Oh well.

Oooh, here's a video of a cat playing a theremin!

(via Laughing Squid)

In my previous post on music appreciation, I expressed some concerns about my writing about music—about using words to express why I love specific pieces of music. I'd rather create more music to express that love for other music.

But, as I mentioned, I seem to have some things to say. And, with the specific pieces of music I want to write about in future posts, I realize that the lyrics—the words are such an important part of that music.

So, I wanted to say a bit about words as music. And, first, to take a step back, I should say that I think almost all words, spoken or written, are "backed" by the same source as non-verbal musical expression: emotion.

This is actually a similar concept to body language. What I am saying is that the human voice—even translated into words typed on a computer, start out as non-verbal communications—and that source carries through to some extent in the final medium. When we read written / typed words, this is part of what we might be able to "read between the lines" on some occasions.

So, imagine that before someone speaks a word to you, what's starting inside them is much more like singing. Then, through social conventions, self-conciousness, verbosity, etc., that would-be song comes out as only a speaking voice saying words.

(Of course, in some cultures / languages, the natural speaking voice is more unabashedly musical! However, some of us just walk around speaking like unenthusiastic robotic honkies.)

In moments when one's guard is down, or moments of unbridled joy, or of terrible pain, or of drunkenness, or of passion, we sometimes let loose and say things that sound more like singing. And, what's so wonderfully musical about good lyrics is how they use words (e.g., syntactically / semantically) to free the voice to sing rather than speak.

Lyrics use rhythm, rhyme, cadence, phrasing and more to enable melody and singing. And the meaning of the words can push the shape of the music. (And word meanings and word sounds are themselves intertwined in a way that I think only musicality may unravel.)

And, likewise, melody and singing enable lyrics to mean what words really say, but don't (always) express when spoken or written.

How I listen to lyrics

I have a favorite way to get into the lyrics of the music I enjoy. First, I don't read the lyrics right away. I just listen to the music and listen for what's being sung as my ear is drawn to it.

At some point, I start to hear what's being said. (Let's assume this is a great song I love—needless to say, in other cases, hearing that what's being said is something lame is an awful disappointment.)

Then I start to really hear the whole of the lyrics. And really feel what's being said in each phrase. I might sing along or say the words—I hear the words as if I am singing them (e.g., about myself, about someone I know, etc.).

At this point, there may some lines I am not sure about. And, this is where I love to finally read the lyrics. I usally read them first, separate from listening to the song. Then I listen to the song again without reading along. And, finally, I may listen and read along at the same time.

Sometimes, if I don't have access to the printed lyrics, I'll listen to the song bit by bit and try to write the words down myself.

Finally, hearing what the words really say often means experiencing something that changes with each listen. The meaning is profound—whatever puzzle you may have solved getting to the point of really hearing the words, you now hear into a more unlimited mystery of experience and possibility being expressed.

To get into the words even more, I might play the song on guitar or keyboard, and sing along. And, even more, I'll start to change the musical arrangement, etc., to hear what the words say in different voicing / voices.

Even the stuff

We talk about a lot of stuff in our world, and a lot of that talk is supposed to be objective or informational or useful. At present, we spend a lot of time seeing people talking on TV or on the web, and, the way our visual sense can dominate our focus, we're drawn into how the speakers / words look (people talking on a screen, words written on a page).

But, if we listen, we can get into what's going on, deeper than what it all looks like. We can hear what's really being said. And, what's really being said is a kind of music. Sadly, much of it is like the song of desperation—how else to describe the thing that can drive us to such maniacal verbiage?

But, people can be beautiful music. And, even some of the most potentially dry and boring stuff, through the voice of someone filled with a joy and energy for life, can express great musicality.

As a closing example, I thought the subject of particle physics might be a good test case. Science is a subject we've all heard delivered in a dead and deadening way, and so I though this clip of Richard Feynman talking about rubber bands would be a good example of how enjoyment (to the point of almost singing) can be infused into a topic not known for sing-a-longs!

The more you love music, the more you want to actively make it heard—heard by yourself and by potentially others and everyone.

A quick aside: let us briefly note that this is the essence of any "music business"—give people a way to participate in making music they love, that is so great / convenient / novel / special / sharable / fun / etc., that they will pay for the opportunity. . .

