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The Rhythm Of Prog
When people think of ‘prog’ they don’t think of an aesthetic, they think of a beat. Well DUHHHHH! And when you further think about it, every style of popular music is defined by it’s basic beat.
I’ve been thinking about ‘prog’ as if it were ‘classical’ or even ‘jazz’ where it’s the process more than anything else that defines the music. But we’re talking about ROCK, baby. So people have expectations that are like popular styles.
And judged in that way? A lot of my stuff sure as shit ain’t prog. In fact, if one listens to it like a normal person, it’s largely this amalgamation of 80′s power pop, funk, glam and rockabilly—with some prog stuff in there (the odd 6/8 and 7/4 beat) to keep one’s cape flappin’ in the breeze.
This has further driven me over the edge in my desire to steer the musical boat back to shore.
Giddyup!
Now what is the quintessential prog beat? Like good porn, I can’t tell ya, but… it sure feels a lot like a waltz to me (as if porn ever had a ‘waltz’ soundtrack.) But by that I mean (as I alluded above) all ya gotta do to evoke the gods of prog is to start playing something with a ‘three’ feel. Slow? You sound like Yes or Gentle Giant (‘Heart Of The Sunrise’.) Faster? Any number of tunes by Rush, Genesis and even Led Zeppelin (Immigrant Song.) In short, if it gallops? It’s probably in the realm of prog.
Am I A Believer?
When I think of the stuff I do that feels the most ‘prog’, Oceans Below (Superpower) always comes to mind. And, true to the formula, it starts in a loping 6/8. But then for the big smash-hit finish? I switched to a groove I clearly lifted from The Monkees Papa Gene’s Blues. On crack.
My natural bent is so ‘pop’ (and so retro-pop) that I can’t even space out correctly.
As I’ve been saying, I’m determined to get back to the whole ‘prog’ ethos. But for me it is an ethos and not a ‘beat’. I was drawn to prog groups not because of the time signature or groove, but rather because they were attempting to combine many styles together that I happen to like.
Here in Seattle, ‘fusion cuisine’ has been all the rage for quite some years. When it works? When it’s done by someone who really knows what they’re doing? Combining bacon and ice cream or licorice and fish are fantastic ideas. When it’s not; and when they don’t? Oy. My guess is that there are a lot more recipes that taste as you’d expect licorice on fish to taste than actually taste good. Because let’s face it: it’s licorice. On fish.
Prog is like that. It really takes a lot to make it work. So more often than not, it fails. And when it fails, it’s quite the joke. But like fusion cuisine, I can’t pin it down as having one characteristic beat (or flavour.) Because if it had that? It wouldn’t be fusion anymore.
Food For Thought?
My goal for the next round of material is to do what prog should do, but not worry so much about whether or not it gallops or uses a mellotron or whatever other conventions are usually ascribed to it stylistically. But at the same time, I’m mindful that if one sounds too ‘pop’ or ‘funk’ or whatever then one is probably straying off course. Because that means you’re ignoring the fact that it’s a fusion.
I still like Oceans Below because I think it succeeded in this regard. It fused a number of styles together in a fashion that I still like. And for me, the playing (guitars, drums, bass) has the energy I used to feel from some of my fave prog groups—even if it isn’t doesn’t exactly ‘gallop’ but rather takes that last train to Clarksville.
As I get ready to start pounding again, I’m going to be more careful to adhere to that fusion of styles—which starts at bedrock with the beat. But will that beat be more ‘classically’ prog as a lot of people hear it in their heads? I doubt it. But I sure hope it’s a lot more to the material than can be summed up as ‘oh that’s a funk tune’ or ‘that’s a pop tune’ or any one word description. If the drumming is truly interesting? It’ll take at least two hyphens to describe what’s goin’ on.
*EBF: East Butt Fuck. The Boonies. Green Acres.
Putting The Anal Back In Analog
Sorry I’ve been out of the loop. I’ve had an ongoing battle with pneumonia and bronchitis that hasn’t let up since Christmas.
