thekenshow's blog

I discovered today that the only time Charles Mingus was nominated for a Grammy was for the liner notes to his record, Let My Children Hear Music. In those few paragraphs, Mingus explores what it means to be a composer:

If you like Beethoven, Bach or Brahms, that's okay. They were all pencil composers. I always wanted to be a spontaneous composer. I thought I was, although no one's mentioned that. I mean critics or musicians. Now, what I'm getting at is that I know I'm a composer. I marvel at composition, at people who are able to take diatonic scales, chromatics, 12-tone scales, or even quarter-tone scales. I admire anyone who can come up with something original. But not originality alone, because there can be originality in stupidity, with no musical description of any emotion or any beauty the man has seen, or any kind of life he has lived.

That last phrase is a beautiful way to express the art of music – an original telling of emotion, beauty and a life lived. Nothing wrong with a little imaginative stupidity on the side, mind you

In Measure for Measure, Andrew Bird writes about the interplay of words and music in songwriting:

...what I love about songwriting is that there is no guaranteed formula for success. I’m hoping that getting better at making records means, for one thing, that I am learning how to leave room for serendipitous moments. I always want to hear how things didn’t go according to plan.

If you haven't listened to Andrew Bird, I highly recommend him. My  friend Jeff – a man of words, pictures and Cuban cigars – turned me on to Armchair Apocrypha a few months back. This column reveals another side of the intellect Bird brings to his music.

A responsible blogger would've mentioned he was going away on vacation, don't you think? Well, I didn't but I will note that I'm back after a terrific week of Westy camping and whale watching in Saguenay National Park on the Fleuve St. Laurent.

In addition to belugas, minkies, harbor seals and porpoises, we were treated to the magnificent marine landscape of Quebec's North Shore. It'll be a long time before I forget the sound of a whale spouting as it surfaces to breathe!

Suzanne Vega writes about the effect of having a hit song and describes how one of hers, Luka, came about:

I was hugely distracted by trying to finish the other songs by the deadline to feel any nervousness about “Luka.” I felt that I was hanging from a cliff by my nails — a feeling I have had many times in my career. How funny that journalists sometimes write about my “relaxed recording schedule”! If your idea of relaxing is hanging by your nails from a cliff, I guess that’s correct.

This is a terrific article – intriguing details about how the tune evolved, the many different people and places that had a hand in it, how it transformed her career the day it hit the radio. Amazing. I've long admired Vega's lyrical compositions and her ability to marry words and music. Two hit wonder? Bah!

The first computer ever to play music is now believed to be a Ferranti Mark 1 at the University of Manchester in 1951. You can listen to a recording of those baby steps (pun intended, you'll have to read the article) on the BBC Web site. This sort of computing capability was extraordinarily rare at the time, and it could take a week or more just to ask these "electronic brains" a question.

Fast forward to the One Laptop Per Child program and you'll find infinitely more sophisticated music tools on computers designed to be cheap and rugged enough for the developing world. Who knows – OLPC might just unleash a wave of new composers around the planet.

David Shearon finds positive psychology insights in country music:

One recent example is Dierks Bentley’s What Was I Thinking. The song features a young man reflecting on a night out with a wild and crazy young woman and the things his emotions got him to do — a fight in a biker bar among them! The refrain is a rueful ”Well, I know what I was feeling, but what was I thinking?”

Shearon links to a YouTube video of the song. It's both formulaic and interesting (some great solo playing in there) and that makes it a good example of the modern country tune. I don't listen to country much although it's one place you can still find conventional narratives in popular music.

The psychology? Thought leads to emotion, emotion to action, and action to consequences. Ideally, consequences lead to learning and new ways of thinking but as the song sheepishly concludes, that's not exactly a given

Mark S. Merrit is using Appreciative Inquiry in his songwriting workshops:

The innovative process of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) — specially adapted for impromptu songwriting — guides the creation of each Songwriting Workshop’s one-of-a-kind song. A fun, appreciative group interview draws out what is best and most meaningful to the group for the given song topic, and envisioning the final work spurs further ideas.

My understanding of AI is that it's a process for change that uses questioning to elicit the essential positives of a group, and then ties that core to a goal of some sort. AI "assumes that every living system has many untapped and rich and inspiring accounts of the positive". The Conversation Cafe method of dialogue, which I've used, has some similar elements. I looked into AI while researching dialogue for the Creativity Happens workshop, but I didn't feel I had enough background to try to incorporate it. I think it's a great idea!

Jungle Jim Dalrymple stalks the great song on Gibson.com:

I am a staunch believer that songwriting, like woodworking or small-engine repair or breakdancing, is a craft. Meaning, the more you do it, the better at it you will be. Sure, from time to time, we’re all inspired to lay down some cardboard and bust out a windmill, a worm, or a reverse airbaby—but how good are we going to be at it if we don’t practice? The same is true with songwriting: You should set time aside every day, even if it is just a few minutes, to work at it. Inspiration comes with regular practice a lot faster than it comes shooting out of the sky on your way to the Cumberland Farms for oat sodas and jerky. Or as a truly incredible songwriter once told me when I asked him the key to writing a great song: “Apply ass to chair.”

Amen, brother.

In the Resonant Frequency column on Pitchfork, Mark Richardson ruminates about American Idol and good songs:

There's the desire to hear something familiar, and the dearth of really good songs. They're hard to write. Better to sing a good song that you haven't written than a crappy one that you have. To bring it back to "American Idol", this is the idea Clive Davis was unsuccessfully trying to hammer into Kelly Clarkson.

Is it? That depends. It depends on whether you're the writer or the singer, and why you're writing or singing. Don't get me wrong; I'm with Brian "Write Good Songs" Adams when it comes to going pro with your music. Exercise: Compare Birmingham from Amanda Marshall's first album with Sunday Morning After from her most recent, and guess which one she co-wrote.

The problem is that statements like Richardson's reinforce the dangerous belief many people hold about not being creative. Moose pucky, I say. If you feel like writing songs, write them and let the world give you feedback. Maybe they're OK, maybe not. Maybe they're high art, maybe not. No matter – you're better for having taken the time to write them.

J. K. Rowland gave the commencement address at Harvard this year, and she decided to speak about the importance of failure and of imagination:

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.

I've discovered that I love a good commencement speech, perhaps because they seem to be quite rare. This is one such speech – take a few minutes to hear (or read) what Rowland offers to some of our planet's most privileged youth.