On Saturday and Sunday I did a ton of work on A Common Pornography. I redid some vocals, fixed up the lyrics and recorded Silhouette, remixed some songs, and wrote and recorded another song called Stereo. I really like it. The short story references the Cars' Candy-O album, so I stole the synthesizer melody from the first song on Candy-O for the vocal line. It's not stealing, actually, it's an "allusion", so put the phone down.

I also did some singing on the Parks & Recreation album. My voice must have dropped in the last year or so because, man, some of those songs are really high for me to sing! Could this be a second puberty for me? I'm not sure. I noticed the other day that I've gotten a bit taller and thicker. It's midlife. It must be.

Tonight I did some really pivotal work on the play. I started talking to myself about the script while doing dishes, and some really nice stuff came to me. I was able to answer some pivotal questions and work them in to the synopsis. I also read quite a bit more about the art business and how it works and looked up information about the town of Melbourne, Australia, where I decided our antagonist will be exiled. Also, I came up with final names for all the characters by looking up their etymologies. Now I have a premise, a group of six reasonably well-drawn and orchestrated characters (though I know some details about them will change as writing progresses), and I have for the structure of the play a shape that I'd like to pursue. I see it unfolding in three acts. Act one: Nicholas digs the pit. Act two: Everyone gathers strength against Nicholas, Act three: Nicholas takes the fall. I want the play to be really juicy, full of sex, betrayal, art, intrigue, and drama, lots of drama. All that in a musical? Is it possible?

I'm finally ready to get to the good part, which is the actual writing of the actual dialog and everything. That's coming up next, as soon as I decide whether to write the play in verse or not. I was thinking that each character could speak in a different form of verse. Gregory, for example, being all brooding and dark, could speak in iambic pentameter, the rhythm of Shakespeare, while Nicholas, being the flighty dandy conniving fop that he is, could speak in couplets. I'm not sure. Maybe it's too gimmicky. I'll explore it and see what happens. It's worth a shot. Plus, if the spoken lines were in verse, it might ease the transition into the songs. That would make the play kind of an operetta. Especially if I put the entire thing, dialog and all, to music. I don't know. Like I said, I'll play around and see what happens.

I finished the song Silhouettes this evening. Here is the finished lyric:

Matt and I saw a spaceship.
We watched it creep across the sky.
From the weak porch light we traced the faint blip
Safe in our sleeping bags outside.
We talked of UFOs and Bigfoot
Until we closed our eyes.
Soon I was dream-interrupted
And I awoke sometime in the middle of the night.

I raised my head to look around me.
Roughly twenty yards away
Stood a silhouette looking down at me
By the garbage cans in the alleyway.
I just froze staring at that shadow,
Who seemed to be watching as we lay.
Wondering who else had seen our spaceship,
We called the radio station the very next day.

Then we talked all morning about our evening
But I never mentioned my shadow man.
Ten years later, Matt confessed to me
He'd never sleep outside again.

I decided again, in the spirit of writing in nouns and verbs, to cut any extra adjectives or descriptive language. So the word "moonless" didn't make it in to the final draft.

Now I'm off to sleep. Tomorrow I start work on a new song called Laynee. We'll see how it goes.

The purpose of this blog is to get me off my butt and get me to work, so once again it has come through. After talking about this song in the last post I couldn't wait to work on it, so I did. I thought I'd share the experience.

One of the challenges of this project is converting the prose in Kevin's book into song lyrics. In prose you have the freedom to be verbose, whereas song lyrics must be economical. The book excerpt that I converted runs like this:

Matt and I saw a spaceship skipping through the sky. We reacted at the same time, surprised we both saw it. We stayed up late that night, sleeping outside on our side porch in our sleeping bags. We talked about UFOs and Bigfoot. We planned a Bigfoot hunt near Walla Walla when we got older.
After falling asleep, exhausted from speculation, I awoke some time in the middle of the night...

So you see the challenge? It would be a pretty jumpy melody that could accommodate all of those words. The rhythm is sporadic and doesn't fit the melody that I came up with. So, the first step in converting this prose into poetry is to abridge it, retaining all of the essential ideas, and pruning some of the less important details. My first line is:

Matt and I saw a spaceship

That's pretty much word for word from the story, right? But the second line is different:

Skipping through the gloomy sky

Well, I don't like the word "gloomy" because it's a heavy handed, lazy way to set the mood. The words in a song should just describe a scene, or present a picture, the music should describe the mood: an eerie melody set against dark, minor key harmonies would go a lot further to establish a "gloomy" mood than a qualifying adjective. Besides, people have different definitions of what "gloomy" is, so it's vague on top of being loaded. I always try to write songs in nouns and verbs. So I changed "gloomy" to "moonless" because that word creates a picture and leaves the music free to describe the mood. Do you see the difference? The word "moonless" is descriptive, but it's less loaded, less qualified than "gloomy". It describes the situation by showing it to us, not by telling us how to feel about it, which is the music's job. A moonless night could be quite beautiful and peaceful if it was in a love song, for example. But in this song the music makes the moonless night rather spooky. The music, not the words, sets the mood. It's that way in films, too. Take a film clip about an alligator slowly emerging from a pond. By itself it's just an image. If you sync it to scary music, the alligator looks quite menacing. But suppose you synced it to some goofy cartoon music; now the alligator looks kind of funny lumbering out of the lake on his clumsy, stumpy legs.

Moving on, if I want the song to rhyme, which I do, these first two lines have set up a rhyme scheme. I have to fit the next couple of lines into that rhyme pattern. I came up with:

Through the weak porch light we traced the faint blip
Safe in our sleeping bags outside.