I played the absolute worst recording session of my life a couple of weeks ago, with a guy who does a type of music unique to himself (in the Seattle area anyway.) It’s so unique in fact that, were I to mention even the genre to you, I would unmask myself before him and thereby ruin our relationship. (How’s that for some bush league, soap opera cloak and dagger!) But he’s about the nicest guy I can imagine and I actually like the genre he works in a bunch. Therefore, his identity shall forever remain a secret!
And yet, Dear Reader, I feel I must comment on his approach to music because it’s so, so, so… wrong.
He begins the recording process by creating very detailed mock ups of his music in a computer, using synthesizers as his sound sources. He makes sure that every nuance he wants played is electronically ‘recorded’. So far this is not at all unusual. Most every movie composer works that way these days—they create everything in the computer and then, if necessary, then print out notation for ‘real’ musicians to play the parts. This guy does something similar. But since he does not read music, he gives an MP3 of his songs to the ‘real’ players he hires and asks them to re-create what is on the sound files. But that’s where the similarity ends.
When a big shot Hollywood composer writes out a part for a cue, say bass, drum set or guitar, he rarely and I mean rarely notates much beyond the bare necessities. Why? Because it’s just a given that you’re hiring the player for their ‘humanity’—the special ‘zing’ that having a real player brings to the table that no ‘sample’ or synthesizer can duplicate. And I’m not talking about wild solos. I’m talking about the entire part. It’s normal to simply let the ‘non-orchestral’ players simply create their own parts. I’ve been given whole cues where the only ‘notation’ was
Why? Because a long time ago composers figured out that the average studio player can come up with something better than they can—after all, the average player has worked his/her entire life to know how to come with a cool groove and tasteful fills. All one really needs to do is wind them up and let them do what they do best.
Now what this guy does, however, is as I said, ask his players to re-create precisely what is on his MP3. Note for note. Inflection for inflection. In fact, during recording, he listens to his version of your part in one ear of his headphones and your playing in the other; to make sure they match precisely. If not? We do another take. Or he uses the magic of editing to cut/paste the part until it truly matches.
In addition to the life-sapping feeling of being literally ‘audited’ for correctness while recording, the fact that he consider his parts to be the ne plus ultra of parts makes one feel like an automaton.
Now, why does he pay good money for this rigamarole? Because the genre of music he does demands it. Or rather, his potential customers want to know that real people played on the record. It would be disastrous if customers thought that electronics were in use. (Lots of genres are like this. Not too many folk records are done on synths, right?) But whether or not it actually sounds ‘human’? Evidently, he could care less. He treats his songs as if they were scores by Schubert and they must be executed with that precision.
The closest I have ever come to this in mindset is the music of Raymond Scott. This was a tremendously creative guy who wrote great music in the thirties and forties. He wanted a very mechanical sound and he got it by rehearsing his players over and over to get that distinctly precise sound. You’ve heard his stuff in many, many cartoons and loved it in that context although he meant for it to be much, much more. So as soon as synthesizers became available in the fifties he started writing for them because that was the sound he had always wanted. In fact, he was so enamoured of the possibilities of creative control that he built many of his own devices in his machine shop! In other words, Scott was trying to get people to play more like machines. But then when machines came along that could do more of what he wanted? He started using those. Fair enough. He had no interest in a human sound so his approach makes perfect sense.
What my friend/contractor does, however, is quite the opposite. He takes music that should have real organic goodness, that he wants to have really humanity and tries to direct just the humanity he wants in every note. But in this pursuit of precision, he sucks the humanity right out of it. He treats his arrangements with a preciousness that would define hubris—if his work mattered to enough people, that is.
It feels like hiring organic farmers to run a machine that makes white bread—just so you could say ‘made by organic farmers!’ It’s a bit of a stretch just for that bit of marketing ‘truth’.
I used to believe that there was one true and ineffable rendition of a song; or orchestration of a piece of music; that constituted perfection. And once achieved, that version should then be left unchanged for eternity. I developed this idea in music school after seeing how hard Beethoven and Brahms struggled to get just the right version of even one movement of a string quartet. Now I know better. There can be many ‘alternate takes’ that are just as fulfilling and it’s a fool’s errand to try to choose one over the other based on what ‘posterity’ will think. There is no posterity; only what seems right at the time. If time validates that choice? That probably means you were good. If not? It means you shoulda been selling insurance. Oh well.
