Sorry it’s been so long since I most recently posted here; it’s difficult being in a “life recovery program” and squeezing in all that needs to be done. When I moved to Nashville from Los Angeles nearly five years ago now, I did so knowing that I was going into uncharted territory for me. I was diving into an area of “music production” that was unfamiliar to me so far in my life. It was a challenge for me, from me, to find out if God had fulfilled the meaning of “Music City USA” that had been revealed to me through the years of preparation in California, Colorado, Florida, and other places as well.
I wasn’t a natural musician; I learned to be as natural as God allowed me. What I mean by that is that I was never good at memorizing songs or reading music as a child, and my practice time – which existed – was mostly made up of toying around with what different sounds sounded like together. When I moved to Florida in the mid-1990’s – ostensibly to teach Golf at a Golf School – I started on a new journey. Music was put center as my communications link with the Creator, and I left Florida, cut out of the Golf business [a month into a “six month trial”], with a search for answers to questions that had been brewing inside me since the early 1980’s when I had started conversing with my musician friends in Los Angeles. Those friends were introduced to me mainly through the practice of Nichiren Daishonin’s Buddhism in the Soka Gakkai International–USA; I also had a nomadic music curiosity around the then L.A. “pop music” scene. Then, I was driven into “country music”; by the 1990’s I was entirely country, with passing “pop” awareness. That centeredness had led me to studying “what is this business”? I found the road in through computers and the rise of digital equipment. When I started to link the concepts between personal & network computing and broadcasting & recording, I started to understand a calling. Part of the lesson I learned in the golf business was that if you really want to TEACH, you need to be able to SHOW. I went to work, hard, to become a “natural musician”.
I studied as much music theory as I could get my hands upon – in books – and which I could comprehend – in mind. Music is not a mechanical thing of the mind, it is best as an expression of feeling, but it is a feeling that has rules that allow the freedom of the expression. It was through the grasping at how we communicate our understanding of God through music and artistic recording and expression that I came to have a mission to understand “where is this business now”?
The “business” side of Los Angeles entertainment is full of all kinds of lessons. There are really good people, some who are highly competitive and will show you nicely why you aren’t prepared for ‘the business’; and there are egomaniacs and not so good people who just want you out of the way. Either way, generally, those in the business don’t want new competition. They go out of their way to “crucify’, in a worldly, fleshly, sense those who would be their next competitor. In most ways I suppose, this is no different than other competitive businesses where people are competing to feed a family. The “secrets” of Hollywood are available to be learned, but it is generally a controlled learning process.
Nashville has long been a center of the Christian based publishing industry, but what that industry is has remained somewhat a mystery, just something which occurred and was accepted rather than something that was quantified and qualified. If “Music City USA” had a difference from Los Angeles in terms of “advantages in the recording industry”, it was that the musicians had a reputation for coming through the publishing arms of the nations Christian thought machines. If we are a Christian based nation, and art is supposed to represent the leading edges of thought, then it is important to understand the context of Nashville as “Music City USA”, and to incorporate it into the art produced.
While I’ve battled some health issues that slowed me during the past three years, I’ve also been blessed with a learning environment in Nashville. What I’ve been able to learn is that God is always at work, but that God’s people don’t necessarily understand what God is doing, particularly when it comes to art, communications, and music. Artistically, we push envelopes and we get into heated areas of debate that expose the size of the egos involved and the desire to be first, to put “me first” “I” first, and the more “Christian” you become by studying, the easier it is to see, as a witness of people who think they are relating to God or being instructed by God.
Over the years, I’ve developed from the perspective that it is best to start from ideas of “what would you do that is different” ( and/or generally beyond) what is already being done. I was fortunate that I learned “tricks” of the golf business which taught me how to listen for God in the simple things that are right before our eyes, the “latent meaning” inside the construction of the art and the science of the task. When computers and musical arts converged for me, the whole picture production came into view. It’s simple, and complex.
The hardest part of trying to “produce” this conceptual framework as a working production model has come from the abundance of people who are certain that they know what they are doing is “it” or that they know what it is that I would do. I can’t say how many musicians I’ve listened to, some who are considered ‘top line professionals’, who really are not producing music even close to the line of the theory that God had in mind when he showed it to me … . I’ve heard too many people who plug in their electric instruments without giving a second thought to why you would do that; I’ve heard too many songwriters who know the form of the genre format they want to work, but who are actually displaying that they are lucky not good, because there is no substance to the music they make within the theory that is God’s instruction book for music creation. Yes, they hit some relevant points, but they fade because they are using a formula which is designed to be expanded as a “startup” point not an endpoint. Sometimes I wonder if they’re even listening to themselves. Sometimes, they get the formula right and the music is not bad, but ask where is it going, what’s next, and you’ll get a blank stare. “That’s all there is”!
I realize that it is best to let those musicians go there own way. I realize that the way that I’ve learned the approach is not the path that others have used. Still, I can’t help but wish that somewhere – and soon – I’ll connect with even one other musician who wants to write with a God centered program for production of relevant contemporary and longer lived, at least in aim, music. How egomaniacal is that? Well, … . The discussion is grounded in the reality of many of those temporary hits that aren’t actually as good when they’ve been played a few thousand times or when they are played back from the “new perspective series” in a week, a month, a year, or a decade or two.
Part of humbly seeking the right dialogue includes letting the people who are sure God isn’t opening a door – here – think about the bridge they are crossing … .
After all, “… he’s a real nowhere man …”!
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