Hi everyone! I owe an apology to (almost) everyone who had a link on this here blog. I accidentally deleted all of the links when I went to redesign it. How do you like the new design, by the way? Anyway, if you had a link on my blog, and don't see it to your right, please post a comment with your web address, and I'll get it up there right away.

Music music music. I've been a fiend. Today, after doing everything I could on the job search, I tried to do what Bach did. I copied some piano music by Robert Schumann. Holy crap. I think it's the most boring thing I've ever done. I mean, I got two measures and my eyes started glazing over, my mind started to wander. I can't believe J.S. Bach spent his time copying other people's works.I simply don't believe it. Did you know that dude had 10 kids? Maybe more, even. No way he could have had 10 kids and still had time to copy out measure after measure of other people's music. If it'd been me, I'd've stuck my quill pen in my eye. It's simply impossible. But, maybe life was a bit slower back then, in the German countryside. You never know. Anyway, I'm going to try some more and then quit. Maybe it's like working out, you do some, it aches for ages, then you get used to it and you feel stronger. What do you think?

So, I'm almost finished with a piece called The Sailor's Cat. I've gotten to the double bar line at the end, but now I've got to listen for clunky notes, and probably rewrite the bass line. More on that later. For now, I've got to head out. More later!

I took my last $28 down to Eugene, OR this weekend for the insane Praxis II test, and you know something? It was fun. I mean the test was a bit tedious, but it was fun to be tested about music. The usual music nerd stereotypes were there. Big bottomed vocalist girl? Check. "Jazz cat" in narrow glasses with pony tail, squeaky voice, and pasty skin? Check. Sad looking churchgoing mother of ten with the frosty hair? Check. Old lady with the self-depricating comments? Check. Deformed guy with the crewcut, mandals and the pink face who plays tuba (invariably)? Check. Indie pop kid? Check. It was like a really square Breakfast Club.

But what fun to be tested about things in which I really have a vested interest. I liked listening to a random musical examples and having to guess who wrote them and during what historical period. I really wanted to know the answers. I considered it my duty as a person to know the answers. That's never happened to me before. When I was in the dark on a question, like the one where we had to guess the "mode" of a particularly difficult recorded example, my first thought was, "alright, you're going to have to go home and do some ear training!", not "when am I EVER going to have to use THIS?!" Do you know what I mean? I felt like I was being tested on my skills and qualifications as a human being, not like I was just taking a test for a passing grade, or to get an A so I could graduate. I spent a month with the Grout studying, not because I wanted to get the test over with, or pass it so I could get a good score so I could move on to the next step, but because I WANTED to know all that great stuff! I wanted to be able to hear what mode it was. I wanted to know what the best seating configuration was in an orchestra so that the trombones could hear the other players. I really wanted to be able to write about the style and probable composer of a piece by looking at a page of the score. When a recorded excerpt came on, and I could actually pick out the wrong pitch in the texture, or hear that the violin had played a wrong articulation, I quickly filled in the little black bubble with pride. But when I hadn't heard of Ellen Taft Zwillich, or couldn't figure out the best action to take when two high schoolers act up in choir class, I could feel my heart sink.

And so on the drive home, having spent my last $5 on gas, it occured to me: It's quite a great feeling knowing exactly what you want in life. But the sad part is not getting it. The sad part is reaching the point where you have to exhaust the remainder of your energy on your plan "B". That's the tradgedy. I'll tell you, I envy all of you people out there who don't know what you're doing with yourselves. At least in some way you're where you want to be. Those of us who've identified our passions, who've worked hard, who've spent ages trying to make our dreams happen, made the sacrifices, shaken the hands, kissed the asses, and who subsequently have to live with our dreams virtually unfulfilled, we're the ones who have it hard. My advice is to never figure it out. Not getting to do what you want with your life, no matter how hard you work, is worse than anything. Being unsuccessful is the most tragic thing in the world. There's nothing worse than to try and fail. Better to not even try. Mark my words. Stay confused. You'll be much better off.

Taking a break from studying for the monumentocious Praxis II test, for which I have to drive to Eugene on FUMES only to subject myself to a million multiple choice questions about, well, anything and everything to do with music, I decided to do a quick post about something that struck me while reading about J.S. Bach. Did you know that part of his musical training regiment was to copy manuscripts from earlier composers? He just wrote out other people's stuff note for note. That doesn't mean, incidentally, that he plagerized their music, it just means that he copied it in an effort to absorb some if it. I once saw an interview with Edward Albee in which he advocated the same method for learning how to write. Cool! So I plan to devote half an hour this afternoon to copying some piano music out in an effort to combat what is definiely shaping up to be another bout with writer's block.

I'm working on a song for the IHML called The Sailor's Cat, which is about a Sailor who loses his girl. She leaves him in Autumn, and he runs after her to beg her to stay, but she sails away in a little boat. The sad part is that she takes the cat! What's challenging about this song is that I'm trying to write it in Russian. I've been doing stuff in French, and I've always wanted to write a song in Russian. But I've never felt qualified. On the plane on the way home to California a couple of weeks ago, I read in a book of Russian poetry that Russian is a great language for poems because it is rich in pure rhyming words. By changing the case of a word, or by altering its role in a sentence, you can generate rhymes off of almost any word. So I tried it. Of course, the obstacle I ran into is that you have to have a HUGE vocabulary, which I don't. Also, in Russian words the stress only occurse on one syllable, and there aren't as many little words as in English. So, my efforts to write in Russian have resulted in this song taking way longer than I'd expected to finish. The lyrics alone took me a week. I originally had sixteen stanzas, which were going to be devided into two huge sections of four stanzas each. But yesterday, I decided that the melody was so cute and repetitious that a listener couldn't possibly stand it for more than four stanzas. So I cut the song down to four stanzas. Now I'm stuck on the music.

Aside from all of the above, I'm also self-conscious about calling the song "The Sailor's Cat" because of the reference to sailors and sea fairing and all that, which is a super trend in indie music right now. I hate the idea of following trends. But I suppose avoiding trends for the sake of being different is just the same as following trends to fit in, in that you're basing your artistic decisions on what others are doing. The reason the song is about a sailor's cat is not because I'm an indie-rock opportunist, but because if the girl in the song leaves the hero by carriage, the stress and rhyme scheme in Russian don''t work out. Rhythmically and grammatically, she must leave him by boat. So in the interest of justifying her leaving by boat, I thought the man should live by the sea. Well, having him be a sailor cuts down a lot of work for me. You see, putting the word "sailor" in the title conjures up a sea-fairing environment in the listener's mind that would take me sixteen stanzas or more to render. So, in the interests of economy, our hero became a sailor. Not only that, but I thought the fact that he's only upset about the cat, and not the girl, seems like something a gruff, bull-headed, Russian sailor type might feel. It might change. He could be a dock hand or something. Maybe even just an average Ivan who lives by a pier. Anyway, here are the lyrics in Russian, and then (roughly) translated:

Кошка Матроса

я бежал за нeё, кошка моя,
мылая кошка моя.
до ворот далеко, кошка моя.
мылая кошка моя

волны жёлтых флагax, осень тиха
мылая кошка моя.
развесилa на вязax, кошка моя
мылая кошка моя.

«уидёшь, я умру» крикнул я.
мылая кошка моя.
«не стой на ветру» ответила она.
мылая кошка моя.

eё лодка поплыла, кошка моя,
мылая кошка моя.
ax, с ней ты была, кошка моя.
мылая кошка моя.

