This is another of those subjects that has been on my mind for a long time. With all the new technology around, being introduced at an ever-faster pace, it was quite sometime ago that the headline was announced on my good old-fashioned TV screen: "The CD is dead".
Only a matter of time, they said. And dying with it, the idea of "the album"...collections of music from a particular artist. People will pick & choose individual pieces of music, archive them on a storage device of their choosing, and then play back whatever they want whenever they want.
My mouth gaped uncharacteristically open; to me the CD was NEW technology. One that had the potential to dominate media playback for the forseeable future.
I can't be sure if the end of "albums" is in fact in sight or not. There are several factors in play that could affect the outcome, so I don't claim to have a see-all, know-all attitude. But my chips are betting on the deeper parts of human nature winning out in the end. Let me explain...
I believe the conclusion that "albums are doomed" is based on the demonstrable fact that the vast majority of music buyers are young (teens & twenties) and that is what drives this phenomenon. I remember that during that period of my own life that many things in life were new and exciting and you want to sample it all.
My analogy is that music (at that age) is like a salad bar. You pay your money and go WOW!
"I want to try this! I want to try that!" and you load up your plate until you can't eat any more....until next time, when you do it all again; eating more of what you like & trying stuff you didn't get to try last time...This phase may go on for years.
But as time passes, and experiences build up, a process of discrimination begins to operate in human beings: the things that weren't really that great you eventually stop going for. Even the good ones, you have to ask yourself, "Which things would I rather have more of today?". And you end up leaving behind something that's "pretty good" so that you can have more of the good and still have a helping of something "great".
With music this is especially so...very similar in a way to selecting a mate. You surround yourself by great music, with some good stuff out on the periphery for when you're in certain moods...And then one day you hear a song that just hits you RIGHT BETWEEN THE EYES...and you think, "Wow, that song is just like that artist knows me...how I feel, what I'm thinking...and plus revealed to me new things about myself that I never realized. I wonder what else they've written and recorded??"
Now you have someone who is a potential "album buyer", who maybe doesn't just want to collect a bunch of songs, but would find a deep attachment to a statement in the form of a "collection of pieces" designed BY that artist to form a synergistic entity.
Of course, I could be wrong. There is a powerful force in what we are exposed to when we are young. A generation never exposed to albums may never be aware what they are missing out on.
On the other hand, things in this universe go around in cycles. Maybe after a couple generations without albums, someone will "discover" that if they put collections of music in a package and market them together, people will find the value in it...and they will then be announcing the "re-birth of the album".
Monday, March 28, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Where songs come from....
I have been thinking about this one a long time, and slightly hesitant to write about it. Whenever you start to approach to "center of reality", things get really fuzzy and hard to talk about because you are going where conventional rules cease to apply. As a result anything you write sounds a little bit crazy.
Creative people tend to understand, but not always, depending on their methods and personality.
First I want to look at the word "art". It has a common root with word "artificial" meaning "man-made", and there is no doubt that we are humans that create art. But it tends to make us look like we are phonies who are copying or imitating creation, and in a sense that is true. In the case of "writing with intention" (see other blogs), this may seem almost completely true.
But I am convinced that "inspired" work, to any degree has a source above and beyond any petty desire to imitate.
To relate this from my point of view I have to delve into a part of my background not yet discussed. I have long had an interest in Native American music, and the ancient songs passed down for many generations in particular. I have played, as a guest, on a number of native drum groups, sung with a rattle in sweat lodge and been invited to join at least 2 drum groups (or "drums" as they are referred to) but neither one panned out for different reasons.
As I understand it, the birth of most native songs is generally regarded as a spiritual event. The songs are usually regarded as "gifts from the spirit", and not the product of human invention. This fits perfectly with my experiences regarding the birth of songs and was easy for me to grasp.
During this period I had several experiences which tended to solidify this understanding.
The Indian way (at least as it was taught to me) was that if you needed a song, you prayed for it.
Once I was on a mountain for the purpose of prayer, and it was a good experience. All was well and I felt in tune with the universe. Despite being a songwriter and musician, I realized I didn't have a personal or "prayer" song. So I prayed for one.