Rhyming this particular passage was problematic. I played with the internal rhyme between the words "I" and "light" in lines one and three. (Both fall on long notes and strong beats) For the outside rhymes I ended up with near rhymes. I tried to rhyme "spaceship" with "faint blip", for example, which is kind of comical. And then "sky" and "outside" are also near rhymes. Not perfect, but of all the combinations I tried, this one was the best.

Now the next four lines:

We talked of UFOs and Bigfoot
Until we closed our eyes.

My fitful dreams were interrupted
I awoke in the middle of the night.

This is hard to describe, but the melody changes at those first two lines about UFOs and Bigfoot, so I set them apart from the rest. To further set them apart, I broke them out of the rhyme scheme. The melody of last two lines are the same as the top two, so, except for the word "interrupted", they sort of rhyme with the original two lines. The rhyme pattern, if your curious, is A,B,A,B,C,B,D,B. Well, again, they're near rhymes, but the vowel sounds match, and that's the best I can hope for. Speaking of rhymes, I tightened up the inner rhymes between the second and fourth lines. Now, instead of skipping through the moonless sky, the spaceship creeps across the moonlit sky. I changed it not only because I wanted to create an inner rhyme between "creep" and "sleep", but also because I felt that the pronoun "across" was more accurate than "through". Since from the viewer's vantage point the sky is flat, through the sky means the spaceship's trajectory is poking perpendicular through the black canopy of sky toward the viewer, but across the sky means the spaceship's trajectory is moving parallel to the canopy of sky, flat along its curved plane. You may call me anal retentive, but it's part of a songwriter's craft to paint with such a fine brush. Here's the entire passage:

Matt and I saw a spaceship,
We watched it creep across the moonless sky.
Through the weak porch light we traced its faint blip
Safe in our sleeping bags outside.

We talked of UFOs and Bigfoot
Until we closed our eyes.

My fitful dreams were interrupted
And I awoke in the middle of the night.

As you can see, my poetic version of the passage above is abridged, but it contains all of the most essential elements. Its all nouns and verbs. It's just a picture of two kids in their sleeping bags, under the porch, tracing the path of the spaceship (or the plane, satellite, or whatever) across the sky. I cut the part about the Bigfoot hunt because it seemed like an aside, and didn't fit into the moment I was trying to paint. Like I said, in prose you can put in those little digressions. In poetry you have to paint a picture and move on. Finally, I want to mention that I added the word "safe" in the line safe in our sleeping bags to draw attention to, or to foreshadow, the sense of danger coming up, when one boy awakes and sees a silhouette of a man watching him and his friend sleep. The spooky music happening underneath the word "safe" underscores how unsafe the boy actually is. Interesting how you can do that with music.

Anyway, that's the first part of the song. More later, if you can stand it.

Recent depressing events in my (now non-existent) love life have caused me to have trouble concentrating on anything. You should see me during the day. I'm a complete basket case. All I can think about is being dumped, and about what the future holds for me. I have no idea. But despite those unhappy circumstances, or maybe because of them, this play is really cooking! I'm writing a little bit every day. I'm really taking great care to flesh out the characters first and foremost.

According to the book The Art of Dramatic Writing, a good play has well drawn characters. "Well drawn" means they are filled out in those qualities of humanity that constitute a human being's three dimensions: psychology, physiology, and sociology. Once all three of those aspects of the characters are filled out, you can begin to get your play rolling. So I've got all my characters filled in now, I know what they look like, what their personality is like, and what their place is in the social structure in which they live. Now, I have some more work to do before I can get them on the stage. For one, I feel like the only way to really get to know these people is to get to know all about what business they're involved in: the art business. Charles owns a gallery, for example, Nicholas is a delivery boy/odd jobber at the gallery, Nora is an art dealer, Tim works in a record store, but he's an art collector, Grace is an art dealer, and Gregory is an artist. So I need insight into the business of art. For example, if Nora is an art dealer, how did she come to have that job? I have no idea what the career path of an art dealer is. How does one come to own a gallery? I have no idea. So I'm working on that research now. It shouldn't take long to get all the information I need to finally start writing.

In other news, after a short break from working on songs, I've just started going on a song for A Common Pornography called Silhouettes. After a couple of days of toying with it, I finally got a melody, and I'm sitting down now to write the words. I'll keep you posted on what's going on with that. I think it would be worth it to reflect on the process of turning prose into poetry. Once I'm finished with the lyrics I'll post about it. More later.

It's the damndest thing, but you know when you fail to pay for things, someone takes them away from you. I can attest that it is true. And so can you if you've been trying to visit the site or the blog the last few days. But on to more pleasant topics.

Rest assured that the Parks & Recreation album is not dead in the water. It lives. And although it may seem like we're sitting on our hands, it is not true. In fact, we just finished overdubbing the strings and horns, and everything sounds fantastic. Next up is the vocals, then a little mixing, a little mastering, and voila, it'll be pumping through your head in no time. Just get through the summer, if you can, and we'll be there shortly.

In the meantime, you have so much to look forward to, and so do I. The last post helped me tremendously to loosen the crossed wires in my brain a little, and so the characters are almost all fleshed out for the musical. I only have two left to fill in, and then I'll be able to put them on the stage and see what happens. You may think this is a roundabout approach, but I tell you it's amazing. I can see everything taking shape even as I sit and imagine who these people are. Every little detail of their past lives is important, and it's incredible how things are lining up to justify my choices. I'll give you an example. I told you earlier how I'd picked star signs for each of the characters, trying to create opposing relationships. But then, when I examined each character, I found that the star signs I picked at random actually give them the exact qualities I'd envisioned in the beginning. I know it seems like it isn't a coincidence, because it's all happening in my own brain, but that's what's so interesting about the writing process: it doesn't feel like I'm doing any of it. It feels like I'm sitting around waiting for something to happen to me. But anyway now I have Nicholas, a charming, foppish, dandy, extravagant, flamboyant, energetic, manipulative, ruthless social butterfly (an Aries) set opposite Gregory, a brooding, self-loathing, insecure, independent, sensitive layabout (a Cancer), plus two more characters. And those initial vague decisions about their personality type helped me to fill in their personal histories. I was able to start from that broad sketch and flesh out their histories in pursuit of the question "Why are they that way?" It's an amazing process, writing. You should try it if you haven't already. It's really cool. It's hard work and a real stretch of the imagination inventing people, but it's a fun challenge.

