However, as I’ve been improving in the craft, I’ve watched the noble art of the craft plummet into the depths of despair.  Perhaps I’m being a bit dramatic here, but often, when I’m reading or hearing many of today’s lyrics, I find myself groaning over the cheesiness of the content and the hollow and paltry result of the lack of craft.

OK, you say, give it to us, Pete.  Do your thing.

So glad you asked…

Rhyming
I come from the world of the theater where rhymes had to rhyme (“shoe” does not rhyme with “blues” nor does “time” rhyme with “fine”) and if your rhymes ‘cheated’, you would be severely reprimanded by the critics.  I studied under the tutelage of Alan Lerner, one of our masters, (Brigadoon, My Fair Lady, Camelot) and he wrote perfect lyrics that rhymed, scanned to perfection and are still today treasures of the American Songbook (If Ever I Would Leave You, The Heather On The Hill, I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face, and on and on).  He would work, not hours, but weeks on one song lyric and, when presented, it would be a flawless piece of masterwork.

He turned me on to the one and only professional’s rhyming dictionary – the only one I’ve ever used and still highly recommend – The Clement Wood Rhyming Dictionary.  None others come close.  I keep one in each room of my apartment and hardly ever leave home without it.  With it, the world of rhymes is literally at your fingertips and every possibility is represented within its pages.  Short of the Bible, it’s my favorite book.

Rap music today has simply slaughtered the craft of rhyming.  I am in no way against Rap music.  It is a completely legitimate style of music representing the urban culture of today, but in it, most rappers rhyme with no regard to craft using any word in the vicinity of the vowel sound.  For instance not only can ‘street’ rhyme with ‘beep’, but it can also rhyme with ‘ease’ or even with ‘help’ because ‘help’ has an ‘e’ in it.

To my ear that’s a point off – any of those kind of false rhymes.  Ultimately they disappoint the listener’s ear and prove unsatisfactory.  The trouble is that we now have a couple of generations so used to bad or cheated rhymes that they don’t even know what to listen for in the first place.  And so it strikes me that the powerful tonality of rhyming is in jeopardy of being lost for generations.  The result of this ignorance of style is that bad rhyming has now spread into pop music and even the theater where it is unfortunately now accepted and used often without criticism.

Call me ancient and stuffy, but it’s said that the decline of a civilization is often first seen in the decline of its language.  Look around you, America, it’s like happnin’, you like know what I mean?

I’m a total hard-ass with my students when it comes to perfect rhyming.  Cheat once and you get a point off.  Get 5 points off and you have a mediocre song.  Get 10 points off and you better start over and get to work.

Scanning and Jamming
I spoke to a ‘professional’ lyricist the other day and mentioned that in her second verse her lyrics did not scan.  She said back to me, “What’s scan?”  I stood dumbfounded.  This is like saying to a musician, “ You’ve got a mistake in the third measure” and them saying back to you, “What’s a measure?”

The most powerful tool in popular music is repetition.  It’s how we learn a song and it’s why good songs are ‘sticky’ or considered to be memorable melodies – because they scan – each time you hear the hook it’s the same notes in the same rhythms scanning (repeating) perfectly.  Each time you hear the verse, the melody is exactly the same even though the words are different. Change a word or jam two words into the line where there should only be one, jam two or three syllables in where there should only be one and you lose the scan, you lose the repetition of the melody and confuse the ear of the listener.

So much of the music I hear today is ruined by lazy lyricists jamming words into melodies and fouling up the repetitions so that the listener’s ear is confused and the otherwise good melodies are ruined.  In perfect scanning the repeated melodies are perfectly repeated even though the words change keeping the integrity of the music.  Even the accents of the words – 1^st syllable/2^nd syllable, etc are honored in the repetition.  So much of what I hear today is junked up by amateur approaches where scanning is ignored and melodies are slaughtered.

On top of that riffing and licks are also confusing the listener’s ears all in the name of two generations of vocalists trying to be as brilliant as Mariah Carey.  I like Mariah Carey, but she singlehandedly destroyed melody for a couple of generations as vocal wannabe copiers trying to sing like her and forcing a twist and turn onto every note – a severe defect that I call being “lick happy” — turned melodies into a series of riffs.  Oh, get me my soapbox.  I’m feelin’ a rant comin’ on!

Enough.  I hope you get the point.  Bottom line: Proper scanning is crucial to repetition.  Repetition is crucial to commercial music.  Without each, music is just not memorable and becomes lost in the wash of mediocrity taking over our industry.

Ira Gershwin, Oscar Hammerstein, Alan Lerner, Lennon & McCartney, Billy Joel, Michael Jackson, Alan & Marilyn Bergman, Lorenz Hart, Irving Berlin, Johnny Mercer, Cole Porter – all followed the great traditions of true rhyming and perfect scanning.  It’s why their songs are still sung, played and remembered today.  These are the masters.  Don’t let their discoveries and work slide away in the dissolving of our language into mediocrity.

John Lennon's Original - "Imagine"

Disneyfied Retreads
And then there’s the content…  How many more “I want you, I need you, I love you” songs must we wade through?  Don’t we, as a people, have anything better to think and sing about?  When’s the last time you heard a great song with a new fresh lyric that wasn’t a retread of teenage discovery?  Certainly love is a most powerful subject to write about, but can’t we yet find something new and interesting to write about that has a new twist, a new insight?