One thing I’ve re-learned from this experience is this: When you hire professionals to do any job? Let ‘em do their job. Not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because, you’ll likely end up with a lot better product.
I Need A New Drum Kit—In Praise Of Ringo & Art
I Need A New Drum Kit—In Praise Of Ringo & Art
My drum kit she is a gone. And she’s a no coming back. My loverly Ludwig Silver Sparkle set (aka ‘Old Ringo’ appears to have been ‘liberated’ from the storage space I had kept it at during my recent studio renovation. I am told that it is not insured for the current market value of $1,500 smackers.
So it’s time to mourn. Not just for the dough-re-mi. And not just because it was my pal for several decades. But rather because it was a critical part of my education as a musician. Drums are a big deal. Even if you’re playing bass or guitar, the more you know about ‘the set’, the better you do your job. So I shall grieve.
And then? I gotsta get me a new one. And, since every loss is also a chance to ‘learn something’ (grumble, grouse, grumble), I think I ought to use this tragedy to re-think my drumming.
From Pee Wee To Ring-o
My whole concept came out of my early fascination with a particular type of drum kit ‘sound’. I did not put it together until much later, but I’m instinctively drawn to a certain way of hitting the drums which I can only describe as ‘jazzy’ (and boy do I hate that term, so you gotta know I mean something when I use it.)
To this day I can still remember the first time I heard Pee Wee Marquette announce Art Blakey’s band on Live At The Café Bohemia. Man, that ‘latin’ beat and the crashing of all that stuff going on at the same time.
It’s like when Chuck Berry says
…until it sounds just like a symphony
I knew just what he was on about. And when you saw Art play—and in fact, all the guys from that era? The most modest of kits. Just one or two cymbals. And one or two toms. That’s it. That’s all they needed.
No, for old school guys, you made up for a ‘lack’ of things to hit by virtue of the fact that they all rang together!
The key was stick control. They all worked very hard to make each hand do a lot of things. For example, most guys in rock and funk bands will play a sixteenth note groove on the hi-hat with two hands. Left and Right and Left and Right and Left and Right and so on as I do on Open Your Eyes Part II. But the old school guys? They spent hours learning to do that sort of thing with each hand by itself. It sounds quite different because they never learned it in order to ‘groove’ in the same way. But it does free them up to play more ‘stuff’ at the same time!
Ringo was the same for me. Same orchestral sound. The antithesis of a drum machine or a ‘modern’ drum kit with lots of separate sounds. But the funny thing about Ringo was how many rules he broke. And yet how huge he sounded. Did Ringo feel the need to keep a hi-hat beat going all the time on In My Life? Of course not! He just alternated whenever a beat needed filling. No ‘modern’ drummer would dare do that for fear of leaving to much ‘emptiness’. But with that big sound of his (and Abbey Road Studio #2 with all that echo), he could leave space and still sound just like a symphony.
When I started playing, I gravitated towards the Ringo sound for a couple of reasons:
1. It looked like the kit I had. There was no point in trying to do stuff with eight tom toms like that guy in ELO because I only had one (just like Ringo!)
2. I did not then (and do not now) have the world’s greatest limbic independence. In other words, I have trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time. Ringo’s style validated my ‘less is more’ approach.
3. But at the same time, Ringo had that great old school stick control. On a lot of tunes he does sixteenth notes on the hi-hat and ride with one hand while still keeping a great back beat on the tom and snare (I Feel Fine). That sort of thing I could do. Just like the guitar, if I could concentrate on making one aspect sound really cool I could somehow manage to keep the ear from recognising that the rest of the show was pretty mundane.
4. Ringo made his fills and licks count. Name one guy with more memorable drum fills? Go ahead, I’ll wait. Bonham? Maybe close. But all the other great rock drummers usually had one or two knock out licks. Ringo had literally dozens spread over those ten years from Just To Dance With You to Paperback Writer to Tomorrow Never Knows to Get Back. Who knew one tom tom and two cymbals could take a guy so far?
