit into a whole picture. I love that opportunity could come, if I could just pull the whole concept out of the ether, when I was talking to the right person ….