Also, I've got six songs for A Common Pornography, and counting. So you see? We're back...again!

The next character I worked on was Gregory. He's Nicholas's brother, and it was pretty easy to flesh him out. I just made him completely the opposite of Nicholas in every way. His star sign is Cancer (which happens to be mine), which, in the Zodiac is 90 degrees from Aries, making it basically opposite. Where Nicholas is tall and elegant, Gregory is short and blunt. Where Nicholas is oversexed and a social butterfly, Gregory is pretty much a perpetually single lonely recluse. One of the few things they have in common is their ambition. So Gregory was pretty easy to sketch out.

So where am I stuck? Well, My imagination is straining to find backgrounds and physical descriptions for all of these other people. I did extensive research into astrology and Meyers-Briggs to make all of the characters opposite from each other. Earlier I mentioned that I made a circular diagram like a color wheel to represent the characters' relationships. Well, the wheel is divided into six segments, with Nicholas in the top center segment. So, Nicholas is an Aries, and Gregory is the sign 90 degrees, or "square" from him: Cancer. I put Gregory in the segment directly opposite Nicholas. Well, I have another character named Grace, and she's Gemini. Her segment is to the left of Nicholas. So the person opposite her on the wheel, to the right of Gregory, is Timothy. He's a Pisces because Pisces is square to Gemini in the Zodiac.

As a side note, an interesting thing happened when I laid out the characters in this way, and it happened totally by accident. The circle ended up having two halves, a "Nicholas" half, populated by the three characters who were extroverted, and a "Gregory" half, filled with the three characters who were most introverted. I noticed even more interesting and weird coincidences when I laid out the characters in this way, but I won't get into all of them here.

Okay, so, like I said above, I'm straining my imagination to invent backgrounds for all of these other people, and the character I'm stuck on now is Timothy. He's a Pisces, an Introverted Intuitive Thinking Judger. Okay, fine. But now what? I have to think up a background for him that would be fitting for that type of guy. What kind of background, social situation, etc., would create a Intrverted Intuitive Thinking Judging Piscean? Ah, good question. So my imagination wanders to people I've known in the past, and it settles on a girl I dated once. Her name was Bevin, and she was from Santa Rosa California. Maybe if I flesh Timothy out with details from her life, it'll settle in nicely. I'll try it and see what happens.

More later.

At first I thought my inability to sit down and write was due to my schedule. Then I thought perhaps I couldn't write anything because I was mercilessly dumped in the most cruel and inexplicable way last weekend. Then I thought maybe getting sick had something to do with it (cough). But now I realize, as I sit here with the entire weekend stretching lazily before me, that I just have writer's block. I'm officially stuck, you see, and there's no help for it but to blog.

The play I'm writing was really chugging along there for a while. I started with a basic idea of a plot about two brothers, one a savvy, successful fop, the other a brooding, sensitive failure. Having never written a play before, I thought I should do it right, so I've been working out of a book called The Art of Dramatic Writing. First and foremost, I established a premise for my play: He who digs a pit for others will fall into it himself. Good. Now I'm working on drawing the characters. So far, I have the two main characters filled out in exhaustive detail. I have their star signs, their Meyers-Briggs personality type profiles, their physical, sociological, and psychological profiles all fleshed out, including some bits about their backgrounds. Here is an example of the abridged profile for Nicholas Quite, my pivotal character:

Nicholas Quite

Physiology: Male, 27, 6'0, 155lbs, Light brown, straight thin hair, green eyes, fair skin, erect posture, graceful, very attractive, fashionable, trendy, wears expensive, well-fitting outfits from trendy Pearl District boutiques, handsome, too thin, has a girlish, weedy look.

Sociology: Middle class, lives in comfort, works as an art gallery errand boy, has a B.A. degree in painting, Nicholas's father was not his birth father. In fact, his mother left his birth father when Nicholas was very small. She remarried early. Dr. Quite, her second husband, was a wealthy doctor. He was a good man, but his career left him little time for his wife or for Nicholas. This didn't stop him, however, from adopting Nicholas's foster brother Gregory after seeing an article in the paper about a tragedy that happened to Gregory's family which left Gregory an orphan. Nicholas resented this move, although he liked the idea of having a younger brother to care for and pick on. Eventually, Nicholas's mother left Dr. Quite for yet another man, and Dr. Quite was left to raise two boys on his own. The strain caused him to drink, which in turn led to his death when Nicholas was 18. Nicholas, armed with another reason to hate his father, took over as guardian of his younger foster brother.

Psychology: Nicholas has a rather overactive sex life, he attends regular swinger parties at the house of the couple he's dating. He hates children and abhors the idea of marriage. He wishes to be the center of the art and fashion world. His chief disappointments are his parents. He resents his mother for marrying and leaving bad men, he resents his father, Dr. Quite, for being passive and too preoccupied with his career. Nicholas can't tolerate failure. He's exceedingly optimistic, sarcastic, quick-witted, and a social butterfly. He has a talent for influencing people. He's an Aries, which makes him adventurous, ambitious, impulsive, enthusiastic and full of energy. His Meyers-Briggs personality type is Extroverted Sensing Thinking Perceiver, or ESTP. This makes him a spontaneous, active person who derives great satisfaction from acting on his impulses. Activities involving power, speed, thrill and risk attract him. He is competitive and unscrupulous.

