manual

I like manual controls on my tools.  Manual cameras, manual transmissions in cars, footpedals rather than rackmount electric guitar effects, a Unix shell rather than a Windows GUI.  I like interfaces that do what I tell them to do, and don’t do what I don’t tell them to do.  I don’t like machines doing the thinking for me.  I’d rather make my own mistakes. 

filler

Over the last couple of years, my primary instruments have drifted to steel guitar and hand percussion, rather than straight acoustic/electric guitar. I’ve also become much more active in group performance, rather than solo.  This means that I’m often taking a supportive and decorative role, playing fills.

There’s a real art to playing good fills.  The goal is not for the fills themselves to be interesting, but rather to decorate and enhance the primary voice of the performance – the singer, other soloists, the rhythm, whatever is central to the music.  So it’s important to contrast the primary voice, rather than competing with it.  Play in the gaps.  And don’t overplay! This can be a real challenge as an improvisor… resisting the temptation to play too much. 

I find it difficult sometimes to fill the gaps rather than playing along with the melody.  That’s because when we hear the song, we hear the melody.  As improvisors, that’s where we hear ourselves.  But if that’s what you DO when playing fills, then you’re probably overplaying.

Phrasing and coloration become very important, too.  Do you want to extend the harmony and rhythm, or reinforce it?  And voicing matters… you should play in a range that is not competing tonally with more solidly rhythmic instruments.

And, uh… when I started writing this I thought I had a point.  But I guess I’m just dancing about architecture.  Sigh.

completion

The other day, the Feng Shui Ninjas had a limited rehearsal… only Justin (percussion and accordion) could make it.  So Justin and I had some time to discuss where we’re going musically, and art in general.  One problem we discussed a lot was completion… turning an idea into a finished product.  Part of it applied to the Feng Shui Ninjas… we rehearse most weeks, yet after a year, we have yet to play a real public gig (parties and cons don’t count), and really, I don’t think we’re capable of an hour’s worth of quality, uninterrupted material we play well.  We do play well, and have a lot of fun, but our rehearsals are unfocused, a mile wide and an inch deep.  We need a real repertoire, not just random ideas.

Justin highlighted the problem when he realized he says he’s “going over to Dave’s to jam”, rather than saying he’s “going over to Dave’s to rehearse”.  It’s an important distinction.  We jam a lot, and that’s fun, but it’s not really solid rehearsal, and the results show.  We don’t complete our playing.

And it’s not just this band, either… I have a huge stack of recordings that I’ve started but haven’t finished.  Justin has a novel he’s been neglecting.  It’s hard to get from the point  of playing with an idea, to the point where it’s really polished and ready to share with the rest of the world.  Good enough for my pleasure isn’t the same as good enough for an audience’s pleasure.

Need to complete more things.

scarcity in the marketplace

Much has been made of the decline of the record industry over the past few years, particularly the major labels.  And a lot of this discussion revolves around the impact of online music downloads, both legal and illegal.  But I think there’s another limiting factor at work.

I consider myself a pretty avid music listener, and buyer.  I spend $50-100/month on recorded music – I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s over $1000/year.  But honestly, I could afford to spend more.  My limiting factor isn’t budget.  Rather, it’s how much time I have available to listen to music! 

There are a couple of factors at play here.  First, I don’t like to buy music and not listen to it.  Although I’m a big music fan, I’m not at all a record collector in the classic sense.  I like the content far more than the physical object.  So I don’t buy records for the sake of buying records… I want to LISTEN to them after I buy them.  Second, I own a large and constantly growing collection of music, the result of 30 years of avid music purchasing.  Over those years, I’ve found many of what I call “lifetime albums” – pieces of music I will be listening to for the rest of my life, at least off and on.  So new music listening time must be shared with lifetime music listening time. 

Because of these two things, there is a real, practical limit on how much money I will spend on new music, no matter what its price is or how much I like it.  So in economics terms, my time is the scarce resource, not my budget or the supply of music available.  There’s far, far more music available that I want to hear than I will ever have time to hear.

The perfect is the enemy of the good

This is another motto that’s been on my mind much lately (albiet mostly in political contexts).  It’s all over art, and is one of the curses of G.A.S.   If you get too caught up in trying to be perfect, you lose track of simply being good.  It can actually PREVENT productivity… worrying that it’s not perfect is a perfect excuse for hiding your work away, from others and from yourself.

K.I.S.S.

Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Obviously, limitations are one of my favorite themes.  But I don’t see “limitations” in a necessarily negative light.  In fact, I see limitations as positives much (most?) of the time.  But here, I’d like to talk about a particular kind of limitation – choices.

