Positive and Negative Modes of Enlightenments

I was re-reading that Intellectual’s Masterpiece on Spirituality, “Varieties of Religious Experience”, by William James, who had been a Harvard Professor at the turn of the 20^th Century; one should read such a classic every 40 years or so just to stay current, anyway, I developed a few fresh insights that I think evaded me on my last read through.

 

Firstly, subjective Religious/Spiritual Enlightenment Experiences are presented by the Mind, if I may be permitted to explain the phenomena materialistically, in order to resolve serious or even potentially life threatening Nervous or Emotional Breakdowns.   These occur when the involved individuals have struck ‘rock bottom’, so to speak, and turn desperately to “a higher power”.   This accounts for such a high number of very sincere Religious Conversions among reformed drunks and, since the Eighties, former cocaine addicts.   But it is not entirely necessary to get to the depths of despair simply through an excess of bad habits, which destroy the health, finances and all of one’s important social and family supports; no, one can also reach the bottoms of despair by being, well, neurotically Ideal enough to experience a Crisis of Meaning of Life, that is, to see all the ordinary events and happenings of Life as petty, shallow or even kind of dirty, and then to be appalled by anything that that seems predatory or hurtful, and it all becomes so much worse when such Individuals see all such behaviors as having impulses within their own Selves.  It presents a crisis of Value, where one wonders where the strength to continue such a miserable and even negative existence should come from, when all reasonable or compelling arguments would favor either an active suicide, or to simply allow oneself to wither away… or to drown one’s sorrows in drink, or reach for the artificial Exaltation of the Cocaine Experience… but this is putting us in a circle. 

 

It can’t be understated how thorough such Religious/Spiritual Resolutions to these Nervous or Emotional Breakdowns are – the Subjective Certainty that one has been rescued and is now and forever under the Protection and Care of an All Powerful, or All Important Higher Power is unshakable.  These people do from the depths of despair to the Olympian summits of absolute Delight… one can hardly help to envy such wonderful experiences going to drunks and those low-life sleaze-ball cokeheads, but that is simply how the Psychological Math of such Metaphysical Geometries tend to work out.   Higher Resolution Events occur to those in Crisis.  If one is living well, or even just managing to cope, then, well, if there is no Real Problem, then there is required no very important Solution.

 

The sad thing about reading “Varieties of Religious Experience”, if one is a dedicated Religious Spiritualist, is that the background Materialism of it all is rather compelling, and that we find that while the core Experiences and and the basic shape of the Effects have a certain uniformity, the actual Details involved can cover a frightful range of Beliefs and subsequent Life Style Choices.   I was able to come to some understanding of this when I read Saint Teresa of Avila’s “Interior Castle”, a real Spiritual Classic, which presents Spiritual Enlightenment more in terms of Process then I have so far seen in William James, that while the initial ‘Conversion Experience’ may be exactly as powerful as mentioned above, still, the Person who receives such an Experience certainly hungers for more, for Repeat Performances.  The Initial Glow of the Conversion Experience recedes and Life becomes dull again, and so my guess is that the Convert gets a bit Superstitious and Obsessive about recreating the original conditions of the First Conversion Experience.  The Drunk may relapse simply to get back into Crisis Mode (which makes a lot of sense when one listens to more than a few Alcoholics Anonymous speeches, and how there is almost a positive pride in recounting how many times they have “fallen off the wagon” only to re-achieve their victories), and the Religious Fanatic goes back to more and more severe fasting, mortifications of the flesh, and renunciations of any of Life’s small pleasures, all in order to re-establish that Crisis Level of Despair that would Trigger the Intervention of God.   Again, we need to remind ourselves that in many such cases, these behaviors can actually be life threatening.  With the Drunks this is easy enough to intuit, but with the Religious Fanatic we must imagine how the fasting and depravations can slowly be escalated until the Health is run down to such a frail degree that it finally just snaps.  At this point one can’t help but to have something of a mixed appraisal of Spiritual Aspirations, where the Proven and Demonstrated Paths to Enlightenment seem to straddle the fence just on the edge of effective Suicide.

 

But then I remembered good old Swami Ramakrishna whose approach seemed to emphasize more of the Positive, and if I can put it into terms which we have now established, that the ‘crisis’ can be one of Unfulfilled Divine Love, that is, a kind of Higher Pining Away.  Where the Monastic Catholic focusses on his own Dispair at being a Low and Unworthy Worm, trapped in a Body prone to Sin, which does in fact create something of an effective Emotional Crisis, one such as Swami Ramakrishna looks more at the Greatness of God then at any exaggerated view of his own Inferiority.  It comes out seeming happier overall.

 

Yes, Ramakrishna too was a ‘Chain Experiencer’, seeking for repetitions of this Peak Experience, but he would achieve his ends through, well, serial ‘Love Affairs’ with various Names, Forms and Aspects of God; and in India, there are plenty to choose from.   Not that Ramakrishna did not also have his ‘Superstitions’ – he could rant about ‘Women and Money’ as even the strictest Saint Francis, but at the end of the day, he had a woman doing his cooking and cleaning, and, well, he lived in Bombay and his rent money was coming from somewhere and wasn’t being tossed away.   It all seemed like his more positive Fanaticism was easier to moderate then the Negative Crisis Mode which really does seem to require Monastic Supervision for it not to be entirely too self-destructive.

 

Oh, the good news, from Saint Teresa of Avila is that the Repetitions of Crisis can eventually result in a Permanent Union with the Divine.  When Teresa arrived at this point herself, she became a bit more practical regarding the risks of extreme fasting and mortifications of the flesh, not wishing her subordinate nuns to go overboard in such practices, but still, it was unavoidable that she would still see the Path that worked for herself was indeed a viable and even exemplary Path.   Her emphasis was to see God as the Highest and Humanity as the Lowest, and such tension would bring on an inevitable Spiritual Crisis and God would inevitably come to the rescue.  

 

Ramakrishna’s Methodology, while seeming more wholesome, lighter and brighter, well, suffers from practical problems concerning execution, that is, how one is supposed to Love a God that is primarily an abstraction, that is, an Abstraction for one that has not had the God Experience yet.  It is all quite like falling in love with a girl that one has never met.  One may very strongly wish to fall in love, but that is not nearly the same thing as finally catching the eye of a girl we actually ‘do’ fall in love with.   Here, I think the feeling of Emptiness would come into play, as opposed to the Catholic focus on Human Inferiority and Worthlessness.  But here the problem arises with the natural tendency for Humans to ‘cope’ with their problems.  One can learn to ‘cope’ with the feeling of Emptiness by, well, resorting to the pleasures of “money and women”, where the Catholic Methodologies are structurally better suited to forestall any attempts for their Spiritual Aspirants to ‘cope’ with their impending crisis conditions.