See? Now in order to draw the other characters, I just started with Nicholas and gave them qualities that were opposite him in every way. The end result was a wheel, similar to a color wheel, with all six of my characters laid out in opposite spaces. So if Nicholas is red, then Gregory, his brother, is green, etc. It's all very complicated, I'm realizing as I look at it.

And now on to part 2...

I played a nice show last night. Reading Frenzy was having a benefit for the IPRC and my friend Kevin was celebrating the release of his new book. He invited me to play. It was a beautiful experience. I haven't played live in some time now; about a year. I guess I sort of got burned out on doing solo shows last year after a disastrous gig at the bar called Roture. After blanking out on the stage in front of the 5 loudly chatting audience members and leaving the stage after 3 songs, I just thought I should take a little break. And I did. But you know, sitting on that little chair, looking out into the darkness, seeing the vague dark shapes out there, feeling the lights on me, letting the images from the songs play through my head, listening to my fingers on autopilot plucking with the sound floating up at me, was the best feeling. That feeling of really wanting to sing to those people, to make them feel good, bubbling up in my tummy. It's the best. Heroin addicts say that first hit after they get out of rehab is the best. Something about cleansing your body makes taking the drug feel like it's the first time all over again. Something like that happened to me. Although, as soon as I finished playing the usual darker feelings crept in. That emptiness. The loneliest feeling in the world is lugging your equipment home all by yourself in a cab. The most profound part of the experience was the feeling that I didn't have anything to gain from playing the show. I was doing it out of pure pleasure. No CDs to hock, no hipsters to avoid, no schmoozing to do, no one to suck up to, none of it. I was just entertaining the audience and showing my friend Kevin the new songs I wrote about his stories. I think the hiatus cleansed me. Now I just jones to be up on stage again.

I recorded another song today called Egg Hunt for A Common Pornography. I'm really insecure about Garage Band and my mixing skills. I have this Korg electric piano instead of a real one, and I thought, well, if Daniel Johnston can make low-fi recordings sound honest and sweet, why can't I? And yet, I can't seem to get the crackles out, or the little buzzing noises. All the equalizers and digital knobs and effects. It's all so confusing. I'm a pen and paper man, through and through. Despite my misgivings, I'm having a great time recording on a laptop in my apartment. I think the songs are coming out great. I've got 5 written, and 3 recorded. Life is good.

I really need a forum for talking about writing this play, so I'm going to devote the next few posts to that. Also, I'm going to start doing some posts about the process of writing these little Common Pornography songs. I was talking to someone last night about the process of turning someone's prose into lyrics. I think it would be valuable to reflect about it here. So, more later.

Hello again! I'm sorry to have been away so long. The blog is looking pretty dusty. Actually it's looking like poo. I'm working on moving the whole outfit over to Word Press. I gave Reclinerland HQ a facelift, which I'm excited about. And the Parks & Recreation site redesign is back on track. A lot has happened in the last six months. Most of it pertains to other areas of my life. In particular, I have completed the graduate program that qualifies me to teach elementary school kids music. I graduate with my Master's degree this summer. This is the same program that had me so busy, that I haven't blogged or webmastered for almost a year! Nor have I seen any of my friends. Man. Well, it's very liberating to be standing at the beginning of a new crossroads. But it's also very daunting. When all the roads are open to you, the trouble becomes deciding which one to pick. Plus, being broke stings more when you have a Master's.

Despite this, I'm working on a new set of songs whose theme I borrowed from Kevin Sampsell's book A Common Pornography. The book is made up of short vignettes about various episodes from his childhood. I felt such a connection to the middle class nostalgia of his vignettes I thought I'd write some little songlets after them. A songlet, so you know, comprises the best, simplest, most melodious, juiciest parts of a song; the stuff that isn't the introduction, the verse, the solo, the tedious instrumental section, or the fade-outs. Why must a song drone on for 3 whole minutes with so much extra gunk? Just give me the catchy parts! Leave out all that fluff and give me the nicest, catchiest melodies in the shortest amount of space. That's a songlet. The term is copyrighted as of...NOW.

The Ideal Home Music Library hit a little snag. Nothing to worry about, it's just that one song has to be re-recorded. I wrote it too high for Kaitlyn Ni Donovan's smoky vocal range, so I've had to knock it down a few steps. I thought about finding someone else to sing it, maybe a soprano, but I don't really want anyone else. This means, however, that I've had to scrape up money for a piano player and some studio time. Well, I've found a piano player who's quite good, and as soon as I can afford it, we're going into the studio to re-record the song. Other than that, the album is so close to being done I can taste it.

The project I'm most excited about, however, is the musical. I was inspired by this music I heard a few months ago by Jacques Brel and Noel Coward. It seemed like the perfect kind of music for the story I've had in my head. I think it's a natural step. I've gone from pop songs to show songs without a musical. I'm going to write a draft of the story, and then I'll be working with Chris Streng to put it all together.

I'd like to give a huge warm thank you to Jason Cohen of Stereophile magazine for his glowing review of the Parks and Recreation album. He extended me the biggest compliment ever by calling me "The thinking man's Steven Merritt." Wow.

Finally, to all of my friends who haven't heard from me in such a long time, I want to extend my most sincere apologies. I've really missed you all. I've been a bad friend. My head is hung low even as I type this.

And that's the news. I'm glad to be back updating the site, and I'm glad you're still here.

Loves. The Grammar School Pictures site on MySpace TV has a trailer for their new little film, Icebreaker. The trailer is really funny, even though it's just a bunch of people sitting around looking worried. Also, if you look below, you can see a couple of films of Parks & Recreation recording at the Magic Closet this past January.

