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Tag: songwriting

New Mind-Reading Machine That Turns Peoples’ Thoughts Into Text Invented

May 2, 2023

One of the prevailing themes of life on planet earth over the last few years has been the idea of information overload. That’s the general consensus of what word combination might work best to describe this ever-growing and disturbing trend. There was a time when watching the nightly news and reading a daily newspaper kept one in the know, at least about the most important topics. But that’s all changed. The hard cold truth is there is no way now to “be in the know”. 15 years ago, in the book We Are the Revolution — Welcome to the Personal Expression Age, I predicted one of the primary Signatures of this coming new age would be “Information Overload”. And so too did a lot of other people. It was obvious, seeing it coming. It’s boiled over now. With no apparent end in sight.

Now that we’re neck deep in the middle of it with no visible signs it will ever change in the future, the real questions are, what are the implications of this trend? What will be the ramifications? And what can we do about it?

If the biggest challenge or most frustrating obstacle to information overload is not being able to keep up with what’s happening in the world, or not being able to learn and know everything one wants to or believes they should…. We can see at least two different methods one might employ to handle it.

One method would be to go small. Or go specific. Focus on your own personal community geographically, demographically, financially, spiritually, socially, etc. and then take it even further — choose a handful of subjects topics issues and industries one is most interested in and then using apps and other forms of media, design a personal information delivering system around this community and these issues, deliberately leaving out a large majority of information one is either not interested in or that doesn’t affect one’s personal or professional life directly.

This is what most people are already doing now…. Using their phone, computer, apps, various media, YouTube, etc. Go small. Go specific. Be deliberate about it. And you may have a chance of not feeling left out all the time. Because at the very least you’ll know about the most important things happening in the world that YOU primarily exist in.

And remember, this is a challenge we are all facing at this time. Every human being on planet earth and elsewhere is suffering from an inability to hear about and know a majority of what’s happening in the world on a day to day basis. There’s just too much happening now.

Another method to deal with this challenge would be to go big. Go really big. Instead of trying to design a personal information delivery system based on your own community and preferences and stuff as much information into your mind on a daily basis as possible, head in the opposite direction. Take a big step back and recognize that life is short, and compared to being dead, it’s a gift, at least while you’re here… there are no real rules to it (despite what everyone around you claims) especially once you discover the secret of all secrets: the goal of our short lives here in human form is to be as happy and enjoy ourselves as much as humanly possible.

From this perspective, one would be hard pressed to want to stuff their mind on a daily basis with every little or even big thing happening in the world around them — even if that world was just their own small community based world filled with their own personal preferences.

This would be akin to tuning in and dropping out in a way. Focusing more on the ontological and cosmological, attempting to connect with the forces at play in and of the universe as much as possible, communing more with one’s own idea of The Divine… on personal well being, on feeling good, on consciousness expansion, on enlightenment. On acknowledging, appreciating and enjoying the gift of life.

From this perspective, from this point of view, the idea of “not keeping up enough with what’s going on in the world” would seem rather shallow and petty.

Regardless of how we eventually come to deal with the challenge of information overload, a prime example of it in today’s world right this very minute: we’ve had three major regional banks in the United States collapse in the last three months, UFOs begin to be openly discussed by the American government and a newly energized China, along with a seemingly ever growing collection of other countries, begin openly challenging the United States as the world’s superpower, and yet we barely speak about these things as a national community.

We do of course… a little. But we’re also engaged in conversation about a hundred other things at the same time. So no one subject no matter how important it might be to us now or in the future gets it’s fair share of coverage or thought.

We’ve also seen the official introduction of long awaited Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the mainstream world of the masses, that alone being a “something” that ten years ago would have had the whole world talking about nothing else for months — the Singularity is actually here now, 25 years earlier than Kurzweil predicted, and now the invention of a mind reading machine that converts human thoughts into text.

Our human society is now moving at a breakneck speed in so many different sectors industries and arenas and in so many different geographical locations around the world that it has become impossible to keep up with everything going on in the minds and workshops of our billions of other human brethren. By the time we’re just beginning to touch the surface of exploring the uses and implications of a mind reading machine, there will be tens of other inventions or world events that will be announced that will require but not receive our full attention.

That’s a symptom or side effect of the kind of freedom and security we now enjoy as a species. And truth be told we are capable of infinitely more. Just watch. Will it reach a point where the freedom for this kind of rampant ingenuity will become dangerous with the potential for self harm or mass self destruction? One might say that just the rapid introduction of artificial intelligence into the hands of hundreds of millions of people overnight already hints at this. And a mind reading machine..?

See below for a copy and paste of the full article by the good folks at 1440. It will take all of us some time to digest and contemplate this latest event…. Of a machine and a set of hardware and software that can read the mind’s thoughts and convert them to text… even at this rudimentary level, it may be the most impactful invention of all time. And the most dangerous.

From a few minutes of contemplation, if we continue to head in this direction, if more and more universities and communities, public and governmental organizations, private corporations, all join the fray and begin investing in, exploring and building out this technology, what comes to mind…

First and foremost it’s the end of privacy as we ever knew it. “Privacy as we know it” ended 20 years ago. Just as we all said it would. With the so-called war on terror, and the ensuing advent of CCTVs on every street corner in the name of safety and security, plus the recent addition of spy-drones buzzing about everywhere we will ever go geographically, physical privacy is gone. For good. And it doesn’t matter where we are, what country we’re in, whether we’re in the mountains or the desert, at this point it’s safe to assume we’re being watched and recorded at all times.

(Do you remember when this was an actual issue people cared about? Privacy? The anger and furor over “being watched all the time”? It is amazing to look back and see how quickly people gave up that fight. If you’re younger and living in the world today where everything you do and everywhere you go is being monitored 24 hours a day, you’d have no idea that this was an actual major issue of the day that people used to fight over. It was. But the people caved. And quickly.)

The kind of privacy we’re talking about here is far more precious and valuable than protecting where our physical body happened to be one shady drunken Friday night. We’re now talking about our MIND. Our thoughts. Even our dreams and our imagination.

We knew it was coming. All dolled up in 1984 cosplay attire. We just didn’t know it would be here so fast. For the defense industry it will be the biggest thing since splitting the atom. Every country in the world will want a hundred of these devices. And they won’t care how much they cost.

The whole world of spy craft will break apart and transform into something entirely different. It won’t matter how you coded the information or the message or who you gave it to or where you hid it or how you delivered it. The fact of the matter is the information will still be in your mind. And sometime very soon, based on the speed at which human technology advances and evolves, it won’t be that difficult to access anything in the mind or in our thoughts.