 

Oh, back to William James and “Varieties of Religious Experience”.  It seems that back in his day, just over a hundred years ago, the New Age Movement was just beginning to get on its feet – he refers to it as the “Mind Heal Movement”, which he sees as a happy, optimistic and positive Movement for people who are basically happy, optimistic and positive already, and that all of its methods and aims are toward what we would see in our larger view as ‘coping’ mechanisms that do not lead to Spiritual Crisis, but rather forestall any possible chance of at a real Higher Integration of the Personality.    So it is that the New Age avoids Moral Conflicts and Crisis, and tells us to simply feel good about ourselves.  To Experience God we only need to understand God is in and around us already… and so there is nothing really wrong with Child Labor to make us our cool leisure shoes or paying our maidsfrom Central America less than minimum wage because they are ‘illegal’ and can go nowhere to complain.    When everything is already so Great, why would one ever want to have a Spiritual Crisis?   So the New Age comes off seeing the Old Styles of Religion and Spirituality as largely Negative, but the Religions bulk at the New Age Movement’s amoralism, inherent hedonism, naiveté and moral and intellectual shallowness.

 

Of course the New Age is not really new.  One can look at many Ancient Philosophical Systems and what even passes for Ancient Religion and see what are plainly just ‘Coping Mechanisms’ – ideas for accepting Life just as it is found.  I would site examples, but people are so easily offended, and so I would rather people arrive at these truths under their own steam, so to speak.

 

But the New Age has been gathering momentum.  Nobody really wants to engineer an intentional Crisis in their lives, even if it would give them God, if they can be made to believe that God is really there already… people being ready to accept a pure Imagination instead of the Real Thing.  But what I wonder is that the New Age was a Child of the Twentieth Century and its Prosperity and Optimism, but that the 21^st Century with its impending Climate and Economic and perhaps even Military Crisis’s will not instigate millions or even billions of Personal Individual Crisis’s of the Spirit.  With the Sea a boiling pot of carbolic acid, with sandy dry plains producing only Famine, and with a Mechanized Capitalism achieving an effective divorce from Labor presenting an almost Universal State of Unemployment, well, I can guess that it will become easier and easier to arrive at these episodes of Nervous and Emotional Breakdown, and that Spiritual Crisis might become rather more common than what we would really hope for, considering all of the other circumstances.  

Spirituality and Celibacy

 

Interesting question about whether Celibacy is essential for the successful pursuit of Spirituality, and given that so many thoroughly bona fide mystical traditions hold celibacy as of the uppermost import, I am surprised the question is not more often asked, except now that it occurs to me that with Today’s Cultural Temperament, to even think of Celibacy is to contemplate a price far too high, and so it is not even considered at all.  It is like myself knowing about most every car on the market and willing to give my friends advice on what to buy, until a friend asked me about Mercedes, when I honestly bulked and said that if he could afford one of those he was well beyond any advice I would have to offer, that is, that even the idea of giving up on Sex is beyond anybody’s consideration nowadays.

 

It is not that most people still find sex inherently repugnant… just now for themselves.   People are honestly sickened at the thought of homosexual sex or sex with minors, which, factually speaking, is not much different from, well, Sex, but when it involves themselves, all animalistic grossness is forgiven and cherished as some Beautiful Natural Act.  As long as Sex is limited to Marriage, the Catholic Church even claims to have ‘sacramentized’ it… eeeoooouuu!  yuck!   Oh, and though few people confess it to their partners, isn’t it true that many people experience at least some mild disgust with sex, once it is over and the urge relieved?

 

But what exactly is the problem with Sex.   Well, it may be entirely all Pretence, but Man and Woman are Idealistic Animals, that is, we do not think of ourselves as animals at all but as Spiritual Beings.  When it says in the Bible that “Man was created in the Image of God”, well, that is referring almost entirely to our Psychological and Cultural expectations for ourselves… well, many of ourselves, as there are a few Cults that have brought it on themselves to be ashamed at their Humanity and try as hard as possible to return to being just animals – all pure appetite and instinct.

 

So, thinking of ourselves as Spiritual Creatures, there are but three or four things in our lives which counter this divine pretention, that is, going to the bathroom, eating meat, having sex, and sleeping, though Sleep is lifted up somewhat by its allowing us to Dream.   I read an essay by a Frenchman once, and he stated the contention that people think poop jokes and sex jokes are found “funny” because they dispute our Spiritual Pretentions, that is, if we did not think ourselves better than poop or sex, then we would not be laughing so hard when the subjects would come up.

 

So really spiritual people, that is, REALLY spiritual people, who have connected and truly identified with their Ideal Spirituality, well, they are deeply ashamed of their sexuality.   At the same time their Spirituality is so vibrant and full of its own powers of support, consolation, affirmation, and even just simple Bliss, that they do not mind suffering in order to maintain their celibacy – so we have Saint Dominic rolling in a thorn patch to give himself other things to think about.  Oh, and that might be what all of the hairshirts and the mortifications and self whipping among the devoutly Catholic Religious is all about, that is, being a distraction to the sexual urge, or a sizeable atonement for the act in any case.

 

Just 40 years ago the Sikh Kundalini People… I remember Kirpal Singh, and his form of Kundalini Yoga, which mixed in a lot of Shaktipat from their Guru, that is, a very powerful initiation passed by touch or through the eyes, and they demanded Celibacy… six months of Celibacy before they could join.  Well, back then I was a horribly lucky handsome young buck and so I found easier pastures to graze, but I knew some people who did join the Kirpal Singh Group and, well, they all seemed quite genuinely Spiritual, as though it may all have been working as planned.

 

But is celibacy absolutely essential?  Hmmmm.  Well, the first awkward thing to come to mind is that nobody long refrains from pooping, and that act is not terribly spiritual either.   Rumors are that some rather genuine seeming Enlightened Gurus had their discreet sexual outlets.   Also, Morally Speaking, I can’t help to think that People over-focus on Sexual Situations as being terribly Immoral, while overlooking far worse Moral Infractions such as lying, cheating, stealing, greed, exploitation, voting Republican , Human Trafficking, etc, etc.

 

Personally, I have met many people who are so focused on either Sex or Money, or Both, that they never ever really think much about God or Spirituality.  It is all Career Goals or Chasing Tail, and Spiritually they remain in Darkness and their inner lives are shallow and stupid.   They only hint that they are missing something is that they have great talents for telling Dirty Jokes…. They don’t know to Cry at their loss of Spirituality, but they sure can laugh about it.

Learning Music, Playing By Ear

(forgive me... I need to come back and edit this thing...) 

I was speaking with a dear friend who envied me my music and said she would like to take up music herself, but was far too busy for such a commitment and would probably die before anything substantial came of it anyway.   Well, at first all of that sounded sensible enough, but then I remembered that not all music or musical instruments are deadly difficult, and some are rather intuitively easy as a matter of fact.  Yes, I suspect the Musician’s Community tries to encourage the idea amongst the General Public that playing good music is akin to magic, and that it requires prolific natural talent, and is as hard to learn as Chinese Trigonometry, and so therefore Musicians as themselves need to be worshipped as Gods, or at least given a livable wage.  But, thankfully, the Truth regarding the intrinsic difficulty of Music, in many cases, is not quite so severe.

