The Way I Write Music

The way people write music fascinates me. There seems to be many ways to go about it and everyone has a little different spin on it. The way that I do it is that I will pick up the guitar and play around until something catches my ear. At that point it can go a couple of ways. Sometimes the chords and the song follow immediately. Sometimes I just get that small part and I have to shelve it for use later. I’ve tried writing everyday and what I’ve discovered is that the ideas are either there or they are not. If it is going to happen, it happens relatively quickly after I pick up the guitar. If I try to force it, or continue to play longer and longer with the hope of getting something, it becomes torturous. And in the end it’s counterproductive. I’ve learned to try everyday but not to push too hard. As I gather little parts I start to hear ways that they may fit together with other ideas I’ve shelved. And I try to start fitting these pieces together in ways that sound interesting to my ear.

I liken it to a painter. These initial pieces that get created and shelved are like the painter selecting the colors to go on his palette. The roughly drawn sketch on the canvas is equivalent to the piecing together of the tonal parts that I’ve collected; which chord fits where in relation to the others. Then the actual application of color to canvas, painting in the shapes, is to me like the rhythmic selections that I make to reign in the chords and make distinction, like the lines on a canvas. Parts, assembly, trimming the rhythms – that’s how it works for me.

Fables of Faubus

Fables of Faubus
Charles Mingus

Oh, Lord, don't let 'em shoot us!
Oh, Lord, don't let 'em stab us!
Oh, Lord, don't let 'em tar and feather us!
Oh, Lord, no more swastikas!
Oh, Lord, no more Ku Klux Klan!

Name me someone who's ridiculous, Dannie.
Governor Faubus!
Why is he so sick and ridiculous?
He won't permit integrated schools.

Then he's a fool! Boo! Nazi Fascist supremists!
Boo! Ku Klux Klan (with your Jim Crow plan)

Name me a handful that's ridiculous, Dannie Richmond.
Faubus, Rockefeller, Eisenhower
Why are they so sick and ridiculous?

Two, four, six, eight:
They brainwash and teach you hate.
H-E-L-L-O, Hello.

Miles Okazaki

My friend and mentor, Cyrus Pace, turned me onto this guy named Miles Okazaki. Cyrus went to school with him at the Manhattan School of Music. His debut album was called Mirror, and he has since followed up with his second album which follows in the footsteps of Mirror. The second album is entitled Generations. Okazaki is a guitarist and a composer. His composition stands above the guitar playing on his two albums. He is experimenting with musical arrangements that are too complex for me to describe here, although he shares everything on his website, www.milesokazaki.com . But the fact is that his style has resonated with me in a way that has been quite inspiring. When I first heard Mirror, I commented that it meant as much to me as John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. This was also the first album where I heard Chris Potter on sax. On his second album he brings in Miguel Zenon, David Binney and Christof Knoche on alto saxes. He brings in the best sax players! Anyway, how to describe Okazaki’s music? He challenges rhythms, often being polyrhythmic. The sax parts are jazz by nature. But the underlying score seems to build from almost a funk comp at times that will morph into a swing. It’s very hard to explain in words. I’m a huge fan of what Okazaki is doing. If you want to hear something different from what everyone else is doing (outside of somewhere in the clubs of downtown New York) then Okazaki is a nice place to start

Musical Revelations

I’ve come across a couple of recent musical revelations that I wanted to speak about. Specifically, there are four bands that I’ve been focused on the last two days:

1. Shakti with John MacLaughlin
2. John Coltrane, specifically the album Ole’ Coltrane
3. Gojira
4. Miles Okazaki
   
   

I’ve also been reading a biography on Coltrane which causes me to contemplate a lot. Have you ever had a day where everything just seems to center around contemplation? Yesterday was like that for me. Two things from Coltrane really stuck with me. One was from his biography. He was talking in an interview about learning from Monk. And he said Monk would play a minor chord but leave out the third. And Coltrane would argue with him that it wasn’t a minor chord because he left out the third. But he said when Monk played it he could make it sound like a minor chord, even without the third. What is it about music that shares something with the world of magic, wherein conviction and truth can be communicated without the fundamentals of our normal ways of communicating? Monk had it, and Coltrane didn’t, at that point in his life. Was it conviction, bravado, context, feel, abandonment of all fear…?

Next, from the liner notes of Ole’ Coltrane:

“Now, sometimes we get up and play a song and I play thirty, or at least twenty, minutes. Well, at the Apollo we ended up playing three songs in twenty minutes! I played all the highlights of the solos that I had been playing in hours, in that length of time. So I think about it. What have I been doing all this time? It’s made me think, if I’m going to take an hour to say something I can say in ten minutes, maybe I’d better say it in ten minutes! And then have another horn there and get something else.”

I think that speaks volumes.

Ok, what do Shakti, Miles Okazaki and Gojira – a French death metal band- all have in common? Polyrhythms. The more I search for music that grabs my interest, the more often I find that there is a common thread with what I like - a use of polyrhythms.

Wikipedia defines a polyrhythm in this way:

Polyrhythm is the simultaneous sounding of two or more independent rhythms. Polyrhythms can be distinguished from irrational rhythms, which can occur within the context of a single part; polyrhythms require at least two rhythms to be played concurrently, one of which is typically an irrational rhythm.

In working to help define where it’s at, musically, for me, I think polyrhythms are the source. It’s like polyrhythms can trigger a trance-like state, not unlike the koans that Zen teachers use to help stop the mind from thinking to reach that split second of enlightenment where thought stops and life exists unblemished. Polyrhythms do that for me.