The idea of civil rights will be rewritten, because they won’t exist in the manner we are accustomed to anymore. We will be told that nothing has changed, that we still have the same right to civil rights that we’ve always had, but just as with privacy over the last 20 years, they will slowly erode in the name of peace, safety and national security.

Our most basic civil right — what we now consider it at least, that of agency over our physical body, will seem quaint compared to having no agency or control over our thoughts. Imagine a time not too long from now when wishing our human body would or could be violated as a trade if it meant protecting the content of our thoughts or mind. Dire and dramatic I know. But now an actual possibility.

Of course there a variety of positive and helpful ramifications that may spring from a mind reading machine. For creatives such as myself I’ve been dreaming of a miraculous technology such as this for decades. A way to tap into what’s in my mind, convert it to text or even pictures and be able to read it and more importantly save it…! There is simply no way that I or anyone else, not even a team of people, can keep up with how fast a creative’s brain works and how fast it creates new information and ideas.

Two primary limits. Typing while I think here. Which I often do. Precisely because of the phenom we’re discussing. After having lived with or inside my mind for the last few decades I can observe that one giant limitation is that my mind processes organizes and sorts current data and then creates new data and new ideas at such a hyper speed that there’s simply no way for me or even a team of people to get it down. Even if we invented a way to give other people access to my mind. Which is another entirely different challenge. Right now I’m the only person who has access to my mind. So when it’s just me trying to dictate and record as many new ideas as I can that are coming out of my mind, I’m only able to get about 10% of them out, typed up or written down or recorded into something. Imagine having a team of five to ten folks all doing it at once. We would definitely be able to get more of it out HERE, out of my mind and into the world. Now imagine if we had a computer doing it. A machine that could process those new ideas as fast as my mind could produce them. It sounds fantastical frankly. Impossible. But we’ve learned that with computers there really are no limits. So yes, just thinking about this and typing it up here excited the hell out of me. Because I’ve been living with this limit for decades. Literally.

Example. Right now I am limited as I compose this essay by nothing else than my fingers and my energy level. My mind has already composed this essay. Hours ago. Finished it. Completely. This essay was done in my mind approximately ten minutes after I first got the idea for it. But here I am three hours into it still typing. And yes I’ve tried dictating audio. And that does work a little bit faster. But then I’m stuck going back and having to edit the whole thing manually due to the technological limitations of dictation software.

With a computer hooked up to my mind spitting out my thoughts as fast as I was thinking them, with no human physical limitations impinging on our ability to produce, we could easily see me writing a few hundred pages a day. More really when you think about it. It would be a dream. A true miracle.

The same applies to writing new songs. At present I am limited to writing approximately 1-2 songs a day. IF I do absolutely nothing else but sit in the same place and work on writing those two new songs. In reality my mind has already finished the songs a few minutes after hearing them in my head and getting the idea for them. But the songs’ completion is always limited by my own physical body limitations. How fast I can play, how fast I can write, how much time patience and energy I hVe in me to sit there hour after hour to do just that one thing.

If instead we had a computer hooked up to my mind reading my thoughts and spitting them out as fast as I was thinking them, we could get that number up to 5-6 new songs per day. Or probably more. 9-10. Simply because we wouldn’t be physically limited by my humanity. The mind has already done all the work. I take a lot of steps on a daily basis to slow it down enough for me to be able to dictate it and get it out of my mind and into the world. Imagine if that were no longer an issue. Again, a marvel. A true miracle.

Obviously this is just the beginning…. The machine and the software is in its infancy stages. The thoughts and ideas that it inspires are infinite. But this is a good start. More later. Article below….

ARTICLE :: Researchers have revealed a new artificial intelligence system capable of translating a person’s brain activity into a continuous stream of text in a noninvasive way for the first time. New research from the University of Texas at Austin shows the brain-computer interface can generate word sequences that recover the meaning of perceived speech, imagined speech, and brain responses while watching silent videos.


Unlike previous language-decoding systems, the new decoder doesn’t rely on surgical implants. The study focused on three participants whose brain activity was measured using an fMRI scanner, which utilizes changes in blood flow to produce brain scans, as they listened to podcasts, thought about stories, and watched short silent films.

A large language model (see 101), similar to OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s Bard, then matched patterns in the participants’ brains to words and phrases they heard and translated the brain’s response to hearing new words into corresponding text. The decoded text is not a word-for-word transcript but rather a gist of a person’s thoughts.

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The Functional Difference Between Edges and Bridges In Consciousness and Their Role In Creativity

December 28, 2022

This caught my eye… it’s a fascinating exploration. But I wasn’t sure I had anything valuable to add, until I read what Sir Richard Knight said when he mentioned creativity in the context of the role edges and bridges of consciousness may have.

Despite how esoteric and ivory tower the subject matter may seem from the outside, it is something Princess Little Tree and I discuss quite a bit in our day to day lives, because it’s such a major aspect of our family’s shared life together.m; creativity that is.

I (tend to) write between 5-10 songs a week on average, sometimes 2-3 a day, On occasion, once or twice a year, it’ll be 0 songs for a few weeks because I’ll deliberately relay to Higher Self/Awareness/Source/The Force that I’m taking a much needed break from songwriting… “No songs for a while please,” I’ll announce loudly into the air to no one in particular, “I am taking a few days off.”

Most people don’t realize how completely immersive, pervasive and all encompassing songwriting is in a persons life if that’s their job or profession or their primary passion and raison d’être. If we were attempt to express it in a way that’s remotely relatable to the average person, imagine you have “a job” that never had a start date — you’ve been doing that same job since you can remember, you work at that job 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, at all hours of the day or night all year round no matter what may be happening in your personal life. There are no paid vacation days, no time off for the holidays, no impending end to the job or retirement to look forward to in the future.

You were born a songwriter, started doing it since you can remember, and your soul’s purpose in this life incarnation is to write, create, record and release out into the world as many songs as is humanly possible without burning out or killing yourself from overwork stress or exhaustion in the process. In addition every one of the songs you write, no matter how many you write, are supposed to be brilliant works of undeniable genius, and at the same time big hits, ridiculously well known and popular, even though these two things rarely mean the same thing. No pressure at all.

I’ll admit it’s one of those things that even after 30 years still boggles the mind, witnessing it transpire all the time, living inside of that, having no idea how it it works, or where it comes from, contemplating it….

“Write songs” is a loose term here, since “I” dont actually “do” much. More of a passenger.