So, we push the play button or hire a musician to play a party or are musicians ourselves. Even most passively (we enter a room where someone else has put on music, or we walk past a musician on the street, etc.), when we notice and respond to the sound, we become co-creators of the music. If we like it, our ears perk up, and we may clap along, nod our heads to the rhythm, dance, sing our favorite phrase, or get others to hear it as well—we are playing a part in the music too.

As a musician, when I hear music I love, I not only want to play it on the stereo or join with it in concert, but I also want to play music on musical instruments. Sometimes that means playing the same music I've heard—for example, hearing a song and then learning to play it on guitar. But, more typically, I want to create new music, influenced by what I've heard.

So, given all of this, I always have a question about how much to talk or write about the music I love. I always want other people to know that music too, but talking and writing about music, in words, feels so inadequate compared with what I want to say in music. I generally find it pretty frustrating to talk or write about music.

But, I think I am going to write about the music I love a bit more here on Wrong Notes, because I see a need to get the word out. I wish I were productive musically in a way that I could quickly and fully say what I want about other's music through my own music. My ideal would be to be like Jimi Hendrix performing "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" on June 4th, 1967—only three days after the Beatles' album came out.

(Here's a video of Hendrix playing the song a bit later that year, in December '67:)

Some more thoughts on writing about music

What I hope to write will not be music criticism, but will be music appreciation.

I sometimes enjoy music criticism, but I basically find its goals to be, very frequently, largely un-musical! In the larger scheme of things, that's OK in that music criticism can be great writing and one can enjoy it as such. But, at its musical-worst, music criticism is writing that convinces you to not play music. At its worst, it suggests that thinking and talking and writing about music are more important and/or better than playing music.

And, I don't have any interest in producing music criticism in that sense.

As an example of writing about music I find encouraging, I can point to Tom Moon's 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die. You can enjoy his writing as writing, but Tom's writing constantly makes me want to stop reading and start playing!

So, as I write more about music, I'll point back to here as my footnote about why I'm not reviewing or critiquing the music I am writing about. For me, the goal of the writing is music appreciation—play music now!

Beyond all of the voice greetings and messages recorded by actual human people, I also hear a lot of messages recorded by robots / voice synthesizers.

I am generally interested in all of these as part of the sound of our time. Something we hear a lot. And, I can't help but wonder how much of it, if any, will be captured in art that future peoples might use to better understand us.

I also can't help myself, when I have to recorded something like a phone greeting, from wanting to use it as a creative opening—if not something strictly musical, at least something akin to a musical performance—or maybe something like performance art.

And, a bit of a tangent: oh, I so much wish I had a copy of this one voice greeting I recorded in the mid-1990s . . .

I recorded a message for my at-the-time office phone. It was an early digital phone / PBX system (Rolm, I recall) that allowed you to re-record just the tail end of your message. In other words, you didn't have to re-record the whole thing—I think the idea was that people would flub their phone numbers or sign-offs at the end, and this feature helped you correct just that bit. Maybe it was so you could have a changing ending that was easy to change?

That feature allowed me to essentially cut and paste together a message out of fragments of my speech, such that my somewhat normally spoken sentences became reset with unusual timing / transitions between words. Many aspect of the rhythm and cadence of the speech were altered, and the final "piece," by the time it was done, left you with an eerie / haunting feeling—even though what I said would look perfectly normal and acceptable were it just written out on paper .

Argh. It's almost pointless to describe it like this (I can't believe I even tried)—you had to hear it.

At the time, I had to delete and change my message, or I was going to get fired. It was like "delete it NOW, or else." So many people at the office—even people I hardly ever talked to, went out of their way to tell me how pissed off they were about that message—so I relented and changed the message. Of course, many of my friends—even people I hardly ever talked to, went out of their way to tell me how much they had loved it.

Had I thought about it more at the time, I would have at least saved a copy for myself, for later (like, now!). But, anyway, that's a whole other story. And, maybe it's even better as a legend than something we could re-examine now.

Now, back to today's (shorter!) story—with sound!:

Today, I got a robot to record a new greeting for my mobile phone. And, I thought it'd be fun to post it here (since so few people call my mobile anyway), so at least a few more people might hear it.

