Song Talk with Morry Campbell

Outside the lines

Nick Granato writes really good songs. And he's a great singer. And his most recent release is actually called Outside the Lines. And actually, beyond giving a shout-out to Nick, he's only peripherally involved in this post. I'm thinking about Outside the Lines because I'm reading Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones, as if you've been following this blog, you know. And in the chapter called Writing as a Practice, she says, 

In my notebooks I don't bother with the side margin or the one at the top: I fill the whole page. I am writing for myself first and I don't have to stay within my limits, not even margins.

Triple meter

Time for the April songwriting challenge. And here it is: write something in triple meter. A waltz, if you will. 1-2-3. 3/4 time signature.

I'm not sure why triple meter has fallen out of favor. Used to be big. We're going to bring it back.

And it's not as if no one writes in triple meter anymore. But it is harder to find examples than I thought it would be. I found these: Goo Goo Dolls: Iris , Dixie Chicks: Bitter End , Annie Lennox: Cold , The Beatles: Norwegian Wood , Cold Play: Sparks , James Taylor: Sweet Baby James . (The links take you to the Amazon page where you can find the albums these songs are taken from).

And okay, the Goo Goo Dolls song moves from 4 to 3, and if that's what you want to do, shift meters, go for it. But the main feel of the song should be in 3. That's the challenge.  Have fun, be brave, and go triple.

With apologies

The posting on Dan Manjovi's Podcast part 2 contained bad links. If you click back to the  webpage, they have been corrected. It should also be up on iTunes shortly.

Songtalk Podcast: Dan Manjovi, Part 2

My conversation with the masterful Dan Manjovi continues in Songtalk Podcast: Dan Manjovi Part 2. We talk about song structure, music theory and subliminal political themes in music. Dan talks about his musical education and gives some great advice to songwriters with little or no background in Music Theory.

You can download part 2 here on this website, or at iTunes. You may want to subscribe to the website, which you can do by clicking on this link. Read more about Dan Manjovi below the fold.

Hmmmm...

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.

— Bertrand Russell

Whereupon I enter into the visual domain

My good friend and film maker Rick Borutta is creating a video out of my song, Black and White. We've been shooting it over the last couple weeks. He says he has all the footage he needs, and now I just have to wait.

So, anyway, I'll keep you posted on that. The plan is to get it posted on YouTube and then hopefully on Logo soon after that. So till then, I'll just chill here with my coffee, and try to think of something relevant to talk about for Wednesday's post.

Thanks y'all for stopping by. And don't forget, the second part of my interview with Dan Manjovi makes it's debut this Friday, March 27. You can subscribe to the podcast at iTunes by clicking here, then clicking "subscribe." It appears that the first episode at the iTunes store has already expired, but you can still get it right here on this website by clicking in the left column under Podcasts. 

Has music become tap water?

Music as tap water. Quite a metaphor, and the comparison that Bono made in USA Today a few days ago. It's funny that the most upstanding of citizens, ones who would never dream of picking up an object in a store and putting it in their pocket without paying, think nothing of downloading through file sharing services. I'm not sure what mental gymnastics are getting people to the justification of illegal downloads, but it seems pretty clear that something is happening there.

MySpace and Facebook and Twitter: Oh my!

Under the umbrella of Outmusic, there was a workshop for musicians this last Monday at the Center. But the kudos go to the industrious, bottomless-pit-of-energy Jed Ryan for organizing it and making it happen. Thanks, Jed.

The guest speaker was Phil Putnam, who has done very well for himself in the Indie music world, and was kind enough to offer up some of his hard-earned wisdom. Thanks, Phil.

Being uninspired

Nothing's coming today. Zip. I've sat down and started 3 different blogs, and none of them would cooperate and write themselves for me this morning. The well has gone a little dry.

So how do you make the  blogs, or songs or any writing project happen, when the dust has settled on your creative muse? What's the cure for that? I sometimes just sit down and write anyway, and see if anything will come out if I "keep the pen moving." Sometimes that's successful, sometimes it's not. Other times I go off and do something, anything, to get my mind off of the creative process altogether. And I find then when I come back, that has helped. Sometimes I watch a movie, or listen to some music; enjoy something  someone else has already created for me. Sometimes I take a walk in the park.