The Sailor's Cat

i caught up with her, my cat
my darling cat
by the gate far away, my cat
my darling cat

fall had quietly strung
my darling cat
waves of yellow flags on the elms, my cat
my darling cat

"if you leave, I'll die", i shouted
my darling cat
"don't stand in the wind", she replied
my darling cat

her boat sailed away, my cat
my darling cat
oh, you were with her, my cat
my darling cat

See, the sailor is talking to his cat, who isn't there, cuz the chick left him and took the cat! Clever, huh? The whole lyric is adapted from a poem by Anna Akhmatova (which, incidentally, has nothing to do with cats. I put in the cat part). I consider copying to be part of my poetic education, like Bach above. Well, in any case, I didn't plagerize, I just paraphrased some bits that I particularly liked. If there's anyone out there who wants to correct my Russian, or wag their finger at me for my rough adaptation, please feel free. In the meantime, I have to go. The cafe I'm in started playing Rush on the musak!! Aggghhh! I'm melting...

Inspiration comes from the most unlikely places doesn’t it? I’d been struggling for weeks to find lyrics for a Parks & Recreation song called, well, until two days ago it was called The Construction Yard National Anthem. I mean struggling! The song started out innocently enough. Months ago, I wanted to write a big song to end the Parks & Recreation album. I wanted a real Star Spangled Banner kind of Oh, Canada kind of thing. In short, a national anthem. So I listened to a few that I liked: The Marseilles, the Soviet national anthem, Oh, Canada, to get some ideas. So I came up with a melody that was long and drawn out and put some simple major and minor chords under it. The melody ended up being kind of addictive, and simple, very accessible, very populist, which was my goal. It was divided into two distinct sections: a major section, which we’ll denote here as A, and a minor section, which we’ll call B. The end product sounded almost just like a real national anthem. Great, so part of my work was done. The trouble was, I got stuck on the lyrics. For the A section, I had the line “Children listen to me…” and that was it. The B section was more complete, it ran:

Don’t listen to your mother, she never cared
she never understood a word you said
she wanted you dead
the day that you were born
she almost got her way

That was it. And it didn’t even rhyme. What was I to do? I knew I wanted the song to be about a construction yard. You know, like the kind you always find at the ends of the streets in newly built suburbs. It seems like there was one in every housing tract I’ve ever lived in. So I had chords, a melody, a subject matter, and a few incomplete lyrics. Now what? You can imagine how many times I sat down to hammer out lyrics, how much singing to myself in my car I did, how many frustrating nights I spent tossing and turning with those same unfinished lyrics running through my head. Finally I decided to throw my hands up and stop trying so hard. I left it up to the Muses to come up with a lyric for me.

Muses. That brings me to the unlikely source of inspiration. So, the other day I went to the mall and traded in some video games. I had enough store credit to buy this game called God of War. It’s a really cheesy game about a Spartan warrior who goes around thrashing stuff, you know: lot’s of blood and guts. It’s a real fantasy geekfest set in ancient Greece. So after a while, I’m playing the game, and I find myself in this desert running around trying to find the Sirens, so I can destroy them and get out of the Desert Of Lost Souls on my way to the Temple of Pandora (I know I know!). There, it hits me. Seeing my little dude running around in this dusty sandpit, with crumbling pieces of stone and planks all over the place, made me think of construction yards. And I was looking for the Sirens. That was it! I put down the controller (after I’d beaten the level, that is) and went to knock out some lyrics. They came all at once, like a torrent. I sat down and didn’t stop writing until I’d finished the whole thing. An hour later, the new title was Siren Song Of The Construction Yard. Here is the lyric:

SIREN SONG OF THE CONSTRUCTION YARD

children listen to me
I’m calling from the land beyond your street
a dusty land of planks,
cement, bent fences
and granddaddies

calling all you cowboys, ninjas and thieves
all you pirate captains, men of the sea
sail upon my seas of tarp and plywood
or drown in my weeds

don't listen to your mother
she never cared
she never understood a word you said
she wanted you dead the day that you were born
but she never got her way

rise up from your sleep
grab your roman candles and come to me
to a land where you can truly be
what you want to be

don’t listen to your teachers
they never cared
they’ll tell you one and one and one is three
but I’ve got the answers that you really need
waving in the dusty breeze

don’t listen to your preacher
his heads in the clouds
he’ll tell you stories that you wouldn’t believe
but I’ve got more stories in these naked eaves
than he’ll ever have up his sleeve

come hide all your playboys
bury misdeeds
I long to feel you digging into me
coat my bulldozers with graffiti
children come to me

come you spartan warriors, soldiers, and knights
clash upon my fields in dirt clod fights
claim my naked frames of 2 x 4s
to be your kingdoms

(spoken) children wake from your sleep
grab your water cannons and follow me
into a land where you can truly be
what you want to be

children listen to me
you won’t need your homework where you’ll be
in a land where everybody’s lazy
and everything is free

In the song, the construction yard is like a Siren of the housing tract, calling to the children to come, leave their lives behind, and play. All of these things the construction yard is inviting the children to come and do are things that I used to do when I was a kid in the unfinished cul-de-sacs in my neighborhood. Grandaddies are those huge dirt mounds, down which the boys would always zoom on their bikes. We used to have dirt clod fights all the time, just hurling huge chunks of dirt at each other. The Spartan warrior comes up in one stanza. I wanted the lines about mother, father, and preacher, to stay in, because, you see, in mythology, there’s something sinister about the Sirens. They actually lead sailors and whatnot to their death. So they can’t be trusted, really, even though they’re alluring and their song is beautiful. And that’s what I wanted for the construction yard. I wanted it to be a fun place, but to also have kind of a sinister quality, like it’s going to lead children to ruin. That’s why I threw in the line about hiding your Playboys and doing graffiti and everything. Construction yards aren’t just happy places where kids can frolic and play, but they’re also unsupervised zones where children can give voice to their inner dark side: their inner thief, vandal, and pervert. I had the idea that the second to last verse would be spoken in a Vincent Price kind of voice, like in the song Thriller. I wanted to create a playful, happy, joyful song, but at the same time a kind of dark, threatening song. The construction yard isn’t just an innocent place to play, but a dangerous distraction.

In addition to being sinister, yet joyful, these lyrics also tie in to one of the central themes of the next album, which is escapism and imagination. In the case of this song, too much imagination isn’t always such a good thing. Well, in my particular case it was. But can you imagine if I hadn’t got up from the game to write those lyrics and had just sat around playing video games all day? Or… hey, actually, that doesn’t sound so bad. In fact, what if I just got a little further just now. I’ll only play for half an hour. Excuse me, folks, but my Playstation...it’s calling to me…

Look, I don't want to seem dramatic, but if the story of my last four years were a movie, what happened on Saturday night would be the ending:

My mother wanted to go and see Darrell Grant play piano on Saturday night, so we all went. He'd invited us the week before, after my recital. When we got there, Darrell was in the middle of a piece, but he spotted me and a little "Mike!" escaped from him. He seemed actually glad that we'd showed up. He then announced that he was going to play a song called My Romance. Having said that, his body bent in concentration and he started playing, of all things, the Promenade from Moussourgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, the very same piece I had played for my recital the previous Sunday. He used the melody for as the introduction, just as I had, and then in his solo, he took the melody through various little improvisations and whatnot, just as I had attempted to. I can't really describe to you what it felt like to have him make that little gesture toward me. Here's this man, this man who I've spent the last few years just trying to wring even a "Good Job!" out of, who had pushed me and even yelled at me at times, paying homage to me in the most intimate of ways: with a musical gesture. My eyes started to tear up. I felt so happy. At first I thought he was fucking with me, but when the piece finished, he smiled and pointed at me. Then he bust into Pent Up House, which was another of my recital pieces. Before that night I thought I'd squeaked by at PSU. I thought they'd kind of written me off as someone who was never going to master jazz, who was a bit of a tourist in thier world, a hack who was just passing through. So they tolerated my presence and let me slip through their system. I didn't think all of this because I was insecure, but because of the way they treated me: yelling at me at juries, giving the other students compliments and letting my accomplishments slip by. But at that moment I knew I was wrong. It was perfectly clear that Darrell Grant respected me, and even better, maybe he even acknowledged that I had worked hard and had talent, even if I was, as I said earlier, no Van Cliburn. It almost seemed for a moment like he saw me as a peer. It meant a lot to me what he did. I'll never ever forget it. It wasn't passing finals, sitting among an oil slick of graduates and looking up at the frantically waving parents, or even hanging my tassel up on my refrigerator door that made all of my hard work at PSU worth it. It was Darrell Grant making that little nod. That's what made it worth it. That was my happy ending. And they lived happily ever after.

