Everything Is Repeatable

• Everything Can Be Repeated
• The Creak

Last night, I had one of those magical moments that every musician sometimes has, when he feels like he is on top of his game and all warmed up and fluid and hearing the right acoustics, brimming with ideas and ready to go, etc.

It was earlier than usual, at a bit before 10 PM, and not the 3 in the morning which I have become accustomed to playing at recently, so that I didn't find myself holding back in the area of volume out of fear of bothering anyone.

I had chanced upon a good acoustical setup, by having placed the speakers out of which the rhythm track emanates, on the the floor to the left and right of a fold out chair upon which sat the Snowball microphone, aimed the the guitar, but in a spot where I could lean forward and sing into, blocking out the guitar with my head as I did so.

The rhythm track was a cowbell that was tuned down enough so that it sounded probably like a cowbell as big as a car would sound.

There was a discernible pitch to it, with the first beat a half step higher than the next three.

This made me decide to do one of my songs that has the same relationship in its chords, which made for a pretty interesting sound, I thought, with the cowbell seeming to be in tune with it.

Well, it and the next 2 hours of jamming were lost after the Audacity program crashed.

It was the first time that I have been unable to recover what I was working on when Audacity crashes. There is something in its software which saves whatever is open when the program crashes for any reason (other than the one that made it crash last night, I guess). I had played what amounted to what I thought was an excellent 2 plus hour concert for Harold the cat.

It was definitely a test of my mettle and my adherence to the philosophy that "everything can be repeated."

This is a very important notion, one that has taken me fifty five years to fully ingrain within myself.

It used to disappoint me when Tanya Huang would shrug and say that she had only been trying to place a few scales and arpeggios where they would produce a musical effect, that's all, after she had played what I had thought was an "inspired" solo.

The same thing when her once partner Dorise Blackmon would say "that's just..." about something she might have played that sounded really cool, before simplifying what it "just" was.

I had perhaps mistakenly deemed that she was discounting it as being mere child's play, as if, when she wanted to appreciate music, she would put on her headphones and listen to Bach's Mass In B minor, but was only coming out to pander to the masses with moronically simple Rhythm and Blues idioms that are insubstantial. For the money, and because it's such easy money.

I might have missed the lesson that would be that music should be child's play and that, when in this consciousness the artist is in his best position to render anything "substantial," in the first place.

That being said. I might have freaked out ....should I be freaking out right now? after I had seen the screen freeze and the 2 plus hours of my playing not saved anywhere on my disk.

But, I had maintained my good frame of mind by telling myself: Everything is repeatable.

Certainly when Claudio Arrau was playing a Chopin piece at a recital, he was demonstrating that everything is repeatable by probably repeating a lot of things for the forty thousand, six hundred and sixty seventh time (in his life, at least).

Sure, I had invented a few riffs, and had executed them so that I had thought they sounded good. But, I wound up with a blank tape.

If anything had been the result of luck or magic or merely the inspired frame of mind that I might have been in, than that is just an illusion.

I should be able to strap on the guitar tonight, assuage the guilt over not being out busking during those same hours when people in the apartment building are still up and making their own noises and won't be bothered by me, and then to play as well, if not better, anything that I played last night.

Because I am focusing on the repeatability of things by strictly dividing the beat into eighths and quarter and triplet patterns which could be recorded onto blank musical staves, and thus, made reproducible by anyone else including myself, I will be able to do the same thing tonight.

Setting the Snowball on the cushion of a folded out chair's seat while sitting Indian style in front of it, with the two satellite speakers on the floor to the right and left of the chair, aiming the rhythm track at my ears has been a recording breakthrough which, in itself, is ample compensation for having lost 2 plus hours worth of recording.

Plus, I hadn't put the brand new strings that I have on the Takamine before playing -so "inspired" I was, so they can go on tonight.

I have also become patient enough to play a track of just rhythm guitar alone and not be discouraged by the simplicity of it; able to rest assured that all kinds of things will be able to be added later.

Jacob (left) my imaginary friend in the studio

Another thing that helped was my decision to record leaving as much room as possible for Jacob Scardino to add parts to in his studio.

The rhythm track, that car sized cowbell, will be the glue to hold our respective parts together. So, I focused upon playing the best possible guitar chords without feeling like I needed to be singing something or adding a harmonica. This also lets me put the guitar a few inches in front of the microphone and get a much more usable recording of it.

Another Huge Discovery

Another huge discovery was that I have isolated the source of a creaking noise that comes out of the Takamine guitar as I play it.

I had been assuming that it was coming from where there is visible damage to the body of it.

But it is coming from the other side of the body, where my chest presses against a certain spot on the back when I pull the neck towards me.

I had been pulling on the neck and hearing the creaking noise and then assumed that it was the neck transferring pressure to where the visible damage is. But, I found a place where I can press on a small area and get the creaking noise because of another spot where one of the ribs is not cemented to where it connects to another. I can even see it moving slightly when I press on that spot.
A bit of epoxy might make the noise go away.

It's also a sign that I am paying more attention and becoming more critical of the final product.


This is important as far as ruling out magic or luck as being one of the constituents of music.