I have a lot to tell you about in other creative matters, but it'll have to wait for another post. More later!

This past couple of weekends we've been working on the Parks & Recreation album, so progress on the Ideal Home Music Library has temporarily halted. I should be back in the bathroom by next week. In the meantime the strings and horns sound really good. We got them all together on the Saturday before last. On a gray and rainy day all 8 of the players showed up to the Montessori school where we're recording. By the way, we can now officially add Montessori school to the list of indie-rock recording venues. I know it isn't as cool as recording in an old church or an abandoned warehouse, but it's the best we could do. Anyway, there we were: me waving a little wooden conducting baton at a group of eight musicians sitting in pint-sized chairs, Anthony tinkering with knobs and sliders, all surrounded by math, science, and language materials, plus lots and lots of children's books. Quite funny. I had given the players the parts I wrote way ahead of time, so they all were well prepared. I had a score in front of me, and we went for it.

I heard an interesting piece last weekend on NPR about Johnny Mandell, a famous arranger. In his interview, he was describing his first arranging lesson. His teacher said, "Make sure you get musicians to play what you wrote, otherwise you won't know what it sounds like." I can tell you that "knowing what it sounds like" is only half the thrill of hearing your music played by real people. Of course it's valuable to hear how things do or don't work when played by humans. In my case, the baritone saxophone player gave me some notes about how his parts were written too high, and there was one section of a song where the strings sounded terrible because of some chords I'd misspelled. I tweaked the notes in that part, and everything turned out fine. But again, ironing out those problems is only half the thrill. The real thrill is in hearing those little dots and lines come to life in front of you. When they fill the air, and you hear it all come together for the first time, just as you'd imagined it, it's such an incredible, uplifting feeling. At one point, after we'd overdubbed the brass on Handsome Models In Love, and heard the playback, I was laughing so hard I was in tears. It took me a few minutes to compose myself. Part of the reason I was laughing was because the music I'd written was so cheezy that we were making jokes about my indie-cred card being revoked. When I say cheezy, I mean it sounded so much like the soundtrack to Shaft, or like a Barry White album, that I had to laugh. Joe pointed out that In the context of the song, it was so MacGyver, so A-Team soundtrack, that it was perfect. But the other reason I was laughing was out of sheer giddiness that it came together so well. After playback had stopped, I felt like the floor had dropped out from under me. Like I was on a thrill ride that, after slowly climbing a steep incline, with a quick lurch sends you plummeting to the floor. It was a giddy buzz like you only feel when you skip home from a lovely first date. I can't describe it no matter how much I attempt to. You can't get that feeling from drugs. It's better than drugs. I abhor drugs thanks to that feeling.

My advice, if you want to know what it feels like: go write some music and get your friends to play it. More later!

I've spent the last few nights overdubbing vocals onto the piano tracks for the IHML. You wouldn't believe the lengths I've gone to. Let me describe it to you:

I was going to use our little guitar studio space to record in, but when I drove all the way there, I realized I'd forgotten a mike stand. So, I decided instead to just do the recordings in my apartment. The trouble is, my apartment has a wall of windows that overlooks a busy intersection, so it's very noisy. I also have to contend with Lily, mewling and sniffing and head butting everything. So, I shut all my windows and banished Lily to the hall. Then, in order to combat the noise and take advantage of the natural reverb, I set up the equipment in my teeny tiny bathroom. When I'm recording the 16-track mixing board is underneath my sink, tilted at an angle because the bathroom is too narrow to accomodate it. My laptop sits on top of the toilet, and the microphone stand towers above the bathtub, with the microphone jutting out at an odd angle because, again, the entire bathroom isn't wide enough to accomodate the length of the boom stand. The lyrics and music lie open on top of the kitty litter box, which is right next to the toilet. When I sing, I sit on the edge of the bathtub, stooping over slightly. It's very uncomfortable. Fortunately I keep my bathroom impeccably clean. Anyway, I draped a bunch of towels and such over the bathtub curtain rod in order to cut down on...well, I don't really have a scientific explanation for why I did that. I just kind of thought it would help. In the same spirit, there are two jackets hanging from hooks on the door. They're meant to cut down the noise from the windows. But what about the sounds of my neighbor talking, using her shower, or turning on her faucets? Well, that will just have to end up immortalized on the IHML. We do what we can. I just hope she and her boyfriend can refrain from any kind of intimate activities in thier bathroom while I'm holed up within earshot. I've heard them at it before, and I can tell you, getting those noises on tape would make the IHML a completely different kind of album.

And so, stooped over in my tiny bathroom, with the scent of kitty litter filling my nostrils, I cranked out the vocals for 6 of the songs. I have to redo one because of corrections to my French. Other than that, things are going along smoothly. I'm very excited to see the tracks nearing completion.

Incidentally, since my last post I've been getting emails of consolation! Thanks everyone, but, well, when I said Reclinerland had flat-lined, I didn't mean that it was dead. I merely meant that the shape of my progress in music was more of a straight line than an upward climb. One of you, however, offered a better shape for my "hobby": that of a spiral. I like that shape better, and shall adopt it forthwith into my philisophical grapple with the past 10 years. However, considering that I started off recording in warehouses and ended up recording in my tiny bathroom, I'm left to wonder whether the spiral is upward or downward shaped. I'm happy either way. And so will you be when you hear these tracks. Yay!