 

But first let me wonder aloud whether everyone is cut out for music, and I am not so much thinking here of ‘talent’, per se, as of ‘inclination’, that is somebody may wish to involve themselves in Music because they think that Musicians and Musical People are held in high regard, or that Music is somehow necessary to show themselves as ‘well-rounded.   The problem here is that when they actually begin to apply themselves, well, their Minds and Bodies simply won’t cooperate, that while the Mind is willing, the Flesh just will never get up enough raw enthusiasm to put on a good Show.  So, I guess people considering the jump into Music should ask themselves something like the following questions:  

 

Do you really like music?  Do you have favorite songs?  Do you sing in the shower?  Do you dance to music when nobody is looking?  Do you dance when people are looking, that is, do you dance at parties or Clubs when there is a band?  On dates, if you are a woman, are you persuasive enough to get your cavaliers to get up and dance with you?  If you are a man, and on a date, do you ask her to dance the first time she glances over to the dance floor, or do insist she beg and plead in order to have a little fun?

 

Did you answer Yes, Yes, Yes in the affirmative about your appreciation for music on this day to day level of things?   Well, then, you pass, and  you should pick up an instrument right away. 

 

Or did you answer with more NO NO NO’s then you would care to admit?   Perhaps you kind of like music but have never listened closely enough to compile a list of favorites – and the music was always played so low or so much in the background that it simply wasn’t strong enough to shock you into starting to sing along, or makes you break suddenly break out into dance.  And you admit to yourself that whenever you have put on some Music, that it was not really as a primary entertainment but more as a background mood-enhancing kind of thing.

Well, then, does all that mean that Music is not for you and that you should give it up before really ever starting?   Well, maybe not. It’s certainly not encouraging, but if you think you might actually like Music, given the right exposure, then the next step is relatively easy… find out what you really like.  Do Web Searches for people’s favorite songs…. Search all the genres – Rock, Pop, Show, Country.   Start listening and find some favorite songs.  Really.  Songs that you like to sing along with and dance around to.  That is the hurdle.  Just liking a song.  Wanting to put on the CD.  If you can actually WANT TO play a particular song… when you walk in through the door at the end of a tough day, if playing your most recent favorite song is all you can think about, or, well, a high priority, then you should learn how to play music.  But if your search for some Good Songs that you like goes too far on and on without your being able to find anything that really stirs you, then, well, I’m afraid it would all be too painful and tedious to pick up music, and you should look to do something that you would more naturally enjoy.  

 

Anyway, so now at this point we can assume that you actually like music and you should go forward with it.  So now what?  Well, depending on your instrument of choice, if you decide to learn to play ‘By Ear’, then it can be a relatively easy and enjoyable process, with results appearing well before you would ordinarily expect.

 

Now, the easiest, most ‘intuitive’ instrument would be the synthesizer Keyboard, using  the Transpose Key or function to drop the song keys into the Instrument’s Key of C, that is, so all of the notes of the song will only be all of those nice big white keys all in a perfect continuous row.  The big advantage to the keyboard, in addition to its intuitive easiness, is that in not much time you could be using all ten fingers at a time to play rapid fire melody or pounding chords, or, best of all, a mix of them both.  Strings and horns could never give you that much, well, fire power.

 

But the String instruments can be a lot of fun.  Let’s talk about the violin family first.  Violins are fretless… no intimidating little bumpy demarcations on the neck to make you think that you have to know where to put your fingers.   How, you may ask,  do you even begin to learn how to play ‘by ear’.   Well, I would suggest that you start on just one of the strings … the 2^nd most high string next to the skinniest string is probably the best place to begin, and then you put on your Favorite CD and start playing along on just that one string.  I used to put olive oil on the string so I could more easily slide into the right notes.  At first it is hard and will give you a headache.  The first night you will get 15 or 20 minutes before you tire.  Fine.  The next night and the next night, you will go longer.

 

Oh, there is the matter of Playing by Ear Theory, in regards to what you expect yourself to be playing.  Perhaps you think you should be exactly overlapping  the notes being played in the Song, or exactly matching the singers voice.  Well, yes and no.  Firstly, no song is so fixed a thing, written in granite, that a certain level of variation could not be admitted, along as it seemed to fit the song, in tone and tempo.  So when you first start, you may find that you can only pick out a few notes along a fairly easy time structure that seems to ‘fit’ along with your dazzling favorite song, but guess what?... If you do indeed KNOW, because it sounds right,  that these few notes work in your relatively easy time signature, then as far as you are concerned, YOU ARE PLAYING MUSIC.  After that, it only gets better.

 

But maybe we should discuss this more, going deeper into theory.   Playing by Ear utilizes the Right Side of the Brain, the Intuitive Side, the same side that does our walking for us or allows us to balance a book on our heads with not too much practice.   You don’t have to think about Walking, or think about balancing that book… you just do it, and it seems like a kind of process that sort of does itself.  Yes, the Left Side of the Brain, the Analytical Part, can stand by the way and shout out instructions and advice – “Keep Straight!  Shoulders back! Quit your smirking”, but even with all that noise by the way side, still, the Right Side of the Brain is doing all the heavy carrying and lifting. 

 

Yes, at first, with a new instrument, the Left Side of the Brain is crucially important.  Turning on and setting up the keyboard.  Tuning the Violin.  The Right Side of the Brain has to sit on the Bench and wait before it will be called in to the Game and be finally allowed to play.

 

Oh!  And it is SO important that you DO finally let the Right Side, the Intuitive side begin to play.  Yes, at the very very beginning you might have to let the Left Brain tell you where and how to put your fingers… for instance, on violin and guitar, you should press the strings down to the neck using what is very close to the tip of your fingers, and you will need to consciously do this at first.  But as soon as you can you need to just let yourself go and stop planning ahead.  Think about something else and let your mind wander.  Without getting in its way, let the Right Side of your Brain find the part it wants to play.

 

This may be difficult to do with an instrument.  Almost the Entire Music Culture is fastidiously Left Brain oriented, not ever allowing you to simply ‘play around’ but from the very start dictates every move and every finger placement.  Yes, in a week or two, you can play a Song, but only like some automated robot.  But that is what everybody expects!  To just start trying with no Structure, well, that is what seems strange.  But it is essential, that is, if you want to REALLY play music, and not just be a programmed music robot. 

But, really, I am afraid that many people would not understand the idea of playing by ear.  That when told to start playing, they would simply freeze up and not know what to do.   So maybe, if it seems like that for you, then let’s start with something easier to understand, where you will get the ‘feel’ for what I am talking about.  Start with Dancing.   Yes, just put on your favorite CD and start dancing along, moving with the music.  Because dancing is so much like walking, in the sphere of the Right Side of the Brain, it will begin happening sooner.  And keep going.  The Music should give you the strength to go on for a full practice… the beat of the music should just carry you along.  That is why Armies once made such use of Drum and Pfife, as the rhythm of the beat lifted the soldiers into a March that otherwise would have been degenerated into a fatigued sauntering and stagger. 