Sunday was the recital, and let's face it, I'm no Van Cliburn. I have no illusions about that. I got by on Sunday with the little Moussourgsky pieces I played. I didn't play them perfectly. There were some boofs, but the energy in the room was really abuzz, and I felt focused and really good while I was playing. In fact I did really really well, and I'm quite proud. I wish I could tell you exactly what I was thinking while I was onstage, or what I was thinking beforehand, but to be honest I can't even remember doing it. When I listen to the rocordings, I can picture what I was looking at during certain moments in the pieces, I can see my hands playing, I can smell the faint smell of roses (I had a bouquet on top of the piano with roses to give out). I suppose I could give you a blow by blow.

On Sunday morning I woke up, puttered around, went to buy cat litter and some food for Lily, and then came home and went to Zell's for a delicious undercooked breakfast. There, the fluttering in the stomach began. (No, not because of the omlet). I told myself to breathe, and to keep the nervous feelings focused in my belly. I told myself to not let the jiggles rise any higher than my ribcage. So every time I felt a nervous spasm, I just breathed into it, and let it do its thing, but not allow it to make my hands or arms shake. Anyway, then I went to school and sat and sat playing through difficult parts very slowly, drinking water, lying on the ground, talking to myself, etc. etc. By the time it came time to set up, I was feeling pretty calm. The musicians all arrived, we set up, and then we ran through the pieces. I didn't do much solo practice because things were hectic, and I didn't want to overdo the playing before the recital. So there it was. My mother and cousins and Liz straggled in way early and were snapping pictures, which was cute. There was this one moment, too, where this guy I don't know wearing a suit named Marcus came bounding into the room saying his wife's recital was to start at 6PM (my recital started at 5:30), and that there was a scheduling conflict with the room! They were supposed to have the room at 5Pm to set up! Well, so I shooed everyone from the room and let them set up their stuff behind us, but that whole episode added to my anxiety a bit. It turned out, by the way, that Marcus and his wife had made a mistake. They had the room from 6 until 8. We had the room from 4 to 6. So they shouldn't have scheduled their recital directly at 6 if they wanted to have the room to practice or something. Anytway, I didn't tell him that because he was a nice guy, and we were all anxious enough as it was.

Suddenly I was backstage, feeling all trembly, trying to stop the flutterings from entering my arms and hands, but they went where they wanted. I couldn't stop them. So I went with it and just tried to relax. I did stretchy things, breathe-y things, and then Kyle lowered the lights and I came out onto the stage. From here I only remember snippets. My legs went all a-jelly when I caught from the corner of my eye the bald brown pate of Darrell Grant way up in the back row. But I smiled, said a few words of thanks, and sat down at the piano. Here, time stretched out and bent on its own whim. I remember sitting there on the bench, checking that my body was okay. I remember placing my finger on the first note of the Moussourgsky (a G), and I remember a slight panicky tremble in my body when I messed up the last couple of chords in the first few bars. Then I remember just feeling kind of asleep. I was in control, but not. I was listening as though I was in the audience, but my fingers were moving. It's so hard to describe. Once in a while, not often, I would phase out, no, blank out, and my fingers would hit a wrong chord, and it would be like I was waking up, and I'd move on as though I handn't messed up at all.

Then I stood up from the piano, bowed, and brought out the other musicians. I handed them each a rose, and even handed Darrell and Charlie Gray, my teacher Brian Ward, my Mom, and Liz a rose, and then we all played the jazz songs. These went really well. I felt really good. By this time my nerves were gone and I didn't have a care in the world. I was really having fun, looking around at my friends playing with me: all these really good musicians who are going to be famous one day. Playing with me!! Can you believe it?

Then I brought the band on and we did a super fast rendition of Break Into Song with horns and everything. Anthony had brought a couple of timpani out of the school equipment locker, so you should have seen our stage set up. Me on a big black grand piano, Anthony with a laptop and two timpani! My friend Kyle played guitar, having learned the lines from the record, and everyone had a great time playing that song.

So then it was over. That's it. The Big Goddamn Recital. One half hour and almost a year of preparation. I suppose I should be sad (or angry) that in the end I missed a couple of notes. Especially after two extra lessons and nine months of practicing every day. But you know, I'm not. I did everything I could to iron out the boofs, and they cropped up anyway. Imperfection is part of life. There were times in the practice room when I would play through the pieces without goofing up even once. Those are the moments that I live for. Who wouldn't mess up in front of his teachers, his peers, his mom, all staring at his first ever classical/ jazz concert with all that pressure? Not Van Cliburn. But then, as I said earlier: I'm no Van Cliburn. But I'm the best Michael Johnson I can be.

Hey, since most of you missed it, (for shame) here are some mp3s from the recital. The recording guy cut off the first couple of notes of the Promenade II, which is a drag, so I included a link to a rehearsal recording I did of the piece. Keep in mind, these pieces are not played perfectly. So try not to get angry. Happy listening!

Promenade I/ Over The Rainbow
Promenade II/ But Not For Me
Pent Up House
Minority
Break Into Song

Promenade II (rehearsal take)

I'm as ready as I''m ever going to be. Today I again practiced really really slowly, and then I recorded some takes of myself playing recital material. Some of it I'm happy with, some of it really still needs work. You can hear me doing the second Promenade from Moussourgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition here.

More later!

Before I begin, I want to wish a huge Happy Birthday to my big brother James. I don't know where he is at the moment. He's taking a much needed hiatus from our family, which I respect (and kind of admire). I really hope he's alright. I'm sure he is. He's a very intelligent, handsome, resourceful boy, and I know whatever he's doing he's doing it well. I only wish I could say happy birthday to him to his face, and tell him I love him. So, James, wherever you are, happy birthday!

To business: I got a sour jolt of butterflies in my stomach when I put up fliers announcing my recital in the hallways of the music department. The first tremors happened when my Russian teacher told me she was coming. From now on, my policy is this: Come, just don't tell me you're coming. When I was doing theater I used to get so nervous just knowing who was in the audience. It's something that's carried over to my performance endeavours in general. But then, this guy in one of my classes who knows the goings on of our band said to me today: "You can play the Gorge, but you can't handle a few of us at your recital?" I suppose he's right. Although, we played the parking lot of the Gorge, which is different. NO NO! I promised this week I wouldn't make any self-depricating jokes. I am the portrait of confidence and poise. No mistake.

In musical news, I sang last night in the choir with full orchestra in front of me. I want to say it inspired me and moved me, but to tell you the truth I was so stressed out I couldn't concentrate. My black thrift store pants were too tight, and I was sweating like crazy. It was lovely music, but it didn't grab me. It did inspire me, however, to want to get to work on the next Parks & Recreation album, because it's going to be chock full of strings and horns! So, rather than moving me, Mozart made me itchy.