Every time a new animated film comes out I groan at the feeble attempts of the omnipresent love song in the score.  They all sound as if they were written by a room full of people trying to write a hit instead of a one talented pro coming up with an original idea.

R&B music, long the bastion of solid lyrical writing especially in the Motown era, has now sunk to pandering the teenage mind consumed with sexual encounter.  I listen to some of these blatant sexual references and wonder if any of the writers of today ever listened to “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” or “Baby It’s Cold Outside” or “My Funny Valentine” or even “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”.  Here were songs that smoldered in their sensuality without clobbering you over the head with blatancy.

Art evokes.  Commercialism steamrolls.  I’d rather a song tickle my fancy than slap my face.  I prefer discovering a rich dramatic moment rather than being deafened by the obvious.  Give me a song that stimulates my brain and softens my heart and I’ll carry that song with me in the back of my mind for the rest of my life.  After all, isn’t that why we write ‘em?

Summary
Every age has its mediocrity.  “Flat-Foot Floosey With A Floy Floy” had its moment in the sun in the 30s but not many of us go around singing it today.  But decades are not remembered for their mediocrity.  They are remembered for their ground-breaking flashes of brilliance.  What will this music generation sing to their kids?  “I Want Your Sex”?

My generation sings John Lennon’s “Imagine” and Paul Simon’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, Seals and Croft’s “Summer Breeze” and Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and The Beatles’ “Let It Be”.  I could go on… and I will – Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish” and Earth, Wind and Fire’s “September”, Billy Joel’s…

Even More Inspiration

• Wonderful
• Even Now
• Gabriel, Come Blow Your Horn
• My Body
• You Must Remember This!
• Love Is The Reason For Living

There’s probably no greater cause of war throughout history than religious differences.  The only thing that comes close to it is greed.  I choose to stay as far away from the human element of religion in my spiritual practice, which, of course, is rather impossible, but, for me, preferable.  We humans (and I count myself as one) have confused the study of God, consciousness, reality, our world, matter, thought, spirit and the universe by dividing into groups and along the way, shutting doors and windows to alternative thought in an effort to protect our own.

It strikes me that religions often are more limiting than creative.  They often force the thinker into a box and essentially say, “think this, study this, here is the only truth – shut the rest out.”

If there is anything that I’ve learned in my life’s study of spirituality, it’s that nobody has a corner on truth.  Truth is truth.  Everybody has access to it. Every religion I’ve ever studied captured and illuminated much truth for me.  The only thing that really ever got in my way was the differences in language or the various definitions of words that are tossed about.  Most religious differences I’ve found to be based on a confusion of semantics.

So I choose to call myself first a spiritual seeker rather than a religious person.  I hope this does not offend you as I approach the writing of this post with the objective of unifying thought as opposed to dividing it.

Wikipedia states, “A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge.  In a more restricted sense a scientist is an individual who uses a scientific method.  The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science…  Some perform research toward a more comprehensive understanding of nature, including physical, mathematical and social realms…  This is distinct from philosophers, those who use logic toward more comprehensive understanding of intangible aspects of reality that lack a direct connection to nature, focusing on the realm of thought itself.”

If we’re to accept these definitions put forth by Wikipedia, then I suppose I’m sort of a scientist/philosopher, a combination of both.  I do engage in a “systematic activity to acquire knowledge” and also I do “use logic toward more comprehensive understanding of intangible aspects of reality…, focusing on the realm of thought itself.”

All said and done, I prefer the word “scientist”.  I find spirit to be actually quite tangible the more I study it and matter to be less and less the reality.  So I call myself a spiritual scientist.

If I am pinned down to name a life religion I admit very freely to being a Christian Scientist.  For those who need a specific religious definition of the way I think, that explains it as well as I know how on the religious level.  I grew up a Christian Scientist, attended the Christian Science Sunday School and learned the principles of the religion.  In my late twenties and early thirties I decided to explore beyond and commenced a 20-year journey of examination of many of the world’s great religions.  This journey was primarily the result of some very serious and thoughtful research I participated in the first couple of years of that journey using the drug, LSD.

The controlled research that I and a few friends took part in certainly opened our minds to many things never before considered regarding life, consciousness, reality and matter and launched me into even further study of spirituality in areas that did not include drugs.  It became very clear to me that drugs were not the answer, but I will say that they did provide me a fascinating starting point for exploration and launched my bark into immediate waters of wonder and matter/mind-blowing thought.

I then spent a few years as a practicing Hindu and found that religion to be immaculate in its conception, rich in thought, radical in approach and full of truth.  Ultimately I found it difficult to practice it as a western capitalist trying to build a career in show business in NYC.  I don’t know whether that would be true for me today, but decades ago I then moved on to Buddhism.

For a couple of years I studied the Dhammapada, generally accepted to be the words of Buddha, and found these verses to be elegant truths that rarely differed from the teachings of Jesus Christ.  Studying Buddhism was a joy for me because it further substantiated my understanding of the basic truths of Christianity.  There were, of course, many unfamiliar words that in the beginning would scare me and actually put me off until I learned to simply explore the meaning of the word.  Always these strange words constructed in foreign languages revealed to me truths that I already believed and understood when translated into my own language.  Through these studies I learned not to be fearful of words that I did not use or even know and rather look at their strangeness as opportunities to shed new light on spirituality.

I finally came to understand that human language is insufficient to explain the world of spirituality.  It simply was not invented for that world.  And so looking at spirituality through the various lenses of language became a plus rather than a minus.

I studied Confucianism, Jainism, the Koran, Judaism, Taoism, and Bahá’í through those years of seeking and honestly found that basically, they all said pretty much the same thing, but used different words.

I then, while in my mid forties, began to have a number of serious physical problems for the first time in my life.  As I had never been to a doctor, taken medicine or set foot in a hospital, I decided to tackle these physical problems by healing them rather than using the medical route.

I visited a Christian Science Practitioner to elicit his help.  We commenced a three-month series of meetings – one a week – where we systematically did a “spring cleaning” on my thinking.  One visit we would discuss business ethics, the next, self-confidence, the next, sexuality, and so on.  Each week he would correct my thinking and adjust my consciousness of right and wrong.  He was merciless and I dove into this cleaning of my attic with him.  During the week I would practice what he taught.

After 3 months of these meetings I was a better man – mentally and physically.  We never discussed my physical problems at all – only my mental insufficiencies or confusions.  I cleaned these up and committed to a better way of thinking and practicing that thought – a better way of living.

In the course of those three months all of my physical problems cleared up and went away.  I was healed.  There was never any difficulty moving through this experience.  It was all completely positive and I enjoyed the challenge of cleaning up my mind and watching the physical ills disappear as a by-product of that mental purification.

I became a practicing Christian Scientist once again.  However, Christian Science was then the basis of my thinking, the central core, though not the circumference of my thinking.  Since then I have borrowed helpful corrections to thought from all the sources I studied over those years countless times.  Again, truth is truth and I had a myriad of ways to investigate it and look at it.

I have never found this mixing pot to be confusing to my practice and demonstration of truth.  My spiritual seeking continues to this day – probably more than ever as I grapple with life, and become more conscious of my own spirituality.  The more I learn; the more there is to learn.

In the last ten years I have chosen music as my central tool of exploration.  As a life work, music is probably what I’m best at.  I’ve spent a lifetime practicing, so why not use it as the means to explore the objective of utmost importance.  Exploring spirituality through music is really fascinating because music is such a universal language.  It is not limited by spellings and strange words, but is appreciated and loved by all mankind.

Music too is a fascinating science.  Again, the more I learn; the more there is to learn.  The two, music and spirituality, seem to go hand in hand for me.  One complements the other.  I am a more spiritual man when I’m creating my music and I’m definitely a better musician when I approach the creation of music spiritually.

I am also always at my best as a person when I am in the studio writing, arranging, orchestrating, etc.  There I am the happiest, the most fulfilled and the least stressful.  Trouble just seem to fall away when I walk into my studio and I find myself doing everything I can in life to get to work musically.  On days when the rest of life gets so hectic that I can’t do that work, I struggle.  On the days that I work, I am fulfilled.

Still some things to be learned here… )

So I am a spiritual scientist/philosopher/musician.  Being a human being is far too often a struggle.  Here is where I need to improve and learn to manage life.  Here is where I’m still stuck – earthbound.  Both The Missus and I now discuss daily how we can approach these issues of humanity more gracefully and productively.  Here is where the problems lay.  Here is the next plateau of concentration.

In the meantime, however, I have my joy life, my world of peace, creativity and fulfillment to enter into and explore.  My gratitude abounds for this space in thought.  I am divinely fortunate.

I don’t know what I can accomplish during the rest of my time here on Planet Earth, but I do know that I am committed to this one endeavor only – scientific spiritual seeking through music.  Everything else pales in comparison.  Eating, sleeping, the laborious minutiae of everyday life all are just things to work through so that my true commitment can be practiced.  The human experience is a stepping-stone to the divine.  We’re trying to make those steps shorter every day.

Even More Inspiration

• Even Now
• When Things Go Wrong
• God Is doG Spelled Backwards
• The Atheist
• Loving God
• Phoenix Rising

Zero Mostel was a large man – not particularly tall, but large.  He had a voluptuous appetite for both food and all the rest of life as well.  Many people don’t know this, but besides being a huge Broadway star culminating in his unforgettable performance originating the role of Tevye in Fiddler On The Roof, he was also a wondrous painter.  He once invited me over to his studio which covered an entire floor of a rebuilt factory and was filled with the paintings of a lifetime.

Zero -- Self Portrait

I had the chance to get to know him and work with him in the Broadway production of James Joyce’s Ulysses In Nighttown directed by Burgess Meredith for which I wrote songs and underscore.  Zero was probably well into his 70s by then and at about 5’ 10” and 280 lbs, carried a lot of girth.  Because of this largess, he sometimes had trouble walking and even standing for long periods of time.  When he would go to get up out of a chair everyone would want to rush over and help him up and, of course, he would have none of it.

Any yet he was one of those – one of those stories we so often hear about actors who have some infliction off-stage, yet seem to lose it on-stage when they become someone else.

From the first day of rehearsal, everyone in the company absolutely loved Zero.  You couldn’t help it.  Oh, he was loud and large in every way and full of himself, but he was an absolute star – totally magnetic, hilariously funny, lightening fast with a quip and probably the most loveable large teddy bear I’ve ever known.  By lunch after the first morning of the rehearsal, he knew everyone’s name by heart in a company of 45 actors.

That tells you a lot about how much he cared for his fellow actor.

Here was a man who drew me to my quiet spot in the wings night after night as I studied and marveled at just how the man did it – how he radiated life, how he found the energy for this huge, complex role of magnificent words and images and how he sustained this for eight grueling shows a week.  If there was ever a man who carried us all on his back, Zero was the man.

In one particularly memorable scene he had a dance.  I had scored the dance with an original Irish jig that I had written especially for Zero that he loved, complete with a hilarious elephant walk section which actually satirizes Zero himself.  I had even snuck in a short musical quote from Fiddler On The Roof referencing his iconic performance of If I Were A Rich Man, that nobody really recognized but Zero.  It was our secret and at the first musical rehearsal with the orchestra when he first heard it, he screamed “HAH” and wheeled on his heel and winked at me as he danced along.

He was, in this dance, unbelievably light on his feet and danced on his toes parodying the ballerina elephants in Disney’s Fantasia.  Oh how he loved to do this number!

One second show on a Saturday night well into the run you could see from the sweat flying off his body and his drenched costume that he was especially tired.  I had long ago placed a chair in an unused wing far downstage where I would often sit and watch him work.  On this particular night, and even some performances afterwards, he was just about a quarter of the way into this long celebrative dance which was, by now, on of our real showstoppers.

I could see that he was in some trouble out there.  He looked into the wing where I sat and in the middle of the dance mouthed the word, “Chair” to me.  I knew instantly exactly what he wanted and stood up and lifted the chair to my chest with the back away from me.  Zero did a quick re-choreographing of his steps which brought him over to me standing off-stage with the chair.  There, he grabbed the chair with a wink and, not missing a beat or a step, danced the chair to center stage, sat down and finished the entire number sitting.

The audience loved it.  It got the biggest applause yet and I swear that he did all of the choreography of the dance sitting, sweating, acting, panting, elephanting, and wowing his audience.

He was a star.  He let nothing get in the way of entertaining his audience.  If he couldn’t dance standing up, well then, he’d just do it sitting down.  And, by golly, he did.

Years later when I heard that Zero had passed on, I cried like a baby.  The world lost, not a man, but a huge force of nature that day and I got to watch him up close and personal.

Again, many years ago, I got a call one Saturday afternoon from a friend who said, “Hey Pete, I got two free tickets to see Elton John tonight at the Garden.  Wanna go?”

Does the sun shine?

I soon learned why the tickets were free.  They were the worst seats in the house.  The present Madison Square Garden is not square.  Rather it is round and actually rather oblong within.  The stage was placed at one end of the arena and the basketball court/hockey ring was filled with seats as well as 7/8ths of the rest of the house to fit the audience of 25,000 screamin’ rockin’ fans.

The only seats they didn’t sell was the section directly behind the stage at one end of the oblong.  Our seats were the last two seats before the roped off section, so we were effectually behind the stage and behind the band.  Had I bought the tickets, I would have been furious.  Before the concert, as we were ushered to our seats, my friend wanted to leave, but I somehow felt right at home once again having the opportunity to watch a star do his thing from the wings.

We faced the back of all the band members and if you’ve ever seen Elton, you know that he plays sitting, standing, jumping and dancing – and sings looking over his right shoulder into the mic so that he can turn his face to the audience.  We only occasionally saw his face in profile that night.  We were totally out of it.  We never saw the faces of the band our seats were so bad.  It was actually worse than standing in the wings.

So Elton put us on the piano.  Actually, Elton put everyone in the audience on the piano – all 25,000 people.  As a performer, he didn’t go out to us, he brought us to him.  That was his charisma.  We were all equal, no matter where our seats, we all had great seats – there on the piano.

I, of course, never moved from my chair, and yet I felt like he was singing and playing especially for me all night.  That’s what it means to be a star.  To me, that’s star quality.  I’ve had the occasion to witness it – we all have – and I really can’t tell you how he did it, but I know he did it.  I was there.

I think it is just one of those God-given gifts that some of the lucky ones get — a largess, or humanity, so powerful as to take over an arena of people and hold them transfixed for hours.  Call it talent; call it magnanimity, but I don’t think charisma like that can be taught.  It can be released by a great teacher if you have it to begin with, but, as a teacher, I’ve never really figured out how to teach it if ya’ don’t got it to begin with.

That’s really why I’ve been drawn to the wings all these years to study it and try to get an insight into where it comes from, how it’s done.

Stay tuned for more such explorations and sightings in my next couple of posts.

Even More Inspiration

• By The Numbers?
• Gabriel, Come Blow Your Horn
• Spiritual Scientist
• I Stood In The Wings… Part 3
• The Changing Scene
• The Logic of Logic II

There, I had the opportunity to watch both my own work and the work of some pretty fabulous performers over the years.  There, from the back of the house.  The greatest of stars figuratively pull those in the back of the house on to the stage – their magnetism or charisma is so great that you feel that you’ve got the best seat in the house no matter where you stand.

But occasionally, when someone gave a performance that was so electrifying as to just bowl me over, I have snuck around backstage, where as a composer or director I was always permitted, and watched, up close and personal, from the wings.

