Thoughts on “Artistry”

Thoughts on “Artistry”

(note – Just some thoughts. I wrote this piece back in March, but am finally publishing it now. Not sure why I never hit publish.)

As someone who has spent the majority of his musical life as background music for people getting drunk, it’s hard for me to relate to what it must be like to actually create music as art. Sure, I’ve written my fair share of songs, and I have pretty strong opinions on what I like and don’t like about things I and others have created, but I’ve never seen myself as an artist, or my work as artistry.

I wonder sometimes if that’s just me avoiding actually putting myself out there for judgment or if it’s putting art on a pedestal, or a mix of both. I definitely am proud of some of the stuff I’ve created, and I’m definitely proud of some of the ways I’ve put my stamp on other people’s work through my experience in cover bands of various types.

I’m inherently not a precious person when it comes to creating musical things, which is to my detriment, I think. I do believe I’d have something to offer as an artist. I just carry this inbuilt suspicion and animosity toward the very act of being precious, with the notable exception that I’m all in if it’s an artist I love – they can be as precious as they feel they need to be and I’m still eating it up. But I wonder if it really does come down to fear that nothing I could ever do would measure up to the things that I like.

Stepping away from music for a bit – when I was first creating audio productions, long before I worked in radio production, I was very particular about things being “just so”. I really crafted the things I created with a lot of care. When I started making commercials, I would do the same, and take tons of time just trying to get them perfect. Once I worked in radio production full time, I learned that I simply did not have enough time to spend hours on one 30-second commercial. I really had to speed it up to get things done. Then I became a production director all by myself, and had no time to be precious about it – I just had to get things done.

One might think I’d be able to carry over that “get it done” attitude to music, but the lack of hard deadlines in music has kept me from really feeling like I’ve ever accomplished anything. People flog the “art is never finished, only abandoned” cliche, but it is a real trap if you think you can keep working on something forever. That’s what I’ve been doing with a lot of my own music. Nothing feels good enough for me, and almost every time I’ve shared something, it’s mostly met with indifference, which reinforces the idea that I’m simply not doing anything interesting. Which is largely true, if I’m being brutally honest with myself. I have my retread pop punk-style songs, and my retread power pop songs and my retread sort of singer-songwritery songs. Nothing is all that “me”.

I grapple with the whole “me” thing as a writer. It reminds me of a time in high school. I was doing my normal thing of talking in every voice but my own (doing accents and characters and basically being a teenage Dana Carvey wannabe) and my best friend Brandon had grown tired of my antics, grabbed me, and said, “What do YOU sound like?” It’s funny how much that resonated. It went far beyond just doing a surfer dude voice followed by a fey German accent. It sticks in my head to this day, but it’s morphed into something even bigger. Perhaps even something menacing for me as a creator. What do I sound like? Honestly, I’ve been avoiding that for years, mostly because every time I create something, I really hate what I sound like when I’m not basically doing a style impression of some other artist I admire. Who am I kidding? I hate that, too, because it’s not original!

Which brings me to the whole point of this spiel: Artistry. How does one define it? I struggle with it all the time, because I feel like 25 years playing in cover bands has basically robbed me of any artistry of my own. I am a pretty complete musician, because I’ve played many different genres of music and can slide into most musical situations quite comfortably, but I never feel like an artist or feel like anything I do is truly artistic. I’ve gotten close to it from time to time, especially during improvisational performances at jam nights, and coming up with parts to complement the crazy ways we redo things in Chandler and The Bings, but with the music I’ve composed, I don’t know that I’ve ever gotten there, to a place where I’d consider it art. I’ve definitely tried.

Thanks for reading!
TMS

Tape Don’t Lie

Tape Don’t Lie

With apologies to (and endless admiration for) Shakira’s hips, there’s another thing that don’t lie: Tape. If one ever wants to be made to feel like you’re nowhere near the musician or singer you think you are, you need to record yourself. Humbling is GOOD. But it’s also NOT FUN.

I pulled a multi-track recording off the Allen & Heath QU-16 mixer that me and the other Bings were playing through, and HOLY FUCKING SHIT.

I SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK as a backing vocalist.

