Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
SampleTank 2
There is a group buy going on right now at IK Multimedia on SampleTank Expansion libraries. You buy one library for $49.95 and you get SampleTank 2 XT and one extra library for free. Then as more people buy into the deal, you get more libraries for free. Right now it is up to four for one. I have Cinematik (movie-oriented strings and effects), Symphony Strings 2, Vocal Collection, and World Instruments. When there are 612 more users, it will go to five for one, and I will get either Hip Hop Instruments (even though I don’t do hip hop, there is some interesting stuff there) or Piano Collection 2.
This is all stuff I can play with my Roland-Ready Stratocaster. Right now I have it set up with an electric bass on the two lowest strings, horns on the middle three, and a cello on the first. Playing like this completely breaks down all the ruts that you get into as a guitar player, and generates new ideas for music. If I decide to record something, of course it is best to record the parts separately and layer them, but for jamming, writing, and fooling around, different instruments on different strings is great fun!
I have Kontakt 4, which is a much more powerful sampler than SampleTank, but new libraries for Kontakt tend to be very pricey. The target market there is people who are doing film scores, advertising, and hit singles, so it is pro, pro, pro and $500 a pop. This SampleTank deal has a lot of usable stuff for cheap, and I am going to have a lot of fun with it.
Here is a link to a quick jam I made with it:
A New Year
I started this blog one year ago today. I intended to post nearly everyday, but I only managed 43 posts. One day the blog got 117 hits, but the average is around 5 or 6 a day. The most popular post in terms of hits is the one about the “Roland-Ready Stratocaster,” which makes sense in a way because this guitar is very interesting to a very small segment of the huge population of people interested in more traditional Stratocasters, and there isn’t a lot of information on the web about it. In general, guitar-related posts got more traffic than rhetoric or teaching-related posts. I did get into one interesting dialogue with a scholar about what Walter Ong meant by “secondary orality.” This individual had edited Ong’s papers, so I lost that argument. Otherwise, most of the comments, 56 of them, were about electric guitars, amplifiers, and stomp boxes.
I started this blog mostly to learn about the rhetoric of blogs. I suppose I have learned quite a bit, but it was little by little. Some blogs are full of personal ruminations and observations on all and sundry, and are either a sort of gonzo journalism sent out hopefully to an imagined large audience or are designed largely for an audience of friends and family. Others are tightly focused on a narrow range of topics and issues and are intended to serve some journalistic or scholarly purpose. My blog here has been a little of both. I haven’t talked much about my day to day experiences, life events, and such, except in the context of another topic. I have offered information about musical equipment, teaching techniques, bicycles, travel, and other things. Looking back, I think that this blog is about too many things to attract any sort of steady readership. Instead, the hits I get come from people using search engines to find specific information. That’s cool, I guess, but I may have to rethink my plan. I could split the blog into multiple blogs, but since I managed only 43 posts in a year, that may be another path to non-success.
The year 2009 was not a very good year, for me, and for many others. When I told my wife, who was struggling with cancer, that I had started a blog, she was afraid that it would be one of those very personal ongoing accounts of dealing with cancer, full of emotion and struggling toward wisdom. She read it a couple of times to make sure that it was not that kind of blog. If I had been writing about that, and I certainly understand the temptation, she would have asked me to stop. After a four-year struggle, my wife passed away at home on March 16, 2009. I am still trying to deal with that loss.
As I think I have posted before, I have stepped down from my quasi-administrative position and will now teach full time. On Monday I will teach Science Fiction, Freshman Composition, and Literary Theory. I am looking forward to my new role. I wish everyone a Happy New Year, and may this year be a better one than 2009.
Roland TD-4S Electronic Drums
The electronic drums arrived today. The stand comes in one box, the rest of the kit in another. Here are the two boxes, plus the Tama drum throne and the Pearl kick pedal that I ordered. The creature on top is Sharkie, who is hiding from our kitten, Boojie.
The first step is to unpack the parts for the rack. The packaging is well designed and the parts are light, solid, and well-made. Here the packaging is being inspected by Boojie, who helped throughout the assembly process.
The parts were all present and accounted for. Boojie actually enjoyed the packaging more than the drum hardware.