Today I practiced for the R word. I played all of my pieces really slowly: so excrutiatingly slowly that I was missing notes because I was spacing out. Then I worked very hard on the solos. By "very hard" I mean I played really hard. I made it a point to just hammer at the keys with my right hand so that my little improvised lines would at least come out strong. And you know what? I didn't play half as many wrong notes! So I figured it out. When they say "If you're going to make a mistake, make it loud." They don't really mean it's okay to make mistakes. They mean that if you play loud, you'll make less mistakes. Well, why don't they just say that?? Let me reiterate: I'm paying these people?

Anyway, that's all the news for now. Tomorrow I'm going to investigate all the logistics involved with the recital. Won't that be exciting?! Hey. If I have to go through all this, somebody else should have to as well. Just remember, confident people are liars!

Not since I was a little lad have I had to play a recital. I don't even remember doing one, to tell you the truth. I took guitar lessons at a young age, but gave them up. My recital then must have been pathetic. Me playing "Skip To My Lou" on one string while my parents' watched. Jimmy Hatton had to play piano in front of our whole elementary school one time. And once when I worked at a music store some of the teachers at our store gave a recital. That's it.

Here's my mental image of recitals: some jittery kid with his hair all combed perfect, dressed like a smaller version of his grandfather, plinking through Mary Had A Little Lamb or something while his teacher, a great bloated alligator of a woman, looks on, nervous that he'll miss a note, clutching a notepad and scribbling. Or a little girl in a velvet red dress and shiny patent leather shoes who gets up and plays Chopin perfectly, and she's only, like, 9. Her parents are so proud of themselves, never having let her leave the house. They smile smugly and clam clap when their little girl finishes with a final crashing chord. I'm hoping to replace that mental image of recitals with a new mental image: ME with arms outstretched in triumph, standing in a spotlight, with long stemmed roses flying toward me, waist high in a warm bubbling pool of rapturous applause. Yes, there I am, being bowed to, like a Roman hero coming back with the Gorgon's head in one hand. Only I intend to have Modest Moussourgsky's HEAD IN MY HAND, no mistake. Darrell Grant will bow to me. He'll say, "You know, Mike, that time I got really pissed at you at your jury. Can you ever forgive me? You were marvellous! Let's go get a beer!" It'll be brilliant. You should all come and throw roses at me.

The recital will be June 11th. I'm playing two of the Promenades from Modest Moussourgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, But Not For Me by Gershwin, Pent Up House and Minority with a jazz septet, and Break Into Song! with Parks & Recreation plus horns. Yay!

So far it's been a long winter of preparation. Back in April, after my horrible jury, I was eager to fix the mistakes I had been making (although I still wasn't angry about them) so I took a couple of extra piano lessons with some ladies in the community about whom I'd been told were excellent teachers. One of them, after hearing me plink and plunk through my pieces, advised me to start back at the very beginning, playing the pieces excrutiatingly slowly, without ever playing them at full speed for at least 3 weeks. She told me that on every single beat I should tell each of my fingers which note they were to play next, and not move my hands until I'd told each finger where to go. (Sounds a little pornographic, but it's true.) She told me that on every beat I should say aloud what chord I was playing, which note was the melody note, where had come from, and where I was going. So for 3 weeks I sat at the piano and said things like "my right hand is now going to play an F major chord. Pinky, you will play an A, ring finger, you will play an F, and thumb, you will play a C." Can you imagine?? During that therapudic 3 weeks, I also worked on things like playing just the melody alone, getting the dynamics and the phrasing, having my hands balanced when playing the chords, voicing the chords, etc. And it worked. When I played the pieces for my teacher at school, I didn't miss a note. However, other problems cropped up, such as my shoulders going up into my ears while playing, etc. I also developed the tendency to play really heavily, especially in certain parts of the first Promenade. So then I had another lesson with one of the ladies, and she advised me to pay attention to the way I was sitting. She told me to relax my body, keep my elbows at my side, sit at the right height, and keep my shoulders down. She gave me a lecture about all the levers in my arms, and about how to sit and hold my weight. Oy vey! Now, that's what I focus on when I play, my body, not the notes. So far I'm doing pretty well. I feel prepared, if overwhelmed. I mean, I'm not going to be Horowitz or anything, but the only thing I need to work on, aside from small details in particular spots in each piece, is to not be nervous when I perform. I need to be poised, calm, and still, with just enough nervous energy to make the performance exciting. (Normally, I would make a little self depricating quip here, but as part of my new "confidence" regiment I shall refrain. Confident people are so boring! They have no sense of humor!) Today I had my second to last piano lesson before the recital, and my piano teacher at school gave me tips on the solo sections. He said I should play the solo sections with more conviction, because I was softening up when I reached those sections so I could make sure not to make any mistakes. He said if I make a mistake, I should make it loud. Hmm. And so we come full circle. All that grumbling about mistakes six months ago, only to then get me prepared to play them louder? And I'm paying these people??

BUT why split hairs at this point? Only two more weeks and I'm going to throw all of my jazz recordings out the goddamned window. I swear to God, if another person says the word "Bird" to me after June 17th in reference to anything other than the tiny feathery chirpy creatures that I intend to listen to while snoozing in the grass this summer, I'm going to do something really unpleasant. The same goes for the word "Train". After June 17th, unless you are talking about the large iron things that make lonely whines in the distance on dark, quiet summer nights, please do not utter that word in my presence.

Anyway more later.

I'm recovering from two things this week: one was a bout with food poisoning which caused me, nightmare of nightmares, to have to cancel a Parks & Recreation show. My sincere apologies to anyone who came to the show and paid, only to have us not show up. Word has it that Loch Lamond was brilliant, and we're sad we didn't get to play.

The other is a couple of eye opening (and really depressing) piano lessons which I had with a couple of different teachers. I can't go into details right this moment, but that will be the subject of my next post. I just wanted to say hello, since I hadn't posted in a while. By the way, just because I haven't posted doesn't mean creative things aren't happening. The juices continue to, erm...well. I'll choose a better analogy next time. Until then!

Today we watched a rough cut of the film we worked on last summer. Apparently it doesn't have a name anymore. It used to be called Drift. But since many other things have been called that in the past, Matt and Joe decided to change the name. That's good. I thought of a couple of alternates, like, maybe, Mike Johnson and the Aimless Guy, or A Film Shot Around Scenes Featuring Mike Johnson, or how about The Mike Johnson Story (With Some Incidental Appearances By Joe Ballman And A Couple Of Other People), but they were all shot down. Anyway, I use the term rough cut loosely, because aside from technical issues, like unfinished audio, the film is excellent. I was impressed with the amount of care that went into the cutting of the film. Our friend Matt did it all himself, with the aid of this feedback session, and, I understand, an earlier one. For one, his shots really look good. I really liked the moments in the movie when things stood still. It opens with Joe just lying on the floor, which is great. Then he just looks out the window. Simple moments like that really made it nice. It's a sweet film. It feels much more mature than a first feature. The acting on the part of Lisa, who plays Kiera, is really fine. The whole cast is good. Joe is great to watch. I look a bit rough in some spots, but of course it's always jarring to see oneself on film. I don't even want to comment about my own work in the movie. in short It's an excellent movie and I'm very proud of it. Matt is a huge talent and I hope he asks me to do future projects with him. But hopefully I'll have less screen time. I mean, please. The movie was practically about me! Joe was hardly in it. Next time maybe he'll give me a more modest part. Anyway, this isn't supposed to be some kind of ameteur film review.