But just the other day when discussing it, right after we had observed a new song come out of nowhere and get completed within an hour or so — the event is akin to being on the road just driving along in your car and then BAM out of nowhere you see a giant tornado which picks you and your whole car up whether you want it to or not, lifts you miles up into the air and spins you around for an hour or two and then drops you back down on the road and you’re once again driving along as if nothing happened, except NOW there’s this new song in the world…

After one such event the other day one of us made a comment that they had decided the mechanics of this mysterious supernatural-seeming process we witness all the time came from living, being, existing 24/7 in this dreamy alternative state, or at least leaving a wormhole open to it at all times, where you’re living totally completely on the razors edge EDGE of (this) “reality” all the time.

Personally speaking Im not sure I ever “jump” as Richard referred to in his comment. That is an “action” that implies too much deliberateness… It is much more like suddenly falling than jumping…. Falling off the edge of THIS reality into an infinitely vast alternative universe outside of this one… One minute you’re “here/now” and then suddenly you disappear, you’re not you, you’re not here, you’re not now, you’re not what we would call conscious… you’re off in some other world just free-falling and flowing along with this new song that’s appeared out of nowhere. It is NOT a state of UNawareness. It’s just unawareness of this world.

I actually sought out and actively used the Avatar tools specifically to get more deliberate control of being that way and try to hone it in a bit, because it doesn’t lend itself to a healthy stable or secure life. Especially if you’re so far out there all the time that you’re not even aware that you’re so far out there… which I wasn’t; until i took Avatar. Learning about Attention and Will and Living Deliberately from the Avatar Courses saved my life. No way I would have made it this long in this life form, living like that — so casually care-freely unaware of reality.

Eventually I found a healthy balance. Between living completely on the edge or way off and past the edges, and being able to deliberately use my Will to focus my Attention to come back to “regular people reality” when i decide i want or need to. Which i think is really important if you want to stay alive in this physical form, and also be a good spouse, parent, child, friend, etc to others.

The bridges… need to contemplate more… I’m assuming based on reading other comments here and feeling into them is that the bridges get created from our deliberately deciding to use our Will, focus our attention, get deliberate and be Source. Suddenly a bridge appears. Or more accurately we create a bridge.

So yes, you’ve checked out 100% as far as others are concerned who are still in the here-now watching you, wondering if you’re ever coming back… But, and this is a BIG but, one need bear in mind none of this is too deliberate; I’ve been this way since I can remember, and until I discovered the Avatar Courses it was a very scary unsafe dangerous way of living…. I actually sought out and actively used the Avatar tools specifically to get more deliberate control of being that way, because it doesn’t lend itself to a healthy stable or secure life. Especially if you’re so far out there all the time that you’re not even aware you are that way… which I wasn’t.

Learning about Attention, the Will and Living Deliberately from the Avatar Courses saved my life in my opinion. No way I would have made it this long in this life form, living like that — so casually carefreely unaware of reality. Eventually I found a healthy balance. I can deliberately focus my attention now to come back to “regular people reality” when i decide i want or need to. Which i think is important if you want to stay alive in physical form.

My biggest fear for many years was that learning to do anything deliberately would compromise the random chaotic flow of our creativity and impede my ability to continue to be a prolific songwriter. But it didn’t. If anything it helped it, because I was suddenly able to more deliberately control the process… a little. I was still, am still, a willing victim of the sudden appearance of songs in my head. And no matter what time day or night they come or where I am at the time, I am immediately a slave to them in that moment. I never say no to one. I do not put off starting one or completing it once they appear. That becomes my immediate and sole priority. Learning to use my attention and will actually helps me move through the process faster and with more deliberateness.

Bouncing back and forth between not being present and not paying attention at all, essential for writing a song, to leaping back into the mind, getting present and paying attention, essential for finishing a song.

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New Song “On the Day They Overturned”

June 27, 2022

In the immediate aftermath of the United States Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe Vs. Wade on Friday, Ed Hale performed a new song entitled “On the Day They Overturned” on his Instagram account and his Transcendent Television channel on YouTube, along with a copy of the song’s powerful, at times graphic lyrics.
“I haven’t been writing as many songs with lyrics lately as you know, because I’ve really been into writing these orchestral guitar instrumentals. But this one came rather fast & furious in the last 48 hours. Like everybody else i was in a state of shock all day after hearing the news, dumbstruck really.”

“The song came to me late Friday night, popped in my head pretty much completed. Saturday I just had to sit down and flesh out the lyrics. Took Sunday to fine tune them. But the song already knew what it was, knew what it wanted to say. I just had to listen.”

On social media Hale wrote, “This song was particularly inspired by human rights and enlightenment activist Devkirn Khalsa, based on a whirlwind of important, intense conversations we had during those first 48 hours. Some of the lyrics are nearly direct translations of conversations we’ve had about these topics in the last two days.”

Performed on a 1971 Hofner 489 acoustic guitar. Two microphones going direct in mono. No treatment or effects.

Lyrics

“On the Day They Overturned”

On the day they overturned
I looked away the world was burning
On the day they overturned
As we were fighting to be heard
All was lost but we didn’t understand
How the rights we had
Could be wrestled from our hands
On the day they overturned
On the day they overturned
Didn’t I see you crawling
Through an alley on your knees
The scars of pain
Carved in your face
As you lay bleeding in the street
Like an animal
I know
That’s what we fought for

On the day they overturned
I looked away, my body trembling
On the day they overturned
A final battle cry was heard
A billion people gathered on the earth
To mourn a nation’s death
So soon after it’s birth
On the day they overturned
On the day they overturned
Didn’t we see it coming
From a million miles away
When states misguided
By stacked courts and gods
Become theocracies
It’s inevitable
I know
That’s what we fought for
I know
Isn’t that what we fought for

On the day we overcame
stared straight ahead
And never fumbled
On the day we overcame
And stopped corruption in our name
All was lost
But they didn’t understand
How it was theirs to lose
As we snatched it from their hands
On the day we overcame
On the day we overcame
We finally raised the flag of freedom
In the morning light
Not for the men the straight
the christian or the wealthy or the white
But for everyone
I know
It’s what we fought for

Music and Lyrics by Ed Hale

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Songwriting in Your Sleep

April 27, 2015

A funny thing has been transpiring lately. Something completely unexpected and almost supernatural in a way. If there is any “one thing” that I do well, out of the thousands and thousands of things we do or learn to do or are forced to do while we’re journeying here in the earthly realm — for surely every person possesses such a trait — for me personally, if there is one thing that I do better than every and anything else it is having a natural proclivity to prolifically writing songs and music composition. This is no secret, I know. It is common knowledge. So much so that I don’t even believe the main point of this entry should be to even remotely explore this strange character trait or why it comes so easy to me compared to so many other things. I am sure we have discussed it before here in these pages over the years.