My lead vocals and bass playing aren’t terrible for most of the show. They have suck moments, and are often mediocre rhythmically, but my backing vocals are almost all terrible.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure casual listeners of music might not notice most of the suckage, but when you reach a certain level of knowledge and understanding of music, you really hear all the warts. There were many times we were performing this same list of songs where I thought something was off, and often I could pinpoint it, but I had never really recorded something that isolated all our performances like a multi-track recording. Talk about brutal honesty. There are times in life when you are blind to your own fetid stench. You get used to it, so you don’t smell it. It’s like I didn’t have a nose and the mixer gave me one. I really thought I was doing an okay job. It didn’t sound awful in my in-ear monitors (which tend to be very revealing of flaws), so I had no idea.

In times like these, my first impulse is usually to quit, because I’m horribly embarrassed that I put that chunge out there in front of people. I always want to impress, because it makes people happy (and usually they express that happiness by saying something nice to me about my performance). Fortunately, my next impulse after wanting to hang it all up is usually SOLVE THE PROBLEM. In this case, the problem is my crap-ass, out-of-tune backing vocals. I’m going to have to go through the parts and learn them right and then practice them over and over so they’re just in my muscle memory. I’m also going to do my faux custom molds for another set of in-ear monitors I own because I think that the lack of overall clarity in the ones I’m using might be contributing to the suckage. I’m not blaming the tools, but I definitely want to be more aware when I’m stinking up the joint. Maybe better monitors is the key.

The recordings also reveal a lot of flaws in my bandmates’ performances, too. Taken all together, it actually doesn’t sound horrible, but if I decide to do something with these recordings other than make myself sad, there are definitely times when I’ll be either re-recording or simply removing failed attempts at harmony and other mistakes.

The moral of the story is record early and record often, and don’t be discouraged. Turn your discouragement into encouragement. You CAN learn those parts. You just have to put in the time and effort. I know in my lead singer days I’d record stuff, notice parts where I was straining for a note and took the time to work out how to do that more effectively. I think it might be time to get back into that habit. I also think that you, loyal reader, should do the same if you are a performer of any kind. Don’t be afraid of the tape, and don’t have so much of an ego that you can’t be open to SUCKING HARD sometimes. We all fall down. It’s how we get back up that matters.

I believe musicians in bands that do interpretations of classic songs and aren’t trying to be “note perfect” should be brave and try things. We definitely do a lot of that in Chandler and The Bings, since generally we care more about playing a fun show than being “perfect”. I remember reading an interview with Edward Van Halen where he talked about his philosophy on taking risks musically and jamming – he said it’s all “falling down the stairs and landing on your feet”. I have always tried to follow this philosophy, and there have been times that it’s worked out and times when it’s been awful. Since the band isn’t purely an improvisational experience, and there are defined things I need to be doing, it doesn’t directly apply, but the way I approach my bass playing on the songs is definitely adventurous and I’m very proud of it most of the time. In these contexts, I do generally fall down the stairs and land on my feet. I am not as skilled a backup singer as I am a bassist, though, so I think I need to spend a little more time on the basics of singing backups so that when I do go for it, my percentages get higher. Most of the big swings for backing vocal stuff at the show were misses. The bigger problem was how often my defined parts were misses.

I was going through the songs, and there were so many times I was off it was disheartening. When I sang lead, I pretty much killed it (pretty much), but so many times I tried to get in when Pat or Alon were singing, I was off. I hate that. I don’t want to be the piece that’s making things sound like shit. I want to be the piece that makes everything come together and sound AWESOME. So it’s time to put in some work. And I better do it quickly – I’ve got a baby coming in a few weeks.

I’m looking forward to being a smoothly lubricated, quiet wheel instead of the squeaky one I am right now. Practice will be the grease to get me there. And the fact that the “tape don’t lie” got me to notice I need some work.

Thanks for reading, and come see us Chandler and The Bings fellas sometime. I’ll be singing better.

RECORD YOURSELF!
TMS

Track List

Track List

I’m embarking on a new quest in the land of The Musical Schizo. Collecting my songs into groups that will be assembled as albums. Yes. I’m making track lists for forthcoming releases!