 

Oh, and you should always practice MORE than an hour.  I know that the Common Wisdom says that practice should be an hour, but, honestly, from personal experience I know that only toward THE MAGIC NINETY MINUTES does the Right Side of the Brain really take over control and begin to TRY NEW THINGS ALL BY ITSELF.   For instance, you decide to practice dancing to see what I am talking about.  For the first 15 minutes you are bit awkward, but after that you loosen up and are flowing fairly well with  the music.  You feel you are getting better and better, but after about an hour you begin to wonder why you are dragging it on and on, and so you begin to get bored and your attention begins to wonder.  You are still dancing, but your head is thinking about dinner, or the politics and Work, WHEN ALL OF A SUDDEN IN A MENTAL FLASH THAT TAKES JUST A TENTH OF A SECOND, you realize that THE PERFECT MOVE for the next bar of music coming up would be to stretch your arms out to the side, whip into a turn, come down hard on your right foot, prance forward, jump, turn, and spin.  And then you find yourself doing exactly that!  That is the Ninety Minute Magic at work.  No, it was not Left Brain, because, how to explain, you really didn’t think of it, and although it can be explained linearly, that is not how the Idea occurred – it is really just KNOWING in a Flash what you are about to do.  It is that EYE THE TIGER thing.   All you have to do is feel it once… to see it happen once, and you know what I am talking about, and you will know how Playing By Ear really works.   But you need those ninety minute practices.

Oh, what if you decide to practice Dancing and an Instrument, or two instruments.  Do you have to dedicate 90 minutes to each one…. That would be 3 hours practices!?  Well, no.  I’ve found that one 90 minute stint will get you INTO THE ZONE, and you kind of stay there when you pick up the next instrument.  Well, you will have to do a bit of a warmup, but it all catches up quickly and you will be playing at your highest level in practically no time on the momentum of that 90 minutes already put into practicing something else.

 

Oh, remember, I was not kidding about how it seems like your mind is wandering and you can no longer seem to concentrate.  People think that means they should STOP practice, but just the opposite is true.  That means that the Left Side of the Brain is finally letting go of its strangle hold over your Practice.  Things are only about to get Good at that point.  But this is typically when all Traditional Music Practitioners usually quit and call it a night, thinking that the Left Brain is their only asset.  If only they would keep going, maybe they too would find that they Right Side of the Brain would have a Ninety Minute Miracle for them too.

 

Okay, now that we have some of that Play be Ear theory out of the way, let us get back to some suggestions on how one can start out playing Strings.  Remember where I left you, with just playing on one string at a time, well, maybe even before the first night is out, natural curiosity will lead you to the other strings.  Let me briefly talk about the interval tuning between each string, and how that makes the strings intuitively easy to play.  First, just from tuning the violin – ( oh, get an electric tuner that lights up with the Letter of the Note… on the Chromatic Scale.  Pitch Pipes, while for purists, are deadly difficult to use) – you will know that there are 7 Semi-Tones between each string.   So, that means that when you play seven semi-tones down on your Practice String, well, you could keep going further down the neck on that same string to get higher and higher notes, or you could simply just jump across to the next highest string.   Likewise, when you are already playing some really high notes on your Practice String and suddenly want a lower note, you could go all the way back up on your Practice String, or you could simply sneak over to the next fatter string over for that low note.  This all happens automatically – the Magic Ninety Minute Insights and Flashes.   Whether you can understand it well enough to explain it with your Left Side Brain, may still be left to question, but to the Right Side of your Brain, it is Intuitively kind of obvious, and you will simply ‘catch on’.  Oh, for instance, when I first started practicing on guitar, I found that my hand, all by itself, developed and ‘trick’, that whenever I wanted to play the Same Note three times in a row, my hand would shoot up toward the top of the skinniest string, and hit the target Note there, then my hand would jump about halfway down the neck of the next lower string, and hit the SAME NOTE there, and then finally drop down toward the bottom of the neck and hit THAT SAME NOTE on the third string over.  All without consciously practicing it… I just found one time when I pulled my mind back from wandering, that I was doing it.   It definitely showed that the hand itself was serious about knowing how each string stood in relation to the next, and that at a certain point it stops being 4 or 6 strings, but becomes One Big String, only set in highly predictable staggers. 

 

Oh, in case you were wondering, Guitars are the same as Violins except the spacing between strings is 5 Semi-tones instead of 7 semi-tones.   Oh, traditional tuning for the Guitar brings the toning up on the second from the last skinny string to 4 semitones away from the next fattest string…this arrangement makes most chording easier for the guitarists, and other turning options are also utilized.   But I myself  tune my guitars for 5 semi-tone spacing all across, so that it remains “intuitively easy and highly predictable” , and a lot of Lead Guitarists do the same as I and probably for that same reason – It guarantees that anything you can do between any two strings, you can do between any two other, that is you can start a scaled progression and just keep it going across all of the strings, without having to think of what you are doing .    Oh, and Basses – really,  just big guitars with longer fatter strings – they are great, because they are all tuned to a solid 5 semi-tones between strings, unless of course a special tuning is used to make a chord reach for a particular song.  But I have always just kept the standard tuning and have never felt handicapped by it.

 

Oh, I had mentioned earlier that the most easy and intuitive instrument is Transposable Keyboard, that is, a keyboard where you can ‘transpose’ the highness or lowness of the keys on the keyboard so that the Key you want to play in drops into just the White Keys – all in one easy intuitive row.   But, there is one fairly big drawback there for the fledgling musician – you have to know what Key the song is in… and about one in every twelve songs has a Key ‘Bridge’ where the song comes up in Key by  semi-tone or two or three.   Now, with Strings, it simply does not matter what Key the song is in… you will automatically learn to play in the right Key, as anything else would sound so bad you simply would not want to play that way… it is like balancing a Book on your Head – you simply KNOW the point of it is to NOT DROP THE BOOK, whereas in Music, you simply know o stay in Key.   Yes, it’s kind of like magic.  Now, the only reason it is a problem on keyboards is that there are two separate rows of keys on a keyboard – the Whites and the Blacks and the design prevents you from being able to simply slide into the right note as you can with Strings (and, regarding this, you may have to slide only once or maybe twice to hit the right note on a string, but then your fingers learn how to land it exactly the next time).   So, it is extremely helpful on the Keyboard to know what key you are in, and, yes, it is a huge complication for which I apologize.

 

So, once we admit we have a problem here and decide that we need to know what Key a song is in, well, the easiest way is to get a set of harmonicas, diatonic scale harmonicas to be exact.   There are 12 Keys and so you need twelve harmonicas.  Oh, don’t believe anybody who says some of the Keys are never played.  They are… every single one though some Keys a lot more often than others I will grant.  But the way it is is that Singers or Musicians will insist on finding a Key that allows them to sing or play both the highest note and the lowest note of a song that may have a very broad range, and so if need be they will insist that the band do the song in Ab or Db or F# , that is, whatever Key will let them fit both the Highest and the Lowest Notes they need to contend with…  so you do need all twelve harmonics.   Diatonic Scale Harmonicas  go for about $40 a piece.  Oh, and it helps that Harmonicas are very intuitive instruments, held back by only one factor, that the notes are different depending on whether you blow through them or draw your breath through.  But none of your notes will EVER be off key.  Getting the songs just right will take some time, but for now we are just concerned with using these Harmonicas as a kind of Pitch Pipe for Key.  What I usually do is set the Keyboard to the Key of C, that is, where a piano would naturally be, and while I play the song on the CD player, I hunt around the Keyboard, striking both Whites and Blacks and when I am sure a certain note fits, then I write it down.  The Key Note itself should sound very very ‘good’ in the song, as the notes 5 above it and 5 below it will also sound pretty good.  Each Key only has 7 notes.  So, with 12 White and Black Keys, you only need to find 7, and not even that many to begin to guess what Key the song is in.  You can use the Harmonicas to prove out your guesses. 