Tonight I'm planning to head into the warehouse space where I teach guitar lessons and begin recording my vocals for the Ideal Home Music Library. It occurred to me just now that this month, September, is the 10 year mark for Reclinerland. Wow. Ten years ago this month our band the American Girls were dropped from our label. While the rest of the band members got cold feet and hightailed it back to Eugene, OR, I stayed up in Portland and started my own act. It's amazing to think of it. A few months after all that I borrowed my friend Eil's digital four-track machine and recorded songs for Reclinerland's first CD. I carried out those sessions alone, mostly, in an enormous warehouse on SE Oak St. I remember vividly the cold, late nights sitting crouched in a dark room among coiled masses of cables and microphones just winging it by myself. Eli helped on some sessions, but most of the time it was just me. I just closed my eyes and really got into the songs with no one sitting behind control room glass directing me. I had nothing but a digital four-track machine and a guitar.

My story is the same story, I realize, as thousands upon thousands of obscure aspiring singer/songwriters out there, but with one amazing difference: that I'm the one who experienced it. I can't tell you how mixed my feelings will be when I sit down to work tonight. I can already feel pangs of sadness in my chest. Reclinerland has taken me across the US and back again. I've been abroad, I've met many musical luminaries, the names of whom I shall not drop here, and I've recorded 4 CDs of questionable quality. I've made amazing friends and written almost 100 songs.
And yet after all of the things I've been through these past 10 years doing Reclinerland, I'm going to end up right back where I started. Only this time, instead of sitting in a dark warehouse with a digital 4-track machine, mixing down to a DAT tape, I'll be sitting in a dark warehouse with a laptop. The technology has changed and the songwriting is better, but the situation is still the same. It's really startling when I think about it. Where did all of that time go? What have I been doing? What do I have to show for any of it? Who is listening? Where did my dream go? Some bands, you see, the very lucky few, look back at ten years and see an upward jagged climb to eventual success. The great majority of us, however, see a flat jagged line that ends up right where it began. It's all very profound for me, you understand. I'll be chewing on that for some time, I expect.

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, Reclinerland has almost flatlined. But it'll go out singing!

Another weekend went by and the Reclinerland mobile studio was at it again. This time it was Kaitlyn Ni Donovan who lended her talents to the Ideal Home Music Library, Vol. 2. She sang beautifully, even though the part was written too high for her. This has become a bit of a problem with me. You see, way back when I started writing these songs, I had Kaitlyn in mind to sing the vocals on Up On The Orange Moon, so I listened to some of her music and wrote the song in what I guessed was her key. Confident that I had guessed correctly, Jenny and I recorded the song. Well, I was wrong. Although Kaitlyn was a huge sport about it, and her performance came out beautifully, I put a bit of a strain on her voice, and for that I'm sorry. What I should have done (let this be a lesson to you) was written the song, taken it to her and asked her where it would be comfortable to sing. Then I should have transposed it (put it in a new key) and recorded it. Oh well.

I want to emphasize, however, that Kaitlyn's vocal was really really excellent. She sang expressively, with the character in mind. We tried lots of different ways to deliver the melody, and she adapted to each one perfectly. HIgh and plaintive, or low and smoky, her voice was perfect for the material. At one point, during Il Fait Calme, she sounds like Brigitte Bardot. I can't wait for you to hear it.

So now I'm off to record my vocals, which I will do this week and on into next week. I'm going to shut myself up alone in our guitar teaching studio and have at it. I'm looking forward to singing these songs. I'm going to try to push myself to really sing differently for each song. I'd like to really work toward conveying the characters in the songs. There are some songs that I would still like to hand to other vocalists, and I'll think about that as I proceed. I'd love to have my friends Doug Sheperd, or Mathew Hattie Hein sing on these songs. But there may not be time. And people keep hinting that they'd rather hear me sing everything. We'll see what happens.

Anyway, the album is taking shape nicely. I'll keep you posted!

Jenny and I spent last weekend recording piano tracks for the album. She did all of the work. All I did was sit at the laptop and click on things. I did do some dancing, though, and lots of waving my arms around while Jenny played, but mostly I just clicked and dragged. Joe Ballman came in and helped me set up things. We suspended two condenser mikes high above the strings of the piano, having lifted the lid so high up that it was leaning against the wall. I was paranoid for the first few hours that it was going to fall. It didn't. Anyway, then we set up a room mike not far from the low strings. I have no idea if this is proper mike technique, I mean, I got it off a website and from watching my friend Ron mike things. I'm no expert.

At one point Jenny said "I'm it! I'm the band!" And she was so right. Her playing was so good. She really worked hard on these pieces. In between long tours and all she still managed to find time to sit down and practice the songs. I was impressed with her playing. The entire two days we were laughing and singing. It was a smooth, wonderful session. We started to get a little tired by the end, and there were a couple of songs that we weren't sure would turn out.

But they turned out great. I've spent this week piecing the takes together. Digital production is a wonderful thing. I was able to take sections from different takes and splice them into sections from other takes. In some cases I sped up the tempo of the song in order to make it move along a little better. I suppose some purists out there might take issue with my fiddling, but I say whatever it takes to make a good song. I think recording is like painting, or doing collage. You piece bits together to make the final product. It doesn't all just fall into place. You have to knead the dough a bit.

Of course, I kneaded a bit too much during the editing last night and accidentally wiped out one of the songs. So now Jenny and I have to get together tomorrow to re-record All Through The Morning. I suppose something had to go wrong. You can't have anything in life just handed to you now can you? It's part of the trade off of life. Well, we're so close to finishing the record I can taste it. I'll keep you posted.

Recording for the Ideal Home Music Library, Vol. 2 begins this weekend. Yes, I'm all a flutter trying to get all of the equipment and personel ready for the event. Then we'll haul it all over to Jenny Conlee's house and start twiddling the knobs. It should only take one weekend to get the takes right. Our original idea is to record all of Jenny's piano tracks, and then overdub my vocals later. Some songs may merit both of us performing together. I'm looking forward to getting the piano stuff on "tape" at any rate. These little songs sound really nice on a real piano, played by a real person. I'll maintain a little recording journal for the blog starting on Friday, so tune in!