Very early in my career, just out of college, I spent two summers working as a chorus boy of the St. Louis Municipal Opera, probably the largest summer stock theater in the country.  For one one-week run they brought in Nureyev and Fontaine, at the time, the two most popular ballet dancers in the world.  I, with two years of ballet under my belt and at least knowing first position from second position, was asked to be an extra in their famous productions of Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet.

One of my claims to fame was that I was actually pinched on the butt by none other than Rudolph Nureyev on stage.  Seems I got too wrapped up in my role as dice player far up-stage and did not see Mr. Nureyev behind me trying to make an entrance.  Rather than push me out of the way, he simply reached down and gave the surprised young extra a sweet pinch.

But already I stray from my point…

At the end of each performance I would rush around after the company bows and stand enchanted in an isolated spot in the wings and watch Nureyev and Fontaine take their bows.  It was there that I learned the purpose of bows and got a terrific lesson from the masters on just how to perform ‘the bow’.

First of all their grace was magnificent.  On top of that, their bows were choreographed – two great ballet dancers still dancing long after the performance was over.  But what I most remember was their love for the audience.  Not only did they absolutely adore the applause, but they let it lift them to new character.  They simply knew how to take the applause with humility and great appreciation and love.  And the more they loved the applause, the more the audience applauded.  And the more the audience applauded, the more Nureyev and Fontaine loved it and loved back.

They created a circle of love with the audience and nurtured it and let it grow and grow until all were exhausted and completely fulfilled.

They were the masters of the bows and I got to watch them sweat and preen and joy and love from about 10 feet away.  It was better than Swan Lake.

Early in my career as a composer on Broadway I scored and wrote songs for Richard Wesley’s play with music, The Mighty Gents.  In this production there was a young, unheard of actor playing the role of a totally down-and-out street junkie.  His name was Morgan Freeman and he was so riveting in this role, that in his big scene each night, I would rush from my place at the sound booth in the back of the house to another isolated wing off-stage and watch him do his ten-minute monologue.  I completely fell in love with this young actor then and have loved his work ever since.

In the performance he so climbed inside the character of this wasted man that each night I relived the power of his performance over and over.  I laughed, I cried, I stared in amazement as he went through just about every human emotion possible.  It was my first up-close experience with a great actor and I couldn’t get enough of it.

For this role, this young previously unheard of actor got his first national recognition as he was nominated for the Tony Award as Best Supporting Actor that year.

I also had the same type of experience this time with a whole company of actors who worked together as a great ensemble in Joseph Papp’s Trelawny of the ‘Wells’ at Lincoln Center with Meryl Streep, John Lithgow, Mandy Patinkin, Michael Tucker and Mary Beth Hurt and directed by A.J. Antoon.   I had the privilege of writing the music for this production and, once again, found myself, in certain scenes, standing in the wings, spellbound, as these young actors tore up the stage with their natural sense of comic timing and stage know-how.

I wrote a song for the production called Ever Of Thee I’m Fondly Dreaming which would be sung each night by all the above mentioned people (all extremely musical actors) as Meryl both sang and played the piano on stage.  I would stand in the wings and sing along adding my voice to the moment though not my stage presence.  It was always a sweet moment and often John Lithgow would give me a wink from the stage to the wings as the audience burst into applause at the end of the number.

These moments of learning the artistry of performance up close and personal shall always be indelibly printed in my memory.  They are the perks of my experience far beyond the money made or the awards given.  They are the reminders of why I keep trying – trying to get a grasp on greatness – trying to see deeply into the moments of perfection and understand better how they came to be.

If you’re enjoying these memories as much as I am, stick around for Part 2…  coming in my next post.

Even More Inspiration

• Gabriel, Come Blow Your Horn
• Chanting/Enchanting
• The Decline of Lyrical Craftsmanship – Part 1
• I Stood In The Wings… Part 3
• My Body
• Light At The End Of The Tunnel

Alan Smallwood

In an earlier marriage my wife at the time chanted the Nichiren-Buddhist mantra “Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo”.  She was going through a particularly rough stretch in her life and she would go off and chant in our guest bedroom every day for a couple of hours.  She would always emerge from these sessions a different person – calm, centered, and quietly joyful.

I supported this practice at first because I saw that it worked wonders for her and over the couple of years that she chanted, I grew to love the sound of her voice pealing through the house, its mellifluous vibrations casting its positive spell over both our lives and probably even helping our plants to grow and be happy as well.

I think it was the thing I missed about her most when we parted.

Several years afterwards I began to work with a young musician named Alan Smallwood who came into my life at just the perfect time and brought to me in musical terms exactly what I seemed to be missing in my life.

As a musician, I had no real formal training.  Most of what I knew came from playing in bands, singing in folk groups and conducting student choirs.  I did study drums for several years with a fine teacher as a kid, but that was about it.

So there were many holes in my understanding and knowledge of this amazing world of music and consequently there were many holes in my music.  Alan Smallwood, several years younger than I, filled these holes with his genius, his fascination with the then developing new technology of synthesis and became my musical director and arranger/orchestrator for many of the musical projects that I created.

It’s possible that I taught him a few things along the way.  He would probably tell you that today in his humble, sometimes self-deprecating manner, but what I really remember from the association is all that he taught me.