Play the voice greeting.

Enjoy!

Music has been like a constant in my life, but I sometimes have to ask "why" about it, given the gap between what I feel about music and (the lack of) what I actually do on some days.

But, I noticed something the other day—that I hadn't really noticed before: I wake up every morning completely excited about music.

I can't figure out what more to say about it without sounding totally corny. But, literally, every morning, I wake up excited about music.

For me, at least, it sort-of explains some things, just recognizing that "event" and its frequency.

And, it doesn't answer any "why" for me, but it maybe gives me less reason to even ask. Or, if I ask:

Q: Why?

A: Because it's there.

I am excited aboard, about, above, across, after, along, alongside, amid, amidst, among, amongst, around, as, aside, astride, at, athwart, atop, before, behind, below, beneath, beside, between, beyond, by, circa, concerning, during, following, for, from, given, in, inside, into, like, near, next, of, off, on, onto, over, pace, past, per, plus, regarding, round, save, since, through, throughout, till, times, to, toward, towards, under, underneath, upon, via, with, within, according to, ahead of, as regards, as per, because of, close to, due to, in to, inside of, near to, next to, on to, owing to, prior to, pursuant to, subsequent to, that of, as far as, by means of, in accordance with, in case of, in front of, on account of, on behalf of, on top of, with regard to, with respect to, anent, behither, betwixt, cum, ere, fornenst, fornent, pro, qua, re, vis-á-vis music.

So, if you're here because you've gotten an answer wrong at Mike Gordon's Andelmans' Yardsale, and you're reading this (I can picture your mouse ascending to that great back button in the sky), hello, sit down, stay awhile—had I'd known you were going to be here I would have made some tea, but I hope this will do.

Click through to a few pages and check out some of the Ear Reverends' music: Entaruption, Plastic Toys, Wing Drops, Riddle. There's more—feel free to snag any mp3s you find—they're just lying around all over the site and looking for good homes.

Thanks kindly Mike!

This is an extended comment where I elaborate on why Lucas's new Wax MP3 Player is exciting to me—how it seems to match-up with something I've been thinking about and working on (e.g., for Err or Man in the recent past, and for new stuff for the future). It seemed like a good topic to post about here on Wrong Notes:

As I've started developing HereJam, I've been thinking about the new role of the record label, in relationship to releases: the new release is (going to be) all about how the music appears on / across the web.

The files and discs are almost irrelevant—definitely secondary. They do need to exist, but, really, once they are published, anyone can get them anywhere. But, the player / interface is primary, because it's actually about that "content" that is the music—about getting into that music.

So, I see the record label as having the role of providing musicians with new web players—i.e., the new formula is:

musician's new music + record label's new player = a new release

This kind of relationship between the label and the artist is easily non-exclusive (though it can work as exclusive one, as well): one new kind of "remix" will be in the multiple different web players created for the same music. The players can be made of all kinds of things that complement the music: visual art, photographs, videos, interactive games, factual information, lyrics, fiction, poetry, nonsense, etc.

Put another way: the player itself is the new format for music. And, rather than it being a single / fixed format, it is instead of the web (e.g., like a website—it is a web page or website). Each player can be distinctive in design, but all players will have at least a few common, idiomatic, elements that make it similar to other players. They marry idioms of the web with idioms of the music player—both provide nearly unlimited opportunities for design—for being turned into products.

You'll know it's a music player when you see it (e.g., maybe it has something to click to make it play), but the player format can be totally free to be any kind of web page(s), which can have original and distinctive shapes, structures, semantics, contexts, interactions, looks, feels, etc. The web page is the new shiny disc.

So, I think Lucas is really on to that!

So one question, with the Ear Reverends' music, has been about the size of works. Is this thing I am working on a song, an album — more? less? Is it, as music, just what one will hear? What about other aspects of its experience, perceptual and conceptual?

Part of what I've been doing lately is evaluating the relationship between planning and doing. In particular, between talking about plans and doing them.

This blog has always been a question, in terms of what is said and what is presented, in relationship to the music. And, same with the website—the web is a part of this music, as an interface to it.

