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I keep getting asked how the opera is going. Actually, I’m getting asked less and less because interested parties are sick of waiting. But Detroit proceeds apace. What strains credibility is the lack of audio samples. And that, Dear Reader, is the point of this post.

JUST ME AND THIS LI’L OL’ GUITAR

There is this myth and legend—which used to be true—that songwriters sat down in a room with their geetar and the producer and performer say, “Now that’s a song! Sign that boy up!” But that ended decades ago.

But I, in all my naivete, still feeling twenty years old, that we were back in the age of Hindemith and some old Germanic types with white flowing beards and a monocle, perhaps. I present Herr Professor with a large sheaf of score papers and he hears the score in his head, humming softly at certain particularly cantabile passages. Boy, what a moronic idea.

Today’s music societies are largely technically uneducated. I don’t mean that the way it sounded. Back in the day […]

And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Matthew 6

I just read an article about this guy Reinhold Mack. Here’s a guy who produced or engineered over 100 million records and you’ve likely never heard of him. Led Zeppelin, ELO, Queen for openers. Amazing. I’d never heard of him. But his credits are as long as yer arm. It was so refreshing to hear about this guy, I mean.. it was like a tonic. I mean, check out his wikipedia page. Have you ever in your life seen a guy with that many credits with such a Spartan page? It’s insane.

So the first question […]

Life is getting slower. At least on the vast Interweb. And I blame those diabolical Swedes.

Now every few years we go through these cycles of ‘reach’ vs. ‘grasp’. For a while, ‘hardware’ rules. Life is zippy. Pundits bitch about how our computers are ‘under-utilised’ and bemoan the ‘boredom’ of software. Then we go through a phase where there’s all this new, trés cool software which leaves our various devices gasping; and us waiting. Sadly, we’re going through one of the latter phases now.

So how is the opera thing going? Not bad. Not bad. Glad you asked. Actually, the thing fairly well writes itself. It’s an odd thing, but it’s clear I wanted to write something about Detroit; that Detroit is the big catalyst of my entire life, since I got here. The real issues are always two:

Is it turning into just a series of songs?
Why the fuck didn’t I pay more attention in orchestration class?

The first issue doesn’t concern me now so much. I’ve moved along far enough where basically everything is developing out of the same four themes I’ve presented in the teaser medley. In fact, the worry now is that there is too much ‘unity’—that the end will seem like 400 variations on the same four ditties. Beethoven may have been able to take four notes and turn ’em into an hour of interesting ‘organic development’. But hey, he was Beethoven. (Which begs the question: would he have still been […]