Here is the assembled rack:
The rack assembly took about 45 minutes, with the help of the kitten. Then I opened the second box. Here are the items it contained laid out on the floor.
The instructions were not hard to follow, except that in one picture the image was either flipped or it was set up for a left-handed drummer. No big deal. Here is the kit completely assembled, but not adjusted for playing. Everything can be moved up and down, side to side, and tilted.
The wiring harness is clearly marked and easy to hook up. The 25 kits sound good, and everything works. I need to put something under the pedals to keep them from moving around. Other than that, the only problem is that, as I suspected, drumming is more difficult than it looks. A lot of practicing is in order. It will be fun though.
The Practice of Songwriting
Like most singer-songwriters, I started out with the “strum and hum” method. I was about 17. I was living in a back house on my parent’s property, and my girlfriend had gone off on a trip across the country. I had my Martin D-18. I tuned the low E string down to D and started strumming variations on a D chord with different notes in the bass. When I sang the neighbor’s dog started barking at me, so that became my first line:
I sing and the dogs bark at me
In a short time I had a whole verse:
I sing and the dogs bark at me,
I walk it’s so bright I can’t see,
But it’s ok, believe me now
‘Cause I’m gonna make it, somehow, somehow
Hey, wandering one
Who told you to come home?
I might have known
I might have known
This song had no verse/chorus structure and had very simple chords and not much movement in the melody. Still, people liked it, so it gave me confidence to do more. I haven’t played it in many years, but I could probably figure out how to do it. I wrote many songs during that period, and played them in various venues, including the Sunday night open mic (it was actually called a “hoot”) at the Ice House in Pasadena, which featured singer/songwriters, folkie bluegrass bands like the Dillards, and comedians like Steve Martin. If you signed up a month in advance you could have one of the first four slots and play for 15 minutes. The hoot came right after the Sunday night show, so if you had one of those slots, you could play to a full house. My friend John Lee and I did that twice, maybe more.
I don’t remember any of the other songs, and I don’t have any playable tapes. The only other song I remember is one of the last ones, called “Waiting.” This song was inspired by the 1971 Sylmar earthquake.
I was living in the back house in San Gabriel. The quake struck at about 6:00 am, so I was asleep. The outside door was a little loose in the frame, so the quake made it rattle so vigorously, I thought someone was trying to break down the door. The moment I opened the door, I saw all the transformers on all the power poles in the area explode in a bright white light. It was an apocalyptic vision.
Later I wrote this:
Wasting time trying to make my way
I think I won’t look in the mirror today
Oh, baby watch your eyes.
Don’t get lost in southern skies
It’s a sinful highway, set with stars
And too many people who play guitars,
[Forgot the phrase here], try most anything
I listened too hard and my ears still ringChorus:
And it’s hard, these times were in
They’re as bad as they have been
And if it seems, we’ve come to harm
I want to die with a woman in my arms.
This song was recorded by Mary McCaslin, a folksinger from San Bernardino, on an album called “Way Out West.” You can hear a snippet of it here:
Actually, you can buy it and download it for 99 cents. How strange.
I managed to get love, romance, the music business, death, the end of the world, all that stuff, into one song. And then it was like the muse left me, probably because I started working at a life insurance company. However, I think the real problem was that my standards had gotten beyond what was possible with the strum and hum songwriting method. I wanted to write better melodies, better lyrics, better chord progressions. The old process was failing me, but I didn’t have a new process.
The other thing is that when you are 17 years old, it seems like you are the first one in history to feel these things and think these thoughts. When you are older, it is harder to discover something unique to say. Again, your standards go up, and you can’t meet them anymore.
Years went by when I didn’t play much. Then computer technology made it possible to arrange whole compositions with multi-tracked parts on your screen, mix them and play them back. You could make mp3′s and mail them to your friends, and burn CD’s of your material. I used a program called Fruityloops, which became FL Studio. I learned to program synths, create drum parts and string parts, all self-taught, without any formal musical training. Then one day I was working on a piece with some sliding triads played through a sampled piano, and I started singing a line. That turned into a song called “Seize the Day.” It isn’t very good, but it was the first song in 30 years. (The version on the website was rewritten a bit to accommodate someone who wanted to put it in a novel/CD project that fell through, so it is even cornier than it originaly was.) I quickly wrote two more, “Fourth of July,” which is about a guy trying to get his wife to forgive him by comparing himself favorably to George III, and “Helen” which is about Helen of Troy from the point of view of Menelaus, her abandoned husband. I seem to be back in business again.
The new songs can be heard on the “Muse of Synthesis” site. There is a link on the home page of the blog.
Why write songs? That I do not know. It seems to be necessary.
Songwriting versus Teaching
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Bob Dylan, kindergarten, literacy
Comments (3) My daughter and I were having a discussion about which changed more lives, songwriting or teaching? Good teaching has a pyramid-like effect, especially if you teach prospective teachers. Your students go out and teach others, who may end up teachers themselves and teach others. Sometimes you can see the effect almost immediately. Once I was teaching a course called “Writing in the Schools.” The students were all pre-service teachers, but some were going to teach grammar school, some high school, some college. I was teaching a book by Jerome Harste called Language Stories, Literacy Lessons, which is a longitudinal study of pre-school literacy. Harste and his team found that pre-school kids engage in all sorts of pre-literate behavior. They know that writing is different from drawing and they can recognize a McDonald’s from way down the street because they can read the logo. They often can recognize and name some letters in the alphabet, and they are often excited about literacy. However, when they get to kindergarten, teachers usually ignore all these abilities and make them begin writing carefully-shaped letters exactly between the lines. One student described in the Harste book went into Kindergarten saying “I can write!” and after the first week said “I can’t write.”
A student who was working as a teacher’s aid in a kindergarten class added my class late, so she missed the first lecture. As I signed her add form, she said, “My students can’t do anything. They can’t read or write, or follow simple instructions.” The next week, after she had read about half of the Harste book, she said, “My students are doing all of these things, but their teacher won’t accept it. She tells them to fill out something with a green crayon, and they use all different colors, so they fail.”
That teacher is undoubtedly in a classroom somewhere today, and it is likely that her kindergarten students are writing and reading much better than others because she is working with natural pre-literate behaviors instead of against them. Good teaching has a magnifying, multiplying effect.
Most pop music is entertaining fluff. It’s a pleasure, but it doesn’t have much substance or ideological content. When I first started listening to L.A. rock radio, KRLA and KFWB, the number one song was “I Got You Babe” by Sonny and Cher. There is not much to think about in songs like that. “Yesterday” by the Beatles was popular. It has a pretty melody and a lot of pathos, but there is not much for the mind. The first song that had a profound impact on me on multiple levels was Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” Imagine hearing “I Got You Babe” followed by this:
Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didnt you?
Peopled call, say, beware doll, youre bound to fall
You thought they were all kiddin you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin out
Now you dont talk so loud
Now you dont seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal.
To a seventh grader listening to pop music, that sounds real. It sounds wise and experienced. It’s a gritty fairy tale with a moral point. Don’t get too smug or comfortable, don’t be high and mighty, because you might fall. I heard it then, and I still hear it now.
Dylan had a talent for distilling a lot of experience into one line. The first line of “Queen Jane Approximately” goes:
When your mother sends back all your invitations
That line triggers a sense of weariness and alienation so complete it almost brings tears. Every verse describes a new way for things to go completely wrong. I was at a rock club one night listening to a group play African-influenced rock, when without warning they launched into this. I knew what it was from the first chords, and somehow, striking without warning like that with no context, it was even more powerful.
So which one wins, songwriting or teaching? Well, we didn’t resolve the debate, which will continue.
Sophistic Rhetoric and “Little Pink Houses”
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: McCain, Mellencamp, Reagan, sophist, Springsteen
Comments (1) I guess I should attempt to make a bridge between “guitar” and “sophist.”