 

Oh, what are the Keys?  The First Key and the model for all of the others is the Key of C.  On a piano keyboard, it is all the White Keys – C, D, E, F, G, A, B.  Now, while there are 7 White Keys in a Chromatic Scale, there are only 5 Black Keys – lets simplify by just naming them as Sharps; there is C#, D#, F#, G# and A#.  Notice that there is no E# or B#.  On the Keyboard you can see this as two White Keys being together without a Black Key being in between. 

 

So, the entire Chromatic Scale, the full twelve notes would be as follows:

 

C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B.

 

The way to figure out how to Transpose, or even what each Key is, note per note, well, the easiest way I have found is to make two Rings of the Chromatic Scale… they are already on line… see, this is one from Wikipedia: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatic_scale

 

You make one Circle small enough so that it can fit exactly into the center of the larger circle and you thumb tack it into the wall, dead center so that the smaller circle can spin inside the larger circle.   To know what notes comprise another Key, simply line up that Key Note with the Key of C, and then write down only the Notes that correspond to the Whole Notes of C.  For instance, the key of E.  You line up the small wheel E exactly underneath the big wheel C, then go around, skipping the Sharps and Flats in C because the Key of C has no sharps or flats.

So for the Key of E we would have the following:

E under C

F# under D

G# under E

A under F

B under G

C# under A

D# under B

So the Notes in the Key of E are  E, F#, G#, A, B, C#, D#. 

To Transpose a Keyboard so that E is played on all the White Keys, just count from C to your Key Note, or count down from C, whichever is closer.   The Key of E, since E is 4 slots up from C, would be Transposable with a +4, or counting down from C, -8.  The Key of A transposes to -3.  The Key of G transposes at -5.  The Key of F is either +5 or -6.

 

In my Music Studio, I have a homemade diagram on the wall, of the 12 Keys, all in the form of little Piano Keyboards.  If you think you know the Right Key, then, without transposing it, you can simply hammer out the Key notes, white and black, and if they all sound good, and the Key Note sounds particularly strong, being used especially toward the end of each musical phrase, then that is probably your key.  But prove it in with a Harmonica if you can.  With a little practice on harmonica, if you got the right key, then everything should sound PERFECT, but any little discrepancy… something sounding a bit off, is a sign that you are close but not quite spot on, as some keys are different by only a note and the Key Note  may be a magical 5 semi-tone (note slots) away from the Key you accidentally chose, which sound awfully close to being right.  For instance, the Key of G is the same as the Key of C, except it has an F# instead of an F, and the G is 5 down from C and so sounds very very good with C.  But you will soon hear it when it is not just right.

 

Oh, my explanation above brings me to a painful passage, that I have to tell you that Music Theory seems so confusing at times.  For instance, although there are twelve notes in a chromatic scale, there are only 7 “steps”, or 7 “tones”, but what makes this silly to me, is that, for instance, while E is right next to F and it is one Step, there is a key between C and D, but it is also just one “step” .  So you have to remember to call them semi-tones, or notes.  Or when talking of guitars to say “frets”… but the term Step is too fluid and relative and tied up in theory.  But for our uses we only have to know enough about music theory to not confuse Real Musicians when we have to talk to them.     

 

 

Now, WHAT YOU MOST NEED TO KNOW ABOUT PLAYING BY EAR is that you are playing music almost immediately, that is, the IDEA of the music you want to play, begins to happen almost immediately.  No, you aren’t playing perfect songs.  But what you want to happen begins to happen rather quickly.  Even when just doing the One String method of practice on your first few days with Violin… well, as you find yourself catching the right notes,   It FEELS rewarding.  It feels to you like you are actually playing music.  And honestly you are.  Now, after over 30 years of playing by ear, of course I am objectively much better than when I first started, but the feeling of just “playing” has never changed. The first time you find the right note in the dark feels just as good as anything you will ever do later, and the sense of Wonder never goes away.  It is as Good as listening to fine music, but so much more at another and higher level because you are in there and part of the Song.  Oh, and this reminds me.  The way songs are written and produced in our Capitalist Society.  Yes, great care is taken to make songs ‘Good’, but no one spends years working on and perfecting these songs and their production and final presentation.  But what about the Guys like me that Practice them for year after year after year.  Well, guess what.   Along comes one of those Magic Ninety Minutes when suddenly you get the Flash Idea for a Part, a Riff, that fits perfectly and sounds great, but was not part of the original song’s production.  Yes, you can rise up to the Level of the Song itself… not just copying and trying to imitate what you hear but actually Breath new Life into the Song and its performance.   

 

Or maybe we should just learn the songs by rote – learn to read music to show us the notes to the song, and where we should our fingers.   Yes, by doing that, we could learn individual songs faster and even better.  But what PLAYING BY EAR  does is that we LEARN EVERY SONG THERE IS OR EVER WILL BE ALL AT ONCE.  Yes, the traditional player will learn one song faster, or even a hundred songs faster.  But they will always be at a loss when it comes to just picking up their instrument and playing along with a new fresh tune.  If practice long enough playing by ear and are asked if you know any particular song, you can honestly say, like those old vaudeville musicians, “No, but if you hum me a few bars I’ll catch on”.    

Letter On New AgeTruth

Dear Hodor23

If you met her and found her sincere, would that change my mind?   Well, yes, and no.  Remember, it is normal for people to ‘show their best side’ when in relationships, particularly romantic relationships, and I know that that is not what we are talking about here, but I offer it as an example of how people… almost all people… have built up a certain skill level at projecting a Model Ideal Self.  Typically the Romantic Charades stop at marriage, when the real personalities show themselves; but when certain persons adopt a Projected Persona for Business Reasons, often the person realizes very deeply that such a Persona needs to be maintained.   It is too risky to drop the act.  Spiritual Groups always wind up breaking up over ‘insider revelations’, that is, when the Guru  or Cult Leader lets down his guard and acts a bit too casually toward some of the members or devotees.   So the best Gurus never let their guard down.    Indeed, I was thinking of writing a Screen Play about a Fake Guru who finds that one of his followers is the “real deal” and then becomes very conflicted between maintaining his own personal Empire and his urge to advance his more deserving protégé, and one of the big turning points in the screen play would be when the Fake finally lets down his Projected Image Persona and becomes Real.

