Music has always been a spiritual portal for me, both performing and listening. I got to thinking about this recently when considering that this blog had been abandoned as I worked to bring my band, The Elevator Conspiracy, out of hiatus. The band has been doing a lot of work to get ready for a series of shows we have coming up, as well as breaking in a new singer. Interestingly, though, as it’s something I’d never considered, is that the performance and social interaction part of the group is more of the focal point than it ever was for me. Whereas, it used to be all about the tunes, sonic creations, etc… and I do enjoy the listening and composing part of creation, but as I thought about playing with these guys, and the musical communion that is when we come together the more I thought that music has always been spiritual portal, and now more than ever, the priority is going through that portal as much, and as frequently as I can. I wonder if anybody reading has ever had one of these timeless, or spiritual moments playing, listening or creating music; if so I’d love to hear about your experiences.

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Over the last year, or even longer (though less consistently) there have three or so major themes here:

1. Music/Sound
2. Electronic communications (social media, Web 2.0, new media, etc…)
3. Our human potential (self-motivation, self-help, goals, etc…)

These themes have taken many forms, including anecdotes, videos, and posts I’ve found online to quotes, book references, poetry, sound samples and musical references. That’s not going to change, but time has given me the benefit of being able to see what this blog is about; what scales, and what’s sustainable as a writer and leader of this endeavor.

If you imagine this blog as an impressionist painting, say a darker Monet (above) or Renoire, and you blur the specific content items into a single whole, the focus of the writing and the message start to get more narrow. You start to see that really this blog is about me and what I’ve tried to do since I came online with my music in 1999, I write a bit about that at the bottom this post here. Here’s an excerpt:

It’s funny because as I write this I remember what it was that attracted me to the Web. I was a musician/composer, and I was working on a recording. After having played guitar for years, being in bands, playing shows, and trying to sell music at venues, I saw that the Web had the power to change everything for me as a working artist — the playing field had been leveled. On the Web, in 1999, Mp3.com had just launched, and it was skies the limit for artists to get out their, hang a virtual shingle, and let the world know about their work. However, it wasn’t about huckstering your product and bombarding folks with spam to inform them about your work (though there was some of that); rather there was an openness that permeated throughout this new platform. There were new channels for sharing what you were doing, as well as for folks, from all the over the world, to share with you.

The Web was, is, the great liberator. It leveled the playing field for artists of all kinds, but for me as a composer, the benefits have been huge. Here are a few reasons why:

• Getting the message out is cheap (often free)
• Exposure is as great as the work you put into it (and free, not historically the case)
• Everyone in the world (with an internet connection) can access your work.
• You are your own limitation because the world is at your finger tips (or to use bad 90’s copy – just a mouse click away)

These items are unprecedented, and while they have, and will continue to, come with their own struggles, it’s has the potential to be a boon for the working artist, writer, and creative. Therefore, the moral of the, blog/story that I’ve been weaving for the past year  starts to look like this:

If you’re a composer, artist, creative, whatever then there’s no excuse to not get your work out there, do the most and be the most you can be; the Web and the many electronic communications tools available to you (including email, social media and even old school listservs and newsgroups) can help you get the message out there about your work.

That’s it.

That’s the fork in the message for creatives out there.

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Pleased to report that I successfully submitted my 2002 recording of the Detroit People Mover to the Sounds of the State collection that’s been playing on Michigan Radio for the last few months. So if you listen to Michigan Radio with any regularity you’ll hear my recording of the Detroit People Mover. You should also check out the Sounds of the State Web site. Very nice.

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I’m filing this under lessons learned.

When developing anything for the Web or from any IT perspective, there are two things that need to be considered:

1.) It’s very challenging to develop a digital process where there’s no human process.

It’s not that creating a digital process can’t be completed, it’s just that it has to be pursued. When you start developing a Web or IT endeavor it’s all about the process that you’re trying to digitize. So having process map is crucial to developing the workflow for a given Web or IT project.

2.) Sometimes a Web or IT project can’t replace real human contact

Some processes, many processes have the luxury of being able to be replaced by computers. However, there are some that no Web site or computer can replaced. In my business, it’s a beautiful idea to streamline or refine work processes, and it’s a work that I love and look very forward to doing, but sometimes there’s no replacement for human contact. Sometimes, creating a digital process where a human one is needed can hurt the process.