Which means there’s actual PLANNING going on in original-music-creation-land.

The first list I’ve made is a compilation of my songs on love, loss, and relationships. I was going through my list of saved text files and demos from the songs I’ve written over the years, and realized there’s a solid trend in a bunch of them – both thematic and musical. So I collected those songs and decided that they will comprise my first compilation of my music. There are a few in there that are good, some that are marginal, and some that need lyrical work, but the good thing is, most are almost completely arranged and ready to go. This means that work on the first record for yours truly (The Musical Schizo) has begun in earnest.

If you follow my social media (and if you’re reading this, I’m sure you probably do, since actual websites are the “deep cuts” these days), you’ll know that I said that new stuff is coming soon. That was more me hoping out loud. I had some ideas for what I wanted to accomplish, but nothing that was really materializing – I think I was more trying to encourage myself to actually get something out there and create because putting a message like that out compels one to action. Or it should, at least.

So, here begins the process of finishing up the songs and getting them properly recorded for inclusion on my first record. I’m sure my buddy Dennis C. Miller will be thrilled that I’m finally doing something. He’s been bugging me about it for years.

Life in general is very good, and things with the Bings are fantastic. I just switched up my bass rig so that the Helix takes center stage, and I’m very pleased with the results. As much as I love my GK amp I bought a while back, it just wasn’t really working all that well in context, largely for reasons out of my control.

Take care, all and look out for “The Musical Schizo Loves And Loses”, coming to a digital distribution network near you sometime in 2018 if all goes well.

TMS

Musings from my new machine

Musings from my new machine

My 44th birthday is next Saturday. I officially am starting to feel old. My lovely fiancee decided that she wanted to do something super nice for me for the occasion, so she purchased a really nice 2-in-1 laptop for me, which is the “new machine” mentioned in the title of this post. Even better, she decided to let me have it early! I am so excited because this allows me to take any sort of productions I’d like to do portable. It’s got more than enough power to do everything I need, recording-wise, and it plays nice with all my recording software. I will be able to use it to write and blog more, and be more creative in general.

I really had committed to doing more creative work earlier this year, but I somehow let life get in the way again. I’m still not doing what I really want to do in that respect, though I did come up with a good song idea for Chandler And The Bings that we should be adding to our show soon. It’s just going to take some vocal work and “Bingsification” to really make it special, but it’s got GREAT potential. I’ll have to be satisfied with that for now.

As for my Bings, we’re kicking every type of ass. We just did a benefit last night for hurricane victims where we raised a small pile of money, and it was a really fun show. Listening to my live recording of the show, it’s not as musically “there” as a lot of other bands I’ve done, but it is more energetic and fun, and the crowd is loving every minute.

The one thing that’s truly been nagging at me musically is not playing any shows where I’m doing most of the singing. I really didn’t think I’d miss it as much as I do. I like being bass guy, harmony guy, and once-in-a-while lead vocalist for the Bings, but it’s kind of weird how much of a hole the lack of lead singing leaves just mostly being an instrumentalist.

Anyway, that’s the update from here. Peace be the journey and #leadwithlove!
TMS

Further Musings on The Bings (and Chandler Bing)

Further Musings on The Bings (and Chandler Bing)

Chandler Bing was by far my favorite character on the sitcom “Friends”. I had already been a huge fan of Matthew Perry from some of his earlier shows, and he’s the reason that I even decided to watch “Friends” when it hit the airwaves in 1994. Well, not the only reason, because I had seen Courteney Cox in a few other things at that point and was a little obsessed with her. But together they were for sure a win for me – funny quippery from a familiar face and an absurdly beautiful woman I could watch? Sign me up. It premiered when I was in college. September of 1994 – so it was my second year living up in the dorms. Friends became an event back in these pre-widespread-internet days. Groups of coeds would gather in the TV lounges every Thursday night for this bit of “Must-See TV”. At this point in my life, most of my friends were young women, so of course I was going to be roped in for the Thursday night festivities even if I hadn’t been a Matt Perry and Courteney Cox fan. I thought the show was a little ridiculous, but I really loved their wisecracking ways, and aside from Ross, who was a whiny bitch, and Rachel, who embodied pretty much everything that could go wrong with a woman to me, I really enjoyed the show. It was so thoroughly white-person-90s that it seemed targeted directly to the Gen-X temporary denizens of my very small, very white college town. And every time you hear someone say, “I was SO not happy” or something to that effect (the emphasized negative), you have “Friends”, specifically Matthew Perry as Chandler Bing, to thank for that.