I am working on some things. Maybe they will be bigger things, and take more time. Maybe taking a lot more time.

So, Wrong Notes may be slow for a while.

This is just a couple thoughts:

The main thing we want to do with music we enjoy is share it. A fundamental part of the enjoyment of music is that the enjoyment can be shared, just by sharing the music. Music is a way of sharing enjoyment (and more, deeper, feelings), and enjoyment is often shared through music.

So, if we're ever interested in paying for anything with music, it's the opportunity to share music better. That's the real, timeless, music business: giving people some opportunity to share some music, for which they will gladly pay something reasonable—just to ensure that opportunity.

When we want to own some music on a CD, it's because having a disc gives us more potential opportunities to share the music. When we want to have some music in mp3s, it's because having a digital files gives us other potential opportunities to share the music.

There are very few reasons to relate to music in terms of totally private purposes, without sharing. There are some—and I assume that most people have some bit of music that they like to listen to privately more than with others. But, even then, just because I like to listen to some song when I am alone doesn't mean I don't want to share that song with others—it's not really that private. At best, some music is kept truly private by some people in rare cases!

But, the rest of the time, we just want to share the fuck out of every piece of music we love!

Last week, I started a practice of writing and recording a song everyday. In the ideal, that would be all 7 days a week. Practically, I've got time blocked out on Monday–Thursday, so it may be more like 4 days a week.

On Monday last week, I ended up using my block of time to finish some rearranging and setup in HereJam studio. Then, Tuesday–Thursday, I wrote and recorded three new songs. Friday–Sunday, I also wrote a song / piece each day, but didn't recorded anything. And, today, I wrote and recorded another song / piece.

Given the constraints of this practice, one of the things I now find myself doing is remembering ideas for musical things I want to try—and writing and recording with those. So far, I've recorded a psychedelic pop song, a surf punk instrumental, a goofy pastoral with banjo and tuba, and an electronic funk piece based around the samples of dying audio chip's last sounds.

Here's some more background on why I started doing this, and what I've learned so far:

Over the years (since I was a kid, really) I've had a lot of days where I've written new music for hours and not recorded any of it. And—especially more recently, I've had a lot of other days where I spent hours fiddling with the same recording, over and over.

Between the time that I completed Err or Man and the beginning of this year, as I started preparing to record the next Ear Reverends' album, I realized that I was spending a lot of time waiting for big chunks of free time to write and record. And, then when I finally got those chunks, I felt a lot of pressure to get a lot done. And, so to relieve that unnecessary pressure, sometimes, I just wouldn't try to get anything done and would "goof off" and have fun in the studio (which worked temporarily to relieve the pressure).

So, I came to appreciate that all of this was a pretty extreme way of working, that was not really what I wanted. But, I was stuck in that pattern for a while and not sure what to do differently.

I know of a number of authors who write for a specific period of time everyday—either a set number of words, or a number of pages, or a number of hours. My cousin Lisa does this, and talking with her about it has been helpful. I also found Cory Doctorow's description of his practice, and the idea of leaving a rough edge, to be useful.

***

When I original started Wrong Notes, and recorded the Wrong Notes Music in 2004–2007, I thought I would use the blog format and ideal of posting daily to drive myself to write and record and post more music. But, I found that publishing / releasing creates its own pressures. And, altogether, the blog format doesn't encourage the kind of editing / curating that tends to become an essential differentiator between a "work" and a "practice."

So, with this current song-a-day practice, I'll release some things at some points, but I am not in any way thinking of each song / piece as "the next blog post."

***

A couple other observations:

Getting up in the morning and getting immediately into writing and recording is just really great. I don't get online or deal with stuff until after the morning session.

Stopping is hard. It's too much fun to stop in the middle of a creative moment. I am trying to stop "on time" everyday. Still working on that a bit.

Having a fixed time to work changes what I write and how I record it. My definition of "recording" for the SAD diet is pretty loose. I've been doing multitrack recordings everyday so far, but I am sure I'll write some stuff on paper or do a quick demo on days when I am writing something with more depth. So far, the songs / pieces I've written are simple in some ways—but, even so, the time limit forces me "marry" simplicity when I might otherwise tend to "fool around" with more elaborate options.

