Sonically, we’re at an all-time high.  The ability to capture the actual sound of the instruments in perfect, pristine quality has never been better.  Those who still grumble about the “coldness” of digital just haven’t been really listening lately.  The advancement of processing power and ram in computers has finally caught up and now the warmth of analog is back.

But much of the rest of the creative part of our industry is mired in mediocrity.  I blame this on humanity and our penchant to always try to attain perfection the easy way.   Nothing wrong with that except when it doesn’t work.

I just wrote a 7-part blog post (The IRA Awards) on great lyrics just to remind us of what could be, of the greatness of craft, of the delight of a well-lyricised song.  I write “remind us” because I think we’re losing track of a great tradition – the well written lyric.

Popular songs today are slaughtering the time-honored tradition of rhyme – “Blanch” does not rhyme with “France”, “father” does not rhyme with “mother” and “pets” does not rhyme with “let”.  In the good old days of craftsmanship the rhymes were perfect rhymes.  “Joy” with “boy”, “sorrow with “tomorrow” and “friend” with “end”, not “friend” with “again”.  But today, and the worst offender is rap, although the decimation of rhyme did not start there, today the state of rhyme in lyrics is at an all time low.

Also what’s with songs today that are so obtuse that we have no earthly idea what the songwriter is talking about?  I’ve heard young songwriters actually say that they don’t want their fans to really understand them – they want to maintain their mystery.  Ha!  This is really just an admission that as a lyricist, they haven’t a clue.  They have no idea how to tell a story, they know not the difference between a lyric and a poem, they have no craft.  Harsh words, perhaps, but unfortunately the state of the art.

OK, it’s a lot less expensive to make music these days – a lot less expensive to make cheesy music.  You can now actually buy music construction kits where some musician has made some tracks and then broken them down so that you can put them back together again.  Some people call this creativity.  It has perhaps a touch of creativity in it and it is perhaps educational, but really, isn’t it akin to painting by numbers?  Fill in the blanks created by someone else.  Complete the puzzle and call it creation.  Ha!  (he scoffs) Some of this reconstruction music actually makes it to the top of the charts!

I blame this on the youth that want the easy way to make music.  Play an instrument without having to waste time practicing.  Write music without ever really studying music.  Record music without ever really studying the art of audio engineering.  There is even now an accepted style of music called Garage – ie, sounds like you made it out in your dad’s garage… and boy does it ever!

Kids love it!  (Some kids love it.)  Oh look what Billy and Bobby down the street created last night!  Why they sound just like the Rolling Stones!  Somehow I doubt it…

I also blame the adults and my contemporaries who, in the name of money, have created product to facilitate the ease of making music, have gone overboard to sell this product to an undiscerning youth bent for stardom, and have, in fact, created music that the inexperienced can simply reconstruct and call their own, reveling in their brilliant creativity.  Egads!  What ego!  All in the name of their 15 minutes of fame!

OK, this is turning into a rant, but I’m passionate about this because I see it ruining the art of music making – an art that I’ve spent my life studying.  Today, popular music, to a large extent has fallen to its knees, overwhelmed by its lack of creativity.  Great songs are seldom written any more.  There are still great records out there, but how many great songs did you actually hear at the top of the charts in 2009?  For the life of me, I can’t remember one.  Can you?  If you can, please send it to me.  I’m interested.

The better the musician, the better the music.  The better the education, the better the composer.  I’m not talking about college education here; I’m talking about years of experience learning your craft.  I’m talking about studying the music that went on before you.  There are many young musicians out there today that don’t even know the history of Rock n’ Roll much less the history of Jazz or Swing or Classical, for that matter.  What physicist would not study the works of Planck, Bohrs and Einstein?  How could you call yourself a physicist and not know of these giants’ works?  How can you call yourself a composer and not know the work of Duke Ellington or Igor Stravinsky or Pete Townsend, for that matter?

It was Stravinsky who said that he could not have changed the face of music the way he did without first knowing all of classical music that went on before him.  In order to break the traditions, you have to know the traditions.  Otherwise, you’re just throwing feathers to the wind.

Lyricists, learn your craft.  Study the masters.  Musicians, learn your instruments.  Study the masters.  Study music, for God’s sake!  Composers, learn music.  Just because you can play 3 chords on a guitar doesn’t make you a composer.  That takes years of study and deep consideration of the power and depth of music.  Again, study the masters.  Singers, study!  Go to a voice teacher and learn your instrument.  Learn how to control your vibrato so that you can sing a straight tone or a wide vibrato or a narrow one or even a straight tone emerging into a vibrato.  Learn pitch, again, for God’s sake.  Sing on pitch.

We’ve now given you a machine that corrects your pitch as you sing.  A sad state of affairs, but make no bones about it, while it’s working hard to digitally manipulate the sonic zeros and ones, it is, in fact, leaving your soul behind in the dust.  The “Cher effect” is laughed at today because though it does put the singer on pitch, it steals ones humanity and robotizes the performance.  Wouldn’t it simply be better to first learn to sing?

OK, enough.  This is supposed to be an inspirational blog…

But, I guess, sometimes in order to inspire, one must first identify the problem.  At this time in history, the state of the art in the music business is in a state.

Even More Inspiration

• The Decline of Lyrical Craftsmanship – Part 1
• Wonderful
• Even Now
• Watchfire Music Learning Lab
• 1/1/11
• Through An Open Door

The building and development of Watchfire Music over these past 3 years has been extremely time consuming, to say the least. We’ve all worked our tails off to bring this idea to fruition. For me, it’s been a hugely creative process and I’ve learned more these past 3 years about business than in the previous total years of my life.

But the process has short-changed me as a composer – especially in the last 6 months. I’ve looked down that hallway in my apartment here into my dark and lonely studio and wondered if I’d ever get back in there again. In the course of the last year, until last week, I had written just one song all year. That’s the first time that has happened in many decades.

It’s not a fact that makes me happy. In fact, for me, it makes living very hollow sometimes and I wake up wondering what’s going on in my life that makes me a little dead inside or gives me this subtle empty feeling that I have carried around with me.

Then I realize that I’ve lost that life-long joy of creativity in the daily rush of details. My partner, Jim Birch, likes to say, “The devil’s in the details.” Well, perhaps I’ve just spent too much time with the devil.

So last week, out of pure necessity, we started to realign our company. New hires, necessary changeovers, and great progress on the marketing front have necessitated a re-thinking of the work force of the company.  It’s all been done with progress in mind. So I took advantage of the situation and re-aligned my life as well.

I’ve committed to get back to my creative roots and begin writing again and get myself back in that studio on a daily basis and re-find my bottle of creative juices. And so the lights have been on in my studio again and the light has poured into my soul once again. I am at peace for the first time in months. I wake up with anticipation on my brain and hope in my heart and charge through the morning getting the office stuff out of the way so that I can spend the afternoon and evening in the studio.

I go to bed weary, but content. I’m getting more done overall and moving through things faster and more efficiently all because I am creative once again. I am also happy, less angry at life’s bothers and well, just happy.

Does all this have anything to do with the fact that I’ve been working on a song called “Heaven”?  I’m sure it does. Contemplating the mysteries of this imaginary place and the many variations of the world’s concepts of the word has been a quiet and joyful search through the possibilities.

It strikes me most that “Heaven, like Earth, is what we make it.” This idea that became a central lyric to the song struck me the other day as I was contemplating the multifarious definitions by the many world’s religions.  It seems that the word and its concepts crops up in nearly every religion and though the idea is basically the same, as in all religions, the language around the ideas makes it appear that we all disagree on the concept.

So I was looking through all the various concepts and trying to discern the central truths of each and I suddenly realized that these concepts were developed in the other imaginations of human beings just like me. We have no proof of heaven here on this plane of existence.  There is, of course, heaven on earth, which makes total sense to me, but as far as a place where we go in the afterlife goes, it’s clearly a figment of the imagination for all of us – a grand leap of the imagination.

This is not to say that heaven is not real. I believe now that heaven will be as real as I choose to make it. I believe that because, looking at life on this plane of existence, I’ve learned that life is as real as I make it. The illusion of matter is pretty wondrous.  I believe heaven could be the same.

I’ve been thinking of it as a return to a more spiritual form, but not the same as ascension. Ascension seems to me to be the final dropping of mortality – for once and for all. Heaven, achieved by death, should not be that. It strikes me that we carry the essences of our problems on with us because we still have things to work out. Death does not let us off scot-free.

We clearly drop the material body when we die and move on, so heaven is a mental experience, or an experience of conscious mind.  Heaven is a state of mind.

This is, of course, purely hypothetical on my part. I have no experience there to back me up. Or if I do, I don’t presently remember it.  Perhaps I’m back here for the 7^th time to keep on trying to figure it all out. I dunno.

But it’s been fun thinking about it all and especially rewarding to write about. It has brought joy back into my life – both the subject matter and the doing of it – the creativity. All I can do as an artist is lay it out there and see how you respond.

Will it jog your thinking? Will it inspire you? Will you think I’m some kind of a nut-case and violently disagree? Will you just like the music and pay no attention to the words as so many people do? Will you listen to the song the first time while you’re on the phone talking with your mother? Will you listen to it with headphones on and totally get into every nuance and tear up with the inspiration of it all? Will you play it over and over again as you too try to figure out the meaning of life? Will you play the CD once and then let it collect dust, or worst, use it as an ash tray? Will it move you?

Probably all of the above.

But it’s all right because, for me, it’s all about the process. By the time it’s out there, I’m on to something else. I’ve had my experience with it; now it’s your turn.

For me, it’s all about the creativity.

I’m glad to be back.

For more inspirational music, thoughts and ideas from Peter Link,
please visit Watchfire Music – the trusted destination for inspirational music.

Even More Inspiration

• Wonderful
• Gabriel, Come Blow Your Horn
• Inspirational Music
• The Organized Artist
• Why?
• Valentine Thoughts