So how does it all relate to music or me being the Musical Schizo? Well, there was another character on the show, Phoebe Buffay, who was an aspiring singer-songwriter and would play her hilariously bad songs at “Central Perk”, the coffee house where all the Friends hung out (and one of them worked). Around that time, perhaps a year later, a coffee house opened up in my very small, very white college town called the Java Hut. There were plenty of Phoebe Buffays that played that place. One of them was actually not terribly bad, and he was the roommate of a friend of mine. This singer-songwriter would enlist my help because I was the only person he knew who owned a PA system. I’d cart my rig (Peavey XR600B and two 10″-12″-horn column speakers) down to the Java Hut and get it all set up so he could play his music for the caffeinated clientele. He wrote songs about all kinds of things – life, love, Star Wars – he just wrote endlessly. His notebook of songs was ENORMOUS. At this point, I think I had written about 20 songs, and they were all pretty terrible blues songs or things forced into some neat riff or chord progression that I had come up with that didn’t really have a story or any sort of decent melody. After meeting this person, I was inspired to write more – and better – and to figure out what it was that I really wanted to say. I went through a five- or six-year period where I wrote a lot of songs, most of them still terrible, but more and more they started to represent things on my mind, or stories about characters in my life or characters in my head. Then I got married, had children, got full-time work, and life started to distract and intervene.

They say major life events like getting married or divorced and having children can really inspire creativity, but weirdly my most creative periods have come when I’ve had nothing going on. When life is really boring and I have nothing else to do. Periods where I’ve gotten over the initial grief or joy of some big life event and psychologically feel “okay”. My most recent big tough life event was probably my divorce in 2013, and to date I’ve gotten basically zero songs out of it. I did meet a wonderful woman and she’s inspired a song or two, but my writing output has been utter shit for the past 10 years. When I have the time I don’t have the energy, when I have the energy I don’t have the time. I’m sure many creative people have the same issues. It doesn’t help that I generally assemble my song demos in the same digital audio workstation software I use for my day job. When I come home from staring at that for eight hours, I’m not exactly inspired to stare at it any longer just to get song ideas down. I’ve thought about using other media to write stuff, and every time I have something vaguely inspiring I make a note of it on my phone’s built-in recorder. Thus far, that’s resulted in one new song. The song inspired by my fiancee but not directly about her necessarily. It’s been through a couple of demos and I’m not fully satisfied with it just yet, but it is quite a stylistic departure for me:

But moving on, I have in my head that I really want to be more creative. I feel like I want to write new and better songs again. I have a studio space where this is possible. But it’s not happening because I can’t decide exactly how I want to focus my creative musical energy. I don’t know if I want to write new songs or improve myself as a musician in general, by working on my relative pitch and understanding of theory, so that when I do write, I can connect things more easily. So my life with music has been one of pleasant distractions for the past few years, since my songwriting output went down the tubes. I’m not sure if the pleasant distractions are WHY my songwriting output is in the toilet, but they have been very pleasant – my long and satisfying (if up and down) run with Roman Holiday, my abbreviated tenure with Nudge, my many fill-in gigs with Texas Players and Mark Chandler, my even-more-abbreviated time with Flext, my false start that was The Dangerfields, and all of my wonderful solo gig experiences. Which brings us back to my current pleasant distraction, Chandler and The Bings.

