Music videos?

I’ve decided to create a couple of short films or videos to complement some tracks from my CD Head Room. I am very excited about this because I feel that the music I write lends itself very well to film. In fact when I play gigs with this material, I always have a screen set up behind the band with graphics projected onto it which change and move with the music. This has always worked very well so now I want to take this idea to a new level.

The prospect of doing this is both exciting and a bit daunting as I haven’t worked with film before. I am going to document the process of creating these videos here.

So, first off I have obtained the necessary equipment in terms of a new digital camcorder which I am going to use with iMovie or Final Cut Express on my Macbook to record and edit the movie. I will probably use Soundtrack Pro to bring the video and soundtrack together.

I have also begun the process of getting ideas for the first video from listening back to the CD. What I have done is to listen to each track while simply free-associating to it, allowing images, emotions and ideas to well up. I have written these down as they come up. The next step was to choose one track which I have done; I chose the one which seems to lend itself to a story or narrative more than the others. There are definite possibilities for videos in some of the other tracks but I will start with this one.

Next I’ll sit down and attempt to bring some of these random associations into focus and put them together into a more concrete idea from which I hope to begin to write a screenplay. I am using a great (and free!) programme called Celtx to track all my ideas and images etc. as well as to write the script. I can also story-board the film from within the same programme. Brilliant.

I am fortunate in that my partner is both an actress and a screenwriter so she will give me a little help with this project when I need it.

I’ll come back and write again as soon as I go onto the next stage.

Here’s the CD cover. I will put up some of the other artwork with future posts:

Constructive criticism

I am a member on an excellent music forum called Sonikmatter. It deals mainly with the ins and outs of the music production software package that I use called Logic but it is also for all things to do with the writing, playing and recording of music. There was a recent discussion about the role of criticism when it comes to creative work. I have never been a fan of the critics. I feel it is all too easy to criticise someone else’s creative output and much more difficult to sit down and produce something oneself. I think most of us who endeavour to be creative need encouragement more than anything else. That’s not to say that there isn’t a place for constructive feedback but I think it is a very delicate matter. I remember the story about the famous poet Rilke receiving a letter with some poems from an aspiring writer who asked him to appraise his work. As I remember it Rilke wrote back declining to do so saying something like we should never ask for our creative work to be judged by another person because it is such a subjective process and who can really criticise the expression of someone else’s creative impulse? He said we should trust our own work and never ask for anyone else’s judgement about it. I may not have it exactly right but I think that was the gist of it. 

I agree with this sentiment and think that although it may be legitimate to appraise something in a technical sense, we should leave the actual creative work itself alone. After all when it comes to music, or any art form really, there is an almost infinite variety of things out there all with their own individual character, expressing something unique about the artist. There is room for almost anything although of course tastes differ which is fine. So I may not like something but that does not mean it is not good art.

I’d be interested to hear what other people think about this topic if anyone would care to comment.

 

The Critic – Nuremberg by shaferlens: http://www.flickr.com/photos/opera-nut/

Scales, scales, scales..

I have been studying and practicing scales and modes for many years. On the guitar, it is no mean feat to master all the important scales needed for improvisation because you always have multiple alternatives for where to find the same scale on the fingerboard; a guitar’s fingerboard is laid out in such a way that you can find the same note/pitch in several different places. This makes it a very complicated instrument to master in terms of scales. I won’t go into the technical details around it – that would be for guitar geeks only. The challenge in terms of improvisation, as it is on any instrument, is to learn the scales in such a way that you can use them as a pool of available notes to use over a particular chord or chord sequence. A scale tells you which notes you can and which notes you can’t play over any given chord because the scale is related to the key that the chord is from.

There are many great improvisors within the worlds of both rock and jazz music. One of my favourites is Pat Metheny, who is essentially a jazz guitarist but is also a very fine jazz/fusion composer. His knowledge and playing of scales is absolutely seamless and he is a total master of improvising over both modal tunes (simpler one or two-key sequences) and more complex changes. 

Photo of Pat Metheny by bennyrosso: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bennyrosso/

My own goal is to develop sufficient knowledge and technique in terms of scales to be able to improvise musically over any chord sequence. This is an on-going project. I may never come close to the almost super-human abilities of Pat Metheny and his like but as a music teacher of mine once said: ¨There are a lot of good places between here and there¨. Wise council indeed.

Great album

Well just to follow on from the last post, I ordered the Keith Emerson Band’s CD a couple of weeks ago and received it last week. I have to say it is excellent. A real return to form for Emerson and a great contribution from Marc Bonilla. Emerson’s keyboards sound as good as ever, gritty and gutsy with of course fantastic playing throughout. The Hammond sounds like it did in the early days of ELP or even The Nice. Bonilla’s playing and singing are excellent in their own right and a great complement to Emerson’s brilliance. The writing is both fresh and complex and the whole band really rocks. It is definitely progressive rock, make no mistake, so it ain’t for the faint-hearted! However if you like that style of music and you crave a taste of the old glory, then go get this one. You won’t be disappointed.

