For, since her own father… who, when he seemed about to
recover, suddenly felt the icy hand of death upon him,…

With apologies to Michael Palin.

People who came into this saga of career-ending injury in the middle of the show have asked me to comment as to what exactly are the current symptoms that prevent me from blazing new trails on the six string. I call it ‘the icy hand of death‘. Basically, it comes down to the fact that my thumb has a short span of attention.

The good news is that, with a lot of practice (and hand lotion), I was able to get pretty much all the twiddling capacity back in my thumb. However, what happens now is that, after about five minutes of continuous twiddling, either with the up/down motion of a pick or via fingerpicking, my thumb seizes. I mean it just stops moving. And it refuses to re-start without a good twenty minutes of rest. If you’ve ever lifted weights, you […]

I’ve been thinking a lot over the last five years about hip hop and the dreadful state of pop music.

And I blame it all on Phillip Glass and C.P.E. Bach.

Back in music school there was this discussion of the constant tidal movements of complexity v. simplicity in all the arts. Some argued that this is ‘the Dionysian v. the Apollonian’, but I disagree.

Basically it works like this: every artistic movement starts out simple. Simple. A reaction to the mature prior aesthetic which has run out of gas. This can be a very good thing. The incoming group has fresh ideas that are stark and stripped down to their essence. They make the establishment look old and slow.

To contemporaries, ‘baroque’ music was a totally stripped down and simple aesthetic. But to modern eyes and ears, the term is applied to the overly ornate filigree that was only a part of the deal at the very end–when it was already being replaced by the classical period. Remember that J.S. Bach was considered […]

This is an update on what I’m doing to try to get back to play for you. It’s also a comment on the music biz. A couple of old saws come to mind:

You meet the same people on the way up as on the way down.

…and…

People never really grow up.

(That second one is mine, by the way.)

Bass Player/Vocalist

I have to say that re-purposing myself to sing and play bass is turning out to be not only a challenge, but something of a drag. First there is the issue of playing the bass. Yeah, I can play, but not this much. Were basses always this heavy? 😀

And secondly, there’s the problem of actually…er… singing and playing (rubs tummy and head at same time to demonstrate.) Frankly, I dunno how guys like Sting do it. I know that I took the Frank Zappa approach; ie. I consciously arranged the tunes to make it as easy as possible for me to play guitar and sing. And much of the time that meant not […]

I’ve started work on an opera called ‘Detroit’. Really.

No really. 😀

A Fearful Background

I have been wanting to do a large scale piece since I was in college. But frankly, I never had the material to work with. I remember reading how Brahms struggled so hard to publish his first pieces. He felt so unworthy and ‘unprepared’. And if Brahms felt unworthy? I mean we’re talking Brahms. Have you ever seen a picture of Brahms? Well, I just happened to have one in me back pocket…

I mean seriously. Unprepared? This is a guy who looks like he prepared just to take a dump every morning.

The thing is, the more that I’ve learned about writing music, the more I understand how he felt. Because the more you write, the more you realise how easy it is to cheat.

Look at most Hollywood film scores. Even the best ones tend to be weak these days. Why? Everyone learns in their first composition class how to take one or two melodies […]

I’m now offering guitar and bass lessons to the few, the proud. As I’ve begun playing out locally again, I’ve become aware of gaps in music instruction with most of the people I work with— regardless of experience. I’m setting aside a few hours a week to work with players who want to bone up on their theory and basic musicianship. And by ‘basic’ I don’t mean ‘beginner’. Basic musicianship is a lot like ‘bodybuilding’—even advanced players often need the occasional refresher when it comes to skills like transposition, ear training, chord substitutions and so on. A lesson or two with the right teacher can shake out the cobwebs and re-invigorate everything from improvisation to learning new tunes to writing to…