Instead I simply wish to make note of this rather incredible new event that has begun transpiring lately on a near nightly basis. A little backstory…. We just finished recording and finishing over 45 new songs for the “new album”, which we now know will turn into three new albums that will be released over the course of this year. Choosing the songs is always one of the most challenging aspects of entering the recording studio with the guys. For I come in with alphabetized binders filled with thousands upon thousands of songs. Each in my humble estimation as good and worthy as the next to be included on our latest new album. So begins the process of me sitting there singing and playing the guys and the producers and engineers the songs that I have tabbed for whatever new album we happen to be working on and together as a group we semi-democratically choose which songs are yeses, which songs are maybes and which ones are flat-out nos.

Sometimes the decisions make sense to me — often times we go in with a set idea of concept in mind and thus only certain kinds of songs would be appropriate. While other times the group’s decisions about which songs are definite nos disturbs and confuses me. Everyone hears music differently. It is so subjective that it is impossible for one person to even be able to comprehend how another person hears a song let alone why they may or may not like it. And I must admit that at times I even find myself getting hurt a little at how quick they are to dismiss a song that I absolutely believe is “an incredible song!!!” But that feeling is usually fleeting for as soon as the discussion ends I start up another and the process begins all over again — every song carries with it such a special collection of feelings and memories and emotions that it is easy to get carried up and away with it as it was with the last. We will easily listen to a hundred or so songs before we eventually narrow it down to fifty or so. And from there we are all keenly aware that the hard part is yet to come as we have to keep narrowing it down to the ten or so that will eventually be known to be on that new album historically.

With this latest project — lord knows we were very aware that time was of the essence and that we needed to record and release the follow-up to Ballad On Third Avenue as quickly as possible. Ed Hale the artist had never garnered such overt commercial success before and never at such a level as what we were experiencing in that moment. But instead of being disciplined and finishing quickly the project soon turned into yet another large epic battle to not only record a mammoth batch of 45 new songs, but also to create three completely new and totally different sounding albums, AND to incorporate several new innovative techniques into the recording process — using musicians from all over the world to record their parts virtually at their own studios and send them in to our engineers to import the songs into our system — a process that would at the very least create an extremely confusing and disharmonious sound but at best could just possibly create something completely fresh and unique sounding. (Since I am writing THIS post-recording now and we are in the mixing stage, I can relay that it did indeed create an incredibly massive oftentimes muddied even noisy fusion of sound and cacophony at times, this is true…but some of the songs are sounding fantastically unique and innovative in their “sound”, a sound no one has ever heard us create before with more instruments and a wider variety of instruments and sounds than we’ve ever incorporated into our music. Not that it doesn’t still sound like “us”. It does. It has the Transcendence sound all over it… Still basically Brit Pop with a classic rock bent… But the new technique we attempted worked. It is very exciting to listen to. Goosebumps inducing at times even. The mad experiment worked. It’s just taking longer to mix and finish. But the wait will be worth it I believe. )

Needless to say that since all of our attention and focus at the moment and for the next few months if not the entire year will be dedicated to finishing these new albums and then to marketing and touring , the last thing in the world I want to spend any time doing is writing new songs. But what to do when you are able to write new songs as easy as breathing, when it comes that easy to you? You see a guitar, pick it up and bam out comes a song. You sit down at a piano and within minutes I am deeply inside of the inexpressible comfort and pleasure of “new song composition”, completely adrift in it and oblivious to everything else going on around me. Not the most productive way to be when your attention needs to be on marketing and mixing and planning and implementing a new album release.

So when we moved back to New York full-time late last year I decided to store ALL of my musical equipment including all guitars and keyboards in our storage warehouse with our other house items so that way I wouldn’t and couldn’t even be tempted to pick up an instrument and write any songs. For we already have far too many to believe we will ever really be able to get them all recorded. That’s just the hard painful truth of the matter. One that is still hard for me to bare the thought of. Thousands of songs literally equates to hundreds of albums at an average rate of ten songs per album. We’ve done the math. It’s a no-brainer. We will never even come close to recording all the songs that I’ve already written… let alone all the ones that I am destined to still write. In a word, it sucks.

And in that, this strange character trait, this gift as some call it, is (and has always been) both a blessing and a curse. For with each new song that I have composed for years going back and from this day forward I am immediately made aware that one of two not-preferable things will happen: either I am pouring my heart and soul into bringing this song down from the ethers into the earthly realm only for it to sit on paper forever never to be recorded, OR for it to be recorded which instantly mandates that another ten that came before it will suffer the same fate. It is very much like being forced to choose which of your children gets to eat and live a long and prosperous life and which you must starve, knowing that they will surely die never to live a full life or be known by anyone but yourself and never to be known by history.

I’ve played this game with the Divine Force many times before. Refusing to accept the gift and refusing to write any new songs for a while, despite the fact that it is my very nature to do just that more and better than anything else that I do in this life. Sometimes I fear that He/She/It will punish me for my impudence and take away the ease at which I can write a song. But that hasn’t happened yet. Truly I don’t believe that it ever will. For I believe that God knows and understands that I know and understand that my ability to pull these songs out of thin air and bring them to life is as pure an expression of Him/Her/It and their glory more than anything else that I can possibly do or say in this life. They serve through their very existence and how they are brought to being in this world as a glorious reminder of the mystical magical supernatural nature of the Divine Force Itself. My guess is that God gifts every person on earth a special and unique ability such as this as a means to express His/Her/It’s Divinity on earth. Our task is to find what that special gift is and become great at it and share it with the world as a reminder of this powerful connection we share with this mysterious Divine Force that comprises and creates and flows through everything in the known and unknown universe.

But I cannot help but feel impulsively rebellious at times. It is a large task. A time-suck like no other. If I did nothing but sat in a room for 24 hours with a guitar and a piano I would easily be tasked with what I guess would be at least writing fifteen to twenty-five songs in those 24 hours. That’s the easy part…the writing of them… The subtle nature of hearing them come to life in your ears, in your mind’s eye… They already exist… Somewhere else, in some other dimension, and all I am doing is hearing them as they already exist and bringing them down to this earthly dimension so others can hear them. BUT from there there IS still work to do. Flushing out the lyrics. Discovering what THEY wish to be… For they too already exist. Arranging and producing the sound of it. So it is a time consuming burden as much as it is a gift or blessing. But I believe God knows this and accepts that at times I may feel prone to rebel from the obligation.

And such was the case this year as I decided to not bring any instruments with me. And here I have lived now for more than four months without having access to any guitars laying around the house.