The point of my post was to talk about how much I've been itching to do some acting again. I just recently got back in touch (well, one email is hardly getting back in touch) with an old friend of mine from California who did children's theater with me when we were kids. Her name is Alisha. I got the jones to get back in touch with her back in 1997, when I'd heard that she waqs still living in our home town. What strange turns our lives take. I was genuinely interested in what became of her, because she was always one of my favorite people. It's a long story. You'll just have to trust me. Anyway, she told me that she's living back in our hometown doing plays. I couldn't help but envy her. Especially since she began to relate the news of her life to me with the terms "my dreams have come true." She has kids, is doing theater work. She's got it all. She was always extremely talented. I remember when we were kids I went to see her sing at some competition. She had such energy. Even at, um, I think we must have been close to 13 or 14. You could just tell she was going to do that forever. I look forward to having the freedom to do what I want with my time once school's done. That is, between punches of the clock, so to speak. I'm going to do some plays, our band is going to record, I'm going to get a job I like, etc. At least that's what I tell myself. Then I got a copy of Гамлет from my Russian teacher (who, by the way, I asked out! She has a boyfriend in Pittsburg, alas) and watched that. It got me all nostalgic about doing plays. Oh, and in San Francisco I learned of my friend Valerie's various acting jobs. She's an actress in San Francisco. I mean she's really an actress. She makes a living doing acting. She's brilliant. Anyway, so I miss it. That's the point.

In musical news, I finished another set of lyrics for the IHML, and I worked on some new Parks & Recreation songs. I'm also working on a new design for the Reclinerland website. I'd like to have finished more of the music for the IHML songs, but my attention is taken up by other things at the piano. I've got to do transcriptions for my lessons, and work continues on my solo recital arrangements. That means memorizing and being able to solo over the chords in four jazz songs. So that's pretty much all I have time for on the piano. I'll continue to work on lyrics and melodies until summer probably, when I'll be free to get into the piano arrangements. I want to have the album finished by the end of the summer. Do you think I can do it? 8 more songs in six months? We'll see. I've been getting inspired to go out and do some solo shows again, too, speaking of it. This probably was brought about by my whole "what am I going to do when school's out" thing, but nonetheless, I have my first show by myself behind an acoustic guitar in May. How will it feel? Good, I suspect. I saw some friends of mine play solo acoustic at the Dunes on Friday, and I really got the itch.

Oh, one last thing. I'm excited because a friend of mine got into the Portland Biennial. Actually, three friends of mine did. But this friend concerns me particularly because her artwork involves me! She did this really cool installation about a composer she invented. The composer supposedly lived in Russia and was a woman named Viviana Spokoinovich or something like that. The exhibit consists of a glass case with varioius artifacts from the composer's life, including some letters, her writing tools and whatnot. There's even a manuscript page with one of the composer's compositions in her own hand scrawled upon it. Well, the whole thing is made up, of course, and the music was written by me. In fact, two of the songs for the IHML came from that project, most especially the song Up On The Orange Moon. The exhibit even contains this pair of headphones, and you can listen to the songs that the composer (acutally that I) wrote. When you put on the headphones, you'll hear me singing "Lu lu lu" on the guitar. You'll also hear a piano piece I wrote especially for the piece. I even copied out the manuscript page by hand on old brown paper to make it look really authentic. It was awesome. It was kind of like the IHML 3D. So I'm thrilled to be a part of a real art installation! If you're in Portland during the biennial, and you plan on going, please please please stop by and see the piece by Mariana Tres. It's good work. Also, Brad Atkins, another friend of mine has a piece that's cheeky as usual. So go to that too.

Well, it's Sunday night, so I should get going. I'm writing this from a pub. It's smoky!

What kind of bogus spring break is this? I haven't seen a single pair of tits! I mean, where are the stretching oceans of sand, the endless fountains of brew, the wriggling coeds, the TITS?? All I've done all spring break so far, being that I'm completely utterly mind shatteringly broke, is walk across town to the university (since my bike got stolen!). They're nice walks, don't get me wrong, and I've been listening to tons of hip hop music while I walk. I crossed the river to the Gray Album this morning, and yesterday afternoon I got creeped out by the gunshot scene in Who Shot Ya and had to skip ahead to Fuck The Police. I love rap! Anyway, the purpose of my walks to school is to practice my recital material. I guess I got a little neurotic after making my deparment head angry at my juries. Although his delivery was questionable, his point was right on. I have a focus problem. I'm trying to figure out why my mind wanders when I sit down at the piano. I think about everytits but what I'm playing. So as a result I make stupid little mistakes. The pieces are within my technical ability, so I should be able to play them, yet I continually play little wrong notes, forget where I am, etc. So, in an attempt to solve this problem, I bring a tape recorder and record myself play. It takes more focus to get through a recorded take than to just sit there and play a piece, plus you have a record of what you did. Then I listen to the takes and see where in the piece I continually mess up, and where in the piece I consistently play well. I make little highlighter blotches on the score where I screw up. Then I focus on the messed up parts. In analyzing my mistakes, I usually discover that the mistake I made was the result of my not paying attention, rather than any technical problem. There are a few places in the pieces which are actually physically difficult, however, so those I try to solve by slowing down, etc. But most of my problems, thankfully, occur as a result of not paying attention. One piece I'm doing is a jaunty, bouncy, full, firm little number...ugh! Tits again! So the question is, how to pay attention? Well, that's a hard question. I try singing along with the piece, I try staring at the keys, turning the lights off, cutting out the caffeine before I go practice. I tell you I've tried everything. The next step, I suppose, is to play the pieces in front of people as often as I can. This is daunting, because it means I have to beg my friends to sit through my whole recital program, like, three times a week. I'm not sure if that's practical. We'll only see in time if any of this pays off.

In other spring break news, I've been working on more pop songs. I've written the lyrics to two more songs for the IHML Vol. 2. One is a really fast song called No No This Will Never Do! It's about this blowhard right wing general who's having a dinner party. Before the action of the song, his guests get into a political discussion, and some liberal at the table says something that offends him, so the song is him kicking the glib liberal out of his house. It's going to be very fast and pattery. Try reading this stanza from the song as fast as you can and you'll get the idea:

I'm a decorated veteran
I met the Fates and bettered them
And won the bloody battle of Waterloo
Until you defend the fort
I will not mingle with your sort
No no this will never do!

Does anyone know when the battle of Waterloo was? Was it a Civil War battle, which I'm hoping, or was it a WWII battle? I can't remember. I suppose I'll have to look that up. Anyway, the other song I finished the lyric for was What Are The Chances? I don't have them with me, so I can't show them to you, but I decided the song would be about this shleppy poor guy who ends up being the object of this beautiful rich woman's affection. Well, they go to a ball and of course it creates an absolute scandal. Because she shows him her tits! No no, that's not why. It's because he's poor and she's this high society princess. The first stanza runs something like:

What were the chances
That this enchantress
Would answer my glances?
I'm just as poor as dirt
Still we flirt
And she says she loves me so

Cheezy, I know, but remember, it's an old song. At the end of the song, he says:

What were the chances?
How funny romance is!
I couldn't have planned this...
I thank Cupid it was me
She chanced to see
After he shot his bow.

I put the reference to Cupid in because I thought that might explain why this woman is interested in this guy. I thought it might lend a kind of supernatural quality to the song. Maybe she really did get shot by an arrow? By the way, can one "shoot a bow?" I mean, you draw a bow, and you shoot an arrow, but you don't shoot a bow. If I wrote instead for the last line "after he drew his bow" do you think that would be enough to imply that Cupid drew his bow and then shot an arrow? I'm hoping that both actions are implicit in the one action.