Also, I've begun work on the album art design as well as all the composer biographies and the like. I'd also like to announce that an Ideal Home Music Library podcast is in the works. We'll have interviews with myself and Dr. Middling, sheet music, discussions, and free songs for people to download. It should be quite fun.

This summer, I aquired a box set of Beethoven's complete works. I vowed to listen to every note of it over the summer. I'm almost through it all. It took me about two months to get through the whole thing. Right now as I type this I'm listening to his Violin Sonata, Op. 23. Listening to all of this Beethoven has given me many ideas for the Ideal Home Music Library, Volume 3. For this volume, I'd like to do string quartet and voice, kind of like Elvis Costello's Juliette Letters album. We'll see what happens. It's a long way off, seeing as how Volume 2 isn't even out yet, but I've already got a few song ideas down, including a melody for a song called I Can Hear It All Now. I'll keep you posted on developments, of course. More later.

Welcome to What's Up With That? A weekly question and answer sesh in which we focus on pressing issues in the music (geek) world. You email it in, and as long as the question ends with "What's up with that?" I'll answer it. That's the way it works. Let's have the first question:

Johnny Punk Rock emailed in with this question: "You always seem to get pop musicians who don't know anything about music, but who can improvise anything. They can just make stuff up! And then you have classical musicians: technically proficient musicians who can't make up a thing. They don't make a sound unless music is put in front of them. How come classical musicians can't make anything up? What's up with that? "

Well, Johnny, the answer is that classical musicians can't improvise because all of thier technical training and knowledge of music theory has sucked the soul right out of them. If you think that's not true, ask yourself this: have you ever seen a classical musician's soul? Oh, and it's true with pop musicians too. Everyone knows that if a pop musician knows too much theory, or if he's too technically proficient on his instrument, not only will he not be able to make anything up, but he'll also have no soul. Have you ever seen your bandmate's soul? I mean the guy who can tell you the names of all the chords and who knows all about scales and stuff? That guy? Have you seen his soul? I rest my case. And don't get me started on jazz guys. Oh man, they don't even have fashion sense, let alone souls. What's up with the porkpie hats? And the suit vest over tee shirts? And the goatees? No no. Anyone with that kind of technical knowledge and proficiency on his instrument has absolutely no soul at all. Especially the ones with soul patches. If you have to tell people you have a soul, then you don't have one.

If you heard the cheek in my tone during that last paragraph, you get a prize! It's, of course, a myth among pop musicians that knowing about music stifles creativity, or that technical proficiency yeilds cold, soul-less playing. It's true of some players, but it isn't a rule. Classical musicians have trouble improvising because they cultivate a different set of skills. They're trained to interpret music, not to invent it, which means they have to have a wide range of technical abilities, but they don't exercise their improvisation skills. Nothing is wrong with that. The implication for us pop musicians, however, is that if we want to have classical musicians come play on our stuff, we have to write out the music for them. This means that we have to know a lot about their instruments and how to arrange them. This isn't always true, though. I've seen pop musicians who improvise their own string and horn arrangements on a keyboard and it sounds great. I've also seen pop musicians bring in strings and horns and just have the players improvise. That works sometimes. But most of the time that approach yeilds limited results. Usually, if you aren't in a "shambly ensemble" band, the result is a very middle range, flat, long note drone underneath the music. If that's what you want, fine, but even being able to write a drone is better than coming up with one by accident. If you want a truly nuanced, sparkling arrangement that ties in well with the music you've made, you should really learn arranging. But that's just my opinion.

Then there are pop musicians who can improvise really well, but they don't know anything about music. In fact, they cling rather stubbornly to an ignorance of the language of music that kind of grates on me, personally. I don't think you have to know everything, and certainly no one likes a gearhead, but when you're staring at a guitar player trying to spell out a chord for him and he's just hunched over his guitar staring at you goggle eyed, absolutely refusing to understand you, it just makes you want to smash a music fundamentals textbook over his head. Anyway, for pop musicians, the focus is not on interpreting old music, but on spontaneously composing as a group brand new music. That's hard to do, because more often than not the skill levels in any given pop group are widely varied. Jimmy and Titch might know all about thier instruments and theory, while Mickey and Frank don't know anything and just go on instinct. That can make writing music really tough. But they get it done; usually to wonderful effect.

And then there are jazz musicians. They are technically and theoretically proficient AND they not only improvise, but they can also compose and interpret music. They are superhuman. And, listen, even if I thought most of the music they make is lame, and I'm not saying I do, you have to admit they have skills.They're the most flexible of all of us. You can get as complicated and as simple as you like in jazz. Miles Davis composed entire songs made up of only two chords. Even math-rockers aren't that flexible. Half of what they do is by accident anyway. Try asking a math rocker to sing you a love ballad, or play in 4. He'll hit you with his graphing calculator while his friends scoff at your outfit. No, a jazz player's skills only make him more flexible. Jazz dudes can get together and, never even having met before, make a performance of a song sound like they rehearsed it for years. It's really awe inspiring. Even if you think their music is shit, you have to admit it's amazing to be able to do that. I have first-hand experience of how hard it is, and how much training goes into it. Those boys and girls work very hard.

So there you have it. Every musician has a different focus, and a different set of skills. Even punk rockers have skills. They have the power to get really far under my skin, for one. And they can do that chugga chugga thing. And they can scream really loud. In fact, I think there's only one skill punk rockers lack: subtelty. Subtelty is not even a card in their deck. That said, there's something to be said for loud music. There's also something to be said for plane crashes, oil slicks, and swallowing tacks.

