The "Front Man" Complex

First off, I think I've decided that I need to dispense with comments on how I go on blog-post-hiatus.  I realize now that while I love blogging on this whole music thing, I get so caught up in life that music (and consequently this blog) gets pushed aside.  ...which is a total bummer when I stop and think about it, as refraining from music--my main creative outlet--and this blog--a catalyst for me to do music--mean I don't end up enjoying a huge part of my life that I potentially could.  And such is my personal history that carries over to other life aspects.  I digress.

In going with the theme of this blog, my catharsis here is about my recent music ventures.  I've recently been challenged with getting a new band together, which has meant coming up with new music--one thing which I've never done, and the other which I haven't done in quite a long time.  Both are causing me to think and grow, and I like it.  I'm hoping that by writing this post, I'll figure some stuff out.

The Band
So I've been getting together with a couple of buddies for some months now with the idea that we can finally do something that we've never done before and always wanted to do.  This process has been a number of things:

1. Exciting.  The thought that I finally have a forum to explore music that I've always wanted to make is pretty darn great.
   
2. Confusing.  When we initially got together, we talked about concepts and styles that we wanted to explore, and found that we were all on similar pages, but I'm finding that with the structure of practicing & writing that we've been using leaves us all over the place and essentially not having moved forward in any direction.
   
3. Frustrating.  In the 2 bands that I've played in, I've basically played other people's music, leaving me to do something that I really enjoy: figure out how to make a part work within a given framework.  We're starting from scratch with this group, which means that if I'm going to contribute to the writing part of songs, I have to switch gears back to big-picture writing, which I haven't really done much of in probably 7 years.
   

In the past few weeks, we've talked about how we haven't made much real progress in term of "product" (finished songs), which has led to discussions about the lack of one of us possessing that "front man" personality (AKA who's gonna be the "a-hole" of the band).  We need someone to keep driving us forward.  We need someone to hold the reins and yank us back when we've spent too much time jacking around or overworking musical ideas.  We need someone to provide some structure for the music we're going to do--and that music should be within certain bounds, yet push those boundaries at the same time. 

I've been elected to be that guy.

The Writing
So what does that mean for me?  I've thought about it, and I think that means that I finally get to bring ideas to the table (and hopefully to the public) that have been looming in my head for years upon years.  And while that's exciting, that's a bit of pressure--something that when it comes to writing, for me, can have a negative impact.

When I was studying music in college, I wasn't the guy that had been playing the piano for years and years--I was just capable enough to learn college level stuff, but didn't have the experience of playing music for people.  At the time, I absolutely loved playing, but I just didn't get why I needed to share the stuff that I'd learned for a bunch of people that I didn't know (à la recitals).  It was my music.  I wanted to play it for me and only me.  And that meant practicing when no one was around; it also meant that if I was going to write my own stuff, it had to be when no one was around.  After all, I was putting my own personal emotions and thoughts and feelings in to this stuff... why should I share my musical diary with strangers?  It took me quite a few nerve-racking recitals and probably both of the 2 years that led up to my senior recital to realize that, whether I liked to admit it or not, I had some level of talent--talent that others didn't have (I say that with all possible humility)--that translated in to enjoyment and pleasure for others that only listening to music can bring.  I realized that I had the chance to stimulate other minds and hearts and should do so--I mean, where would I be without all of the music that had shaped my life?  What if aaaall of those writers and composers had selfishly kept their music for themselves?  I'd surely be a different person and I'm immensely grateful for that music that has made an impact on my life.  With as much narcisism aside as possible, I hope that I can use the gifts I've been given to do the same for others.

Cut back to the present... So I decided that in order to get this song-writing ball rolling, I needed two things: 1) time, 2) inspiration.  I realized that I've got time--I just need to organize it more efficiently.  I've recently made an attempt to apply some GTD (Getting Things Done) principles to track all of my responsibilities, blah blah blah... that's boring though, so I won't talk about that.  Let's just say that I've made some improvements there.  Now to the inspiration...

I grew up listening to "oldies", Blues, Classical music, Christian Sacred music, and a whole lot of Folk music.  I studied Classical piano in college, sang bass in the choir, and found myself highly interested in 20th Century stuff, despite the not-so-aurally pleasing result of a lot of it.  Part of this interest was founded in my frustration while taking Music Theory classes--learning formulas for music got me to realize that everything that I'd sit down to write was really just like something else that someone had already written.  The 20th Century stuff spurred me to get in to Jazz.  The choral stuff got me hooked on the phenomenal ability of big groups of voices to pull off really gnarly dissonances and make them sound, well, pretty.  When I got in to the SW industry, I got turned on to Electronic music--which spurred the idea that I had the ability to orchestrate a large number of instruments on my own; I didn't need to have an arsenal of players at my disposal to pull something off.  All of this got me thinking that if I could just put it all together, I might have the chance to come up with something "new".

Fail.  You don't write something and go, "Wow, no one's ever done this before!"  Well, OK, lots of people say that, but come on guys... We're all just building on our past--and I'm just now realizing this--not realizing like acknowledging, but realizing like accepting and taking to heart.

