Sparks from the Fire

I’ve always loved Christmas songs.  Who hasn’t?  They are iconic references and symbols of one of, for most of us, one of the real highlights of childhood – and then we get to repeat it all in a slightly different fashion as parents years later.  These songs take us through these enchanting times and play in the background like a movie score.

Previous to this month I had only ever written one Christmas song – a song recorded by the Jenny Burton Experience called Christmas In My Soul.  They say, in the music business, that the month of June is the month to write and begin one’s Christmas album, the preparation of such to be around 5-6 months.  Who can write Christmas songs in June?  What a silly notion.

This year the Missus has come up short in her search for the perfect Christmas song for her Christmas Day performance in church.  She had decided to employ a terrific Boston harpist and together with her organist, Bryan Ashley, keep it small and delicate in accordance with the spiritual implications of the morning.  Last year she used a brass quintet plus the church four manual pipe organ and blew the roof off, so this year she wanted to do something completely different.

But no song came to mind to fit the criteria.

While watching her go through her turmoil, I happened to mention one day several weeks ago that perhaps I could write one for her.  This was said in a fit of compassion for her plight while I was in the middle of the mad dash of the final throes of my own CD, Goin’ Home.

Seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, she grabbed at the offer and signed me up.  At first I thought, “Oh no, what have I gotten myself into?”  Where would I ever find the time to do this? (more…)

Dmitri Shostakovich

I spent last evening with the Missus in what has now become my favorite place to be on the planet – Carnegie Hall.  Inspirational music rose to another high point with a visit from the Philadelphia Orchestra to our fair city.  The Missus and I were given gift tickets (better n’ Christmas) and though we sat up in the nose-bleed section, 4^th Tier and no place for vertigo sufferers, I was amazed once again by the acoustics of this wondrous concert hall.

When I first came to NYC back in my early twenties to study acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater, I got a job at night selling orange drink in the tiers of Carnegie Hall and then eventually bar tending in its intermission café.  Though I made decent money in pay and tips, the real payment for me was the fact that for two years I got to see every concert presented in the main hall during that time.

I could fill a book with the stories and memories of those evenings and matinees.  It was certainly a huge and unexpected part of my education as an artist.  I had a place where I would stand in the back of the main floor and knew all the ushers who dubbed that spot, “Pete’s Place”.  In those two years I saw and heard a lifetime of great performances.

Since then I have had the great fortune to visit this hallowed hall many times and often had great seats.  Last night was, in fact, the first time I’ve ever watched a performance from the 4^th Tier.  But I must say I loved it.  There you sit above the orchestra looking down on the body of players and instruments and can watch the bowings of the strings and the bassoonists prepping their reeds and the timpanist tuning his kettle drums and the bass bassoonist endlessly counting bars of rests waiting for her big moment. (more…)

Here’s a song in demand before its time – if that were possible.  If there was ever a time in our nation’s history for a shot of inspiration, it’s now.  Leadership seems to be stuck in a very unfortunate place ruled by ego and greed.  No matter what your political affiliation or taste, you can’t be liking what’s going down out there in Washington, D.C.  It seems like we need some new ideas, some new inspiration perhaps – something beyond the human will.  Here’s where Inspirational music can definitely help.

Last week in her church service (which gets broadcast around the world on the Internet) the Missus performed a new song fresh off the presses.  It has received tremendous feedback, the kind of response that makes all the blood, sweat and tears of this industry totally worth all the effort.  I’ll have to admit that we were not prepared for this response.  Who knew that this national occurrence would come?

Julia Wade (The Missus) chose the song to fit the sermon of that particular Sunday over a month ago, but it turned out to be the right panacea for the moment.  The trouble is, it is a new song that she has been working on for her new forthcoming CD, Silk Road, due to be released this coming Christmas season.  We have no single completed; we have no sheet music to sell – yet.

So we’re going to rush this one out to you ahead of its time.  We’ll release it as a single and its sheet music in the next couple of weeks.  I guess it’s just a song that demanded its own time – not on my schedule or Julia’s, but on its own schedule.   Like a baby who comes early – once it’s born, you simply have to stop all else and deal with it no matter what.

Here are only a few of the comments that we’ve received:

“We had the great good fortune to hear you perform “Even Now” in the Mother Church last Sunday.  We were traveling and just happened to be there in Boston. We both wept, it was SO gorgeous… even my husband cried — who is a Methodist!