I don't have one "go-to" strategy to get over the humps. I do get over them, however. And I guess that's the important thing.

California Blues

I was certain that the mean-spirited, anti-everything that's decent and fair Proposition 8 would be overturned by the California Supreme Court. It seems pretty open and shut to me. Here's a revision of the California constitution, passed by a (slim) majority of Californians, that limits the rights of what the CA Supreme court has already declared a "protected class" of citizens. Which is unquestionably wrong. If the majority had been able to vote on the rights of African Americans in the '60s the Civil Rights Movement would have come to a much different conclusion.

But, judging from the reporting from the proceedings of the hearing, it sounds as if the CA justices are afraid of "overturning the will of the people." Well, that sounds cowardly to me. And I hope they surprise everyone and overturn this hateful amendment.

Johann Sebastian Bach: plagiarist and copycat (and Handel too)

It happened a lot. A composer would take a line from another's work and use it in their own composition. Bach would borrow from Handel.  Handel would borrow from Bach.  Sometimes entire sets of variations were done on another composer's theme. Variations on a theme by Paganini comes to mind, Brahms being the guilty party. It was actually considered an act of respect to quote from a known piece and make it into something else. I guess they didn't have lawyers around then.

Somehow, somewhere, some lawyer got hold of some musician or composer and convinced them that this "borrowing" was actually stealing. Instead of being honored when someone else uses a part of our work to make something new, we're told, we should be incensed that they are stealing from us. And so the legal profession brings down hundreds of years of musical tradition and creativity. For hundreds of years musicians were able to look to past works as an avenue to inspiration. No longer.

Songtalk Podcast now available on iTunes

You can now listen to and subscribe to Songtalk Podcast from the iTunes Store (for free, of course). Follow this link to see the original posting on my interview with the brilliant Dan Manjovi. You can read more about Dan and follow links to his music and pertinent websites there.

Rob Thomas at ASCAP New York Sessions

As promised, a report back from ASCAP New York Sessions.

The keynote speaker was Rob Thomas of matchbox twenty fame, grammy winner and hit song writer. I didn’t know what to expect, but it turned out to be perhaps the most valuable portion of the entire day.

Rob (can I call you Rob, Mr. Thomas?) didn’t deliver a speech. He was interviewed by Erik Philbrook (editor-in-chief for ASCAP's Playback magazine), and he was very gracious, humble, and articulate. And he, more than any other contributor to the day’s proceedings, spoke directly to the art and craft of songwriting. Recordings weren’t allowed, and I didn’t bring anything to record with anyway, but I did jot a few things down as we went along.  I’m going to just list the notes I took. These aren’t necessarily direct quotes, but they’re close and the gist is there.

Thanks, Verizon

Sorry, kids, but my Verizon DSL went out last night, and was down all night and all day. I’ve just been able to get back on. Hence the reason no blog post until now.

ASCAP seminars went well, I’ll be posting about them shortly. Just lost a lot of time to this internet outage. It was frustrating, but also it’s interesting to me how much we as a people, and particularly as musicians, have become to depend on being “plugged in.” Curiously, when I took off yesterday to go to Lincoln Center for the ASCAP events, I forgot my cell phone. I spent the entire day off the grid. I left the apartment at 8:30 in the AM, and didn’t return until around 10:15PM. And then I get home to find that the DSL is out (a common problem with Verizon; I don’t recommend them).

But anyway, very disconcerting, and also strangely comforting, to be totally “off the grid” for an entire day.

Post on the ASCAP sessions coming soon.

Thanks for hanging in there.

ASCAP New York Sessions is today

Today is a full day. New York Sessions, the ASCAP event, is today. It's songwriting and music seminars all day long at Lincoln Center, then I shoot downtown to teach a video editing class at the LGTB Center. So I'll be leaving the abode at 8:45AM and coming back home at around 11:00PM. Wow. Just writing that made me tired! But I'll report back, and let you know what I learned.