‘Woody’, as we lovingly called him, was always a flurry of energy.  In normal life that energy would spill out in a myriad of ways sometimes verging on a kind of scattered turmoil; however, when he would sit down at the piano or with his beloved Polymoog Synthesizer, he would turn into a concentrated force of magical wonder as his music poured forth out of his mind and fingers.  He would transform before our very eyes into the boy genius that we all knew him to be.

He taught me how to arrange for a rhythm section.  He taught me synthesis programming.  He taught me how to rehearse a band and get the most out of my musicians and he taught me how to write for musicians and challenge them and trust them.  Did he know at the time that he was teaching?  Probably not.  I learned by osmosis, by watching the kid do his magical thing.

As we both evolved as musicians we began to drift in and out of each other’s lives more and more as I got into the Industrial market and Woody went off to work as a side man with the likes of Lou Reed, Edgar Winter, David Clayton-Thomas of “Blood Sweat & Tears” and also with Marilyn McCoo, Eartha Kitt and Della Reese.

For a couple of decades then we hardly saw each other.  He made the root of his living doing radio and television commercials with a jingle house here in NYC and that was a world that I never really ventured into, so our lives didn’t really touch.

But I always knew we were intertwined through the music that we had shared and especially the understandings of music that he had taught me.

Over the past year, “forces” have seemed to be bringing us back together.  A phone call here, a possible gig here and there that fell through or got postponed, but nothing really concrete.  Just enough to get him back into the back of my mind.

Then one day I received an email from him with a single song MP3.  He, still in his humble fashion, suggested that this piece of music might interest me since I was doing this ‘Inspirational thing’.  It was cut #2, Winds Of Change from his album called The Far Reaching Sound.  I sat mesmerized listening to this beautiful work from my old friend who had obviously grown even more as a musician over the decades.

I immediately wrote him back and said, “Send me the whole CD immediately!”

He did, of course, and Watchfire Music has now added Alan and The Far Reaching Sound to our roster of great music.

Woody’s  CD explores the merging of music with the Nichiren-Buddhist mantra  “Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo”.  In his own description, “the mantra is sung in a similar fashion to traditional chanting.  These songs present an aspect of the chanting experience while also taking the listener on exotic musical journeys.”

His description, for me, is totally accurate.  The CD has found a continuous home in my computer for the last few weeks now and gets played nearly every day filling our home with its most special music and beautiful chant.

Many of you, our loyal customers, are Christian-based people.  Here I ask each of you to keep an open mind and an open heart to the truths of existence.  Give this music a listen.  Don’t let ‘religion’ be constrictive.  Expand your thought and stay open to truth in all forms – in language, style and music.  We can all get inspired in a myriad of ways.  Here’s one of them.  Check it out.  It certainly works for me.

Chanting.  Try it.  It’s enchanting.

Even More Inspiration

• Even Now
• Spiritual Scientist
• Gabriel, Come Blow Your Horn
• Light At The End Of The Tunnel
• The Decline of Lyrical Craftsmanship – Part 1
• I Stood In The Wings… Part 4

Barry Danielian - Trumpeter

Yesterday I had a blast.  Inspirational music took on new meaning as I recorded virtuoso trumpeter, Barry Danielian, here in NYC at Link Recording Studios.  I needed a 16 bar trumpet solo for the song, In That Great Gittin’ Up Mornin’ which is the climax song on my forthcoming CD, Goin’ Home – A Gospel Cantata – On Heaven and Beyond.

I had lost my precious musician phone book last year with all its numbers and so I called my friend, guitarist, Chieli Minucci and asked him for a recommendation of a great trumpet player who could play like the angel, Gabriel.  Chieli recommended Barry Danielian.  When Chieli speaks; I listen.  I hired Barry for the gig.

I wrote the first 4 bars of the trumpet solo for Barry to get him started and then gave him the direction to improvise the rest, to keep it Gospel, make it hot, iconic, hotter, joyful, timeless and apocalyptic.  Think, in the climax of the solo, Gabriel on acid trying to blow the roof off the moon.  I sent him home to listen to the track for a couple of days and he showed up yesterday afternoon ready to go at it, trumpet in hand.

We did 6 takes – each one discussed relating to shape, development and mood.  Barry was the perfect partner in crime.  He listened, but also brought his great ideas and mastery of his horn to the moment.

As I mentioned, the first 4 bars were written, but I wanted the next 12 bars to be improvised with the last 2 bars of the 12 sliding back down into the vocals.  Since this was supposed to be Gabriel, the trumpeting angel of Biblical lore, he’d better be good.  Barry was great.  He fulfilled the promise, hopes and expectations beyond my dreams.

After he had gone, I took a couple of hours and studied the various takes and composited together the best of the 6 takes into a gorgeous and soaring angelic moment.  As I sat back and listened when finished, I found myself suddenly standing triumphantly and raising my arms above my head like Rocky on the Liberty steps.  It was a true moment of inspiration.

Barry (blue shirt) w/ Tower Of Power

We talk a lot about inspiration here at Watchfire Music.  It seems like we’re always trying to get there one way or another.  Well, yesterday we did it, and, best of all, when we got there, we had recorded it for all to experience.  That’s the great thing about music.  It can do its thing to you over and over.  It’s a wonder.