And no, I’m not trying to promote the album in any way. Just voicing my opinion and my thumbs-up .

Keith Emerson

Now there’s a truly great musician. Porbably the most talented piano and keyboard player ever to grace the world of rock music. Or more specifically, the world of progressive rock. ELP were one of the most unfluential bands of that genre coupling technical mastery with complex and masterful writing. Although they had their fair share of critics, especially in the latter days of their performance career, they are still widely recognised as one of the greats along with bands like Yes, Genesis and Jethro Tull.

Although ELP is no longer in existence as such, Keith Emerson has pursued a solo career and this is on-going. In fact he released a new album in 2008 that marks a return to his progressive rock roots. This album was a collaboration with the guitarist Marc Bonilla. Sadly though, Emerson had a serious hand/arm injury some years ago which has re-emerged recently as a problem. In fact he has just cancelled an up-coming tour because of this. He also planned to do a tour with ELP which has also been cancelled for the same reason.

We all hope that he will once again overcome this injury and be back to playing his unique brand of fine musical compositions and keyboard wizardry in the not-too-distant future.

Photo of Keith Emerson at 2009 NAMM show in California by Synthesizers: http://www.flickr.com/photos/synthesizers/

Logic

This is the name of the programme I use for music production. It truly is an amazing piece of software, including a whole batch of state-of-the-art synths and effects plugins as well as a fully professional recording and editing facility. You can truly do anything with this package. Sounds like I’m advertising it but I’m not; I just regard it as probably the most important ‘instrument’ in my studio. Apple also include thousands of their Apple Loops which range from drum and percussion to guitar, piano and synth phrases. Just perfect for coming up with compositional ideas and even for structuring whole pieces of music around them.

One of the best features of the recent versions of Logic is the synth they call Sculpture. I’ve only recently come to grips with it as it is at first glance a very intimidating piece of software. But the flexibility and potential built into this instrument is second to none. You can basically design an instrument from the ground up using the fundamental idea of a ‘string’ which is excited or disturbed by a variety of different objects in different positions and using various materials to make the string. It then builds from there as you include all sorts of filters and other processes to develop the sound. This may not come across as all that exciting but when you get into it, the possibilities are endless. And some of the sounds you can come up with are truly beautiful, powerful and highly original.

 Photo by evymoon: http://www.flickr.com/photos/evymoon_quatrain_quotidien/

How did I get into it to the extent that I did? Well by using another amazing facility available on the net which is the group of fantastic tutorials produced by macProVideo.com. No, this is not another plug, just a note of appreciation for the producers of these great instructional videos which de-mystify and simplify some really tricky aspects of an already hugely complex software suite. I am not very good at getting into the depths of programming etc. for its own sake – I am a musician first and foremost and I simply want to use this gear to make great sounds which I can incorporate into my musical compositions. I love to mix acoustic and electric guitars along with all these electronic sounds and textures to produce music which I believe contains all this richness while at the same time maintaining a high level of originality and naturalness. What the macProVideo tutorial on Sculpture did for me was to make this thing accessible whereas before I used to turn away in despair because it looked like I’d need a degree in engineering to even begin to use it effectively. As a result of this experience I am now hopeful of getting to grips with all the power Logic and its various different elements have to offer more and more as I explore their different tutorials. I’ve been using Logic for years and have produced whole albums on it but this takes my whole compositional and production process onto a different level. Stay tuned for news on up-coming recording projects which will include and integrate all this new learning.

Magical

We spent the Easter weekend in Mayo in the west of Ireland. That part of the country is an amazing place, so wild and beautiful. Areas like Connemara, the Burren, the Ring of Kerry, The Beara Peninsula are all truly magical places. The climate is of course pretty awful but that’s somehow part of it. There’s a sense of a thin veil between worlds, of a spiritual or mystical realm not far away. I remember walking in the Burren a few years ago. The Aran Islands were just in view off the coastline and there was this wonderful azure evening light. It was all so beautiful and the atmosphere was almost electric with the energy of it. Add to this the fact that the ground we were walking on had once been sea-bed and it was really amazing. And to drive around the Beara Peninsula – it feels like you are on a different planet or perhaps the moon. Incredible.

 

Photo of The Burren by Quentin Xerxes Zamfir: http://www.flickr.com/photos/qxz/

I know there are many other beautiful and magical places in the world but there is something quite special about the West of Ireland. I am not particularly patriotic or anything and there are places I’d prefer to live than Ireland but this is an aspect of this country that I really love.  This Easter weekend we drove from Cong in Mayo to Leenane in Connemara, Galway, right through Joyce’s Country and the Maamturk Mountains. It was truly magnificent. I had my mobile ‘studio’ with me and did some writing out there. It’s such an inspiring place. That’s something I intend to do a lot more: composing in the inspiring environment of Nature. Thanks to today’s mobile technology that’s now a real possibility, if you use computers and so on in your music-making.