In addition to those two numbers I wrote a couple of songs for P&R. One is called God, Or Whoever's Up There. It's about pretty girls and all the mysterious, crazy things they're made of. This is all revealed in a story about a guy who has a crush on a girl, who's only dating him because she heard from her sister that he was a good kisser. Well, he falls for her of course, and she gives him the straight arm. All this takes place against a nice suburban backdrop, just like the rest of our next album will. The first stanza goes like this:

God, or whoever's up there gave the world
No better gift than a pretty girl
I know you'll find the one for you soon
The trouble is he wrapped her up in mysteries,
Enigmas that make Socrates
And his friends in ancient Greece look like buffoons.

She was mopping up at Huber's when you approached and sat down
Said she caught a little rumor floating all over town
Is it true that you went out one night with her sister and
That you're an excellent kisser, man?
Yes, she's talking to you.

So if that's a whole verse, the first part will elaborate on all of the confusing and mysterious things girls are made of, and the second part will elaborate with a narrative. Cool, huh? Not really, but I'm still working on it. I was inspired by the Magnetic Fields. And I'm not sure about that part about Socrates.

There are more, but I can see this post is getting long. Well, happy spring break, kids. Hope you're all fairing better than I am in the tits department. As for me, well, reading over this post, no wonder I'm not seeing any!

Dude! I pissed off the head of the jazz department at PSU this morning. I had my piano jury, right? And so I sat down to play this piece I'm preparing for my recital, and what did I do? I messed up a note in the opening measure. Now, all I had to do was play a simple unison melody line in my right hand, nothing difficult, you know, so I really shouldn't have messed it up, but I did. So I hear this "STOP." And I look at him, and his eyes are smoldering. He's sitting with his arms crossed looking really thunderous, like he was going to strangle me. He says, "Play it again. Try harder." So I started over, this time more nervous than I was to begin with. Although I didn't mess up that particular spot, there were other little plinks and plunks here and there throughout the piece. I couldn't help it! There were little pauses, and lapses, I got lost once. So I get to the end and sit back, my heart thumping. Silence. Finally he says something like (I'm paraphrasing) "You're too casual. These little mistakes are really annoying. They mar your good intentions. You shouldn't tolerate them. You're better than that now. Until you get as angry about your mistakes as I'm getting, you won't ever improve." This through almost gritted teeth. But then the atmosphere relaxed a bit as I nodded in agreement, melting into the floor with shame. Then he gave me practical advice and we all discussed my improvement regiment, which shall heretofore include a sphincter tight intolerance of mistakes. Ugh. I felt like a little kid who made a poopy in his pants. I got schooled, n'est-ce pas?

Okay, I know this isn't supposed to be a personal blog, but I have to tell everyone that this afternoon I got a voice mail message from a girl I hung out with twice, like, a MONTH ago (just as friends, though she did tell me she'd heard I was a good kisser), explaining to me why she couldn't date me. She said something like, "not to sound arrogant, but I got a vibe from you that you were interested, etc." This after a month. And we only hung out twice. Well, I got the hint ages ago. I mean, after flaking out on me once, she just didn't call back. AND, by the way, I had forgotten all about it. There was really no need to leave me a 15 minute voicemail delineating the reasons why she "isn't in the headspace right now to be seeing anyone, etc. etc." I suppose it's nice that she called, you know, to clear the air and all, in the name of honesty and everything, but um, the air was already clear, and now I feel bad about it all over again. So then she invited me to her Birthday party, making me feel worse. Rejection, then invitation? How confusing is that? That's like the kid on the playground who always gets picked last for football getting invited to the team captain's house for celery sticks and peanut butter later. Um, no thanks. By the way, this will be her 30th Birthday, not her 20th, so she has no excuse.

Ladies, Please. It's not funny anymore. I already have more than enough material for new songs. Do you want me to become a punk rocker or something? Grrr.

HEllo? Is anyone still out there? I don't think anyone actually reads my blog anymore. Pity. Well, maybe that's because I go on and on about musical things that no one cares about. Perhaps I should blog about who I'm dating, or sleeping with, but that would be a short blog indeed. Heh. Okay, to business...

I worked into the night last night on a song called What Were The Chances for the IHML. I got many ideas for piano accompaniment from some of the stuff I'm working on in my piano lessons. I don't have any lyrics yet, just a few. I thought I'd start with the music this time. I can always make changes when the lyric seems to require shifts in mood and that sort of thing. The song is going to be about a guy who goes to a ball, and the most wonderful, most unattainable, most beautiful, most incredible girl at the ball is after him, but he can't believe it, so, in not believing it, he blows it. It's kind of what happened to me on Valentine's Day (see my last post). Aside from the autobiographical ramifications, the exciting part about writing this song was that the whole process is getting faster. I used to spend a few hours on, like, four measures of piano music. Last night, I woke up from writing for only a couple of hours and found I'd finished an entire page of music. Granted, this is largely due to the fact that there is a set stride piano pattern that forms the basis for the accompaniment, but within that pattern, there are many little variations, so it was quite a feat.

I also catalogued new pop songs for P&R and found that, including songs the fellows haven't heard yet, we have about fifteen songs toward our next record. It seems strange to be thinking about the next record a week after the first one came out, but on our budget, thinking ahead is very important. I'll have some little snippets up soon. In my last post there is a link to one of the songs in progress.

I'll post updates about new songs as I write them. I'm stuck in a few places, so I need some suggestions. That is, if anyone's even reading this thing. Maybe I should post naked pictures or something? Anyone?...

Valentine's Day sucks! If it weren't for the fact that the new Parks & Recreation came out today (Yay!) all over the planet, and is available on iTunes, Amazon, etc, I would be utterly miserable.

But to commemorate the black occasion of Valentine's Day, I wrote a jaunty little pop song called The Devil In Miss Morgan for P&R. It's a pornographic tale of romantic woe. If you go to this link you can download the demo. I guess one good thing came out of my heartbreak. Curse you, St. Valentine!!

I'm officially the worst blogger ever. It's been so long since my last post. But I suppose the fact that I'm such a bad blogger is made up for by the fact that I'm such a good student. Yay! I've been very busy in school. You see, I'm trying to graduate this Spring, so I have some loose ends to tie up. Also, Parks & Recreation have been very busy. This weekend is our CD release party. We're bringing up our friend Chris from California to play guitar, since Jason is no longer in the group. We've also done some horn arrangements, and Kaitlyn Ni Donovan is going to join us as well. I'm so looking forward to it. Except that I got sick earlier this week.

In creative news, Il Est Calme has changed to Il Fait Calme, and there are some interesting lyric changes as well. I finished the lyric a week ago, corrected the French grammar, and added a little tagline "Il n'y a pas d'amour heureaux" at the end. Now I have to begin work on another song for the IHML 2 entitled What Were The Chances. That one's coming up. In between all that, I'm working on my recital program. I have to do a half hour of music, including a classical piece, a trio piece, and some solo piano arrangements. So, I'm going to model my recital after Moussourgsky's Pictures at an Exibition. Pictures at an Exibition is made up of little piano pieces written after certain paintings in an exhibition Moussourgsky visited. A little Promenade appears in various forms throughout the piece. So, I'm going to play the opening promenade from Pictures at an Exibition in various arrangements throughout my recital. I thought I could do some different arrangements of the Promenade melody. Some could be very classical-esque, and some could be jazzy. Then I'm going to do Break Into Song! at the end of the recital, bringing in all the horns and strings from the record. It's going to be a cavalcade of musical love! You're all invited.