There’s nothing like working with a great musician.  It’s not just the way they play, or their mastery of their horn, or their chops that makes them great.  What always stands out to me is their ability to listen and to take direction.  You’d think that somebody with all that ability would not have to listen, but that’s often what separates the men from the boys – their ability and grace to drop their own ego and listen, to take input, and to collaborate.

Here’s a little more info on this modern Gabriel:

Trained from an early age in his first love, jazz, some of Barry’s most memorable performances have been with such greats as Dizzy Gillespie, Illinois Jacquet, Paquito DeRivera, and Branford Marsalis. Equally valuable in the evolution of his style were some of his first New York gigs, with Latin giants Eddie Palmieri and Tito Puente. Starting in 1984, he toured widely with these bands over a number of years and began an impressive series of Latin recordings with such artists as Marc Anthony and Ricky Martin.

Dizzy Gillespie & Barry Danielian

Barry’s mileage on the road increased in 1985 with the first of several tours with rock fusion giants Blood, Sweat and Tears, and subsequently with Paul Shaffer and the World’s Most Dangerous Band, Queen Latifah, and Jon Bon Jovi. The early 1990s saw Barry on world tours with Latin-pop star Emmanuel and funk legends Tower of Power.

During the mid-1990s, Barry began to realize the reputation he enjoys today as one of New York City’s most in-demand session players and arrangers, racking up more than 200 recordings with such pop notables as Celine Dion, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Natalie Cole, and James Taylor, as well as with touring partners Queen Latifah and Tower of Power. His Jingle/TV and motion picture credits (for Touchstone, Columbia, and others) from this period are too numerous to mention.

I am deeply privileged in life to work with the best.  Yesterday was just another one of those great life experiences of music and creativity.

Even More Inspiration

• Light At The End Of The Tunnel
• Even Now
• WFM Listening Room – Series II – Event 4
• WFM Listening Room — Series II Opener
• WFM Learning Lab – Grand Opening!
• The Decline of Lyrical Craftsmanship – Part 1

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.

This is one of the few pluses in our rapidly changing music world.  Technology, especially digital technology, has made a tremendous impact on our lives in music.  And fortunately, I’ve had the wherewithal to keep up with the technology and take advantage of its wonders.

My studio, Link Recording Studios, which used to require 4 Mac computers to run it at full capacity, now runs on one dual quad 3.2 processor with 16 GB of ram running at 64 bit.  For those of you who are somewhat computer challenged, that’s not even the hottest new one on the market today, though it certainly is extremely powerful.

I teach Logic and yet I’m still learning it.  The learning curve is steep in that they give you ten different ways to achieve the same task, but after a while you figure our what your favorite two of those ten ways are and choose your methods accordingly.  Logic is logical.  If you’ve worked on other DAW systems you can swing over to Logic and know your way around it in a matter of hours enough to record.

I recently helped a young composer who was doing a movie score for a film house and had only first bought the program 2 months ago.  Though he still has a lot of holes in his knowledge and understanding of the program, he was making music, and good music using sampled and very realistic orchestra.

Every day when I walk into my studio and hit 5 switches to power things up, I breathe a sigh of gratitude for this wondrous time where I can sit by myself and make the music of my dreams in elegant, comfortable surroundings.  The systems of orchestration, mixing and especially editing are so far advanced from just 15 years ago in a tape machine world as to make those past days ancient and archaic.

I remember days of standing at a tape machine editing ¼” tape with pieces of tape taped to the wall, hanging around my shoulders and organized in little batches on my machine while I hand cut and rearranged with tape and editing block.  God help me if I sneezed.  It would take a week to put it all back together.

Today I take mouse in hand, highlight the section of music in the screen of my choosing and simply drag it where it belongs.  If I don’t like what I hear, I simply hit Re-do and try again.  It’s a better world.

In the old days, when it was time to mix a song we would book 24 hours in the studio to mix one song and then an extra 3-4 hours the next morning in addition.  A 24-hour mix is extremely rough on the ears.  By the end of day both producer and engineer are exhausted and brain dead and not at all trusting as to what they are hearing anymore, so the wiser ones would go home, get some sleep and then come back and finish with fresher ears the next morning.

Today, by the time I get to mix day, the song is already 90% mixed and remembered in my computer’s automation.  Every little move and nuance of what I want to hear is recorded and performed by my computer as set up by me previous to the final day.  The final day comes and I spend anywhere from 2-4 hours finishing up.  It’s a better world.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea.  Occasionally, there are technical breakdowns, and they are no fun, but actually running my own studio where I’m the only engineer means far less problems than ever before when several engineers worked the hardware equipment.  Then, I had a regular maintenance man come in every two weeks to fix that which was broken or in the process of breaking.  Today, I am that maintenance man and I’ve learned to only buy software from companies who have great customer service.  9 times out of 10 I’m able to fix problems with a half hour phone call.

It’s a better world.

With all my complaints about the condition of today’s music world, here’s one aspect that really works and is actually miraculous in its results and costs.

Technology has its upside and downside in today’s world.  I could certainly write another couple of posts on how technology has ruined songwriting and record-making today.  But that’s perhaps for another day.  Today, this morning as I look to a weekend of intensive work in my studio on a new CD project, I’m simply grateful for this wonderland of creation and imagination that supports my every musical thought.