What I’ve learned is that you really have to evaluate the projects, analyze them, and sometimes the best thing to do is avoid digitizing a process, allowing the human process to stand.

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So, much of this month has been spent putting pieces of The Elevator Conspiracy back together, with bandmate Will Jurkiewicz and myself doing singer auditions (see my amused and irritated post on this), getting PR stuff in place, and just coming out of our hiatus period. I also completed a Web site for the group, which is now available at http://www.theelevatorconspiracy.com, which I hope to morph into an active blog site for the band once we finalize the re-launch line-up.

The whole process has really gotten me thinking about just how damned hard putting together and keeping together a band can be. I’ve always had an appreciation for any band that can stay together for 20-30, 40 years, but now I have to say that groups that can do that, especially without line-up changes in many instances, is nothing short of miraculous.

It’s easy for the non-musical lay-person to think that there’s nothing to being in a band… learn some Skynyrd covers, buy case of Schlitz and head to practice… Yeah, not so much… there’s a little more to it than all of that. I’ve been working on learning Antonio Carlos Jobim’s Águas de Março (Waters of March) as a cover, and man it’s a pretty straight-forward tune but with some $17 chords that make positioning and performance a dexterity and rhythmic growth experience. Good thing I like to keep growing as an instrumentalist, but this is no first position G-chord opening to Sweet Home Alabama.

Maybe, that’s it, though, the more complex the music, the more important the dedication.

Music performance can be a transcendental, timeless experience. For a long time I was able to achieve that sort of timelessness in my own music, and composing in solitude, but that became more and more difficult, or maybe it was that I could find that sound, that solace, that place of timeless more easily playing in an ensemble? Yes I think that’s it. That’s what makes it important to keep going, and keep pushing, and keep working to keep it together.

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I enjoyed a pretty good movie yesterday. It was about Scott Joplin, played by Billy Dee Williams from 1977. A little before my time, but apparently the movie The Sting sparked some renewed interest in the music of Scott Joplin and this movie was riding the crest of that wave.

Ever a sucker for music/artist-inspired movies, I was pulled in. I don’t know how accurate it was, probably not very, but it was interesting to see the role the publisher played in getting the work of Scott Joplin, and other artists, to audiences.

It’s interesting for me to think that a hundred years ago if  you wanted to hear the latest hit then you bought the sheet music, and played it on your piano. How amazing is that? Now, and even for the last 80 years, we’ve been able to just put on a recording, but prior to that… if you wanted to hear it, you played it, or found somebody that could.

How far we’ve come… now, the idea of a sort of in-home music performance is all but a lost novelty, but try to imagine the time of “parlor music”. Kind of cool, if you think about it. However, with the advent of portable listening devices the intimacy of the musical performance is often lost. There’s very little intimacy in the average music venue these days, but some genres of live music, specifically, folk, jazz and some classical and chamber music has realized that this intimacy is key, and in fact, truly connects you to the music, to say nothing of the reasonable logistics of setting up a folk or jazz act in a small room with a couple dozen folding chairs.

As a musician and composer, the means and mode of delivering your music and compositions is ever-changing. While western music did enjoy a period without paradoxical music/compositional change, from Palestrina to Schoenberg, the world was ever-changing. So… we adapt.

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So the search for a singer for the Elevator Conspiracy continues. We’ve heard from a lot of different folks and mostly it’s been positive. There have been a few instances that have given me pause, but overall it’s been good.

I have been amazed by the number of folks that contacted us with no band or musical experience of any kind. In ElCon, we all have 10-20 years of experience playing, like the better part of most of our lives, so to bring somebody in with no experience doesn’t really even make any sense and it’s kind of unfair to them, because right from go they’re at a disadvantage from the rest of the group.

The other thing is why would you even respond to an ad looking for experienced singers/vocalists with no experience? Just because you have a voice. I have a banjo and I don’t suck at Bluegrass-style playing, but that doesn’t entitle me to answer an ad looking for a Flatt and Scruggs-style review band or something… The question that pops in my head is this: Is there no introspection, reflection, or self-analysis?