Is there a recording of that song available?  My husband is an accomplished guitarist and he loved the guitar music so much too. Of course your singing was a gift!

Thank you so much for sharing your beautiful singing with all of us.  We will never forget how special that was!” –Carolyn (more…)

Every once in a while I just have to stop and be grateful for and appreciate the incredible tools I get to work with creating Inspirational music here in the 21^st century.  I’ve been working with a software system for about 15 years now that was first developed by a German company named Emagic in the early 1990s called Logic.  In 2002, Apple, seeing that Emagic’s Logic had probably the most powerful engine of the various DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) systems, bought Logic from Emagic and has produced this industry leading tool ever since.

Coupled with a hot Mac computer and a few other relatively inexpensive pieces of hardware, this software system has taken the place of the entire recording studio of yore amazingly for the price of $499.

For 25 years I owned a major recording studio here in NYC and operated 3 rooms for various recording spending, over time, a couple of million dollars on equipment to keep up with the times and keep the shop running.

Today all that has changed dramatically.  Today I record symphony orchestras in my son’s converted bedroom in my apartment.  Of course I’ve put some serious money into the acoustics of the room including an isolation booth that fits five, but essentially, I’ve got everything I ever had before and more, for infinitely less. (more…)

Thrilling!  That’s the word that keeps coming up.  Absolutely thrilling!  Inspirational music took on new levels of inspiration last night as both Jenny Burton and Chieli Minucci and Friends closed out Series II in majestic form.

As I stood in the back of the room with the Missus and watched and listened and teared-up and danced, I was aware that we had reached, yet again, new heights.  This was an evening to be remembered.  (As if all the others weren’t?)  This was quickly becoming the new standard.

Here were four master musicians (Chieli Minucci, Philip Hamilton, Alan Grubner and Jenny Burton) taking us on rides of wonder, flights of daring, and journeys into the music of their minds revealing places never before visited.  Here was music pouring out of the minds and souls of master musicians – the kind of experiences that make us mere mortals sit in fascination and stand and scream in exhaustion when it’s over. (more…)

“Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.  So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.  Therefore is the name of it called Babel.” – Genesis 11

More and more I’m convinced these days that much of the world’s problems lie in language.  If we all spoke the same language, the world would be a better place.  As human beings we all want basically the same things – a full stomach, a roof over our head, love in our life, a chance to succeed and our freedoms of expression.  Most people who have these things are basically happy.  Happy people don’t make war.  There’s nothing to war about.

I’m trying to keep this simple without being simplistic.  But if this were true…

“And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.” – Genesis 11

…I think we’d be having a much better time of it.  Consider politics.  How many wars have started throughout history because of a misunderstanding of what was said?  My uneducated guess would have to be somewhere around 90%.

“War is what happens when language fails” – Margaret Atwood

(more…)

When we first rolled out the WFM Learning Lab here at Watchfire Music, we thought it would be for New Yorkers only.  Oh, maybe some New Jerseyites who knew us through our Inspirational music site, but basically it would be limited to neighbors.

Well, it turns out that our neighborhood is the world.

One of the great things about NYC is the quality of teaching in the arts.  This is where they come to do it and so this is where the great teachers are as well.  “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere” the song goes.  And that’s because, especially in the arts, this city sits atop the flagpole.  The talent here, especially in music, is wondrous and has been so for decades. (more…)

The selling of Inspirational recorded music is a rough road these days.  The selling of any recorded music is a rough road and it seems that Inspirational music is no different.  It also seems that there are far too many good reasons why – so many that the problem has become very difficult to solve.  Difficult for the entire industry.

Why?  Like I said, the problem is complex.  File sharing does not help.  The fact that many now find their music free and accessible on the Internet at any time and immediately also is huge.  Sometimes I think people are just too busy to listen these days and when they can, there are a myriad free ways to do so and access what they’re looking for.

So we’re all looking at alternate ways of doing business.  At Watchfire Music we are shifting more towards being a digital sheet music company and producer of ancillary music events.  Hence the WFM Listening Room and the WFM Learning Lab.

It’s a changing time and we’re having to change with it – whether we like it or not.

These changes have required wholesale changes within the company.  Focus, leadership, staffing, direction and the day-to-day implementation of just about everything we do has come under careful scrutiny as we fight to survive in a world of evolution. (more…)