Sparks from the Fire

I’ve just spent the last two and a half weeks working on Julia Wade’s new Inspirational music CD, Every Day. (Read more about Julia’s new CD at her Inspiratus blog.)

She took a “vacation” from her job in Boston where she is the soloist at the world headquarters of the Christian Science Church.

It’s one of those jobs where people think she shows up on Sunday and sings a couple of services and that’s about it, but, in reality, it’s pretty much a full-time job considering all the preparation, research, rehearsal and administrative work she puts into it.

So the perception in Boston is that Julia is on vacation, but the reality is that she moves from one difficult, totally time consuming job to one that is probably at least twice as intense.  That’s the job of recording an album.

(more…)

Here’s a guy I’ve worked with for several decades now. I play a decent acoustic guitar when my chops are together, but when I need a master guitarist, I call my friend Chieli (Key-eh-lee). If he’s not available, I change the session to when he is available.

He has a new and most exciting new CD that has just come out on Watchfire Music. If you want to get connected with some of the great music being written and played today, performed by all world-class musicians, download or purchase the CD, Without You, by Chieli Minucci and Special EFX now.

(more…)

As creative director of Watchfire Music I usually spend my time touting our own artists, but recently I downloaded two CDs of inspirational music that are out of the WFM box and now deep in my waking and sleeping consciousness.

Two of my absolute heroes are Peter Gabriel and Bobby McFerrin and their music has been coursing through my brain now for days.

Ten-time Grammy Award winner/vocal innovator Bobby McFerrin surprises us yet again with VOCAbuLarieS, his first new release in eight years. Like his #1 worldwide hit song Don’t Worry Be Happy and his multi-platinum duo album Hush with cellist Yo-Yo Ma, VOCAbuLarieS is based on Bobby’s experiments with multi-track recording and his ceaseless exploration of the potential of the human voice. (more…)

I’m writing you from inside the music.  I suppose I’ll come out sometime, but I don’t know when.  It’s pretty safe in here and I’ll have to admit, I rather like it and sometimes wonder if perhaps I just shouldn’t stay here the rest of my life.

I just spent the last 4 days immersed in the otherworld of notes and sound, strings and woodwinds, Logic and Kontakt, push and pull.  ‘Immersed’ is a shallow description of where I have existed for the last 96 hours.  ‘Lost’ is perhaps more accurate, but I can’t say I was ever lost, but rather ‘found’.

I came halfway out occasionally to grab a quick bite of something to eat or drink, check the Yankee game scores on espn.com, but even that would only be a quick half hour and the song would still be raging through my brain, the ideas still formulating, the desire to rush back into the studio and sketch the next 4 bars overwhelming.

I did sleep in spurts – far from my normal schedule – sometimes in mid afternoon, sometimes catching two hours at 8 and not knowing if it were PM or AM.  I didn’t read my email; I did not answer the phone except to talk to the Missus who was away for 4 days.  I did not go out.  I simply lived in the music.

Even as I write I feel myself slipping out of that world and back into the normal one.  I don’t like the feeling.  It’s really good in there.  There’s no pressure, no sense of time, no sense of place, no interruption of thought, only pure problem solving on the most creative plain.  It’s 96 hours poured into 4 minutes and 30 seconds of song.  It’s building a house from the bottom up.  It’s a kind of madness perhaps, but an exquisite madness.

Perhaps I should explain myself, but to do that would be to further stand outside the experience and I’m not sure I really want to do that yet.  But here goes.  I’m orchestrating and sometimes composing a new album for Julia Wade.  We’ve been really slow to start mainly because of her far too busy schedule and my own duties at Watchfire U.  The CD is long overdue.  She hasn’t done an album in a couple of years and that’s a sin.

How can a singer be too busy to do an album?  Ridiculous!  But I lived it.  I saw it happen and I’m partly responsible.  But cast the past aside; we’ve started – I think.  I know I have and she promises to be not far behind – still clearing out a world of responsibilities.

(more…)

Welcome to WFM Radio! Get the best inspirational music right on your desktop.

Absolutely Free!
Here you can choose from a number of 2 hour music programs featuring the best of our Watchfire Music artists.

Take it with you!
Not only can you listen to their full songs while you’re here visiting the WFM Radio site, but you can also take this radio with you as you surf the web and, in fact, play any of our programs all day – 24/7.

It’s so simple!

(more…)

A new song is born.  Out of the nowhere, yet out of the experience of life.  It comes forth out of a dream and is placed in consciousness by Being needing to sing.

It’s organized and shaped, scanned and massaged by human hands and matter pen and paper, but it is realized in a lifetime of mullings on the subject of God – poured forth through my gratitude for the magnitude of His being – my gratitude for this life.

Inspirational music – born from a spiritual place.

A new song is born.  Born of rise and fall, born of new/old sonorities and the trial and error of harmonic invention all to find a tone, a timbre of understanding and portrayal.  A ridiculously simple refrain, nearly too simple to chance, yet somehow right for the profundity of the moment.  Followed by a complex splattering of impossible notes in passage, the song begins to take shape struggling to reflect the magnitude of God’s great presence.

(more…)

In the last 2 weeks I’ve been to two house concerts here in NYC.  Perhaps I should call them “Apartment Concerts”, but I’m seeing a real trend here in people getting back to the idea of pure inspirational music listening.

I love this concept and I love this trend in music.  I’ve felt for far too long now that audiences are slowly losing the ability to simply sit and listen to music and enjoy it for what it is.  Instead, more and more hoopla seems to be needed to stimulate the listener.  I enjoyed the novelty of Pink this last year at the Grammys singing upside-down while hanging from a trapeze, but c’mon now really…

I fear that the real basic problem here lately has been that there is a diminishing quality of music to listen to and so artists have to add additional value to their live acts in order to hold their audiences who have grown to expect light shows, ridiculous costumes, gargantuan sets and fireworks to stay interested.

(more…)

Well, it’s truly just around the corner.  I know we’ve been promising this for a long time now, but finally I can say for certain the immortal words, “Coming Soon!”

We’ve been talking about this widget/gadget/app for over a year now and I’m more than happy to report that we’re in the last stages of production.  It’s so “done” that I’m finishing up the programming for each genre this coming week and you should see the first beta tests this April.

We’re excited here at WFM because you’ve been asking for this for some time now.  People I speak to every day have said repeatedly, “I go to Watchfire Music every day just to listen to the samples.”  This has actually been somewhat frustrating to me because as a composer/producer I want our customers and fans to hear the whole song – not just a 1:00 sample.

(more…)