It’s easy to become paralyzed by choices, for a number of reasons. First, it can be hard to choose between equal-but-different versions of the same thing. Second, choice can become a distraction, a path for fear of completion to take over our creativity. Third, it can just be added complexity when dealing with already-complex problems, pushing them beyond our ability to handle the big-picture problem. This is often made worse by computer-mediated creative processes like writing, photography, and music recording (to name three of my favorites) – computers provide us with a dazzling array of choices – the ability to undo/redo our work, create alternate versions, process in different ways, etc.

I find it valuable to take away choices when working, unless the choices are really necessary.  If I can work without a computer, I like to do that.  If I must use a computer, I try to do so in a limiting way.  For example, if I’m writing, I like to do at least pre-work with a pen and paper (erasers give us choices, too).  But pen and paper are slow going, and the work often needs to be retyped on a computer later – bad limitations in many cases.  I type far faster than I write, and often want to move my writing to a more complex form.  So I’ll start writing using a simple, formatting-free editor like Notepad or vi.  This takes away unnecessary “choices” like bold or italic.  It helps keep me focused on the words, not how the words are presented.

Choices can also be reduced by improving the raw input so we don’t have to “fix” so much.  I try to be a good technical photographer so I don’t feel an urge to Photoshop the heck out of everything afterward.  I could go farther and stick to b/w film (which does give a lot of choices, but also forces commitment to them once they’re made). If I’m recording music, I like to pre-produce as much as possible so I know well what the finished product should sound like.

This isn’t to say choice is always bad, or computers are bad.  They’re wonderful tools that have opened up new worlds for artists – the fact that you’re reading this on the WWW thanks to WordPress is proof of that.  But it pays to be aware of them, and be conscious of when choice becomes a substitute for creativity, or an impediment.  Don’t be afraid to take away choices from yourself.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

(hmm, a weeks since my last post, and I have four incomplete posts sitting in the editor…)

I have a fortune cookie taped to my monitor at work. It says “Tomorrow will be one of the best days you have at work”.  I don’t know whether it’s supposed to be empowering or ironic.  Then again, I often don’t know why I decide to do things.

blast from the past

My first electric guitar was a heavily modified Stratocaster, purchased in 1987.  It had three Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound pickups.  That guitar had spent several years in prison with its previous owner, so the pickups were probably among the first Quarter Pounds made.  They were noisy and I didn’t like their voicing, so I pulled them and started a quest for a quiet, clear Strat pickup.  Eventually, I sold that guitar, and the pickups, which were basically broken, sat in a junk drawer or got used as refridgerator magnets.

Fast forward to 2007.  I bought a Squier ‘51, a nice retro-vibed Fender with a Strat-style neck pickup.  Great guitar, cheap pickups.  Rather than seeking out a new neck pickup, I dug out one of those old Quarter Pounds and had it rewound by OC Duff, who worked with me to get a voicing that matched my playing style.  Last night, I got it all together again, and had a blast with my new/old pickup.  It sounds terrific and looks great too! 

I mated it with a GFS Bigmouth bridge humbucker, which is a nice visual and voicing match (and a great pickup all around).  I also lined the pickup routs with aluminum tape and grounded them to reduce noise, and replaced the annoying rotary pickup switch with a DP3T on/on/on switch.  It’s turned into a very nice-sounding and good-playing guitar… I’ll have to haul it out to the next Stagner/Lovan/Scherr gig.

you have taken yourself too seriously

You have taken yourself too seriously. That’s one of the phrases I live by.  WHATEVER the issue, whatever the matter at hand, I’m taking myself too seriously, and so is everyone else.

Seriously.

G.A.S.

One thing the music and photography hobbies have in common… Gear Acquisition Syndrome, aka G.A.S. (sometimes known as Guitar Acquisition Syndrome in music circles, but it means the same thing). It’s also a verb… for example, right now I’m GASing for a ribbon microphone. I don’t really NEED a ribbon mic. It’d be nice, but there are things I need more. But it’s G.A.S.  Meanwhile, I’m having minor GAS for a prism focusing screen with grid lines for my Nikon D40.  I’ll probably sate that with a $25 Chinese Ebay prism screen, rather than springing $95 for a custom one with grid lines.  It’d actually be useful to have 35mm-style manual focus support, considering the shortage of affordable AF lenses for the D40 and the many exciting used MF lenses for those of us who aren’t afraid to do our own metering.

The online communities for the photo and music hobbies are basically just big GAS parties, and the magazines are worse. It’s very seductive, the temptation to think that next lens or a new guitar will solve your artistic insecurity.