 

Oh, I admire your reaching out to me, so let me tell you a story from more than 40 years ago.  I was in College and I found this fascinating little New Age Book by a Mr. George Weed I believe, and it had all sorts of fascinating  ideas that were new to me.  A friend of mine, a beautiful  albino Upper Classman, whom I was showing the book to, snatched it out of my hands and tossed it in the nearest trash bin, and told me I must hold myself up to Academic Standards, and advised me to check out perhaps William James’ “Varieties of Religious Experience”, or to go back to some of the famous European works on mysticism and spirituality, such as Saint Teresa of Avila’s “Interior Castle”.  These pivotal works do not go away, and everybody can refer to them.  But these flash in the fire New Age books that pop up every five minutes, so the latest Pretty Person can go on Book Tour and run those Seminars, well, they come and go.  Five minutes later it is useless to quote them because everyone has either forgotten or never known the reference.   For instance, I went to Amazon and tried to find a book by my poor old Mr. George Weed, and found that a mere half century was enough to totally submerge him in oblivion.

 

Now, if you really like New Age, then why not go back to the source materials that everyone… all the fakes… have been using for the best part of a century now.  Madame Blavatsky, and Annie Besant and the Theosophical Society.  Even Edgar Casey stole from them.  Oh, here is an example -- Let’s face it, WHAT!? “Akashic Records”?  Until Madame Blavatsky wrote of the Akashic Records, there had never in the History of the Universe been any even tiniest reference to such a thing as  “Akashic Records”… but now no New Age Book is complete without a section on those Akashic Records.  Which brings up a point about how to Pull Off Being a Fake.   You simply repeat back what your Target Audience already thinks it knows, and in a deplorable way, the Knowledge Reinforces itself… it seems Truer every time it is repeated.   And only Blavatsky would know the Joke, but after she died, well, it isn’t funny anymore.   Nobody knows what came from any honest investigation or scholarship or what was simply invented to charge the atmosphere with wonder and amazement.  So we are in a place where we can’t suppose something is true simply because we hear it being repeated all the time.   So I am old fashioned and will only listen to a Saint, that is, someone who can support what he says by being able to demonstrate an affirmative connection with the Divine Will and Power.   If you want to show me the Truth, then you will have to show me God too.   Religious and Spiritual Truth can only be verified by Miracle.

Legal Reform, Defense Strategy, Kill All the Witnesses

 

Given the context of how the Anglo-Saxon Legal Systems perform in this day and age, one can easily guess about their source Traditions, that such codes were put in place by a decidedly Classist Society to favor the Rich and Powerful; and no prevision more blatantly fits this mold than that which stipulates that the Accused has the right to face his Accuser, which effectively makes any sworn witness affidavit worthless at trial, even if the Witness is murdered to assure his or her silence so that the Accused can belch out the biggest belly laugh and go on his merry way completely vindicated in the far too obviously blindfolded eyes of the Law.  Yes, yes, yes, while the option to murder all the witnesses belongs to any man who is ever accused, well, the reality of the situation is that the rich and powerful have a great many more resources at their disposal for bringing about such ends – they can set up alibis for themselves at the finest clubs to which even their lawyers and judges belong, and then they can hirer third parties to take care of all the gruesome details of Witness Disposal; while, on the other hand, the accused poor have enough trouble making bail on whatever they had been charged with.  You know, it is kind of a shame that Poor People cannot buy some kind of Legal Insurance, that could provide resources in times of Legal Troubles to make them, well, for the time being, as Resourceful as any Rich Person, so that they too can have all the witnesses against them killed before Trial.  Yes, this would be hard on the Witness Class, but it would be the only way, now, that one could assure Equal Protection for Everybody before the Law.  

 

But isn’t it such an inherently cruel and callous System that gives so little regard for the death of so many witnesses, dying only because of a strategy devised to save the Rich and the Powerful from legal embarrassment.  Yes, I know that the Legal Traditions enfold this Old Recipe for Murder in the cloths of the Ideal, referring to Fairness and the justice of Cross-Examination, etc.  But we need to forget about these Traditions that put forward their Pretend-Ideals as justifications and excuses for the Atrocities that we know actually happen and result directly from the implication of the Legal Logic.  Besides, this is Today, when, really, there are so many Rich and Powerful people about,  that we need to wonder why we should have to go to any great pains to protect them and their privileges.  Honestly, all of this needs to end.  Modern Legal systems need to honor Sworn Witness Affidavits, which should bear all the force of what is now in-court witness testimony.  This would stop the slaughter of witnesses.  Criminals and all the others of the High and Mighty Rich and Powerful Social Classes would no longer have anything to gain from murdering witnesses, outside of  futile revenge, and even then with the Witness Affidavit still going forward, which would preclude a summary acquittal, the Court would more than likely take a severe look at the murder of a witness during the sentencing phase of the trial.  This would make  the Murdering of Witnesses an actual liability, as it should be, instead of what it is now – the only sure way to maintain your innocence.

Safety and Secularism Versus Religious Freedom

 

I suspect that the first proponents of Religious Freedom were all relatively comfortable with the moral and ethical content of all of the Religions they saw on their Society’s horizons, or at least they had no tangible reasons to feel under any serious threat from any Religion that could eventually get total freedom to do anything they wanted within their Political Jurisdictions… and to do it with total exemption from Taxes.  

But now we have the rise of Crazy Religions.  The most seriously Crazy Religion advocates Genocide against all none members, and has and still does carry out attacks to show that it is just not empty rhetoric, but that they really do intend to kill us all, and even many of their Own Members who do not manage to keep up to a certain level of expected Craziness .   Another seriously Crazy Religion stands by their affirmation that there is only one Blessed Ethnic Group, that is, their own – they refer to themselves as “The Chosen People”… not as catchy as “Master Race”, but it means the same thing, and that God has created the remainder of the World’s Population as a Flock for their exploitation or as colonies of drones and workers to be enslaved.   There is another very puzzling Crazy Religion which declares that they will finally be able to climb up the Divine Ladder to the status of Barely Being Blessed of God if they become the Willing Slaves of the above mentioned Self-Declared ‘Chosen People’,  and, what’s more, that such a Blessing as they seek can only be secured if they are able to provoke a huge World Ending Battle to end all Battles, helping that Self-Declared ‘Chosen People’ annihilate all of its enemies, that is, everyone who is not of the Chosen People Ethnic Group.   Yes, it is perhaps the Craziest thing of all to expect that those Crazy enough to murder everyone else, won’t also murder you… especially when you know that they know that God gives them permission to do anything they feel like.  

You know, honestly speaking, if some Foreign Religion has been yoked around your neck by dumb Tradition or Ancient Conquest, and ranks you and yours as second rate slaves who deserve only denial and death, then, well, it should be common sense to go out and find a Religion that treats one with the Fairness that we should only expect of a Just God.   And not all World Religions are Crazy. 