I often wish I could take Johann Sebastian Bach on a 3-hour tour of my studio.  He was, in his day, a true technologist.  He would simply gasp in wonder at what was available to him at his fingertips.

And then he would sit down and get to work.

Even More Inspiration

• Gabriel, Come Blow Your Horn
• Even Now
• WFM Listening Room — Series II Opener
• Spiritual Scientist
• By The Numbers?
• Chanting/Enchanting

Rod Stewart in the Studio

Note: In celebration of my 350^th post, I thought I’d circle the bases and go back to the beginning – to my first post 4 years ago – January 26, 2007.  This was actually a defining moment for me in the creation of this blog – defining in both its content and style.  It’s still one of my favorite posts I’ve ever written.  Here’s a re-print of the first post from Sparks From The Fire.

The singer stands at the microphone in a recording studio and performs an inspirational song to a beautiful orchestration.  The sound of the voice is picked up by the microphone, run through a cable into a large console which then sends it on to a digital converter which converts all the parameters of the sound of the voice into digital numbers — a series of zeros and ones, which are then stored in a computer to be later reconverted back into the sound of the voice for further usage.

Months later, you or I place the CD in our CD player and listen to the performance.  The laser beam reads the zeros and ones and converts them back into beautiful music.  We are touched, moved emotionally by the inspiration of the singer’s performance.  The music has been captured digitally in strings of numbers, each string a symbol of a pitch, timbre, vibrato, etc.

Pretty heady stuff.  Technical beyond most peoples’ ability to comprehend.  Certainly a mind-boggling concept!

The real question is, “How do the digital numbers capture and then represent the emotion or the inspiration that pours through the singer?”  Are there zeros and ones that stand for joy, sadness, exhilaration, vision?  Does sadness or joy travel through the microphone cable?  Of course not.  So how do these feelings and insights get communicated from one individual to another – across time and space?

Now you might say, “Well, the emotion and the inspiration come through the words and music.”  Very true, but how?  The rise and fall of the melodies, the harmonies, whether major or minor, often represent an exhilaration or a lament.  The way the chords move and work together brings a sense of confidence, peace and harmony or can elicit chaos.  The sonorities and rhythms of music all represent different emotions and energies and when we listen, the music reminds us of these multifaceted feelings that we all experience throughout our lives.

The lyrics too are simply symbols of concepts and ideas assembled and reassembled in multifarious ways — each word, an assemblage of letters symbolizing the sounds of our human language (God, dog, black, white, tree, forest, rich, poor) and on and on.  These symbols, put together into phrases, represent the concepts of our existence.  When intelligently placed within the framework of music, the two, words and music, become a vast matrix of symbolism and with this matrix we communicate on a rich and fascinating level.

So is sadness recorded digitally?  Is the joy of inspiration imbedded there on your CD?  Can laser beams read soul?  Can your speakers waft love into the room?  How do these eternal, timeless concepts travel from New York to Des Moines, Iowa?  From December to May?  From Paul to Samantha?  Can they really be communicated through strings of zeros and ones?  Hardly.

In Truth, there is no time.  There is no space.  We are all one.  We hear these concepts again and again throughout our lives and seldom grasp their meaning.  But art, certainly a higher human form of communication, allows us to begin to envision infinity, eternity, yes, even God.  We look at a Monet painting and feel its peace and presence or we look at Dali’s melting rubber clocks and laugh with surprise.  We contemplate Michaelangelo’s David with awe and appreciation of the grace of human form and for each of us it is a different experience shaped by the experiences of our lives.  We read the poetry of the Bible and are healed, not by the poetry or the words, but by the understanding of the concepts that lie within.  We listen to Samuel Barber’s Adagio For Strings and weep at the struggle of the human soul, but grasp the joy and exhilaration of the music’s spirituality.

Is there peace in Monet’s oil?  Is there magic in the Bible’s words?  Is God in Barber’s music?

Art certainly gives us an insight into the realm of Spirit.  Art can be a doorway.  But the truths do not lie in the oil or reside in the stone or even travel through the cable as zeros and ones.  Truth is eternal, without time.  Truth is infinite, without space.  Man is one, without separation.  God is all in all, without pause.

Art, a higher language of communication, simply reminds us of that which we already know, but somehow have misplaced or forgotten.  It does this through its symbolism — reconnecting us with God’s eternal idea, jogging the human memory and opening up insights into the infinite.  Art can be a tool that reconnects us with our spirituality.  Can art heal?  No, but it can help lead us to the Truth which certainly does heal.  Are we healed by the hymn beautifully sung on our CD?  No, but we are led to the Truth by the symbolism of the words and music, yes even by the zeros and ones.  They are simply a human step in the spiritual process.

So when we listen to the CD and are inspired, or weep with sorrow, or laugh with joy, we, in effect, leap across time and space into the singer’s experience.  We are there with that person in timeless, spaceless communication both exploring together the emotions and inspirations of the moment.  If the singer is inspired, if the song is inspired, if we are open to being inspired, then we all live in the oneness of the infinite now — singer, songwriter, musicians, engineers — connected across time and space through the goofiest of digital technologies — strings of zeros and ones.

Even More Inspiration

• Spiritual Scientist
• Thinking And Creativity
• God Is doG Spelled Backwards
• The Atheist
• The Changing Scene
• Words Of Wisdom