Many of you have written me very sweet emails with congratulations on my string arrangements for the Decemberists' Hollywood Bowl appearance. While I would very much love to take credit for the crystalline, beautiful arrangements that I heard on the YouTube version of their performance, it is with much regret that I say I cannot. I definitely did the string arrangements on the album Her Majesty, but I didn't have anything to do with the orchestral arrangements you heard the Los Angeles Symphony play.The band, of course, had a professional arranger write those arrangements.

Well, I'm flattered that you would think I wrote those beautiful arrangements, so thanks for the vote of confidence. I wish it could have been me, but it wasn't.

See? You wouldn't believe what happened to me. Inspiration struck! Yay! It just goes to show: just perservere. You may hit some snags in your creative life, but you just gotta keep going. Find inspiration wherever you can. Mine came in the form of recent downloads of the entire collection of albums by artists such as Paul McCartney, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Cure, and The Jesus & Mary Chain.

I decided to let go of the 35 project for a moment, because the subject matter is hitting a little too close to home. Let me explain. You see, I've never been a person who can write a song about something I'm experiencing while I'm in the thick of the experience. It's always easier for me to write much later, after reconstructing the experience. An example is when my sister died back in 1995. I wasn't able to pen a thing when my mother requested I write something and play it at her (my sister's) funeral. But then years later, in 1997, when I had some distance, I was able to write something. The song I wrote is called Olive Green, and it's on the first Reclinerland CD. The 35 project is a reflective piece dedicated to the question "Why is it that I'm about to turn 35 and all I have to show for it is a trail of broken hearts?" Ah, but that question is too close to home at the moment. I'm turning 35 next week after all, and feeling all of the corresponding emotions means I can't begin to write about it now. Also, a(nother) kind of recent nasty break up has left me too sad and angry to try and write a song. I'm not the type to turn his amp up to 11 and start chugging away, you see. And these days I'm even loathe to bust out the acoustic and start weeping. Better to just stew and reconstruct the experience later, when I'm able to be a little bit objective. From that distance I can start to craft a song. Nothing is more soothing than a melody well crafted. So for now, I put that project to rest.

However! Jenny Conlee and I got together today to do some rehearsing for the Ideal Home Music Library 2, and she sounds terrific. I'm so glad I asked her to do it. She's been so busy with touring and working hard with her other projects, and yet she's really taking the time and doing great with these pieces. I heard most of them this afternoon and it was a joy to sing them. Her touch is varied, her tone is good. She's still tightening things up, and I'm still working out some vocal snags, but for the most part the songs are sounding really good. I'm very pleased and I know you will be too when you hear them.

But then there's more. I sat down with Kevin Sampsell's book and picked through it. If you haven't read the earlier post about this, I had an idea for a project in which I would take my friend Kevin's book A Common Pornography, and write some songs from it. His book is a collection of short stories about his life, and I found a wealth of ideas in there. I can't wait to get started playing around with songs for his little vignettes. I already have one, it's called Vibrator. I'll try to get an mp3 up so you can hear it.

Anyway, there it is. More later!

Man. It's happening. I've tried for a week now to write some new songs, but nothing comes out. I'm getting really discouraged. I have a few subjects in mind that I'd like to write about, but notihng happens when I sit down. All I end up with after hours of work is maybe three lines. One should be able to sit down and write a new song. I mean, it's hard work, but you should at least be able to get something out. Lately I can't think of a thing. I started to write a song called 35. It's the first of a new collection of pop songs. This is as far as I've got:

a boy and his lover lay lips to lips
with the sea crashing in on the shore she
collapses a yellow white hand in his
and asks "How many have come before me?"

stretching his memory for a true reply
with the sea crashing in on the shore he
settles on a number like thirty five
and she turns in agony toward the gray sea

how does it feel to know that over the course of your life
you've seen the love light die
in thirty five pairs of eyes?

seventy thighs clutching your waist
seventy eyes touching and tasting
this was your life: what a waste
thirty five!

five hundred twenty five ribs almost crack
three hundred fifty nails down your back
millions of jibes you can never retract
thirty five!

seventy lips, thousands of teeth
letting secrets slip they bound you to keep
your little life is rounded by people you sleep with
thirty five!

So you can see that it's absolute shit. The thing is, when i used to write this kind of personal, confessional pop song, I just wrote off the top of my head. That's one way to do it, but the results for the listener were cryptic at best. I even listen to some of those old songs and have no idea what I was writing about. Now, I'm trying to be absolutely clear about what I'm saying. The mess you see above is not only unclear, but it sounds cheezy and contrived. I don't know what to do about it. I guess I should just scratch it and start over. But the writer's block funk has me. My mind is blank. It's time to try all those little tricks you read about: just do one little ditty a day and see what comes out. You know, the kinds of things writers do.

My famous friends all complain that they feel all kinds of pressure to write new songs. Their process is hampered by looming deadlines, recording budgets, all of that. I think that's a load of crap. I have no sympathy. You know, one of the reasons I'm having such a hard time is because I have no idea if this stuff will ever come out. I have no money for a studio, no deadlines, no budget, heck, judging by the $35 royalty checks and the amount of people who look at this blog, I don't even have an audience. So what am I doing it for? Myself? Fine. But what fun is that? If I had a record company paying me to write songs for them, that would only light a fire underneath me to get them done, and done the best I can, you can be sure. Plus, it's extremely validating to know you have lots of people out there connecting to your music. You can play for them, not yourself. That's the point, isn't it? Playing for them. Who am I playing for? That question is holding me back, I think.

In the meantime, the Ideal Home Music Library songs are sounding better and better. Jenny's got them under her fingers pretty much, and things are coming along nicely. Also, the orchestral music for Parks & Recreation is underway. We have musicians selected, now it's just a matter of scheduling. The guitar overdubs are done. It's all moving along swimmingly.

So, current projects are moving smoothly, while new projects are dying before they leave the gate. Ah well.