I don't usually write lyrics in the morning, unless they are carrying over from something in a dream. I've only recorded lyrics on one day so far (started in a dream). I'll probably start using lyrics written at other times (which times, I realize now, are generally at night).

All of the songs I've recorded so far are now "almost done." I know from past experience that there's potentially a big difference between almost done and done. I am not sure yet whether or when I'll finish these. Sometimes I think it's good to just leave them as is and keep moving forward—right now, that's the point in some sense: no going back and getting bogged down in something from the past / always being open to the next new thing. But, I'll see in a few weeks what's what.

***

If you've ever done something like this and/or if you have some practices that you find useful, I'd love to hear more about your experience.

As part of February being the month when every musician in the universe started self-promoting and/or doing cool things on Twitter, I got on there too (actually, in November last year—and, hopefully doing the latter).

You may remember that I used to list my personal (@imjay) Twitter account on the about page. I still tweet there too, but I've made @herejam the official Ear Reverends' channel for cramming ideas into 140 characters. Typically, I like to say something once or twice a day about music or art, or about what's going on in the studio.

Also, unlike how I use my personal account (I follow only a few people I know well), @herejam works for me to connect with new people—especially other musicians, artists, fans, etc. So, if you're on Twitter, please give us a follow @herejam, and we'll follow you back as well!

I've always been interested in Sparks (official site, Wikipedia). During the time when I was a kid and watched music videos on MTV, Sparks had popular videos for songs like I Predict and All Your Ever Think About is Sex.

In spite of my interest, I've never listened to them very much. But, over the past few months, I've gotten really into Sparks' latest album, Exotic Creatures of the Deep. So, I am listening to Sparks much more now. And that somehow led me to find all these Sparks videos of This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us on YouTube.

I knew that the Sparks' song, This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us (Wikipedia, fan site's story of the song) was a big hit in the UK. But, it's not one of the Sparks' songs that I ever heard more than once or twice—it was never as popular in the US.

Anyway, it's a cool song—and also a very archetypal Sparks song. Like, if you wanted to play someone one song, such that they'd have a good idea of what Sparks sounds like, I think this would be a good choice.

And, this is what makes it interesting both as a cover song, and as a song to see Sparks themselves play across the eras of the 70s, 90s, and past few years.

So, I didn't include absolutely every video of the song on YouTube. There were several 1974-era TV appearances with Sparks lip-syncing that I left out. And, there were a couple super low quality cover versions that I left out too. Also, I tried to put them in a meaningful sequence—there's a somewhat intentional progression there. Anyway, I ended-up (at this time) with these 18 videos:

(Finally, I'll note that I am always hoping that there'll be some interesting innovation with music players that allows us to rotate through different versions of songs we like. So, for example, imagine a player with a playlist item for This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us that, each time that items comes up for play, a random version is selected, rather than the same exact track. . .

This video is from a show called ABC in Concert—I never watched it (I totally tuned-out of TV during that era). The video is online as part of what's turning into an amazing resource, the Timothy Leary Archive, at the Internet Archive.

It's strange to see—a weird purgatory era—for Billy Idol, for the Ramones, for Television—for the web. I don't know what things were like in general for Tim Leary at that time (he rants a bit about still being seen as a "public menace" in the UK). His comments about cyber-culture are really insightful. But his appearance in this video—interviewing Bily Idol, nevertheless makes me think of the 1990s as being "out of time."

At just before 16:45 minutes, there's an interview with Television. It's neat to see them, at that time, as a band. The album they're promoting, Television (1992) is one that I rushed out and bought and listened to (because their earlier Marquee Moon is one of my all-time favorites—and I also am big fan of Tom Verlaine's albums in-between.) But, "Mars" was the only song I ever got into on Television.

Again, it's like it's "out of time." You draw a line between Marquee Moon and Tom Verlaine's current work, and Television (the album) maybe isn't even on that line.

(btw, we we're just turning-on some friends to Tom Verlaine's 2006 instrumental album, Around the other night. That gets played a lot around here.)

Anyway, here's the video:

Timothy Leary Interviews Billy Idol - In Concert with The Ramones (1993)