Almost instantly, I heard a melody. It was in a voice like the wind but definitely NOT the wind. It was very much like my experience in the birth of the song "Freeway" (see my blog on "inspiration" at TomHawkRevisited) but much clearer. Again that "voice" was both old & young, male & female, high & low and everything in between at the same time.
Like "Freeway", the notes in the melody were not of the scales that humans use, but there could be no mistake of how to translate those notes. It could only be described as a "spirit voice".
In another, similar event, I used to raise gourds for the purpose of making my own rattles. One day I was checking on my gourd patch, and I remembered from something I had been told or read, that singing to your plants was helpful. So in good Indian fashion, I prayed for a "gourd-growing" song.
Instantly it was there. This time much more defined & human as it entered my mind and I began singing it.
These are the things that tend to convince me of what I've always felt.
Consider, everything that humans produce takes time. There's the planning, re-working, the endless tasks of gathering information and/or material to produce anything. My music is this way. It takes countless hours for me to work out, write down, arrange, record and mix even a single song so that some simple idea in my head can be heard by other people.
But with "inspiration" this is often NOT the case. One second there is nothing there. Then suddenly it exists. No human work proceeds this way.
There are those who think creative work bubbles-up from the unconscious mind, and yes I too believe the subconscious is involved. But even the unconscious needs time to work. These experiences have shown me that there is something more at work here, not bound by the constrictions of time & space. Perhaps something from that realm that gives rise to Creation itself.
Creative people tend to understand, but not always, depending on their methods and personality.
First I want to look at the word "art". It has a common root with word "artificial" meaning "man-made", and there is no doubt that we are humans that create art. But it tends to make us look like we are phonies who are copying or imitating creation, and in a sense that is true. In the case of "writing with intention" (see other blogs), this may seem almost completely true.
But I am convinced that "inspired" work, to any degree has a source above and beyond any petty desire to imitate.
To relate this from my point of view I have to delve into a part of my background not yet discussed. I have long had an interest in Native American music, and the ancient songs passed down for many generations in particular. I have played, as a guest, on a number of native drum groups, sung with a rattle in sweat lodge and been invited to join at least 2 drum groups (or "drums" as they are referred to) but neither one panned out for different reasons.
As I understand it, the birth of most native songs is generally regarded as a spiritual event. The songs are usually regarded as "gifts from the spirit", and not the product of human invention. This fits perfectly with my experiences regarding the birth of songs and was easy for me to grasp.
During this period I had several experiences which tended to solidify this understanding.
The Indian way (at least as it was taught to me) was that if you needed a song, you prayed for it.
Once I was on a mountain for the purpose of prayer, and it was a good experience. All was well and I felt in tune with the universe. Despite being a songwriter and musician, I realized I didn't have a personal or "prayer" song. So I prayed for one.
Almost instantly, I heard a melody. It was in a voice like the wind but definitely NOT the wind. It was very much like my experience in the birth of the song "Freeway" (see my blog on "inspiration" at TomHawkRevisited) but much clearer. Again that "voice" was both old & young, male & female, high & low and everything in between at the same time.
Like "Freeway", the notes in the melody were not of the scales that humans use, but there could be no mistake of how to translate those notes. It could only be described as a "spirit voice".
In another, similar event, I used to raise gourds for the purpose of making my own rattles. One day I was checking on my gourd patch, and I remembered from something I had been told or read, that singing to your plants was helpful. So in good Indian fashion, I prayed for a "gourd-growing" song.
Instantly it was there. This time much more defined & human as it entered my mind and I began singing it.
These are the things that tend to convince me of what I've always felt.
Consider, everything that humans produce takes time. There's the planning, re-working, the endless tasks of gathering information and/or material to produce anything. My music is this way. It takes countless hours for me to work out, write down, arrange, record and mix even a single song so that some simple idea in my head can be heard by other people.
But with "inspiration" this is often NOT the case. One second there is nothing there. Then suddenly it exists. No human work proceeds this way.
There are those who think creative work bubbles-up from the unconscious mind, and yes I too believe the subconscious is involved. But even the unconscious needs time to work. These experiences have shown me that there is something more at work here, not bound by the constrictions of time & space. Perhaps something from that realm that gives rise to Creation itself.
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