in playing the shows with the project band, i acquired a nice stereo PA system. it is now integrated into my recording studio (a picture of this appeared on one of the CNN iReport things a month or so ago), and i've added some new equipment and software capabilities:
- a Firewire audio interface (Alesis IO|14)
- some software upgrades (Sony Acid Pro 6, Reason 4)
- some plug-ins (Antares AutoTune 5, iZotope Spectron, BIAS Soundsoap)
- a low-end (but usable) 4-track cassette machine (to transfer my old stuff to CD)
over the weekend, we stopped at a native american gift shop (Oards) in the High Desert west of Burns, and i got a couple peruvian Ocarinas and a really sweet flute made by Brent Haines (Woodsounds: www.woodsounds.com). I am no good at flute (i can find my way around everything from a dumbek to a harmonica, a Xylophone to an Er-Hu, but flutes/saxophones/clarinets/recorders are sooooooo not my thing) ... but this particular one (made of one of my favorite trees - Juniper!) is such a fine instrument, i've decided i may try to nail it down a little before going back to Er-Hu and Violin. i spent a half-hour a little bit ago mapping out the fingerings on it, and i can play some really basic things, but i'm pretty sure i'll never be well-known for my awkward flute skills ...
one thing i've learned is that it is never a good idea to buy a 'student' instrument. with most things (and i can say this about guitar, violin, erhu, and now this flute), there is such a noticable difference between a higher-end instrument and a lower-end 'student' instrument that it's a wonder more people don't give up when they're first learning. i'd venture to say that half the dischordant children's orchestra/band noise comes from cheap instruments and poor tuning ... if you gave a handful of new students top-of-the-line instruments, provided they're tuned, they'd sound a lot better ...
so i suck at this whole flute thing, but the flute makes such a full sound, it's hard not to sound kind of awesome.
when i was reading up on this instrument, i saw quite a few native american rockstar sites & stuff, and (coupled with this weekend's exposure to a lot of folk/blues music played on a front porch in downtown Springfield) it got me thinking about 'roots music'.
i don't mean 'african music' or any of that ... i mean people performing in a style or with an instrument commonly understood to be a part of a cultural group, and generally one of their own heritage.
being a keyboardist (electronics, not piano), i come into the sneers of 'real musicians' sometimes because i'm playing a 'machine'.
i suppose the first people to play a guitar ... or a modern horn like a trumpet or tuba ... probably got teased for playing a 'machine' too, and with time, they were accepted.
i don't think non-keyboardists understand how much is involved in performing/creating with this kind of instrument. i know the assumption is that a keyboardist hits a button and all this factory-preset music starts playing, and they plink around on top of it with some really fake string noises or whatever. i don't blame their ignorance ... most consumer keyboards 9especially of the late 1980s) were casios and yamahas that *did* have a 'fingered chord' arpeggiator or something, and the sounds themselves were pretty lame.
what i (we) do is quite different. we sample or synthesize our own sounds because the factory presets are never cool enough. these tweaks give us a deep understanding of the physics of sound and waveforms.
we learn to use MIDI. MIDI is both simple (it's standardized) and complicated (master/slave device, 'omni mode', sys ex dumps, channels, controller IDs and parameters, velocity sensitivity, etc). We 'sequence', which is akin to playing a track or two of guitar, then picking up a bass and playing it too, and WHOA HEY! we play our own drums, too ... often sounding so much like a real drummer that you'd never think that EVERY hit or note you hear in our songs was made by one guy with a keyboard ...
controllers are fun. we have 'breath controllers', pitch band/mod wheels, pedals, sliders, knobs, and expression pads ... so we use as much (and sometimes far more) coordination than a typical guitarist.
i grew up HATING guitar. it was mostly due to being a rebellious kid and trying to 'be different', but i have to be fair and admit that, when compared to all the options in a good workstation keyboard, guitars are pretty dull and incredibly limited. needless to say, guitars were cheaper than keyboards, so my first band was made up of a drum machine and two guitarists. i learned quickly to alternate playing muted strings and regular strumming ... and i began collecting effects pedals in great quantities. i was determined to make my guitar sound like a keyboard ...
a week-long power outage in 1997 changed that. with no power, i was suddenly left with only an acoustic guitar and an old piano to play with ... and if i'd thought that guitars were dull and limited, pianos were much more so. i decided i'd learn guitar, and eventually pick up an acoustic ...
10 years later, i bought my first acoustic guitar, an acoustic/electric Ibanez.
but i've deviated from my point.
there are a lot of 'folk' musicians out there. it seems if you're of irish descent, there's celtic music ... if you're a cowboy, there's cowboy guitar, if you hate something, there's protest folk, if you're native american, chinese, black, polynesian, or pretty much of any other ancestry, you've got your 'traditional' music niche.
when you think about it, though, all people came from elsewhere, whether it be 50 years ago or 2000 years ago. todays 'native americans' were not always on this continent, and many of their own traditions confirm this. the japanese weren't always in japan, the celts weren't always in ireland. some 'traditional music' (and cooking) is tainted and borrows from more recent cultural exposure.
my point isn't that any of these genres/cultures have anything more or less than the others, but that all had a finite beginning ... "they had to start somewhere".
i could dig into my own heredity and plug into one of the many 'roots' i have, and go merrily on my way ...
but i've never been to ireland. i was never involved in slavery. i never fought next to others who died in a war, i never 'lived on the streets', and though i'm descended from an early american pioneer songwriter, i never made the great trek myself.
so what reason would i have to take up the 'cause' or to wrap myself in the vestaments of a life i never lived?
i know of my ancestors, and i respect them. i know more about my 'roots' than most people i know ...
yet my experience has been different than my progenitors. i opened my eyes in a sagebrush strewn 'desert' in the rocky mountains. i camped in the mountains, swam in the rivers, slept in the rocks, went for long walks at night in the countryside. i spent time reading headstones of those who passed before me, and i spent late nights thinking about lives i never knew. i wanted to live in a 'big city', so i wore the uniform and made the sacrifices ... only to find that 'big city' was a hollow skelton with a shallow spirit ... when i'd always expected it to be something far different. i had my moments of happiness and moments of sorrow. the soundtrack to my life wasn't the clang of swords, the scuffle of chained feet or the distant whistle of a flute ... it was a hum of powerlines, the scream of jackrabbits, and the buzz and rumble of electronics whizzing through the car stereo as i raced across the desert in an old car with the windows down.
i slept on the streets a few times. i knew the homeless. i studied foreign cultures and have an appreciation for them. These things, though, are not - and never will be - the essential parts of my creative soul. i can draw on them if i have to, but i speak a different language, and i've much to say in my own tongue.
when people ask me why i don't "be introspective" or "write from my feelings" ... when they look down on me for not drooling over the latest Jewel CD or question my taste when i am not impressed by the latest ethnic instrument to be inserted into a Sting song, i wish they could know that i *am* telling the story of my life, i *am* expressing my feelings, though neither may be what is expected by a person raised in this small western culture.
can i insert an 'ethnic instrument' into my music? yes! and i can do so with as much right to it as any other person a generation or more removed from its rightful breather. do i have to? no ... and neither do i 'have to' formulate my music to conform to the established patterns and fads in this world. maybe sometimes i follow a standard ABAB pop structure, or a 4/4 time signature, and maybe sometimes i don't. do i need drums? do i need to sing a melody with highs and lows, or can i just be monotone?
i've wandered too far from my original purpose in doing music. i was much wiser and more controlled in high school ... i simply wanted to create the music i wished i could hear.
now i've got the means, but where did my direction go?
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