Practice makes perfect – or does it?

Every musician has to practice their instrument(s). Some do so more than others. A lot of people play so many gigs or recitals etc. that this becomes their practice, to some extent anyway. However, at some point we all do need to improve or to maintain our technique and knowledge. I have developed a routine of practicing most days which involves going over scales and modes in different positions, some work on speed and accuracy in playing as well as improvising over different chord sequences and so on. That’s for the more jazz and rock side of my playing. I also practice classical guitar for a while every day, mainly to keep up some reasonable level of technique. I’m even learning the piano, mainly for composition purposes, so this is another thing I keep up.

This is all good discipline but sometimes I wonder how much it really helps me to improve. No doubt it does but by how much? This is very hard to measure. As you can probably tell I do tend to diversify but I can’t justify giving up on any of those ‘branches’ because each part has a function within the whole. I suppose that’s the risk with having an eclectic approach to music: the danger of spreading yourself too thinly and not concentrating enough on any one thing to master it completely. I did go through a phase earlier in my life when I was playing a lot of classical guitar, doing concerts and so on and that was pretty satisfying. But I wanted to explore other things so that took away from the concentration on that which was fine because I never wanted to be purely a classical guitarist.

The guitarists I admire the most are people like Pat Metheny or Steve Howe, both of whom in their own different ways have developed a strong but fairly open approach to the guitar. In Steve Howe’s case especially I always liked how he used all sorts of different stringed instruments in his work, particularly with Yes. I read an interview with Pat Metheny recently in which he said that he never has time to practice as such. Well I suppose at his advanced stage there’s no real need anymore..

I’d be interested in hearing from any other musicians and what your relationship is to practicing your instrument. So do leave a comment if this is of interest to you.

Steve Howe playing in Toronto in 2007. Photo by  afiedeldey: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fiedeldey/

Current playlist

So, what are you listening to these days? My tastes vary but are definitely not mainstream. I never listen to commercial radio for example. I hate all the manic chatter on most of the stations, whatever about the music they play. Some internet radio stations are great but mostly I listen to music that I have recently downloaded from either iTunes or Emusic. I always pay properly for any downloaded music because as a musician, I believe that artists should get paid properly for their work. That seems only fair to me. It’s hard to resist the low cost or free sites but being an independent musician myself definitely helps.

Currently I am listening to the likes of: The Yellowjackets, Todd Rundgren, Trifonic, Felix Laband, Steve Roach, Josef Zawinul, Tortoise and a host of others. I came across a brilliant video that was set to a piece by the electronic artist Trifonic. It is really amazing so here is a link to it. Check it out at: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/parks_on_fire.html

 

  

This is a very powerful piece of work. I hope to do someting like this one of these days, a collaboration with a video artist.

If you do get a chance to check this video out, leave a comment with your impressions.

Tragedy

There is a case on at the moment in the Dublin courts. It is a murder trial of a man who killed his wife because she was having a relationship with another man. She was planning to leave him and he just couldn’t stand it so he killed her. It’s a very very sad story and I know it well because the woman was one of my partner’s best friends. We were travelling home from holidays in the summer of 2007 when we got the news. Deeply shocking of course.  I had met them both on numerous occasions and although he was of a heavy sort of temperament he seemed a pleasant enough man.

I think that under the right or the wrong circumstancces the worst in us can come out no matter who we are. Who has not known the pain, rejection and jealousy that is felt when a loved one turns their back on us, when they choose someone else over us? Often these sorts of feelings can be accompanied by a murderous sort of rage, all natural enough. However to take the step of acting on those feelings, to take a knife and to stab your wife repeatedly is a whole other thing. Now there were certainly factors in the whole situation that made it particularly humiliating for the husband and it is easy to understand how he was pushed to the end of his tolerance by the way events were unfolding. I won’t go into detail because to do so would feel like it would dishonour both of the people involved but suffice it to say that the whole story was one of conflict and resentment building up over years and a final tragic climax when one of the parties decided that she’d had enough.

I make no judgements except to say that once we act on our feelings and take another person’s life we have crossed a line in terms of what is acceptable. I think the story is a heart-rending one and I feel very sorry for all concerned, particularly for their three young children who witnessed the whole thing. Their lives will be forever tainted by this awful trauma. I hope that justice is done and that the courts make a wise decision about whatever consequences should follow for this man, also a victim in his own way.

Photo of The Four Courts in Dublin by Angela Murphy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/connemaraheather/

Edit:  The jury came back the other day with a verdict of guilty of murder. He received a life sentence.