But something changed. A few months ago I started having dreams where I would hear these incredible songs — usually it was some random character in my dream performing the song on stage or just sitting there in a room with me and couple of friends or I even hear them on the radio or playing in the air…and then this voice in my head says “Ed you are dreaming. It is you who is writing this song. Wake up and record it NOW. Do not let this song go. Do it now.” So I do just that.

This isn’t the first time this has happened to me. And many other songwriters tell stories of having similar experiences. So I have became accustomed to keeping some type of recorder on my nightstand for just such these occasions. Now I can just use the voice recorder on my iPhone to do this. And so I do. What strikes me most though about this most recent string of new songs is the sheer quantity at which they are coming. Near nightly now. As if God had a leg up on me the whole time and decided “okay then son, if you refuse to pick up an instrument to pick out the songs from the ethers then I will just deliver them to you fully formed in the dreams of your sleep. For that is what is happening now. I hear them fully formed in my head while I am sleeping and I just wake up enough to turn the recorder on and sing them into it. I always listen back to them the next day to see if they are total shite and I was just kidding myself as we are prone to do in our sleep and yet they never are. They are always totally original and beautiful glorious new songs. And yet I have to do absolutely nothing to make them this way. I certainly am not “writing them” or creating them myself. I am simply singing into the voice recorder exactly as I hear it in my dream. It is very close to being almost supernatural. Like channeling. And it leaves me impressed with God’s persistence and ingenuity. And of course with his generosity. I thought I was in control and perhaps had one up on Him, but it turns out that the joke was on me. Truth be told, I am more than fine with this.

– Posted by The Ambassador using the BlogPress app on an iPhone



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Uncategorized channeling songs from other dimensions, ed hale, god, new albums, songwriting, The Divine, writing songs

On the Wretched State of the Music Business

November 7, 2014

A film producer was waxing nostalgic earlier today about how good the music of the 70s was and wondering why the music of today is so horrendous. I have already shared here in past posts that while I wholeheartedly agree with this notion I also recognize that there is some incredible music and musical innovation happening at the moment. It’s an exciting time creatively for music. But with a few caveats:

— It’s just not mainstream.

— It’s no longer about music in the traditional sense as in playing an instrument; the computer has turned into a musical instrument.

— It’s no longer about songs and songwriting as much as about SOUND i.e. What does it “sound like” forget the song or lack thereof underneath.

— It’s no longer limited to a field of a few savants but rather it’s become a very wide open playing field where every and anyone can throw in with their momentary contribution.

— Having “talent”, i.e. being able to sing or play an instrument or perform live is no longer a necessary requirement.

I was ruminating about the same exact thing yesterday. Here’s the thing: the 90s was so filled with kack (garbage) that it DID jade us to what followed, even though some of it was still very good.

Bare in mind the PEAK of the $$$ revenue generation in the history of the music biz was ’98, when the formula was “release ten diff copies/replicas of whatever happens to be hot at the moment” and avoid originality because it’s “dangerous” (may lose money) — (this started in the 80s w the “first wave of consolidation” (of the labels); the revenue has fallen precipitously since, to where we now have an industry that can no longer sustain itself due to no customer demand for the product (more than just one factor, for sure, but yes one can easily blame part of it on the industry’s “churn and burn” practice of releasing crap over artistry jading and turning off the consumer).

Certainly the trend to entice the audience with manufactured pseudo-music ala “DJs” churning out generic computer generated tones over hypnotic dance beats in lieu of real musicians because it was much more profitable also contributed to the wretched state we are in as well. We addressed this menacing trend in Ed Hale and the Transcendence on our NOTHING IS COHESIVE album with the song “Somebody kill the DJ” — whose lyrics if one listens carefully are literally both a lamenting of the loss of traditional music making AND a rallying cry to kill DJs if one has the chance just to save music. Perhaps it was tongue in cheek hyperbole to a certain degree. Perhaps it wasn’t. But regardless it’s way past that now.

BUT, though it was easy to miss, the 2000s DID actually produce some of the best artists albums and songs of all time still (think Rufus Wainwright, Aimee Mann, Phoenix, Strokes, Coldplay, Muse, Jet, Travis, Aqualung, Radiohead, Sigur Ross, etc etc there are hundreds more…). Problem is: “career artistry” is no longer a practice we can afford, i.e. paying for an artist to have a career both with hits and/or no hits. Combine that — the inability to afford career artists financially — w the “anyone can claim to be an artist due to technological advances” trend and we land right where we are today.

Now we are in unchartered waters… all of us, fans and artists alike, adrift in a wicked system where there are no gatekeepers, tastemakers, mentors or arbiters; the trend is “anyone and everyone gets a shot, about 10% of all who try will get 1 hit, 1% may get 2, and 1/10th of 1% may be able to eek a living from it”. But just how one does that is completely different than in times past because all of the traditional revenue streams have dried up. The business still chugs along but broken bankrupt and rudderless because the old rules no longer apply and new rules are constantly forming and re-morphing as Silicon Valley and Wall Street continue to take more and more control over the business side of things. Geniuses they may be — but with no heart and having been bred on coding hacking and the quick creation and abandonment of disposal commodities for profit and fame (websites, apps, software, devices, hardware, etc.) they have reduced music to a perceptually valueless commodity. Now an entire generation — several in fact — have been indoctrinated to fall for that preposterous notion, e.g. music has no value, just like last week’s “app of the week”.

What used to be intangible and transcendent, art heart passion balls love the mind God survival AND entertainment–with $$$ as a side benefit– is now a barely breathing industry that breeds one hit wonders galore through this “replicate what is happening NOW and for Gods sake do NOT innovate for fear of striking out on your ONE chance at bat”, but no “career artists”. Career artists is a term coined in the early 70s that referred to “artists who might not make us very much money NOW but are still very important artistically and therefore might make us money LATER, once the people catch up with them”. We used the money generated from one hit wonders to pay for the careers of career artists. Hence we’d allow Dylan to do a country album or Hendrix to do a 20 minute instrumental jam song or Pink Floyd to record a whole album as one 60 minute song about pigs and dogs or Lennon to release an album of him screaming at the top of his lungs for an hour or Joni to explore jazz fusion etc etc etc. We allowed it because we could afford it AND because it “might” hold artistic merit. Neil Young Lou Reed David Byrne Warren Zevon Led Zeppelin even Van Halen and a million others were born from this ideal…let’s support them a while and see if the public eventually catches up.

The industry can no longer afford this in today’s age because there is no money to be had. And there are a million reasons for this — not just one or two. But making music still costs money as it always has. So WHO is making music now? In this environment? The best and brightest? The really talented? Or “anyone who can afford to”? Sadly the latter. The hardest aspect of the new music business to fathom is that the best and brightest may BE making music somewhere, MAYBE, IF they can even afford to…(big if), but we may never hear it or even hear about it because there’s no money being generated from it, not even enough to launch it out of the artists small local zone.