I detailed in my last post that they have managed to soften the hard candy shell that represents my “musical perfectionish” tendencies (not “-ist” because that’s unrealistic). We come up with clever reworked versions of songs and that’s pretty inspiring – to hold on to the essence of the song and make it relatable but put a new spin on it that better fits our personality as an ensemble. It’s the same bit that I found endlessly inspiring working things out with Roman Holiday, creating rock band versions of 80s synth-pop tunes. Our wonderful shows with engaged and happy audiences have made me understand more and more that if you just have fun, they’ll have fun with you. I want to carry that fun back into my creative endeavors, so I think my next plan is a fundamental lifestyle shift. Taking a little bit of time every day to just create something, good or bad. Just to remind myself that it’s fun and that I love creating things. Because I DO! So, much like realizing that I need to have some physical exercise every day, and committing to that, I’m going to make the commitment to have a little creativity exercise every day, too. This blog post is the first example of that. Musing about life in the mid-90s, my love for “Friends” and how inspiring it can be to just love creating music, art, whatever. I AM A CREATIVE. It’s time to start behaving like one again. A creative that doesn’t create is nothing. I’m tired of being nothing.

Related unrelated comment: I once wrote an episode of Friends in college with my wonderful roommate Mary because we had a TV Writing and Criticism class together. It was great. Well, we thought it was great. But it was certainly great fun to create!

Expect new stuff from me soon, because I’m going to document my creations here on the blog.

Thank you for reading, and peace be the journey!
TMS

P.S. Come see a Chandler and The Bings show – it may not be perfect, but it sure is FUN!

Well, things have definitely not gone according to plan…

Well, things have definitely not gone according to plan…

So word of the resurrection of Roman Holiday were premature. Sadly, no matter my efforts, I haven’t been able to get the band booked anywhere. I am a terrible booking person. I’m sure it didn’t help that we never updated our marketing materials, etc., but I want to apologize publicly to Lee and Ned for not making it happen yet. Moving on from that…

I’ve joined the 90s “phatness” that is Chandler and The Bings.

This new experience has really challenged my perspectives on how to be in a band. First, because this band has actual heat – people seem to really love what we do more than anything else I’ve ever done in a cover band. Second, because even though the quality isn’t necessarily where I’d let things stand if I were the music director, these guys are such a hoot to play with that I actually don’t care. WHAT? THE MUSICAL ASSHOLE LETS THINGS GO? Yup. For some reason I do.

We are playing stuff by all kinds of 90s artists – Green Day, Spice Girls, TLC, Salt N Pepa, Gin Blossoms, Celine Dion, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears – and it all seems to work. We don’t play the songs right – we chop up arrangements or rearrange them. But people still love it. I think it’s the amount of fun we bring to the stage. It in some ways reminds me of Slaphappy, because that silliness always made people dig us, even if we didn’t sound perfect.

Regardless, I’m happy this has come along, but I’m really sad about having no solo gigs and no Roman Holiday comeback. Perhaps this will light a fire under my butt and bring that stuff back sooner than later.

Time will tell.

Thanks for reading, and check out the new band!
TMS

The Dangerfields are in peril, but ROMAN HOLIDAY IS BACK!

The Dangerfields are in peril, but ROMAN HOLIDAY IS BACK!

So The Dangerfields might be a dead concept, with Shawn moving back to Jacksonville, but with that news also came the news that Roman Holiday is coming back from the dead!

I’m so excited to play with my musical brothers Ned and Lee again all together as a trio. Our first practice back really didn’t feel like three and a half years had passed since last we played together. We just sounded like us. It’s so weird. But good weird.

So look out for more news on that front in the coming weeks. We should have some shows booked soon, hopefully for the next few months! WOO HOO!

#leadwithlove,
TMS

The Dangerfields, Solo shows, keyboard, fitness, etc.

The Dangerfields, Solo shows, keyboard, fitness, etc.

Updates:

The Dangerfields are still in progress, and we’ve played one more show since my last post. Okay, that’s not really accurate, because it’s not The Dangerfields, really if Lee isn’t playing drums. But it was a nice try, although an overally unpleasant experience for a variety of reasons. (Kudos to Ernie for filling in and doing a good job) We’ve had a couple of rehearsals since then and the last one was very inspiring – we’re starting to sound like a BAND – which is really good. Finding time to schedule shows around our lives and Lee’s other band is the next trick, but we’ll get to that. So life is good in the world of no respect. 🙂

I booked a few more solo shows at Scoreboard, and I’m very excited to be back there. I’m going to try and make my PA and light rig even more simple for easier setup-teardown, which is a delightful challenge.

