Sparks from the Fire

Short.

Keep it short.

No one has time anymore.

So keep it short.

Not sure I can…

Just not my style.

Never took to writing music for commercials.

60 seconds?

30 seconds??

No time to stretch my wings.

Yeah, I’m probably a bit long winded.

But I love to tell a good story.

Weave a good yarn.

I tend to put the problem on the other guy’s shoulders – the reader, the listener – the world.  Not my fault if they can’t hang in there.  Can’t slow down enough to consider something a little deeper.  Things are just going faster.  It’s a throw-away society.  No time to stop and think, to pause and pray, to sit back and dream, to lie down and do nothing.  We’re all trying to get somewhere when really we’re already there – only we just don’t know it.  Baba Ram Dass said, “Be here now.”  Eckart Tolle wrote The Power Of Now.  A best-seller.  Who had time to read it?  It appears that many did, so where are they and what are they doing about it?  Can’t we slow down enough to just sit and read?  Just sit and listen?  Does music have to get relegated to the background?  Someone said to me the other day, “I listened to your album while making dinner the other evening…”  I was crushed.  I hoped they liked the tunes…  Now I’m supposed to break this paragraph up into several for my blog post so that people will be more inclined to read it.  Long paragraphs will scare you away.  Did you know that?  Are you afraid?

There.

Fear gone?

Feeling better.

Want to read on?

OK, perhaps tomorrow…

The dictionary defines this in simple terms.  “Someone who denies the existence of God”.  It’s from the Latin: atheos which means ‘without God’ or ‘Godless’.

I’ve always been curious to meet an atheist.  Whenever someone announces themselves as one, I always try to take a moment (or often many more) and discus their atheism with them.  I like to first start with the obvious question, “Define God?”

I’ve had this opportunity 15-20 times in life and it’s always been the same experience.  Once they’ve explained their definition of God to me, I’ve always found myself saying back to them the same line: “Well then, I must be an atheist too because I don’t believe in that god either.”

Often the definition portrayed is archaic, anthropomorphic, and usually something taught them by confused parents or Sunday School teachers, but always ideas that I find equally hard to swallow.

Can this be the most misunderstood word in the human language?  Quite possibly so.  I’m not here to rectify that.  I have had an evolving, ever-changing struggle with the concept of God for over a half a century now.  I’m not at all sure what God is, but I do have a feeling for what He, She or It is not.

A guy in the sky with a long white beard?  No.  A He or a She?  No.  A Father/ Mother?  Sort of…  An infinite and eternal concept?  Probably.  Love, Life, Truth, Being, Interconnection?  Yes. (more…)

I’ve been working on a song – a song for an outside client whose album I’ve been producing and orchestrating.  It hasn’t been working.  I’ve tried several different approaches – woodwinds, guitar based, drums/no drums, stronger/lighter, and nothing I did seemed to bring the song to its musical realization supporting the lyric, content and intent of the song.

And it’s a good song.  I know it is, because it’s been running around in my mind for several weeks now.  I wake up singing it and wonder for a moment where it came from and then realize, “Oh yeah, that’s that song!”

The client keeps coming in when I’m finished with my latest iteration and she sits and listens and nods her head as I play it for her and then when it’s through we nod and agree that we’re not there yet.

In the original session, her pianist and writing partner came in and recorded the piano and she the scratch vocal.  They were kind of ornery with each other when usually they’re a happy team.  I stayed pretty quiet as he kind of ran roughshod over her as they worked and he laid down the piano part and she sang the scratch vocal.  It was not an inspired session.  At one point I remember exclaiming kind of in fun, “Boy, you two are like an old married couple.”  The session was more about their momentary troubles than the song itself and the song was basically a love song!

As he got more and more depressed and actually meaner to her, she became nervous and hurt, embarrassed and withdrew into an uncustomary quiet.  But we were getting the work done.  He’s a fine pianist and though he was not particularly inspired that day, his playing was solid and mistake free.

When the session was over I was relieved to move on in life.  I began, several days later to orchestrate the song using his piano track and her scratch vocal as a base and it all seemed to go downhill from there. (more…)

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…)

“I want all of you to get up out of your chairs.  I want you to get up right now and go to the window.  Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’  I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell – ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’  Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!… You’ve got to … stick your head out, and yell, and say it: “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”

Back in 1976, newsman Howard Beale, played by actor Peter Finch in the movie Network, uttered these immortal words that, for those of us who saw the movie and Finch’s riveting performance, have stuck with many of us for a quarter century.

Back then it was a grand idea as, in the movie, thousands rushed to their windows and did just that.