Very suckass, both for us as artists and for us as music lovers.

Will this change? Can it? Yes. The companies behind the artists simply need to 1, look for the cream NOT the hits, and 2, support those artists through their career in every manner, financially emotionally physically, with mental support and mentoring and lessons etc just as they used to. At least for a few years to see if anything will come out of it. The 70s was the PEAK of that methodology in our industry. Many people consider the 70s to be the BEST decade for music of all time. For a brief period, artists were allowed to record an album that yielded NO hit IF it had artistic merit or the potential to — JUST because it was “art” and that’s what art does. If it yielded a “hit” and made money, even better.

At some point in our future we the people, all of us, will become tired of the current trend of music as a commodity and nothing more and speak up demanding art from our music once again. And through that desire we will create a way to pay for it so that the best and brightest are able to be heard AND make a decent living. It’s only a matter of time.

We are already observing artists and their respective labels devise ingenious ways to generate money through music outside of the traditional means (consumers buying it or paying for it) whether it be U2 giving their album away for free via Apple (Apple paid for it) or Jay Z selling advertising and product placement embedded in his lyrics AND giving it away for free via AT&T or Coldplay having Target pay them or Taylor Swift having Diet Coke pay her etc etc. Of course we can’t all afford giant corporate sponsors and wouldn’t want to if we could. (Personally I could never get away with endorsing something as overtly poisonous as a diet soda — my fans wouldn’t permit me to). But the trend is definitely shifting towards “getting large companies to pay for our music making so the fans don’t have to, or better put don’t want to.” The future possibilities are seemingly endless.

In the meantime we all must realize that even today there really is some incredible music being made out there right this very minute by artists who are busy living and Dying Van Gogh. We just need to look harder for it. And more importantly PAY for it when we do on occasion find it. C

– Posted by The Ambassador using BlogPress on an iPhone 8s Custom



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Uncategorized 70s music, DJs, ed hale, Music Business, Somebody kill the DJ, songwriting, talent, Transcendence

On Songwriting…

July 10, 2013

In the recording studio all week this week. Working on the new album(s). We were aiming for one when we started last year, the follow up to Ballad On Third Avenue. But we ended up with 34 songs, with two very different styles… so it’s really two different albums we are creating at the same time. One is more acoustic and organic sounding. The other is still ballad based but more on the pop side. We had a temporary freak out a few weeks back when going to cut the vocals for the song “Oh Sophia” (yeah the one I demoed on YouTube a few years ago in the Song Log series). Couldn’t find a HUGE batch of songs. I was going CRAzy. As always Princess Little Tree stayed calm, kept me from having a nervous breakdown, and eventually we found them. Had them in a big stack next of papers next to a laptop I barely ever use in an office I barely ever use in order to make some edits to them or type them in.

[There is a process. A strict one. Like most artists I’ve slowly huddled into a very strict and detailed highly OCD and methodical routine for songwriting and tracking all the songs. Because after the first few years you start to realize you’re going to be dealing with something really big. A giant project with a mass of paperwork and tapes etc. For some reason whenever I think about this topic my mind immediately jumps to this one distinct memory of being at our summer home in the Cayman Islands and announcing the whole family the moment that I hit 100 songs written. I was 15 or 16 years old at the time. It felt like a big accomplishment. Now it seems kind of meager and embarrassing. But that’s the nature of any art or craft I’m beginning to realize. As we evolve and progress our past achievements tend to seem small compared to our present reality. I wouldn’t know how to even ascertain how many songs I’ve written now.

I remember hitting 1,000 about a decade ago. I remember when I was a kid hearing about how Steve Allen the famous comedian and talk show host had written roughly 1,000 songs and how surprising that was because most people weren’t aware that he was also an accomplished songwriter. I remember feeling angry with myself… for not having achieved that yet. So the 1,000 mark felt like a big deal at the time; maybe… not really now that I think about it. I “remembered” the Steve Allen bit for a day or two and the buzz quickly dissipated.

I remember hitting 3,000. From there I just stopped counting. Perhaps that’s the sign that you’ve finally arrived — when you reach the point where you stop counting. When it becomes so routine to you that the number doesn’t even matter anymore. I’m sure painters, career painters, have no idea how many paintings they’ve created.

Regardless of how they start — a tune pops up in your head, or in a dream, or while you’re strumming a guitar or tripping out on the piano — that song gets into a recording device (now most of the time my iPhone) as quickly as possible.

[From there I start putting it to paper. One of many legal pads kept in one of many leather binders with one of many thin silver Cross pens sitting in an inner connected loop. The song may stay that way for a few weeks to a few years or decades. When I feel like it I go back to it and work a little more on it. I never force a song to flesh out. I’m always working on so many that I don’t have to. More importantly I don’t think forced songs ever come out well. If I’m not feeling it, that song will just sit there. And I keep plenty of legal pads in leather binders around filled with plenty of songs. So there’s never any rush. Usually I can just pound through them though. A good song writes itself. Once it comes, all I have to do is just ride it like a wave. It’s all in my head already. I hear it. I hear it’s potential is more like it. So all i have to do is just keep playing it over and over again, massaging it along the way each run through, listening for different things, subtle changes and additions…

[I take breaks, a few hours, a few days or weeks, and I listen to the song play in my head over and over again. It’s like a repeating record. It never stops. Usually a few of them at a time. And as I listen to them up there, they start to take shape and form themselves, as if they already exist — (which if one subscribes to the whole “time isn’t linear but circular” paradigm, then they do already exist… just in the future which is really in the here-now only we don’t usually recognize that) — so by the time I pick up an instrument to work on it more I have a much better idea of what it’s meant to sound like as a finished product.

[Once I am done with writing it all out on pages in the legal pad, I make a copy of that original stack of pages in the legal pad. When a legal pad is finished and all the pages are filled I send it off to my mom who has been saving them for all these years since I was 17. She has boxes of them. Tons of them. Now we’re in the process of moving them to a bank vault. Can’t take the risk anymore. I keep the copies of those pages in boxes and take them with me wherever I live. Just to have access to the original (copy of the original) handwritten notes. I then sit down and type the song up and save it on my laptop in a giant database of all the songs… a folder filled with thousands of songs. There are two sub-folders: songs that have been recorded and songs that haven’t yet been recorded. Obviously the latter folder is still much larger than the former. The goal is the exact opposite of that.