Anyway, I'm off to practice. I hope you're all doing well.

It's the first day of school and I'm feeling all peppy. My courseload is steep again, but I'm feeling pretty capable of tackling it. It's raining softly all over the place and It's such a pleasure to walk around in.

Well, so I finished the music for a new song called Il Est Calme for the Ideal Home Music Library, Vol. 2. For an idea of how long this song has been on the books, and how fast time flies, see the August archives of this blog. Anyway, it would be difficult to write about the way I came up with the music, so I'll concentrate on the lyric. Unfortunately, I'm only halfway there with the lyric. For this song, I wanted to utilize some of my first year French for two reasons: 1) I like French 2) the song is loosely based on a girl I had an immense crush on last year who spoke French. She wanted me to do some music for a little film she was making. She reciprocated my crush, but she ultimately rejected me on the grounds that I reminded her too much of her father. Go figure. Her message to me, by the way, that she wasn't interested, was to give her number out to some other boy (the cheesiest one in the place, I might add, just to hammer the point home) whilst out dancing with me. Go figure again. But I'm over it. The fact that I was in the middle of doing the music for her film when she gave me the old straight arm was the biggest tragedy. You may think me a cad, but I was so broken hearted, I couldn't go through with the music. So I shelved it and told her I wasn't going to be doing her music. I haven't spoken to her since. BUT, having revisited the melody recently, I thought I could instead make a little song based on our experience. Not a bitter song, mind you, but a nice one. A song about the good times. Yeah right. But still, it's a soft, sad homage in a way. Incidentally, the name of her film, and I don't know if she ever finished it, was Il Est Calme.

Anyway, using this premise I first imagined a guy killing his lover by the Seine. (How's that for not being bitter?) She's telling him "Il est calme, Il est calme..." and he's stabbing her or something. So the first lyric was:

Il est calme. Il est calme. Un petit chanson! Un petit chanson
These are the words she whispered that beautiful Paris morning

Hokey hokey hokey. The lyric was going to continue with the guy stabbing her, you know, so that the whole thing gets really violent while the music is really sweet. But then I thought no no, it's not working. In trying to come up with answers the man could give, I found my way blocked at every turn. So I scrapped that idea and started again. This time, my couple is just strolling along by the Seine. They're just friends, but he likes her. Well, moved by the moment, she turns to him and asks him to write her a song with the words:

"Il est calme. Il est calme.
Ecrites pour moi un petit chanson."
These are the words she whispered
That ill fated Paris morning

I like this because it doesn't have a strict line by line rhyme scheme. The rhymes are sprinkled in here and there. For instance, there is a near rhyme between lines 1 and 2, with an internal rhyme in line 2 on "ecrite" and "petit" (even though you don't pronounce the "t" in petit). The girl uses the "tu" form of ecriter, but she just likes him as a friend. You'll find that out later. I also liked that the woman speaks in French in the first half of the stanza, but the narration, which makes up the second half, is in English. The rhyme scheme isn't as tight, but I don't mind, because the words still sound nice with the melody and if the French and English parts don't rhyme, it sets them apart as separate occurrences. One is the outer, spoken dialog, and the other is the narration. Then, in keeping with my new less violent premise, I had the man then answer:

"Oui! D'accord! D'accord, mon amie!
Pour toi je vais un chanson ecriter!"
That moment I moved to kiss her
But she moved her lips away
She moved her lips away

Here, I used some more not-so-overt rhymes. The first line is a mirrored rhyme (I don't know the technical term for it), in which the two inner syllables on the word "d'accord" rhyme (is that cheating, since they're the same word?) and the two outer syllables on "oui" and "amie" rhyme. Another internal rhyme on the second line occurs between "vais" and "ecriter". By placing this internal rhyme on the same line as it occurs in the first stanza, I tried to preserve the pattern I had set up. The fact that the words "kiss her" in the third line of this stanza rhymes with "whisper" from the same line in the first stanza reinforces the relationship between the two. Also consistent is the fact that the spoken dialog, in French, makes up the first two lines, and the narration, in English, makes up the second two lines. Oh, and the last line repeats on purpose, because the melody first cadences in E major, and then repeats, only the second time on a cadence in C#-minor, the key of the song. I meant it to be like a sad afterthought.

So, the man addresses the woman as "mon amie". That's a hint that they're just friends. But he's so excited, having taken her request for a song as being romantically motivated, that he moves in for a kiss. Ah, but she pulls away. The shape of the song necessitates that I have four stanzas. So I decided that in the third stanza, the woman is going to explain (in first year French) that she doesn't like him in that way, and that she only thinks of him as a friend. In the fourth stanza, he'll be heartbroken and decline to write her the song. I thought: that's nice and sad, based loosely on real life, and it's a clean, direct narrative. Well, I got this far and decided that I hadn't said anything about the setting at all. So before moving on to the third stanza, I went back and added an intro to the song, in which the narrator explains what 's going on:

I walked with mon amie one night
Beside a gloomy Seine.
She turned to me with eyes alight
And this was our exchange:

Simple ABAB rhyme scheme. Nothing to write home about. I know it's pretty cheezy, but remember, these songs are supposed to have been written during the late 19th Century. If you look at the lyrics to some of the popular songs of that era, you'll find mine to be pretty reserved. Plus, this section is the inroduction, which they used to call the verse. The verse in those old songs was forgetable, simple material that only served to set up the main melody, which was the chorus. The chorus contained the memorable material, the "hook" if you will. So my song has an intro that sets up the situation and the key just like those old songs. Plus, I like the slight snootiness in the narrator's use of "mon amie" during the intro. He's a bit of a fop. He's straight out of Voltaire. The good-looking loverboy snob who gets it in the end. Those are the best comic romantic leads. He's your typical dashing, handsome, romantic, clueless, bungling anti-hero. That's why he's telling us the story in English, but quoting his characters in French. His snootiness further justifies my use of such phrases as "with eyes alight" and such words as "exchange" to mean "conversation". He's a real dandy.

Here I should reiterate that he's not me. I said this song was "based on" reality. Any similarity to actual persons and/ or events is strictly coincidental. Well, that's as far as I got with this song. I hope to finish it by the end of the week. We shall see.

I'm back. I just wanted to finish what I was talking about in the last post, in which I was exploring the way I came up with the latest P&R song Don't Get Caught Up In Your Dreams.

So to continue: the first verse starts out with our hero, we'll call him Walter, after Walter Middy, in the superstore during his workday. Here's the lyric:

Well I dreamt I saw the White Cliffs standing over me
With the Channel splashing sea spray in my face
But someone yelled and an endcap fell on aisle 3
And the cleanup stole my whole ten minute break

There are a couple of things I did here. The rhyme scheme is obviously ABAB, but there's also an internal rhyme in the last line "stole" and "whole". I changed the lyric from "the cleanup cost my whole ten minute break" so I could make that internal rhyme, even though it sounds funny using the verb steal with the subject cleanup. I figured the rhyme was more important. Incidentally, for those of you who have never had the pleasure of working in retail, an endcap is the display section at the end of an aisle in a store. This verse also establishes a pattern, in that the first two lines of the stanza are Walter's daydream, and the second two lines are reality stepping in and waking him up. I used this pattern for each verse, as you'll see later.