 

Anyway, now we must ask ourselves how is it possible that any of the Crazy Religions could foster the Stability and Welfare of any Civilized Society?   Yes, often in the Past the State has looked to Religious Guidance in order to clarify Ethic Issues and matters of conflict between Good and Evil.  But when Religions themselves cave in to the Pressures of their own Self Interest and take up Evil to advance their own Agendas,  then it is up to Secular Governments to declare themselves as the sole guardians of the distinctions between Good and Evil and the differences between the Ethical and the Unethical, and in the exercise of this prerogative, to take on the responsibility of licensing and regulating Religious Practice, Teachings, Doctrines, and Scriptures of the Religions wishing to operate in any particular Political Jurisdiction.  Essentially the Secular Sphere would take care to assure that no Religion could declare its members entitled to be murderers or that they may enslave those of any other ethnic group or persuasion.   Also, scriptural references which may be suspected, or have historically been used to advocate Supremacy Doctrines or Genocidal Violence, would have to be expunged.  In cases where the particular Scripture is so universal or ubiquitous, that no selective expunging of any passage would be effective, that is, where everyone already knows of the content of these inherently evil passages ‘by heart’, then, the only recourse would be to revoke License to the Religion entirely, and declare it akin to some Ancient Barbaric Tribal Tradition, that while worthy of historical note, can no longer be trusted to be anything but a Sign Post for Evil in this Modern Day and Age for which we would all hope for so much better.

An Open Letter to Miss Carly Rose Sonenclar

 

My God! Young Lady, but weren’t you ripped off!?  The Producers arranged it so that the Popular Music Vote would be split so that the strong Minority Vote of the Southern Block could walk off with the Win with far less than 50% of the Vote.  In any Civilized Venue, you would have deserved a runoff, no?  Head to head Mr. Steven could never have come even close to beating you.

 

Well, anyway, the reality of it would have been that you would have won next to nothing.  The “5 Million dollar Record Deal” would have been the X-factor Producers shoving money from one of their pockets to another one of their pockets; from left hand into right, but behind their back.   They would have consigned you into cutting a cheezy record with low production values, on a tight schedule, and consisting of mostly horrible generic pop originals.  They would have you made you the pop girl of the season, and then, disillusioned and disappointed, your adoring fans would remember only that you had once been good.   

 

As it stands now, you can get your Own Deal, and under much better contractual considerations.  Oh, you are just 13 years old, and so it might be likely you would still be thinking of High School and College… but not necessarily.  You could home school your way through knowing anything a High School student must know to do well on the SAT Tests, and then  you can enter College whenever your career reaches some natural point of relaxation.

 

Now for some advice… from an old man, and so humor me.   Yes, yes, yes, you have a Once in a Generation Voice, but what is the most important thing now, is not your Voice, but your Taste and Discernment.   Essentially it comes down to whether or not you know what a Hit is.  Some people with amazing degrees of musical talent simply throw it all away by making horrible choices regarding what they choose to record.   For instance, Barbara Streisand, an undeniably talented Lady, now takes up nearly all of her time trying to impress a New York Theatrical Elite that doesn’t do good popular music because, well, they don’t need to… they have a huge captive audience – all those New York Gay People, God Bless them,  that have nowhere else to go.  They go to the same theatres to see the same shows, however horrible they are, satisfied to just to preen like birds out in the theatre lobbies during the intermissions.  But Barbara does this ‘Show’ music hoping to make friends or keep them among this tired sick and wasted ‘elite’.  Meanwhile dumpsters nationwide are brim full of Streisand CD’s, or people are warned off of buying them in the first place.    Joan Osborne did a CD of some of her favorite Blues Songs… songs that had been her inspiration.  My God!, but what a yawn fest!  Macy Grey did a tribute to Stevie Wonder, of mostly songs that Stevie couldn’t  even get into the Top 40, and she tore up the few good songs so badly that, well, we are topping off the Nation’s dumpsters again.  Oh, and there are the Generic Pop Songs.   The Record Companies, who knows why, but they blindly and stupidly demand of Artists that they provide so many original recordings on some fixed schedule.  In a World where anybody who really does write three real honest-to-god Hits in their entire lifetime should be recognized as something of a Mortal God, well the Record Companies  want to fill up records year after year, but with what.  It is a huge waste of plastic!  Even the Best singer song writers are reduced to putting out CD’s full of ‘filler’… sometimes ‘filler’ from start to finish.  Aimee Mann… I used to worship her.  But her most recent CD… I listened to it and cried.  Ten songs and nothing there.

 

The best anecdote I have regarding this particular problem, of record companies demanding ‘filler’ songs on the off chance that one might somehow go against all the odds of market logic and creative judgment to become a surprise hit, is all about a once young star,  Jackie De Shannon.  She had made a hit of a Burt Bacharach song, “What the World Needs Now is Love”, and then she got a big break of being able to open for the Beatles on their 1965 American Tour.  Around about then she thought up her own ‘Hit’ song and had the good sense to know it was a ‘hit’. It was “Put a Little Love In Your Heart”.  She was excited for herself and ran off to the Record Company offices and because her demo tape was so sparse, she made all of the horn parts and string parts with her mouth, and accentuated them by waving her hands all about.  The Execs tried to bluff away her optimism but she stood firm – it was a hit – she knew it and they knew it,  and they would have to pay for it!  Well, they did, but the small print in her contract was a B___h.   She would have to follow the Single soon with an album.  She had something like a few weeks to fill the complete album and she knew and everybody knew it was awful… except the American Public who hadn’t been warned and were very disappointed in her ‘rip off’ album and never forgave her for it.  Remember ,this was during the Age of the Beatles where almost every ‘good’ album had well more than three songs that were actually up in the ‘Hit’ caliber and most of the rest fine enough to listen too without rendering offense or absolute boredom.  So the idea of a complete album with just one good song, when everyone already owned it as a Single, well… it was all bitterness and darkness after that.  And so it is that the way she negotiated an honest-to-god ‘hit’ came down to ruining her career.   Her friend at the time was a young songwriter named Carole King, to whom she poured out all her various laments and warnings.  Carole took them to heart and so when she in turn went off to the Record Companies, she had a complete album full of nearly perfect ‘hits’, from start to finish.  Of course, Carole King, except for a few good songs in later years, was never even nearly able to equal the likes of “Tapestry” again… well, in fact, has anybody?  Most Greatest Hits albums aren’t nearly as good as just plain “Tapestry”.

 

So, the point there is to be very careful in assembling your Work, your CD’s.  Now, of course you can’t please everybody – not everybody likes every song, but we are not talking about that.  We are talking about songs that everybody with a modicum of taste knows to be simply a ‘filler’.  Remember, YOU are the talent.  Remember, that when a Record company Exec gives you advice, well, politely nod your head ‘yes, yes, sure, sure’ but then, go off to the company archives and find out how well this particular exec’s judgments have gone.  Had he been responsible for a series of flat and stupid CD’s, and a broken trail of used up and abandoned artists?  Yes!?  Well, guess what he wants to do to you… not out of hate or malice, but simply because he a stupid business man… probably got the job because he’s somebody’s son-in-law, and not because he even pretends to do anything besides go through the motions of being a Record Company Exec.  So trust your own judgment, but that also means trusting a Producer or somebody that actually does have a Stellar record of producing hit after hit after hit, and never leaving a wounded or melancholy Artist behind.  For instance, Stevie Nick’s Greatest Hits  record jacket is really funny, in that it points out time and again how she moaned and complained that songs her producer wanted her to do simply ‘sucked’ but that he wouldn’t budge and when she finally did them that they ended up being Monster Hits for her.  So, you need to have the Discernment to know who to listen to.  You need both good Judgment of Music and Good Judgment of the people you work with.