[Once I save the song as a file, I print it out and it goes into a clear protector sheet and into one of many black binders where all the printed out songs are alphabetized. The black song binders are also grouped into two different groups, one for songs that have already been recorded — for when we are planning set lists for live shows, and one group of binders for songs that have not yet been recorded — so we can flip through all the songs when choosing songs to record a new album. Pretty anal huh? It works though. Smooth. No guess work. I can do it all in my sleep. All the kinks have been worked out. That’s the process in a nutshell. Why I’m telling you this I have no idea. But hey, at least we finally have this down for posterity. This is how I do it.]

I fell behind. Once Princee Little Tree and I fell head over heels in love for the millionth time back in ’08 I pretty much fell behind in everything… And taking care of the songs was definitely one of those areas. So there are songs and song notebooks in various stages of processing all over the freaking place. We travel so much that I’m lucky if I remember to bring at least just one binder with me for songwriting. Always one at least. Problem is that there are tens of other binders at home with songs in various stages of being half-written that I always seem to want when I don’t have them.

But it’s never a huge deal. I can always record ideas into my phone and scribble them down on a new notebook. That’s the thing. They’re going to eventually get typed into the main database, I know this. So it gives me a real sense of security.

So that’s what I did for the last few months. Typed up a truck load of songs that needed to be typed and put into the database and then printed out. Now I am organizing and alphabetizing them. There are hundreds. Way too many. But I need access to at least the 34 for these new albums and the 25 that are on the other new album(s), what we’ve been affectionately referring to as “the Girls Album” for the last few years. Hopefully we will finish that one this year along with these other two.

So yeah. I’ve been sitting here while the engineers are in the studio working on stuff, I’ve been organizing and alphabetizing all the song lyric-sheets from the last 25 years. (I ran out of space in this master binder I was using and decided I need to break some of the binders into broader sets.. Maybe something like Songs A to B, C to D, etc. Like that. Because the binders get so big and heavy and then songs start falling out. I’m just doing it to the typed-up ones that haven’t already been classified so far. Gotta be 1000 songs here. Big project.

Every time I come across one from our college years, the Broken Spectacles years when we were smoking out and tripping on acid everyday, there’s something very special about THOSE songs… A really deep vibey heaviosity to them. They weren’t necessarily “hit songs” — in fact they’re downright un-hit songs — long and wild and free-form and complex, with infinitely long chord progressions that go on forever — similar to “Bored” or “Rise and Shine” but even more so; but you know, that’s not what we were about back then, that’s not what we were going for.

I cannot help but feel as we are working on recording these new albums now that something has gotten lost along the way. Songs just seem to be way better when you write them when you’re tripping on something. I know that is so NOT the thing to ever say, especially if you’re a public figure… But sometimes I cannot help but think that… Some of these songs I am revisiting and seeing for the first time in years… Wow… They are just soo sooo good. So groovy and vibey….

There is so much pressure now. As a professional singer/songwriter, to make a living from it, to make enough money to live and support a family from it, especially now after we’ve had a few hits under our belt… It’s not like it was back then when we were in our late teens and early twenties. When we just did whatever we wanted. When we were going for a heavy serious vibe. I mean, now, it’s just so different…

I have to go. Have to finish this project because the guys are waiting for me. Just need to remember from looking at all these songs what it was like back then.. what THOSE songs were like… how much emotion and passion and EVERYTHING we put into them. I honestly don’t feel that commercial radio, that the commercial music market has a place for that kind of music. Really, that’s the thing. When we were young and only had dreams, we didn’t think about these things. We thought we could force the industry and the people to listen to and like whatever it is that we did. We learned the hard way. I mean I struggled for years as a starving artist. Decades. So I learned… But I loved every day of it. Homeless? More than once. No problem. I actually enjoyed the experience. It was an adventure.

Our biggest hits have come from sincerely sitting down and crafting hit songs. Being very careful in every step of the process to do things in a way that structures the song and the sound and the feel of the song to resonate with the commercial music market. And it’s paid off. Big time. You aren’t going to hear me complaining. Because lets’ face it, as these Diaries and everyone who knows me can testify, I spent YEARS doing it my way, doing whatever I wanted to do for ME. So I got a lot of that out of my system.

It was only later that I started thinking it would be fun just to “try” creating “commercially viable” music. And luckily it actually worked. I mean it’s really not rocket science. Writing hit songs is just doing the exact opposite of what you would normally do as an authentic and sincere artist who loves to innovate. Funny but true. You just write the song the way that all the other songs that people listen to sound like. Rather than try to get creative and innovate. It’s like yes you innovate during the production and sound creation process. But not during the songwriting process. People don’t want to hear innovation. At least not in the commercial world. They just want to hear what they’re used to hearing plus something a little special and different. But they don’t want to hear a twenty minute song that traverses thirty different chords and changes keys ten times… Sucks, for us, the artists. But that’s how it is now. Didn’t used to be that way. Inventiveness in music used to be highly valued. But not right now. Not in this climate. The top three songs of the last three years have been “The Harlem Shake”, “Gangam Style” and “Thrift Shop”. Fuck me. Fuck us all. We’re screwed, as artists, we’re screwed.

But frankly I like those songs too. I dig the commercial ones that we do, and that other people do. I like the “sound” of them. Not the songwriting… But the sound of them. But honestly not even one-tenth as much as i like the crazy wild non-commercial ones. THOSE are the ones that I really love. That really get me off. But then what? Get a day job. I mean that’s really the quandary. People don’t realize it. But those are our choices. We become a slave to the tastes of populace OR we settle with not making a ton of money from making music… We can always make money from doing other things… And I have NO problem with that, EXCEPT that it greatly limits our ability to spend all our time making music — which is THE thing I enjoy most in this life hands down — because we have to spend the majority of our day to day life working at something else… So it is definitely preferable to create music that, commercial or not, is popular with enough people that it generates a ton of money. Most of the time that means it’s COMMERCIAL, i.e popular, i.e. liked by many people, current, trendy, a valuable commodity to the masses. Commercial, let’s face it.

Maybe one day this will all change. My hope is that one day I will feel as though I “have enough money” from this that I can “stop working” for a living, i.e. stop creating music to make money — and have enough money saved up that I don’t need to generate revenue anymore…. Then I can just make the kind of music that I want to. And then if people like it, great. If they don’t and we only sell a few hundred copies, that’s great too. Either way, I’ll be following the inner muse. (Is it inner?? Not sure about that… save it for another blog post.) Gotta run. Peace.