I bought a Korg X50 synth at a pawn shop, and it’s already inspiring me with its sounds. I’m excited to become a better keyboardist, and I might even learn some songs on it for the solo gigs. Wouldn’t that be weird?

Finally, I’m back at the gym on a regular basis. Time to get in shape and stay in shape. It’s already making my joints feel better, and once I’ve worked out a way to eat better with my weird sensory food issues on top of the regular gym activity, I’ll get lighter and will be able to start exercising a little harder.

I have been inspired to improve my overall musicianship, but I also really want to tap into whatever emotions are flowing through me now. I’m very happy with my life in general – my work is pleasant, my home situation is awesome, and I feel very loved. And that sort of peace usually keeps me from being all that expressive with music – I just don’t write all that much. I have had some serious moments of worry and pain, though, with family far away, first from Hurricane Matthew (everyone is okay, but it was scary), and then through a friend’s loss this past weekend.

One of my best friends in the world, both musically and non-musically, just lost his brother. I can’t really imagine the emotions he’s feeling, but it’s made me very, very sad, because his brother was always such an encouraging spirit, supporting our musical endeavors and really just showing us “the love”. If I ever had to do a crying scene in a movie, I’d think about losing one of my brothers – the very idea is that level of pain for me, and I wish there was something I could do to help my friend through this horrible time.

I wish there was a way to express it as well as I think Neil Peart and Rush did on this song:

The world will miss you, Darin.

Peace be the journey, all!
TMS

The Dangerfields are officially a gigging band!

The Dangerfields are officially a gigging band!

So my new trio, The Dangerfields (www.facebook.com/TheDangerfieldsATX) played their first two gigs these past two Thursdays. And rough as they were at times, they were fun. According to most of the people who have talked to us, we’re a lot of fun. And that’s great. Of course, it makes me think of my “wow, you guys are having fun up there” saying I use when a band sort of sounds like shit but are having a good time. Our show at the Oasis was hot and the load-in was tough, but it was great to get in front of a crowd for the first time. The show at Hanovers was even more fun, because people were more engaged than the Oasis show. So I’m pretty psyched that this is happening. Thanks to Lee and Shawn for rocking out with me.

Audio from the Hanovers show:

Set 1: 

Set 2: 

Set 3: 

I’ve still got my regular plate of solo shows over at Scoreboard (8/26 and 9/9) and up at Quinns (9/29), and I’ll be playing a benefit solo at the Rusty Rudder up on Lake Travis on 8/28. It’s a great cause – we’re raising money for the victims of the Louisiana Floods. Here’s all the info.

That’s my quick update. THE DANGERFIELDS ARE REAL!

See you around town! #leadwithlove

TMS

 

July Update – Solo shows and new band

July Update – Solo shows and new band

So my updates apparently are coming every three months or so now. Time to stop thinking it’s going to be more frequent and accept that I sort of suck at this “regular blogging thing”.

I’ve been playing some great solo shows at a new venue (to me) called “Scoreboard”. I have a lot of fun there. I also just played my first show at Quinns in Round Rock. That was delightful and I kind of killed it, which made me feel like I’m getting good at this solo thing.

The new trio that’s starting up is still in progress, though we grow ever closer to gigs. We haven’t settled on a name for it yet, but it’s definitely been fun putting it together. Once we pick a name we’ll book some shows and force this thing into being. I thought it’d be funny to call it “Roman Candle” since that was the most common mistake people made with “Roman Holiday”, and this is essentially the same stuff (though it will get different as time passes).

On the creative front, well, that’s just stalled. I’m not feeling very inspired, so I’m not writing, but I have been playing some of my existing originals live, and they’ve gotten a good response, so that makes me feel good.

Next show is at Scoreboard on July 9th (this Saturday), and then a break for about a month. Maybe we can use that time for whipping the new band into shape and getting it some gigs. Here’s hoping!

Thanks for reading, and let me know if you have any good band name ideas you’d like to share. We’re not excited about much of anything we’ve thought of so far.

Peace be the journey!
TMS