Yeah, But What About?
OK, it’s true I haven’t included much ‘real’ drums on any of my records. What I almost always do is play on my trusty DrumKat electronic drums which trigger lots of those fancy ‘samples’. But the concept always came from Old Ringo. It made everything that is good (and bad) in my percussionism.
What I’m thinking about now is… I have this chance to start over. I never would’ve gotten another kit while Old Ringo was still alive. It woulda felt like cheatin’. But now? Woo hoo! I’m a free man, pardnuh! I mean, I loved the thing maybe a little too much. I’m thinking now that the kit… and the concept that went with it, kept me from stretching out to places I should have been going along with my other forays. And it sure kept me strapped to the same technical limitations.
I Need A Wing Man
So I’m asking all of y’all to be on the lookout for the next Ms. Right. If there’s a drum kit that you know of that’s for sale? Let me know! Even if you’re in Pittsburgh or Louisiana (I hope not right now, mate!) and I’m in Seattle. I have no problem at this point in my life starting a long distance relationship—for the right piece, that is. 
The main thing is that we all keep an open mind on this so that I make the right choice. After all, this is a relationship and it is something I intend to hit. A lot. For a long time.
I want the next kit to be as good and true (and able to take just as much punishment as) good Old Ringo.
OK, enough with the wife-beating metaphors. Help find me that new kit and drown my sorrows before I go even crazier!
Positive Remastered — Finally!
After nine years? The first record from JCHMusic will finally be available as a professionally remastered version.
As long-term listeners know, in late 2007 I embarked on a plan to re-master the first four records prior to the release of Home. For some reason, I released them in reverse order, starting with Balance — then Compartments and Superpower. Then all heck started to break loose in my life and I had to leave off.
Until now, this has always been a great personal sadness for me. After more than twenty years playing other people’s stuff, Positive was a chance to finally get the music out there that I wanted to do. So, like many artists’ first records, it contains some of my best stuff (in fact, the sophomore jinx so many artists encounter is often simply the result of one simple fact: they’ve usually had umpteen years to develop ten great songs for their initial offering but then only twelve months to do the second. Do the math.)
The really annoying thing is that, although Positive benefited greatly from the ‘first release effect’ as far as song quality, it also suffered in equal amount from another common characteristic of first records: namely crappy recording quality. And the complexity of reasons that led to thiss can all be summed up in one sentence: On the job training. I was teaching myself the wonders of digital recording as I went and made all the usual mistakes that newbies make.
In my defense, I have to say that I never intended to release Positive to the general public. As I’ve commented on ad nauseum, I was still in the ‘traditional marketing mode.’ My goal was simply to get something out to ‘the industry’, get a record deal of some kind and then record the ‘real’ debut album. With someone else’s money. Putting it on a web site was a complete afterthought and came about only because I was writing shopping cart software at my ‘day job.’ Making it available for sale was more of an exercise in learning e-commerce than in cutting edge music promotion. But for whatever reason, people bought it; I started touring to support it and the rest is recent history.
Now here we are. Positive has several songs that I still think are among my best efforts and I feel strongly that they deserve to be heard the way I meant for them to sound. At my live shows, “Why Don’t You Come In?” and “You Are Loved” always were among the best received pieces.
So while everyone is waiting for me to get on with something truly ‘new’, I’m offering the next best thing in the meantime—completely new mixes of the original twelve songs that I think you’ll find are as striking as seeing the Sistine Chapel before and after the cleaning. 
OK, maybe not quite that striking.
As we get closer to release date, we’ll be posting some ‘before and after’ clips to give you some idea of the differences. At the risk of sounding immodest, I think you’ll be impressed at the difference that nine years and a couple of Grammy® Award-winning engineers can make.
Some Details
- Positive Re-Mastered is scheduled to ship August 1, 2010. As you’ve overwhelmingly demanded, it will be packaged in the traditional jewel-box and include not only the original art, but additional production notes.