 



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Uncategorized art versus selling out, Broken Spectacles, commercial songwriting versus indie, Ed Hale songs, pop music versus good music, songs are better when you’re high or tripping, songwriting

Taming the Beast — Recording Resumes

July 9, 2013

Today we resume recording for the new album(s). 34 songs in total were laid down last summer by me on rhythm guitar and vocals, The Poet on drums and The Ex Norwegian on bass and production. All in New York. For the record (pardon the pun) those songs are: American Cinematheque, Another Day in the Apocalypse, Baby Blue Doll, Give Me Blue Skies, Born to Lose, Closer to You, Crazy Heart, Don’t Be Sad My Love, Gimme Some Rock ‘n’ Roll, The Stranger (Hello Hello Hello), Hold On My Love to Keep You Strong, When the Battle is Through, Honestly, I felt Freedom When You Said No, I’m Looking For, It Will Be Me, It’s Alright It’s Okay, Junk, Knee Deep in the Apocalypse, Marsha’s Sleeping, Jack Johnson (working title…), My Black Brother, Never Too Far Apart, Oh Sophia, Our Love Still Turns Me On, Silence Kills, So For Real, Summer Flowers, The Ambassador in Paris, The Prince of New York, Welcome to the Rest of the World, White House Jihad, and Without You.

We’re in Seattle presently. We’re primarily working on my parts, adding rhythm guitars and some minor leads — mostly acoustic and some electric, lead and background vocals, and various different keyboards and percussion instruments. From here, once I’m done with all my parts, the songs will be sent out to Vancouver in LA to add his special Transcendence magic (which “literally” translates to lead guitars, various keyboards, percussion and background vocals), The Ex Norwegian — who may clean up or redo some of his bass parts and add various other guitars and keyboards, DJ Johnny Rose who will add piano and keyboard parts, Infinito who will add percussion, and Zeke Zaskin, who, besides being the one who will ultimately  mix and master the albums to completion, is usually encouraged to add additional guitars, keyboard and background vocals. Various other musicians will come in to add things like cello and strings and horns.

For all of our albums over the last 11 years we have used Trophy Wife as our main female background vocalist along with Vancouver and me and Zeke. But on All Your Heroes Become Villains and Ballad On Third Avenue we used The Toad for background vocals as well (this momentous occasion detailed in Diaries entries back in ’04 ’05 and ’06). He really knows how to match and augment my vocals and is a freaking stellar harmony vocals writer. So I’m hoping that all the tracks can be packaged up and sent to him down in Florida so he can add whatever he wants to. This is going to be the strangest album we’ve ever recorded due to the fact that we’re all in so many different states and all the recording will be run solo and sent back and forth over the internet or via giant external hard drives. A lot of albums are recorded like that these days. It’s surprisingly less infrequent than most people would think.

It’s not been easy getting back into it. It’s going to take a while to get back in the vibe of these songs and the respective albums that they will eventually become a part of. Besides the fact that the band is experiencing some of that seven year itch meltdown drama that is customary with bands who have been together for a long time. Vancouver is vehement about not wanting any “fake drums” on the record, meaning drum machines, samplers, keyboards, sequencers, MIDI drums — anything but “real drums, i.e. acoustic drums played on a regular old fashioned drum set.

Most popular music that we hear today on radio or TV is created using machine made drums or samples and NOT “real drums” or at best a combination of both, which is what The Ex Norwegian and I recommend doing this time out. An artist has a much better chance of the music sounding modern , current or contemporary AND has a lot more control technically of those sounds, compared to “just” “real drums”. He actually sent us an email saying “sorry guys, it’s me or fake drums”.  On the other hand The Ex Norwegian is so freaking mad at all the drama that he doesn’t want to have anything to do with Vancouver anymore because of all this. Me and the other guys are stuck smack dab in the middle.We love Vancouver, especially his ability to make beautiful music. We put up with a lot of shit because of his unique talents and believe it’s totally worth it. He is after all a HUGE component of our sound.

Of course, it’s all subjective. What one person calls “real drums” can be totally different than what another person calls real drums. Gotye released a series of documentariy styled short videos detailing how he created his last album — the one that everyone is familiar with now due to that hit he had last year and when he’s discussing this one song he shows how he set up two floor toms and a snare and remarks “this song is special because it’s the first we ever used any real drums on any of my music…” So what we’re doing is normal for the industry at this point in time and in fact will sound a lot more like the music that everyone is now accustomed to. That’s what we want. We really want these albums to “sound” modern and current and professional, pristine, polished, commercial, regardless of what is expected for your typical rock band.

I spent all day yesterday listening to the two rock radio stations here in Seattle (both are awesome stations — I wish all the other cities in the States had stations as good as we have here) and just about 95% of the songs that were played all had computerized drum sounds on them as opposed to acoustic drums. It’s just the sound that people are used to now. We don’t see anything wrong with going in that direction for an album or two, especially considering the fact that The Poet is still “playing a drum kit.” He’s just “triggering” drum samples that are inside of the computer or drum machines etc. It’s really freaking cool. Working with the technology that we available to us now to make the best sounding album we can using all the tools we can find. It’s fun and creative.

I hope Vancouver catches up. Not only do I worry about us as a band but also about him. I personally don’t want him to fall behind just because of any purism or principle. He deserves to be well known and popular for his skills and musical gifts. But you’ve got to keep up; no one is going to hold your hand and drag you to what’s happening. But he’s always taken a long time to catch up in these matters. Back in 2001 when I first started getting into what was then being called “indie rock”, he hated it. It wasn’t until this year that he started to “like” indie rock. Of course now indie rock is old and stale and the cool thing to do would be to steer clear from it and head into a totally new direction — which is exactly what The Ex Norwegian suggested we do on these two albums. Try to mix our rock band sensibility with a more modern and popular music approach in order to capitalize on the thrilling success we had with the last solo album. I dig the idea. Just hope we can pull it off.

More later. Gotta run.

 



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Uncategorized indie rock, MIDI, modern music, popular music, recording songs, rock band drama, rock radio, songwriting, using real drums versus machines or drum samples

Videos of New Songs Live Ed Hale

December 13, 2009

New Songs Log Playlist


YouTube Playlist of on-going series of Ed Hale working out new songs roughly recorded here and there as they come and then posted to YouTube. Usually under-rehearsed and too soon after they were written. But a cool thing. Definitely a good way to keep track of songs that might get away for future use, and good reference for the tuning and chords used.

 

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Music, Music Videos, Personal Life ed hale, new songs, playing live, playlist, songwriting, videos, YouTube

A private little world for me… a private little world for you. The online journals and musings of singer-songwriter author and activist Ed Hale. The Transcendence Diaries have been posting regularly online since 2001. Comments are always welcomed. And so are YOU.

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