Now, having come up with the first verse, and having decided what the song would be generally about, I needed to have a trajectory for the story. I thought if the first verse was about him daydreaming at work, the next verse could be about him on his way home. Here, I thought he could see a beautiful woman in another car while driving along on the freeway. Only, there should be something supernatural about her. So I came up with:

On the commute I saw an angel on the 42
With a winged horse beneath her sailing by
But when I breathed her name her steed became a Subaru
And she showed me her middle finger when I caught her eye

Again, the first two lines open with his daydream, while the second two are the reality. I like part of this lyric because the girl's horse is really a car, but to Walter, the horse becomes a car, even though the car was only a horse in his daydreams. By having the horse morph into a car, and not the other way around, I wanted to underline the fact that to Walter, dreams are more real than reality. There's a double internal rhyme in the third line: "breathed ... name" rhymes with "steed became". But besides that this lyric is a bit awkward. I'll have to work on it some more. The last line about her showing her middle finger feels a bit awkward. Maybe some of you have some suggestions about how the stanza could end differently. I don't know if I want her to flip him off. But I wanted to move on, so I went on to the final verse. Here, he's at home in bed at the end of the workday. I wrote:

That very night the houses crumbled on my cul-de-sac
How their walls were overcome with trembling vines
But when the daylight came my neighborhood was all intact
And I must confess I really didn't mind

What I like about this verse is the ending. You see, I've grown tired over the years of Suburban Parody. Ever since the 90s, when a band has sung about the middle class, they have done so in a satyrical light. Blur in particular, a band I love, used to lambast the middle class for such crimes as living in nice homes, having jobs, and watching television. Moreover, a certain cannon of cliches with regard to the subject has arisen as a result, not just in music, but also in film. You know the cliches I'm talking about: all the houses looking the same, mothers with big hair and kitshy furnishings, everyone white and everything pleasant and dippy on the surface. I'm not saying any of that isn't true, but what I'm trying to do with these songs, that is, the songs for the next Parks and Recreation album, is to try to address the theme of the Suburbs without falling into those cliches. In other words, I'd like to show my own personal picture of the 'burbs, which ends up being a bit sympathetic, because I'm from there. I'd like to portray something that's closer to my own memories growing up, something that isn't Leave It to Beaver, but isn't American Beauty either. I'm thinking of songs like Pleasant Valley Sunday by the Monkees. Listening to this song, you can't really tell if its idyllic picture of the 'burbs is ironic, or if it's an homage. With regard to my song, I tried to make an ending that you could interpret in two ways. If you were more cynical, you could say that Walter is a typical suburban plebian who doesn't mind his neighborhood being the way it is, and therefore conclude that the song is a parody. If you were less cynical, and this is closer to the mark, you would decide that Walter is just a simple guy who enjoys the comfort and security of the 'burbs and is doing the best he can. After all, just because he daydreams doesn't mean he's oppressed by commercialism or a dead end job. Either interpretation is okay by me. The song is character based, so you can bring your own interpretation in as you witness this character's daily routine.

The lyrics finished, I came up with the broad structure of ABABAB for the song. When I sat down at the piano to sing the whole thing, I found myself plunking out a big huge sus4 chord in the beginning, which alternated back to E. If you want to know what a sus4 chord is, by the way, go to your piano and play, say, the note E in octaves with your left hand. With your right hand play a b-minor seventh chord. That's a sus4 chord! Pretty isn't it? Well, I took that chord and alternated it with an E chord, and that became the introduction. When I showed the song to the boys, we started putting that intro bit after each verse and chorus coupling. So if you call that sus4 chord bit C, the structure became ABCABCABC. And badda-bing, we have a song!

We still have changes to make, however. Joe has some ideas for a different chord progression in the choruses, but essentially the song is fleshed out. And that, my friends, is how I did it. Now I'm going to get to work on more songs before the next school term begins. I'll let you know how it turns out. If any of you have any suggestions about how I could improve this little number, please feel free to let me in on it. Bye for now!

Following is the first of many posts about the creative process that this blog was supposed to have been set up to explore. Here goes:

I get inspiration from a variety of places. Sometimes I'm not inspired at all when I'm writing a song. Sometimes it's just a matter of sitting down and making choices. In the case of the new Parks & Recreation song, which I'm tentatively calling Don't Get Caught Up In Your Dreams, I wasn't at all inspired. You see, gathering dust on my bookshelf at home is a stack of 90 min. cassette tapes (remember those things?) on which I have recorded tiny snippets of song ideas over the last, well, four years or so. Every time I come home with an idea or something, I grab my hand held tape recorder (remember those?) and sing a melody into it. Usually these melodies are short pieces of a potential song. They might be a verse and a chorus worth of material. They might even be less than that. But I start with the melodic idea. If I have words right away, I'll sing them and just mumble the rest, or sing gibberish. Then I hit stop on the machine. If I have time to work on the song further, I will, but if not, I leave it for another time. Well, it seems that the moment those little ideas stack up on the cassette, they leave my brain. So I decided that, rather than try to wrack my brain for new material, I would listen to each of the cassettes, starting with the most recent, and make a catalog of the old ideas, with a mind toward making the best ones into songs. On the first cassette, which spans a time period from 2002 until now, I cataloged roughly 100 ideas. None of them fully formed. The one that became Don't Get Caught Up In Your Dreams is the first one I really liked.

The Mike Johnson on the cassette sings just the melody for the chorus. But when I heard him sing it, I immediately got a verse in my head. It was instantaneous. I stepped away from the stereo, went to the piano, and started singing and playing a verse, mumbling gibberish. The first melody that came out was the one that stuck. It's rare that that happens for me, so I went with it. Next, I filled in the chords. This was more difficult, because I had no idea where to start. So I started plinking around, looking first for a comfortable key. I found E. Then I started playing, and my first instinct was to step right away up to f# minor, then again up to g# minor, and back down again. Now I had a stepwise chord progression, and I liked it for the verse. I especially liked it because at the moment when the melody moves upward, the chords start moving downward. In the past, I always used to think that you had to have a different chord progression for the verse and chorus. I saw an interview with Paul Simon where he said it was fun for him to try and use every chord in a key in the song. So if you got stuck, you could just start the next section of the song on a chord from the key that you haven't used yet. But I have always admired the music of the Smiths, who's chords repeat themselves over and over again during the course of a song, and Morrissey lays a different melody on top of it. They manage to carve the sections of the song out of the same material. Listen to How Soon Is Now? or Shoplifters Of The World Unite And Take Over. So I wondered what would happen if I sang my chorus over the same chords. Lo and behold, they worked! The only thing I did was substitute an A for the f# minor at the end of the phrase in order to make a slightly stronger movement back to E.

The lyrics came next. Here, I got off the piano, got out a clean sheet of paper and my rhyming dictionary, and started to sing to myself. The lyric on the cassette was:

Don't get caught up in your dreams my son
There's a world beyond
And it's yours

Well, you can see that they're a bit hokey. But I seemed completely unable to sing anything else over that melody. So I decided to go with it and see what I could come up with. Those are the lyrics for the chorus. So I started singing the verse, and I came up with:

Well I dreamt I saw the White Cliffs standing over me
With the Channel splashing sea spray in my face

I really liked that image, but again it was a bit hokey, I needed to bring it down to earth. Well, the line "aisle 3" for the word "me" kept coming up in my head. Suddenly, the story came into my head. This song would be about a Walter Middy kind of guy, who daydreams through his life. He's a simple guy who lives in the suburbs and commutes to his job at some SuperStore or other, but he has frequent hallucinations. I liked this idea because 1) I could take license with rather fantastical lyrics 2) that theme is in keeping with the next Parks & Recreation album's theme, which is all about the suburbs. So I came up with the next few lines to end that stanza:


Well I dreamt I saw the White Cliffs standing over me
With the Channel splashing sea spray in my face
But then someone yelled, and an endcap fell on aisle 3
And the cleanup stole my whole ten minute break

But I have to go right now. To be continued!