A new project developed this month. It centers around the idea that there are almost infinite ways to cross a landscape and, similarly, there are so many different ways to wrap a melody around a rhythm.
I asked Stephen Duros to join me for this experiment and he said yes. Given the same recorded guitar rhythms, how will the music we create differ in the end. We each add our own melodies, counter lines, and perhaps additional rhythmic elements, using only guitar.
Imagine the map of a landscape, with railroad tracks, roads large and small, bridges, even bike paths and foot trails. There are so many different ways to cross that landscape. Slowly or quickly, with intricate steps and many changes of direction, or forging straight ahead, or perhaps ambling along and enjoying the view. You can choose any way you like. Let’s meet at the destination and compare the paths we forge.
Another way to imagine this is that Stephen and I sit on a hill and we each drop a marble and watch it roll down the slope. Those two marbles will create two different trajectories.
We have created three musical pairs so far and the fourth and fifth maps are also almost done. I am going to show you the pair that started with two rhythm guitars from this piece, from the album Rain Poems:
Here is one new version:
And here is the other:
We post these pieces to Backstage as we finish them but eventually Stephen’s versions will become available on his Bandcamp and you will be able to find mine on my Bandcamp.
We are enjoying this project very much. I think that’s in part because it is structured like a game, like we are playing a video game together. Perhaps it also has to do with this game not feeling like a commercial undertaking. Whatever the reason, we are having a blast and members of Backstage have been getting new music almost daily.
These people are not “making a record”, they are making music because it creates for them a world they want to inhabit, makes them feel alive, and that life floods out over the edges of the recording and into you, the listener. And that, I’m starting to think, should be an artist’s minimum ambition.
That statement really hits home for me. From the first album on, I tried to create a sonic place that felt like home. Every home was a little different, as if they were in different locations, with slightly different cultures, but still inhabited by me and the other musicians. NF was very romantic, but by the time The Hours… was created the home had become much more multifaceted. slow was a harbor in a storm for me. Rain Poems was part of crafting a new home, after leaving Santa Fe and my studio.
Another thing the quote reminds me of is that it’s not content that I am creating. That word is a put down that originated in Silicon Valley. It belittles what we do. It denies the years of practice that go into music. It denies the experience of creating and making music.
Calling music “content” is like calling a lovely meal “food“.
This is a piece from one guitar two, recorded during my recent retreat in the cave at the Prajna Mountain Refuge. The album was published to Backstage this week and will make its way to Bandcamp in a few months.
The piece has the working title Wednesday because that’s the day it was recorded. What would it sound like if the cave was really really huge? I used a plugin called Valhalla (perfect name, isn’t it?) to simulate a gigantic cave. The beauty of a simulated cave is that it can be turned on and turned off. What you hear is just my guitar… no other instrument was added. Some people imagine they hear synthesizers but it’s just the guitar and reverb. So now I want to give this treatment to all of the slow pieces from one guitar two, which means there will be a second volume called one guitar two – Big Cave Versions.
Woke up this morning with bits and pieces of a Genesis album in my head. After making coffee I figured out they were from Selling England by the Pound, the 1973 album. Hadn’t heard it in many decades.
When I was 14 or 15 I’d often walk to a class mate’s apartment. He had a stereo and LPs and we would listen to music and talk. He also had Nursery Crime and Trespass.
I can’t remember whether the bits and pieces of Genesis were connected to a dream. I imagine they were but that’s blank.
Last night I asked Siri to play some music while I was cooking. It played an interesting mix of music from my library and stuff it decided I should hear, I guess.
At on point Siri decided to play this piece by Oscar Lopez:
I wasn’t paying much attention as I was chopping up onion and garlic – always important to keep the attention on the knife – and so only a few musical phrases entered my consciousness. Like the phrase about 50 seconds into the piece, which sounded like something Jon and I might have played. I checked my phone and noticed the name of the artist.
This morning I looked him up and discovered this article:
After a three-decade music career that established him around the world for exceptional guitar playing, Oscar Lopez has recently been living out of his car in Calgary.
Former band mate James Keelaghan said many artists often don’t have funds for mental health counselling or medication.
Keelaghan and Lopez have been performing off and on in a joint project called The Compadres since 1993.
Keelaghan, who will be performing in Edmonton in March, said finances for musicians were bad during the pandemic and got worse when revenue from CD sales dropped off.
“All that revenue has now gone. Streaming services have completely destroyed a huge swath of our income,” the folk singer-songwriter said.
(I added the emphasis.)
I wish him well and contributed to a Go Fund Me for Oscar Lopez. You can check out the fundraiser here: LINK
I found this yesterday, while searching for something else. It’s an old live recording of the late Baden Powell playing (his?) Prelude in Am. I can’t seem to find the music on any of his albums. Does anyone know more about this piece?