So in trying to do music that I've always wanted to do (putting all of my influences together) and knowing that it's not really going to be "new", I've decided that I'm going to unabashedly rip people off.  I've decided that my first rip-off goal is going to be Godspeed You Black Emperor (you choose where you want to put the "!"--they keep changing their minds on that dumb punctuation mark.  Silly Canucks.).  I've been working on a piece for a few weeks now, and am actually encouraged that I just might have something here.  On the flip side, I've also come to remember the rollercoaster ride it is in writing music: I love it, then hate it, then love it again, then get totally disinterested...

Putting It Together
I realize that I've got an opportunity and actually have some things to say musically.  Putting on this "front man" hat is going to be a new challenge for me--kinda like how it was signing up for a management job when I knew I sucked at (partially because I didn't know how, partially because I thought it was dumb) managing people in a job scenario.  I signed up because I knew it would challenge me by exposing weak areas of my personality--and while I've grown immensely, it's still doing that four years later.

Doing this front man thing, for me, will surely be an unconventional way of doing such, but if I can force myself to stick to my guns, I think I'll be really excited to be able to share some new pieces of Steve (and Chris and John) to whoever will take a listen.  Right now, I just have to force myself to put the pieces together and make it happen.  Good thing I like rollercoasters...

Cognitive Anthropology and Lyrics

A few weeks ago I finished up collaborating on a lightweight research paper as a work-related extracurricular activity that we submitted to some Computer Science consortium for judging and potential publishing.  The paper was intended to use Human-Computer Interaction principles and some other tech-geeky stuff to describe the difficulties in developing video security software.  Why HCI is kinda interesting Along the way, one of the advisors for the paper, Brent Aurenheimer (a Computer Science prof at CSU Fresno) pointed me in the direction of a book called "Cognition in the Wild", by Edwin Hutchins.  Hutchins is an cognitive anthropologist that spent some time with the Navy, observing how people work together using certain protocols to ensure safety for the things they do.  For example, a protocol that pilots follow when changing altitude in an airplane would entail something like:

1. One crew member verbalizes "Altitude change to X feet"
2. The pilot verbalizes "Altitude change to X feet"
3. The pilot operates on the plane to change the altitude to X feet
4. The pilot verbalizes "Altitude set to X feet"

This protocol ensures that the crew all know what's going to happen, and minimizes the risk of the pilot setting the wrong altitude because he's forced to verbalize what he's going to do, then what he did.  These sorts of systems and protocols might be boring to think about or study for most, but are of super importance when dealing with things that risk people's lives (Xray machines, airplanes, surgeries, etc.) Language and Music I came across this passage in Hutchins' book:

As part of the cognitive revolution, cognitive anthropology made two crucial steps. First, it turned away from society by looking inward to the knowledge an individual had to have to function as a member of the culture. The questions became "What does a person have to know?" The locus of knowledge was assumed to be inside the individual. The methods of research then available encourage the analysis of language. But knowledge expressed or expressible in language tends to be declarative knowledge. It is what people can say about what they know.

Maybe I'm taking this out of context, or maybe I didn't interpret it correctly, but the whole "language tends to be declarative knowledge" thing really hits home: I think this is a huge part of why I tend towards music without "language".  Language, or lyrics when language is paired with music, is really mostly capable of expressing that which one knows; au contraire, it's not so good for expressing that which one doesn't know.  Furthermore, how can you really express something that you don't know?  You probably can't.  You can't communicate something you don't know until you find out that you don't know it.  And for me, I think that's one of the great things about music--when doing music, you can express things that can't be said with language.  The idea of "a picture is worth a thousand words" comes to mind.  Looking at this picture, for example, probably evokes more emotion than reading the text: "prisoners at the Dachau concentration camp were tortured by hanging from their hyperextended arms."  Sorry for the slight morbidity, but I think it makes a good point.  Music has wonderful potential to convey and/or stir up emotions to listeners without necessarily telling them what they should think or feel.  And I happen to think that there is a vast amount of music out there that can do this far better when it's unaccompanied by language.  In fact, language over evocative music can detract from the music--like watching a beautiful sunset next to sewage processing plant.  Or like putting a caption under that picture above--once I read the caption, I'm lead to somewhat subdue the emotions that the picture stirred up, and focus on what the caption's words are telling me; without words, the picture alone allows my thoughts and emotions to carry where they may--maybe to places that I don't have words for. Don't get me wrong--I'm not suggesting that music with lyrics is crap.  I've been reacting for some years now to what seems to be the more common notion that music without words is boring.  I stereotype and think of so many people that if forced to listen to modern instrumental bands like Mogwai or Explosions in the Sky or Godspeed You Black Emperor! for the first time, they'd just be waiting for the words to start, then when they found out that there weren't any, they'd just dismiss the music as boring. Instrumentals Are Inspiring Up until this past century, as I understand it, it seems that Western instrumental music versus music with language was maybe a 50/50 split.  Depending on the era you look at, music with language was used for telling stories or for religious purposes, while instrumental music still played a huge part of music as a whole.  Today, in my perspective, it seems that that ratio has changed quite a bit, which is quite a bummer in my opinion.  How come we don't see more instrumental groups getting popular?  How has our focus shifted as a culture?  Whatever the answers are to those questions, the lack of this type of music really gets my wheels turning.  It makes me want to contribute to this part of music in our society--to fill some wholes where we're lacking (there I go again, getting "epic" notions again). The wheels are turning... "Play Delicate, Desire Quiet", Grace Cathedral Park, In The Evenings of Regret: