audiot

this is filed under reviews but it’s really an order. in fact, it says ‘BUY THIS RECORD !!!’, well with a few more words, but basically that’s the message.

this is about the new Bill Champlin record called “No Place Left To Fall”. you may have already heard or read about it, depending on where you live i guess. here in germany, Bill Champlin is not as big as he should be. but anyway, you can find all sorts of information about this new album anywhere on the net. what i’d like to say about it, since i’ve had the chance to fully listen to it yesterday, is quite simple. this album is outstanding. it’s a great piece of songwriting, arrangement, craftsmanship and let’s not forget a lot of fun to listen to. but since this blog is for people who are somewhat more into music than the average listen-to-some-radio-while-driving-to-work-in-the-morning-kind-of-guy i’d like to give you some good advice you might not find in another review. this album simply is one awesome lesson for every musician. you’ll find songwriting with some edges and corners you wouldn’t expect and still it all runs smoothly like a bar of soap covered in babyoil on an airhockey-table…….ermmm, oh well, you get the idea.

and then there’s of course the playing itself – and wow! you can learn so much by closely listening to this masterpiece. there’s nice voiceworks by Bill and his mates and even if Bill’s voice is not really my favorite, soundwise, he’s just doing a great job. there’s outstanding performances by all of the musicians, topped by the ridiculously awesome creative greatness of Billy Ward, who’s simply drumming this album to the all-time-must-haves. sorry for this, but it would seem i’m kind of short on superlatives :-)

this record is a perfect example for ‘being in the moment’, which is (or at least should be) every musicians priority. you’ll find the right thing played at every single moment. and that’s a great lesson in itself…

so before i write myself into tears of joy, i’ll say it again. go and buy this album. if you do, naked women will have sex in your backyard – or men, whatever floats your boat…

working on “traitor”, my 2nd album (listen to the 1st one “corner” in the blue player to your right) provoked some thoughts about the future, actually the present as well, of the album as such.

looking at websites or profile pages of independent artists creates the feeling that’s it’s just about single songs instead of albums. songs are uploaded as soon as they’re finished and more often than not, they don’t even seem to be related to some kind of album anymore. now, is this so?

it would make sense, because people listen to music on their mp3-players, create their own playlists and pick single tunes from download-sites. so is this the switch from rug to patchwork-quilt? and if yes, would it be wise for an artist to jump on that train? there’s another point to this, it would be more web2.0-ish if an artist would release each song as soon as it’s done because that would mean more frequent updates to his/her page or profile. one more advantage might be that each song would be noticed and listened to equally (at least at first). with the release of a whole album there’s always songs that draw more attention than others.

but on the other hand, i do like the concept of albums. to me it’s a lot less confusing, especially if someone covers a wide variety of styles with his/her music. so the albums would be like folders on your desktop that keep the songs together that belong together and give you a better view at what the artist did so far, because you see the different phases of his/her work. and the artist has the possibility to group songs together, so the album is more than just the sum of its tunes.

that leads to another thought. is this just triggered by the market? do artists simply react to the new era of consuming music? or do they welcome this and like the idea of thinking in smaller units? as for me, i’m not sure. right now, i’m in the middle of creating what i thought of as my 2nd album. but as a matter of fact, it’s more like 2. one of them very much related to the first one, stylewise. and the other one a straight hardrock record (about 8 songs each at the moment). now, there’s a decision to be made – should i do 2 albums, write more material for both and release 2 full records when they’re done? or should i just mix it together and do one album with those 16 tunes, even if they don’t really fit together? or, should i just go ahead and release every single song once it’s finished and don’t care about albums at all? or do the latter and then group the songs together once all of them are out? but who would be interested in an album if all the songs were already released? or, release some of the songs, so people already know half of the records, but have to wait for the records themselves to hear the other half?

i guess the main question here is: does the rug really tie the room together?

at this point, i have no idea. and instead of helping me to get closer to a decision, writing this confused me even more. damn!

do you remember the last time you’ve been to a museum? what i always hated with this were the discussions about what the artist meant with his/her work. same thing with poetry. back in school, we spent hours and hours figuring out what the writer’s intention was – or to be precise: the intention our teacher wanted him/her to have back then…

another teacher of mine, a rather stupid man and an unbelievably bad teacher, who should never have been allowed to influence children in the first place, made one (!) good point (in all the years we had to deal with him): “how can they claim to know what the poet/painter had in mind while creating this? maybe he was just too drunk to know what he was doing or maybe he just did something he got paid for without even thinking about it…”

no doubt, there are works of art that scream for some interpretation. and of course there are those with which the creator’s intentions are a priority – or maybe they just don’t make sense without the background knowledge of the artist’s situation, surroundings, feelings etc. but then again – back to school – we analyzed stuff that surely had no intention whatsoever. ‘it’s spring, i see a butterfly and some flowers over there, looks neat…’ that kind of thing.