 

Oh, and now a personal observation.  You have focused on singing. When it comes to dance and moving on stage, well, it is as though your slippers are made of steel and concrete.  My advice here is to learn quickly how to Visually represent music.  The best method for that is one I have seen in the Far East – Korean Girls come out on stage with sticks that have attached to them these very long flowing ribbons that they twirl and bullwhip around in perfect time to the music.  High notes are whipped up into the air, and the low notes beat along the stage floor.  The audience sees a perfect Visual Translation of the music.  Dance is supposed to do the same thing, but the Medium of arms and legs is not nearly was Wonderful as the sticks and ribbons.   But after one ‘gets’ the idea, then one can translate the Music visually with dance.  And once you can dance, then you can control the stage better.  Oh, and as Rod Stewart or Annie Lennox can attest, being able to toss the mike stand up into the air and catch it like a baton, well, audiences wouldn’t be more amazed unless it were by the 2^nd coming of Christ… and if He had good sense, He would learn to toss the mike stand too.   Oh, be careful, and use both hands.    

 

Also, an appreciation for visual motion and dance gives one an idea for the exuberance of some music.  Right now you focus on the Sublimity of Music – those magical moments of a culminating melodic phrase against a background of folded together and consummated harmonies… it does carry one away.  But Music also can have Exuberance and Flight… anywhere from a tickling lightness to an absolute kind of stomp.  Yes, there are thousands of examples of this done badly.  But how often is Musical Sublimity done badly also?   So, yes, you already have the proven ability to take your audience up into the very Stratosphere of musical rapture, but now you need to be able to whip them up into a Frenzy.  You know what they say about Show Business, don’t you?  “Make them Laugh and make them Cry”.  Well, that phrase may apply more so to the Dramatic Arts, but you get the idea.  You need more Range in your Act.  Move them to tears, but also just plain move them.   Get those feet a-tappin.

 

Now, what do you do?  As I said before, anybody who can even write three hits in a lifetime is a veritable God, so I can’t ask you to be a ‘singer-songwriter’, as it is, well, an impossible trade to maintain for very long.  Even Neil Diamond does covers now.  You could find a good Song Writer.  There is a guy in the U.K. that writes for Amy Belle, a very talented young lady that Rod Stewart ‘discovered’ some years back.  The songwriters name is Lindop.  Rod Stewart had brought her out on stage for a concert that went to DVD, and then everyone waited years, and nothing was heard from her, and when the world was ready to simply shrug and forget her, out comes this precious little CD called, ironically enough, “Lost in the Shortcut”.   All of the best songs are by this Lindop character.  See if you can steal him… well, if he still has anything left.

 

But you can always reach back and do covers.  I know you listen to a lot a music… the note ‘bend’ you do at the end of “Feeling Good”, well, Nina doesn’t do that, but the background singers on Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff”, they do a note bend just like the one you did.  So you listen a lot of music and you don’t hesitate to use what you know.  So go back and get some of these old songs and fix them up… update them.  If you need any ideas, well, I have over 600 ‘favorite’ songs catalogued by Key.  There are some really good songs… songs that had even been ‘hits’… that no one does today.  Yes, and there are probably many good songs out there in Musical History hidden by horrible production choices – good songs made bad.  Oh, James Taylor had first been signed by the Beatle’s Apple Records, and they made “Carolina” sound like a march song, with trombones and tubas.  Oh, and remember how Joe Cocker was able to make the stupid  Ringo Starr song “With a Little Help from my Friends” into a true rock and roll Classic.   You know, nearly all of the ‘Hit’ songs of the Sixties, or well before about 1972 or 74, were done to some awkward time signature… I remember as a juggler having to do everything to a 3 ball pattern, which was not very ‘dancy’, but then songs went ‘even’ somehow and I was able to do 4 ball and the dancing got more fluid .  So I suspect one could go back to the sixties and re-build melodic phrases to a more modern time signature.    

 

Oh, here as an idea, considering your age.  Laura Nero.  Of course you know her, but for my other readers, allow me to elaborate, Laura Nero was, much like our very own Carly Rose, a teenage prodigy.  Some of her songs are almost embarrassingly ‘young’.  “Let’s go down to the River and drink my daddy’s wine, get Blasted”… it’s about a teenager’s first drunk experience.  “Wedding Bell Blues” is a 16 year old girl fantasizing about marriage… almost a child playing ‘house’.  “Stone Soul Picnic”, well… we can guess what that is about.   Barbara Streisand covered Nero.  Oh, and a lady with perhaps the best popular voice of the 20^th Century, though nobody gives her the credit for it, Marilyn Macoo, with her Fifth Dimension group, they made a fortune of covering Laura Nero.  But at your age, Laura Nero should be yours… you should do Laura Nero and simply resonate with all that Teenage Prodigy energy.   Oh, and rock and roll.  Cover The Who… do that song about Teenage Wasteland with the best electric violin solo in rock and roll history.

 

Oh, perhaps we dismissed your writing your own material much too soon.  Do write.  But don’t compose on guitar.  People who compose on guitar do so with the most predictable of chords and it all ends up sounding the same…  yes, perfectly constructed songs, but one simply can’t tell them apart.   It is all like Taylor Swift – the songs all seem okay one by one but when the CD is over, the mind has nothing particular to remember because all the songs merge into one big bland mass of sameness.   So compose on keyboard.  Yes, yes, you already play piano, but I recommend going to electronic keyboard so you can transpose all of your notes down to just the white keys, like you are playing everything in the Key of C.  That way you can keep the same key finger patterns and use the transpose key to change Key to fit your vocal range.  This allows you to put all of your work into finding phrases and less into fighting the mechanics of the traditional piano keyboard – two rows of keys, blacks and white, a certain stumbling block, but we all insist on lugging it about to appease the Gods of Holy Musical Tradition .

 

Oh, about musical themes and lyrics.  Well, you are so young.  We are all so used to your Sublimity, that we would be rather disappointed if we only had songs of ‘puppy love’ and passing notes in class.  But if you got too heavy, well, nobody would believe it.  Now, I do not think many people have ever done this, but you are young enough so that we can likely suspect that the Best Literature and Poetry of the English Language is still in front of you.  When High School curriculum requires you to read the Very Best, well, let it ‘kill two birds with one stone, and see if it could perhaps give you some musical or thematic ideas.  And when your interviewers ask about how a 14 year old or a 15 year old can come up with such themes, well, you can plausibly blame it upon Literary Influences.  Oh, and it would prove you are not such a dunce as Taylor Swift.  How can any ‘intelligent’ young lady be exposed to so much fine literature and come out totally unmarked by any of it?

 

Anyway, enough from an Old Man.  If I can be of any further assistance, then, please, just let me know.