Much of my early years I had tons of energy. Like most people my age, I got up early and stayed up through the evening. Unlike most, I got a bit extreme with this and as I started working I seemed to be able to handle the after hour and evening shifts quite well. Staying awake for 24 to 48 hours at a time was almost normal. I obviously was not! As most of the household was quiet and recharging their internal batteries, I would pull out my 12 string guitar. In the very late and dark hours, I would reflect on the day(s) past and go over experiences I or friends had. The fullness of the 12 strings (when I could afford to replace the old strings with new ones…) for me is just an amazingly soothing and inspiring environment. The guitar noodling started to reflect a mood and the experiences would turn into words, phrases or thoughts that I would repeat and refine until they started to gel into lyrics.
I would use this method over and over. Alone at night, lights out and everyone quiet or sleeping. Even now, decades later, this is still my favorite time to reflect and create. If you can, find your own time and environment that you can settle into quickly. If you cannot find the time – MAKE it. It does not have to be hours at a time. Rarely do we write a masterpiece or complete a painting or poem in an hour or so. The important thing is to set aside time – even little bits – and noodle, sketch, sing, or even think. Build your stage for creativity and perform there as often as you can. The masterpieces will create themselves…
Quiet Nights – An original tune I wrote based on this idea.
I have been very fortunate over the years in a number of ways. As I look back on my history and the events I have been involved in, this rule became obvious to me. I have always performed or created music with people that are much better than I am. I did not do this by design, it just seemed to happen over and over. One of my favorite bands I have been involved with for many years is Euphoria. Think of all the adjectives you know to describe excellence and you can use them all for the members of the band. They invited me to run sound for them and that is how I got the nerve to be a sound guy. As they played out and I ran sound and helped with musical toys as a music store manager, we became great friends and shared a real passion for great music. When the keyboard player decided to work on other projects, they found out I played keyboards and asked me if I wanted to take his place. I cannot tell you how much courage it took to say yes. I had never really played out before and we were into progressive rock and really complicated songs – many you heard clips from the studio demo posted earlier.
I knew I was not ready for prime time, but I got my keyboard gear together – practiced on my own every spare minute I had and forced myself to show up for practice. I had big shoes to fill. To their credit each of the band members were extremely patient! The knew it would take me some time to get to their level. Some songs on our set list were replaced with songs that had less emphasis on the keyboard until I could get my chops up to speed. Some we had to drop altogether. But they all worked with me and did not make me feel like I was slowing them down or not up to par. Had it not been for their great attitude and flexibility, I may have thrown in the towel and called it quits before it got started.
The only better piece of advice in this area I think is just as important is to always play with great people! Band life can be hard work, physically challenging and demanding and at the same time can be disastrous
I have always been into helping charities and volunteering for good causes. I entered a few tunes from a local cover band I was in (Euphoria) for yet another battle of the band contest sponsored by habitats for humanity and a local radio station. The bands would play in Eden Park at the very-cool Seasongood Pavilion. At first it looked like we might not even play, then the dust settled and we would go on to play last. The other bands were interesting and pretty good. We were hi-energy progressive rock and we played our short set really well and had a great time. We even made the goof of mentioning the wrong radio station’s call letters! Agh! I thought on that alone we might get overlooked. But they might not have heard the comment and in all modesty we were really good. We won a trophy – some unknown band member still has it hidden safely in some underground bunker – and recording time at a recording studio! For me, this was like candy.
We were awarded the prize and a limited time to go into the studio. We decided to use the recording time of three hours (yeah, kind of a tease and they probably figure you will run over and have to pay them for additional recording time) to record a band demo. Eventually we got a list of songs we wanted to do and had some discussions on what parts of the songs to feature.
As the time got near, it became more and more difficult to arrange schedules of the various band members (and lets NEVER forget the schedules of the family of band members!). So I told the band guys that this weekend was it. This is the deadline and if we do not go in a few days we will lose this opportunity altogether. After the whining and complaints, we agreed to go that Saturday, the last day before the deadline.
There are two reasons I bring up this story. A couple of good lessons keep this fresh in my memory. The following is the first;
Sometimes you have to lie. I knew we had another two weeks to record, but I also knew if I left it up to the band to schedule, it would never happen. Everyone wants to do it and everyone SAYS they will, but other things always happen and conflicts crop up at the last minute, and it is too late to save the project then. I knew how the band put things off and I did not want to miss my time at the ‘candy store’.
The second lesson was learned by the studio recording engineer. I will share that in the next post. Here is a bit of the demo we did in the studio so you can get an feel for the mix.
MidiMike 