so what i’m talking about here is my reluctance to overanalyzing, i guess. when i see a picture, i decide if i like it. simple as that. i have never ever liked a picture more after i was told what the artist had in mind. there were some ahuh-effects with music though. i heard something, didn’t like it, then was told /figured out/read what it’s about and decided that it wasn’t that bad. but that’s more like having respect for it rather than liking it…

don’t expect some kind of conclusion or punchline here, just random thoughts… it seems there are two three kinds of art: the one that should be thought about, analyzed, figured out because it makes it whole and without the idea behind it, you’d just miss the point (political comedy comes to mind for instance) aka one important piece of the puzzle, so what you receive would be only part of the creation. second, the creations with absolutely no background, nothing to analyze – scribbling out of the head of some drunk. which might, come to think of it, not be art at all in the first place (usually the stuff that pays the most…). and third, something that just looks, feels, sounds great even if there is no deeper meaning (at least not to our knowledge). but aren’t the third and the second not the same? nope, because of what i didn’t take into account – read on:

in all this, i forgot one very important part. the second half of every artwork: the recipient, beholder, listener etc. if it means something to him/her, who’s to say that it is not art? if it means something different to him/her than the original idea behind it, who’s to say that he/she got it all wrong? maybe that’s what makes it art, the fact that it means something to someone, no matter what or why….

i think i’m done with this. told you – just random thoughts…..

Image by audiot.eu via Flickr

this word has kind of a negative taste, right? but i guess it’s time to stop that because we need a term for it and this one seems appropriate. what i’m talking about is once again the awesome possibility to work together through the internet, which is – sadly enough – not used to the extent it deserves.

so i’m stepping forward and dare you to do the same. of course there were others before me and i won’t accept any credit whatsoever for this idea, because it simply wasn’t mine, but it’s a great one and anyone interested should stop couchpotating and be part of it. what i’m talking about here is a cooperation between artists – an artistic-penpalship-thing (we might have to work on that term though :-) ). if you would like to create something with me, drop me a line. easy as that. i don’t care if it’s ‘just’ music or if you’re a video-, photo-, paint-, or whatever-else-artist. i don’t care about a genre or some other stereotype. i just love to work something out with someone else somewhere. so if you are creative and kind of a free-thinker, we might give it a shot and see what happens…

come to think of it, “guerrilla” is also one of those words in need of a less negative rating. recently this has become a term for people who try to do things on their own, musicians without a label who try to make do with the resources they have for instance. and that’s a great thing, at least in my book…

ok, i borrowed this idea or learning technique from two outstanding teachers: Billy Ward and Vera F. Birkenbihl. the first one’s an unbelievably creative drummer, the second one’s a ridiculously productive and creative german author and trainer. i don’t know if there is any english material of her but if there is you really should check it out.

the idea now is quite simple. i mentioned this before as a way to learn in a passive way but there are ways to exploit this even further of course. again this is about imitation and the experiment would be to pick something to imitate, a guitar part from one of your favourite songs for instance. now the goal is not to cover it or play it your way but to copy it as perfect as you can. this includes not only the notes played in the same tempo but also things like the sound, the phrasing, the accents etc.

make an exact copy of the original. this can be pretty hard, i know, but it was a lot harder before the internet with sites like youtube made our day :-) now the first thing to do would be to figure out what it really is that’s been played in the first place. for me this usually is the tough part because great musicians have ways of making things sound different. ahuh. i’ll try to explain: there are two types of creativity, convex and concave (gosh, i hope this is the same in english…) – maybe we could call it active and passive creativity as well… the active (or convex) type is the one an artist uses by creating something – easy enough, right? now the other one is the type one uses by listening to what the artist created. meaning not only the artist needs to be creative but the audience as well. hmmmm, not very cear, is it? think about a painting by a modern artist. to lots of people it may just look like someone threw up right on the canvas. but others see something in it, their mind makes something of it, it creates or re-creates the picture. maybe the way the artist meant it, maybe not… that’s concave (passive) creativity. if you don’t have this, there will be no picture. of course this goes only for that one picture or artist and maybe he really threw up on the canvas, who knows? in that case your nose would need the concave….you get the idea.

anyway, great musicians (or painters etc.) are able to get your ears to hear it in a certain way. for example a drummer could leave out certain notes but you would swear that you hear them. that’s what makes it hard to find out what was really played in some performances. so the first thing i would do is to look if i could find it on youtube. if you dig it there’s a good chance other do as well, so someone might have uploaded exactly what you’re looking for. you might find a performance of the original artist as well as other guys trying to play it or maybe even break it down. if it fails you’d have to use trial and error but that’s fine and even has its advantages, because the quest for creating a sound-alike-piece is much more rewarding this way. but it can also be a very long one and might even not work at all… as soon as you know what was played, figure out how to get that exact sound – everything’s allowed. after that it’s just practicing to bring it up to speed or precision etc.

anyway, experiment. try as hard as you can to make a perfect copy. “but i don’t have the same gear…” don’t give me lame excuses. you need to make do with what you have, that’s an important part of the journey.

in the end you will not only have gained really cool insight into your favourite artist’s world but also have more possibilities to express yourself. and hands down, there’s no better way to learn than being taught by the masters themselves…