A friend hit the nail on the head, I think… and that’s the American Idol syndrome. There’s a feeling of entitlement, like even if you can’t do it well, at least there’s some value in doing it, even if only comedic and absurd, rather than as a stepping stone or some kind of ascent towards something greater. Because here’s the thing, whether you’re a singer, drummer, guitarist or tabla player, the initial practice and musical experience is done alone. Eventually, you get your skills and confidence to a level where you join up with others. However, there’s a large contingent of folks, who in their conceptual mind, who say I want to be a singer. I should join a band. For starter’s that’s all wrong, and is kind of a mockery of music and what it takes to create it. I didn’t just decide to be a bass or guitar player and join a band. I spent precious time learning, watching, waiting and preparing; then it was time to dip a toe in.

This is really turning out to be an interesting chapter, and one that I believe will be fruitful. However, I’m continually amazed by human beings, the human condition, and just how insightful watching a world at play can be… really interesting…

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I’ve had a bit of a guitar fixation of late, trying to find just the right instrument. I almost always practice on an acoustic, but almost always play electric live. I wanted some kind of instrument that could have both the acoustic and the electric elements. I looked at acoustic-electric guitars, of particular interest were the Taylor 114CE and the MartinOMC1E nice price points, solid instruments but I kept getting stuck on the fact that the necks were too thick for my chunky fingers.

I started looking at electrics almost exclusively, specifically hollow body instruments including a variety of Ibanez Artcore models, Gibson jazz boxes, the Gretsch Electromatic and a variety of Godin’s. More often than not these instruments were nice, but I found the gaps on the strings, from E to A, A to D, etc… was too narrow for my acoustic fingerpicking style to not feel cramped and flubbed when I tried the techniques on the electric. As well, I found that the tension of the acoustic gave me better control and a more calculated attack with less give because of the tension and that also I liked to have a thicker instrument against my torso. This led me to a variety of dead ends, and start stops in the search, but I continued on and found the Ibanez Montage.

The Ibanez Montage was an interesting instrument. It’s what’s called a hybrid acoustic guitar, and basically they try to bring the best of the acoustic and the electric world together in a single instrument. My first thought was that much like the print-fax-copy machine an instrument that does all of this must have some serious weaknesses. I needed to try one for myself. While looking to demo some of the Ibanez Artcore hollow bodies, specifically Ibanez Artcore AK95 I stumbled across the Ibanez Montage. Some other guy had it, and held on to it for a good while, but after about fifteen minutes of him playing it I got my chance.

Ibanez Montage - Metallic Black

I picked up the instrument of the wall of acoustic area where Guitar Center housed it and plugged it in. My initial thought: This instrument has a lot of knobs. Now the electro-acoustic musician in me loved this, but it also left me a little befuddled. Here I had the conversative, traditional acoustic instrument with all of these new-fangled devices. For starters it has on-board reverb, chorus, with adjustable knobs, a tuner, the standard EQ, and then a five-way switch on the upper shoulder of the instrument with a control over each of the various pick up selector positions. In all of the positions it played nicely, and sounded warm. It wasn’t the greatest electric, but the control was nice, and certainly more than I had anticipated. The various acoustic setting were good, and in keeping with what’s to be expected from acoustic electrics, honestly a tone that I don’t love, but have learned to make do with. Then I unplugged it and strummed it with electronics. As you can see from the photo here it doesn’t have much of sound hole, but nevertheless it still produced warm and rich sounds that obviously didn’t have the volume of a Martin D-28 or something, but still it sounded more like an acoustic guitar than an electric. The neck, which is indicative of all Ibanez’s, had what we used to call a “fast neck” in my formative early metal and punk rock days. As well the strings had a good action, and response with more than enough rough for my chunky fingers to fingerpick with ease. The Ibanez Montage seemed to be the instrument I had been looking for.

So with that much of my absence here on the blog can be attributed to me wiling away my days picking and grinning at a variety of guitar shops all throughout mid and southeastern Michigan, so I felt it only fair to share the stories of my journey.

I hope to put some recordings of the new instrument up here on the blog, but this instrument is sure to be the instrument that Elevator Conspiracy emerges with in the weeks to come.