Today it’s really happening.  And it’s a good thing!

Bloggers now take down selfish companies.  Egypt’s people stage a peaceful revolt and take back their government.  Bank of America abandons its plan to charge customers a $5 fee to use their debit cards for purchases. Only a month earlier, the bank had announced the new charge, immediately setting off a huge uproar from consumers.  The Occupy Wall Street movement grabs the attention of millions and whether you’re for it or agi’n it, you have to value it as the great American dream of free speech in action.

Netflix‘s video subscription service lost 800,000 customers in the third quarter —the biggest exodus in its history— even as its earnings rose 65 percent. (more…)

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. (more…)

I grew up in a family of four.  My older brother, Jim, was five years older than me and led the way in just about everything.  I idolized him just as every little brother should.  In our family, it was always said that Jim got the brains and Pete got the work ethic.  I don’t remember ever thinking much about the “work ethic” part, but I sure wished at the time that I had gotten the “brains” part of the deal.

Jim was a lefty.  That meant, as all you lefties out there know, that when you learn to write longhand, you have to drag your hand across the already written word often in the beginning smearing the ink or even the pencil marks into oblivion.  In order to not do this, you have to lift your hand awkwardly up, losing your controlling leverage.  Consequently many lefties start out as poor hand-writers until they get the hang of it.  My brother, Jim, was just such a monster.

My school district in Kirkwood, Missouri did not go by the usual A, B, C, D, F grading system that most institutions use today.  Instead it was as follows:

S= Superior
E= Excellent
A= Average
P= Poor
U= Unsatisfactory

Why or how I still remember this is beyond me.  Sorta like remembering my first telephone number was “Kirkwood 1084J”.  Another was “Terryhill 31390”.  Those were spoken when the operator came on and said “Operator” – before dial phones.  I guess that oughta date me.

But I digress…

When in the sixth grade, under the tutelage of the feared Miss Cochran, older brother Jim had pulled off the near impossible.  He had, with his big brains, received straight ‘S’s at the end of the year from the toughest teacher at Osage School.  Except for one thing.  He actually didn’t get straight ’S’s because he got an ‘E’ in handwriting – probably a gift from a momentarily generous Miss Cochran who felt sorry for the kid who was so smart but had the dreaded Lefty Disease.  Even in the sixth grade Jim’s handwriting was still unreadable.

But everyone except younger brother, Pete, gave Jim the benefit of the doubt and his straight ‘S’s (except for Handwriting) became the talk of the neighborhood for a season and a high-water mark in our family for what felt like forever.  Every time grades were brought home we were reminded that Jim had received straight ‘S’s in the sixth grade.  (All except for one)

So this became the life objective for younger brother, Pete, not necessarily self-perpetuated, but certainly parent perpetuated.  This became the record to beat for five long years of my life as I waited to try my lesser brains in the sixth grade. (more…)

Inspirational music is a new category.  5-6 years ago it basically did not exist.  When Watchfire Music first began we googled the words “inspirational music” and up came 4 pages of references.  At about 10 references per Google page that’s about 40 in total.

Today, I just googled the term and up came over 65,000,000 references.  That’s an incredible growth over this short time.  For the past year this blog, Sparks From The Fire, has stood at #1 or #2 on page one of Google just about every time I’ve googled it.  That’s about once a month.  Watchfire Music is nearly always found among the first 3 pages.

It’s taken a lot of work and dedication by a talented staff here at Watchfire Music to keep us up on the top of those rankings.  It’s also taken a lot of writing on my part to stay high on the charts, so to speak.  I must say, I’ve enjoyed it.  Writing this blog has given me a great time to think deeply about life and the meanings of inspiration almost daily.

I sometimes wonder if I’m not writing a new kind of autobiography – like a diary of a lifetime of thoughts and stories.  It certainly has been an autobiography of the last 4-5 years.  This particular post is actually the 350^th that I’ve written these past several years.

Some bloggers write short, terse 1 paragraph posts.  I read several a day and they’re very popular.  Mine are more often 3 pages.  I ask myself why.  I know that nobody has time to read any more and figure that one look at one of my long posts can be daunting to most people.  I try to write short, but I guess that’s just not me.

I could never be a commercial writer as a composer either.  Writing 30-60 second commercial songs was always an area that did not interest me.  I guess I just like to stretch out and try to go a little deeper.

Call it style; call it a reflection of my deranged mind.  Whatever…

At any rate, I’ve enjoyed the ride.  It’s been a chance to think things out and talk to all who might be interested and create a dialogue of thought on the topic of all things inspirational.

Thanks for listening.