Updates, friends and GK Chesterton.

Hi there...I'm at my desk drinking coffee on monday morning and thought I would check in. Today is the start of a very busy month of writing and recording and I couldn't be more excited about where things are headed although I have to admit I am a bit overwhelmed trying to keep all the details together as producer, etc...

I keep making lists and wondering if I'll ever be done but I carve a little bit every day and then go to sleep and get up and do it again the next day. Rinse, repeat. I'm a creature of habit so the routine can be strangely comforting even if it is overwhelming at times.

I met up with Jim at Starbucks a couple weeks ago and we made a list of the gear I would need to run things from The Map Room...I told him I just wanted the basics so that I could do overdubs and minimal tracking if need be without destroying my budget. We came up with a list of gear that totaled around $3500...ouch. I hadn't budgeted anything close to that.

Jim suggested I call some friends and ask to borrow some of their gear for a few weeks....and lo and behold....every thing we needed I was able to borrow except for one piece of gear that will cost me $60 to rent for the two days we will need it. How cool!

I am rich in friends. So thank you to Monroe Jones, Cason Cooley and Andrew Osenga. If you ever need anything of mine just say the word.

I spent a lot of time last week learning some of the finer details of Reason 3.0 which is a music production program that I love. It sounds fantastic and I'm getting some cool stuff with it by programming beats and using some of the bass sounds. Learning a lot every day around here.

I am continually surprised by the degree to which a musician can truly rely on his instincts when it comes to learning new ways of making music or working with instruments. In music school they always taught me to follow the rules...learn the scales....read the sheet music....use the correct fingering techniques, etc....and some of that stuff is actually true and great if you can swing it but I was never good at reading music or playing chords properly on piano since I relied so heavily on my ears.

In college it got me into a lot of trouble when I would work to learn something new and purposely not use my ears but to try and use music theory etc... it was very frustrating and I barely made it by. But ever since I've been out of school I've been using my instincts just like before and...well....I'm better when I trust my ears and feel my way through a piece of music or a new song than if I were to apply all the rules I learned in college.

Music school is a great thing, please don't misunderstand me. But I think it's sort of like spending four years learning everything you need to know about every tiny mechanical detail of your instrument and then on your last day of school the teacher tells you to go and make something beautiful with all the math you've just tattooed all over your soul. It can be a confusing process. Especially if you are bad at math.

What a mysterious thing art is. GK Chesterton says that works of art are the "signature of man" since man is the only one of God's creatures that can create art. He also says that all art is born when the temporal touches the eternal.

I really believe that music is a spiritual language of some kind. Musicians can speak it but everyone understands it regardless of background.

Reminds me of that Dylan line...."it was written on my soul from me to you....all tangled up in blue."