- If you pre-order (we’ll start taking orders July 1) you will receive an autographed copy and a personal note.
- For current owners, as before, there will be a trade-up offery. You will be able to get the new release for a measly $5.00. If you ship back your current version, we’ll even pick up the return shipping.
Commitment: Coda
As picayune as my ‘career’ has been by ‘American Idol’ standards, the truth is, that I have been totally blessed with a core following that most artists would kill to have. You who have been so devoted through all my ups and downs deserve the best quality recordings I can muster. It’s not only my pleasure and honour to finally offer Positive Re-mastered, but frankly? It’s the least I can do for everyone who has supported my work. Of course, I hope that this release finds new listeners—better mixes have definitely brought new people into the fold with each re-mastered album, but that’s not the main point. I want everyone to know that I’m back and just as energized about what I do as I was ten years ago. Positive Re-mastered is just the first fruit of that effort for 2010. As I sang almost a decade ago now into the first decent microphone I ever owned:
I am committed.
The Importance Of Being Earnest
…with apologies to Oscar Wilde (not the most serious guy in the world, but what-ehveeeer.)
In my last death-defying rant I talked about the terrifying trend towards twee.
This time I’m giving you the flip side–the road less travelled. Or at least, the one that I have decided upon after some reflection and pain and suffering.
I’ve taken a lot of criticism from you dears fans (we few, we happy few, we band of broth… OK, enough with the high-school Shakespeare already.)
As I was ranting, my ‘base’ has been on me for the past several years about my downward spiral towards ‘pop’. Not that I ever reached the levels of Pomplamoose (that would be far too perky for such a curmudgeon as I.) Still there has been a definite shift towards less complex music and simpler, more immediately recognizable themes.
When I force myself to listen to older records (as I have to now in order to post music to all these frickin’ ‘music sharing sites’) I realise that the most successful stuff I’ve done was the stuff that was the least obviously ‘commercial’. And by ‘successful’ I mean the work that I still find ‘OK’. (As an aside, I used to gauge my work in the following way: every once in a while, I’d be listening to Internet radio whilst doing something else and being very preoccupied. I’d pop out of my concentration for a minute and think to myself, ‘I really like that song that’s playing. I wonder who that guy is?’ And then of course, realise it was just li’l ol’ me. And that would mean it was a truly good song. But before you accuse me of narcissism unbound, recognise that the same thing probably has happened to you or another artist who’s work you enjoy. It happens to lots of very normal people. Really. It’s not just me. Seriously.)
So I’m here today to make my contrition. And as we Catholics know, there are the four faces of contrition: admission (of fault), submission (offering to make amends), commitment (here’s how I intend to do better), and finally the actual asking of pardon.) Since implicit in a true contrition is a plan for the future, consider this post something like a manifesto which I can sum up in one sentence. I promise to be even more fuckin’ serious than I already am.
I confess to you my brothers and sisters that I have sinned.
For a while, I have drunk the indie kool-aid that constantly tells one to ‘lighten up’; that people have no need of musicians who are pretentious and take themselves to seriously. (Why. So. Serious? as The Joker would say.) More and more I bought into it and became more and more self-deprecating about what I do and what it takes to do what I do. And then I realised something: professionals don’t that. Doctors don’t do that. Lawyers don’t do that. Very few physicists do that. Seventh degree black belts in karate definitely don’t do that. In short, the most respected people in society take what they do very seriously and they wouldn’t dream of adopting an ‘aw shucks’ persona because ya know something it tarnishes the brand.
When Miles Davis got on stage in the early ’50′s and turned his back on the audience as he played it was the culmination of decades of struggle for respect by jazz musicians who previously had to mug and grin in order to get gigs. He had reached a point where he didn’t have to do that and part of his over the top arrogant schtick was to tell other musicians to respect themselves. It wasn’t enough anymore to have that internal belief. Rather, it was important to tell the world that jazz was a deep art form that demanded respect from the audience. Miles was educating the world to take artists seriously. Just like how barbers in the 15th century started demanding to be called ‘physicians’ and ‘surgeons’. Over the course of several centuries they built a brand identity of awe and respect for what they do that, as much as their education and skill, gives them the authority and the earning power they have.
