Part 3 – As an artist:
Perhaps this sub-heading needs further explanation before we start. On the Watchfire Music website an artist is someone or some group that makes records (CDs, songs). In this case I’m using the larger meaning of the word. In my case I am an artist with several hats. Stick around while I try them on. (more…)
Part 2 — As a producer:
It’s a busy time. Spent the weekend in the studio working on two projects. Will spend today, the day after Valentines Day, celebrating 14 year anniversary with the Missus. I’ll actually take the day off.
The rest of the winter months and spring are loaded with music projects for Watchfire Music – so many that I must get better organized and get my arms around them all. Here’s a list: (more…)
Sketch by Max
The great thing about blogging about Inspirational music and beyond is that every day I sit down to write, there’s something that’s just happened to talk about.
As many of you already know, my wife, Julia Wade, has been soloist at the Christian Science Center, the World Headquarters of that church for the past 5 years. Since we live in New York City, that means that she leaves early every Saturday morning for rehearsals, takes the train to Boston and returns the same way very late each Sunday night.
It hasn’t meant exactly living the normal husband/wife weekends for these last years, but, hey, that’s show biz.
Many years ago, before I knew any better, I made a big mistake. I’ve regretted it ever since, but there’s not much I can do to rectify it. Every time I hear this mistake it haunts me. I kick myself for being so stupid, but you know what they say, “What ya’ don’t know, ya’ don’t know.”
So opens this week’s confession. I write this post to reveal all so that, per chance, none of you out there will ever make the same and that you may all learn from mine. What was that mistake that haunts me to this day? I’ll tell you now. I wrote a beautiful song with a 2 octave range.
Whew! There. I said it. In the hopes of thoroughly cleansing my soul here and now, I’m going to analyze this mistake right in front of you and even play it for you – all in the hopes that it may never happen again. (more…)
By the time I’m finished producing an album, I don’t ever want to hear it again – at least for a year. It’s not that I don’t like it; it’s just that I’ve heard it – over and over and over again, way too many times for any human.
Alabado sea Dios
The process of creation demands the repetition. Often I’ve also written the songs, or some of them anyway, and that only increases the ear and brain fatigue. Repetition is definitely a large part of the writing, producing, engineering process, and since I do all three, that also extends the repetition.
On top of it all, by the time I’m deeply into the making of a CD, the songs go coursing through my brain all night as well, over and over while I sleep just to add to the number.
So when I listen to that last master reference copy back from my masterer and approve it as final, I always breathe a sigh of relief that the prolonged grind is finally over. If you were to ask me to listen to a CD that I produced when it comes in from the manufacturer, I would go screaming into the night.
Last night, while testing the ecommerce end of the new Watchfire Music site, I arbitrarily decided to download El Amor from Julia Wade’s Spanish CD, Alabado sea Dios. Thrilled by the simple and intuitive process of purchasing and downloading, (a blatant plug) I decided to check the MP3 download as well.
OK troops, I need your help on this one. Yesterday one of my life’s unanswered questions came up for me big time. Once again I did not have a sufficient answer. This morning I decided to turn to you, dear readership, to see if you might be able to shed a little light on the subject.
Muir Woods
You see, I took a walk in the woods – Muir Woods to be exact — one of Northern California’s great redwood forests. My wife, Julia, and I had a rare day off and after spending the morning being tourists at Fisherman’s Warf in San Francisco, decided to get in a little nature — literally. Neither of us had ever been to Muir Woods and I had never experienced our country’s amazing giant redwood trees, though I had certainly read a lot about them and seen the pics.
So we walked among these giants for a couple of hours in awe of their splendor, their majesty and their lives. The day was perfect — cool but warm, one of those Northern California days that make you realize the God must live in Northern California. By the end of our walk my neck was stiff from looking to the heavens, my feet tired, and my brain in a frazzle.
At one point I stood before one family of mammoth trees and wept at the thought of them standing together in such incredible strength, waving softly in the wind as the world went by below for the last 1100 years or so. Time shrunk and then expanded and then simply slipped away as I tried to wrap my mind around the magnitude of their trunks, their bodies, their lives as trees, their time on earth living, standing, waving in the sun.
Yesterday was an amazing day. The Siyahamba Project that I’ve been working on for the past 4 months and that has recently been performed at the Annual Meeting of the Christian Science Church in Boston was posted on YouTube. I sat at my computer amazed at the outpouring of gratitude and affection coming from hundreds of people as their letters poured in from across the world for both my wife, Julia Wade, and myself.
Norm
Many people worked together to make this project become the success that it is, but one man was its leader – and very few know about his work because he took no credit. He is the Producer of the Annual Meeting for the Church and the Executive Producer and visionary of the Siyahamba Project.
I have known Norm Bleichman for over 4 decades now and am blessed to call him my good friend. We were roommates in college and shared many of the same interests in music, sports and show biz in general. We also had a popular college campus radio show back then called The Blinkman Show where Norm and I with a cast of total morons would perform send-ups of Superman and Batman comics complete with musical underscoring.
We laughed a lot. We discovered the Beatles together. We MC’d many of the campus shows as a stand-up comedy act – he the funny guy, me the straight man. I say with complete sincerity that Norm Bleichman is the funniest guy I’ve ever known. He has kept me laughing throughout a lifetime and that’s a lot to say for a friend.
After college he went off to fight for our country in the Viet Nam war while I became a draft dodger. After the war, he came home to work at his dad’s plastic factory while I came to NYC and started a successful show biz career. I’ve always said that one of the best things I’ve ever done was to help convince Norm that he could be funny on a national scale and get him to finally quit plastics and go to work as a successful comedy writer in Hollywood. Doing this, he kept millions of people laughing for many years.
(If you are looking the other installments of this article, simply visit Siyahamba -Sao Paulo Installment 2 and Siyahamba – Cape Town-Installment 3)
I’ve worked on a thousand musical projects in my lifetime. Some didn’t turn out so well – the result of myriad reasons. Most, gratefully, went well and we achieved what we set out to do. I’m always grateful for the high quality of professionals that I’ve had the opportunity to work with. They always make success possible.
Occasionally the outcome actually surpasses the dream. Yesterday I had such an experience.
Several months ago I was asked to produce a fascinating event for the annual meeting of a major international church. The concept, developed by executive producer, Norm Bleichman and me, was to go around the world and record various churches singing the beautiful South African hymn, “Siyahamba”.
(Watch the video we made… Siyahamba Project on YouTube)
Each location would sing a different verse or chorus and each would be sung to a track recorded in the style of music related to the culture. The music would then be assembled with video and performed at the church’s annual meeting with the “whole world” singing together in one grand finale.
Siyahamb’ ekukhanyen kwenkhos
Translated from the original Zulu, it means, “We are marching in the light of God.”
