Louis C.K. has done a bit for a number of years called ‘Hilarious’. Basically he talks about how hyperbolic everything speaks these days. Every joke is ‘hilarious’. Any event even mildly interesting is ‘amazing’. And then, of course, he spends five minutes giving an ever escalating series of penalties and tortures for offenders. Prog rockers? Epic, of course! But my pet peeve is ‘awesome’; which Webster’s describes as ‘inspiring awe.’

As Louis so rightly points out, if you start with everything on the top shelf, there’s no place left to go.

The thing that wears one down after a while, in any kind of modern music is the constant pounding. The lack of contrast.

COMPARE AND CONTRAST

One reason I always jumped at the chance to play Cuban music was the huge contrasts. There’s no drum set, so the bottom is held down by a guy playing a double bass (typically this old thing called an Ampeg Baby Bass, which is made out of aircraft plastic.) And unlike pop music, the bass […]

I understand that the biggest objection people come up against re. Detroit is the ‘opera’ voice. We’ve all done it in the shower.

Figaro! Figaro!

…and so on. I mocked that whole deal in my song ‘Time’ from

In our last riveting post, we were talking about ‘leverage’ in the context of getting as much production work done with as few resources as possible. In this exciting conclusion, the reverse is discussed; ie. squeezing the most much reward from that output as can be got.

In the most coarse manner, I want to get as much mileage out of this material as I can. Think of this like food companies. They start with a $10 of raw corn, and then somehow, turn that into $100 worth of ‘corn products. Like most things in life, this can be good (corn meal) or very, very bad (high fructose corn syrup.) But they’re quite efficient at the concept. My goal is similar. Hopefully the by-products of somewhat higher overall quality.

What I’m trying to do is get as much stuff out of Detroit as possible. One thing is to be able to re-purpose materials

The Opera (well duh!… I wonder how Verdi said ‘Duh’?)
JCH Music: I always envisioned this material as being at least […]

What’s The Delay This Time?

I know. I know!

Look, I haven’t posted for a while because (beside the fact that the dog ate my homework and the sun was in my eyes), the usual delays of health and wealth and computers. But Detroit does proceed afoot. Or ahead. Whatever. What is holding up progress now are dongles and fingers.

The Finger

Yeah, that finger. This refers to a silly infection I got after cutting my middle finger doing some sort of repair. Remember how your mother used to nag all the time to wash a cut immediately after an injury. Good advice for grown ups. Something about being ‘old’ that makes one less skinned in Teflon. 😉 So now I’ve been fighting this painful blister with antibiotics going on two months. Not enough to kill me. But it sure makes playing difficult.

Dongles

It is a fairly unique practice in the music software biz to use a form of copy protection known as a ‘dongle’. Feel free to titter. Basically a dongle […]

To me, this is America. Both the building and the image. Some may say it’s ‘the wild open west’ or some vista of water or mountains, plains and horses. But to me, America is a building that juts out with that ‘determined chin’ and says to the world, ‘I can make anything that I need to make in order to accomplish any task and at whatever cost. And I do it because we are here to grow.’ It is a look that is at once expansionist and grounded.

The Penobscot Building is not particularly elegant in the broad strokes. Its proportions speak of power and strength and production during a period when those things mattered more than just about anything else. (Elegance? That was for a worn out effeminate Europe that was wasting its energy arguing over petty anachronisms—they got the World War they deserved for being so wasteful!)

So you’d be forgiven for missing the buildings thousands of and even humorous details;—even if you’ve lived in Detroit […]