I realise now that one reason I dug the music that formed me (the progressive rock and fusion musics of the ’70′s) is that these guys were serious. They played great and they wanted people to stop and listen because damn it, what they were doing was just as worthy of that rapt attention as any guy listening to a classical concert. Were they entertainers? Of course! Zawinul admitted over and over that he was consciously trying to make danceable music with Weather Report. Keith Emerson stabbing his Hammond organ with knives was total theatre. But that was like Dogberry in Much Ado and Osric in Hamlet; a bit of comic relief to balance out the load.
Pop Will Eat Itself
I travel in the pop and rock worlds. If you’re say Bela Fleck or Leo Kottke, you avoid the ‘respect’ and ‘seriousness’ issues by virtue of the fact that you’re doing a very elevated form of ‘folk music’. You can be as ‘serious’ as you like with a banjo in your hands. It has a built-in pretentious limiter.
But if you write and sing songs that are done with the requisite Fender bass and Gibson guitar and Ludwig drums and Hammond organ, the current climate frowns upon anything that even smells of pretention. As I’ve written ‘pretentious’ is the one word everyone who hated ‘prog’ spits out to show their contempt.
In short, I’ve realised that if I project that ‘aw shucks’ persona then I’m in trouble. Because I’m trying to get people to take what I do seriously in a climate that doesn’t necessarily wanna do that. Like Miles, we gotta fight for our right to… er… well not ‘party’ but have people pay attention. We gotta build a brand. We gotta get back something we had back in Miles’ day and through the seventies but which is now lost. We have to state clearly this simple idea:
Don’t Try This At Home
It is a good thing to make intelligent and complex vocal popular music that demands your attention. And like Miles did, we will insist that we who make such music are professionals.
You may have a guitar and GarageBand, but you cannot do what we do. Just like you may have a computer, but you aren’t a scientist. And you may have a Subzero freezer, but you’re no Julia Child. And I’m gonna try to convince you that, despite everything the culture tells you (Pomplamoose) music delivered by someone like me who knows what they’re doing really is superior to that made on a laptop in a dorm room.
This worship of the primitive, which has so taken over music seems to have largely bypassed the visual media. I mean, it is still quite possible to be a serious visual and dance artist. I think this is simply because there is a culture that has nurtured that brand because it never had the commercial success of music (until recently no painter could expect royalties anything like what a musician could make from one successful album.) Now that music royalties have languished so dreadfully, most musicians are pretty much in the same boat as painters; but without that infrastructure of museums, grants and patrons that allows one to do serious work and be taken seriously.
I’m Coming
…So to speak. My final word on this (for today) is that I realise how the culture has taken it’s toll on my work. What I do hasn’t been as technically challenging as it might have been in the past few years. I’ve substituted other qualities that I think matter (more mature lyrical themes, one hopes) but the fact that I substituted means to me that I have, to some degree, lost my way.
Over the past couple of years, it’s fair to say I’ve had my share of bad breaks (no pun intended), which I won’t go into here. But it’s given me a real chance to think about why I’ve carried on even though it has at times been physically, personally and financially just excruciating. There has to be a reason I put up with that in order to keep doing what I do. So if it’s gonna be hard, then darn it, I gotta make sure I do the most intense, concentrated and action-packed version of whatever I do. No ‘substitutions’. Rather, it should be more like stuffing an overnight bag with a Steinway D. I gotta cram as much technique and craft and energy into every piece until the disc just can’t take it any more! More is more!
You fans keep asking when I’m gonna be back; if not touring, at least with new material. And the short answer is. Soon. I don’t know all the details yet, but I do know that I have never felt so enthusiastic to get back to work as I do now. And I can tell you that I have never felt more like ‘shredding’ than I do now. My ‘less is more’ period is officially over.
And again, I don’t know exactly what the product is going to look like yet. I’m working on it. But I can tell you that I am going to jam something into yer face by the end of the year. And when I do? I promise you one thing right now as God is my witness.
It’s gonna be intense.