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Being yourself, sometimes, is the hardest thing to be. This is especially the case if you’ve gotten in the habit of denying who you really are and playing the role of somebody else. At least when you’re playing a role or a character and somebody takes issue with you, or doesn’t like you, then they’re taking an issue with a mask, a facade, rather than the you, who *you* really are.  At least, but on the other side of that is that you spend so much time pretending to be someone else, and one day, before you know it, you’ve spent your whole life being this character, this shell of someone else and you find yourself totally out of touch with what you believe and who you really are.

I’ve found this to especially be the case if you’ve been raised in an environment where you’re scared, or insecure, or don’t necessarily know what people want from you. So you take on a role, which isn’t as dissociative as it sounds, and you become someone else. Of course, the real you is always there, but it’s hidden, tucked away a little bit, and when people get close you lash out, or do something that keeps them at bay, or at arm’s length so that nobody can get close and catch a glimpse of you really are. After all if that were to happen then they might get an edge, an angle, or some other kind of perspective or insight into the delicate and gentle person that you really are; which is to be avoided at all costs.

Often, though, over time, the real you, who you really are, that person connected to the source, the child of the universe, comes out. You can’t help it, but on the other hand, you don’t really want to help it because it feels so good to be free, basking in the ray’s of the sun’s light knowing that if only for this second you’re free; free to be who you are and achieve everything that you’ve wanted to but your caricature or character’s insecurity wouldn’t allow for. This is the real you emerging from your universal womb; free to breathe in the air, taking life fully into your lungs.

Like a snake you shed that old skin and begin anew. Sure that sheath protected you and gave you comfort, if only a bit cold, in those dark moments of your life when you coiled up with it, but it allowed you to live, and it allowed you to get here, to this moment, and that’s what the journey, the trip, the experience is all about, growth through introspection and the analysis of who you are and what it means to be you – the expansion of consciousness.

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What do you do when you reached some personal best, some thing in your life, where you just don’t have anything else to prove? Underneath prayer, meditation, the will to succeed, and all of these other things that we focus on, underneath that stuff, if you pull back a few layers, you’ll see that all along, really, you just had something to prove. Whether it was to yourself, your family, your dad (a big one for dudes), your high school guidance counselor or whatever, it’s likely that there was somebody, somewhere that you were trying to prove yourself to.

Now, it’s extremely abstract to actually prove something to anybody, and on top of that the proof usually comes in the intangible form of a feeling unless you’re success has garnered a lot of publicity for one reason or another. Assuming that you’re the person who’s looking for proof in the zone of feelings this is a hard one to share. However, what you find after a bit, is that the thing that drove you, that motivator, that will to succeed, that need to prove yourself falls away.

I remember that after the success, monetarily and otherwise, of The Dark Side of the Moon the members of Pink Floyd were kind of disoriented. Now they hadn’t just gotten a number one record, but they’re recording was in the charts for more than twenty years. They had achieved something that nobody before, and quite possibly after, has been able to achieve. As you can imagine it kind of messed with their perception of reality. In many ways “Dark Side”, as fans offhandedly refer to it, marked a turning point for the band. They no longer had anything to prove, whatever it was that drove them, slowed a bit. In time, they found their bearing, and continued to do great work, but the motivation, the impetus, the whole landscape of their perceived reality changed, and subsequently so did they.

So with that story, I also wrap in the moral of my own story here. When you’ve reached a point where you no longer have anything to prove, the ground beneath your feet shakes a little, your reality shifts before your eyes, and the fire that once burned in your gut is now only a smoldering pile of ashes. It doesn’t feel great, and mostly a feeling of disorientation washes across your being. Some medicate with legal and illegal narcotics, sex, material items, etc… but really this change, this loss of “something to prove” is growth. Of course, it’s change, but it’s also change for the better. That monkey of having something to prove is off your back. Now what do you do? Do you do anything?

Most of us who’ve experienced this have spent the better part of our lives trying to prove this thing to ourselves and others. When that urge is gone, it leaves a huge hole. Do we look for something else to fill it with? Do we acknowledge the loss? Can we rest on our laurels? I don’t know.

I know I feel lighter, and more at ease, but the hole where I had something to prove once lived is now an empty cavern at the core of my being that’s constantly grasping and looking for something to fill it with if only to take up some of the emptiness of where my sense of purpose used to live.

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