In “Encomium of Helen” the sophist Gorgias defends Helen of Troy, widely considered to be the epitome of a bad woman. Gorgias argues that she is blameless because her actions were either due to the will of the gods, or she was “by force reduced or by words seduced or by love possessed.” Gorgias’ argument deprives Helen of all agency and thus all moral responsibility. However, what I am interested in here is not the argument, but the theory of rhetoric represented here by the seductive power of words. Gorgias argues
Speech is a powerful lord, which by means of the finest and most invisible body effects the divinest works: it can stop fear and banish grief and create joy and nurture pity. I shall show how this is the case, since it is necessary to offer proof to the opinion of my hearers: I both deem and define all poetry as speech with meter. Fearful shuddering and tearful pity and grievous longing come upon its hearers, and at the actions and physical sufferings of others in good fortunes and in evil fortunes, through the agency of words, the soul is wont to experience a suffering of its own. But come, I shall turn from one argument to another. Sacred incantations sung with words are bearers of pleasure and banishers of pain, for, merging with opinion in the soul, the power of the incantation is wont to beguile it and persuade it and alter it by witchcraft.
Much of the effect of Gorgias’ speech derives from rhythmic, poetic language with odd turns of phrase and lots of repetition of words and sounds. The translator of the above passage has attempted to preserve a bit of this effect. This is the sophistic logos, a persuasion through hypnotizing words rather than logical argument, as in Aristotle. Note especially the last sentence above, where he talks about the particular power of words that are sung to beguile and persuade the soul.
I want to argue that rock n’ roll music is the inheritor of the Gorgianic strand of sophistic rhetoric. Let me see if I can make this case.
In 1984 (1984, yikes, how Orwellian!) Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign tried to use Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” as a campaign theme. The chorus sounds stirringly patriotic:
Born in the U.S.A.
I was born in the U.S.A.
I was born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
It is almost impossible to hear this chorus without singing along, even for people who were not born in the U.S.A. However, the words themselves are banal and repetitive. It’s the music, the rhythm, the chords, and the arrangement, that drives them into your skull. You can hear this song a hundred times and not hear any lyrics besides these. That is what fooled the Reagan campaign. If you listen more carefully you hear words like these:
Born down in a dead man’s town
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground
You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much
Till you spend half your life just covering up
Got in a little hometown jam
So they put a rifle in my hand
Sent me off to a foreign land
To go and kill the yellow man
The song is clearly a bitter message about the men who went to fight in Vietnam and the problems they had when they returned home. The Reagan campaign’s cluelessness about this is old news. People, including Springsteen, said that they needed to put in the time and effort to listen to the song. However, songs with a rousing chorus like this are not designed to be understood in one take. What is the rhetorical effect of living with a song for a period of time, liking it, hearing it as a celebration of patriotism and American values, taking it into your heart and consciousness, and then suddenly hearing it as a critique? Could it be that a message that would have been fended off by ideological filters actually gets a hearing?
The McCain campaign recently made a similar blunder with John Mellencamp’s “Pink Houses.” The chorus is equally patriotic and stirring, except that the last line contains a hint of possible irony:
Oh, but ain’t that America
For you and me
Ain’t that America
Something to see, baby
Ain’t that America
Home of the free, yeah
Little pink houses
For you and me
Oooh, little baby
For you and me
The verses are about ordinary people, their aspirations and disappointments. There’s a black man in a black neighborhood with an interstate running through his front yard who “thinks that he’s got it so good.” There’s a greasy young man in a t-shirt who already thinks he’s found his destination because his crazy dreams to be president, “just kind of came and went.” But the real problem for the McCain campaign might be this verse:
Well, there’s people and more people
What do they know, know, know
Go to work in some high rise
And vacation down at the Gulf of Mexico
Ooh, yeah
And there’s winners and there’s losers
But they ain’t no big deal
‘Cause the simple man, baby
Pays for thrills
The bills the pills that kill
Each verse builds up the irony of the “Ain’t that America” of the chorus until the catch phrase signifies a sense of broken dreams and quiet desperation rather than celebratory pride.
Neither “Born in the U.S.A.” nor “Pink Houses” is anti-American. Both songs question American culture and politics in constructive and provocative ways. However, neither song is exactly what it appears to be on first listening. The music opens the way for the bewitchment that is to come. Gorgias would approve.
New Year’s Day
I am starting this blog so that I can stop bothering my friends with unwanted emailed observations about writing pedagogy, Fender Telecasters, large-scale educational mishaps, amplifier technology, science fiction books, and other matters general and specific. It’s a new year, so why not start a blog?
