Skill Variations

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook […]

Twitter and Facebook

Some time ago a couple of friends urged me to join facebook.  Admittedly, I’m often negligent of this blog, much less logging in and writing what I’m doing on facebook.  So it was with some reluctance that I finally made the jump and created not only a facebook account, but a twitter account as well.

more thoughts on that article and musician’s multi-tasking

this is a bit more on that article at Huffington Post.  One of the reader’s comments contained this nugget: "Can an artist truly develop if they are trying to book all their own shows, market themselves, manage their myspace, facebook, twitter, etc.? When exactly do you have the solitude to write? And who provides the […]

thoughts on YOUR input

Tonight I was reading an article on Huffington Post by John Mellencamp decrying the corporate control of the music business that began in the 80s.  It was a good article,  in which he said something that really touched me: "The artist is here to give the listener the opportunity to dream, a very profound and […]

Singing and Personal Expression

Just a bit about vocal style: Turn on any radio and you’ll hear a lot of different vocal styles. There’s styles by genre and then there’s personal style. I once gave a workshop that focused on singing as both a meditation and also as personal expression…so a comment I heard by vocalist K.D. Lang recently […]

What’s our potential?

In writing some of the new lyrics a bit of a philosophical discussion ensued… I suppose you could consider this all ongoing: I’d love your thoughts. Some of the topics… What is our human potential? Can we know it? Is there a limit to it? What about our individual potential? How do we consciously direct […]

Songwriting: Looking Glass Road

Today we made some progress on mixing some of the tunes that have been recorded over the past months including the last three (from last weekend). I awoke with the missing lyrics for Looking Glass Road; and grabbing my trusty pen and paper before I got out of bed, managed to jot them down before […]

Thoughts on Songwriting Styles

Yesterday Brian and I were going over our catalog of songs and it reminded me that some of you (especially other songwriters and poets) have wanted to discuss writing styles. What follows is a quick off-the-top outline of songwriting styles.

Ancient History: My First Digital Audio System

Sometime in the mid-nineties I decided to build a computer dedicated to digital recording. No, I’d never built a computer, and no, I’d never really engineered myself or anything. I just had so much music in me and wanted to be self sufficient (or as self sufficient as an artist can be).