Attacking the Corners

The Morning Show is a blog companion to the podcast audio

Hey there, and yay for Thursday!  It's the Morning Show!  I have this cool book called Zen Guitar, and there's a great quote in it.  "The Samurai say:  Attack the Corners."  I've been doing this with a Bach piece.  There's a delightful flute spotlight in the Orchestral Suite #2 in B minor, and while I've learned half of it years ago, I never tackled the rest.  For the past week, I've been chipping away at it for 15 minutes a day, attacking the corners.  It's not perfect, but it's GETTING THERE!

  We were talking about impossibilities yesterday, traits of our lives that we consider intractable.  For example, I'm a clumsy guy who's terrible at sight reading musical pieces.  With 15 minutes a day of attacking the corners of a Bach piece, I'm changing the sight reading impossibility.  And what about the clumsy part?  Did I mention the Latin Dance practice?  It's even sillier than you'd think...me, a clumsy white boy, trying to move to a beat.  But hey man, with a little bit of consistency, it's getting there.  Not only is it fun, but transformational to think "Hey, one day I might be able to consider myself...graceful."  That day is a long way off, but the fact that the journey has even been started is a fact that has changed my perception of myself.  So, what will you do today to attack the corners of an impossibility?

Sneaky identities

The Morning Show is the blog companion to the podcast audio 

Hey there, and welcome to the Morning Show!

  Speaking at schools, I see how early we start to develop identities, and how blinding they can be.  We start with such a limited range, but if we're a little better or slightly worse than our buddy at say, throwing a ball, or solving a math problem, we start to build reasons why.  "Oh, I'm better at writing", or more dangerous still, after one or two failures of athletics, "I'm better at writing than playing basketball."  (This was me.)  One or two failures!  And we build a life identity around this, our prophecy self-fulfilling, because yeah, if you don't practice a skill, you will be bad at it.

  Looking at the kids doing this, I can trace it all the way to present-day me.  Part of my identity is a clumsy, goofy guy, but that's changing.  I'll get into how I'm doing that in tomorrow's episode, and hopefully you can join me in this process of reinvention.  For today, see if you can spot any of these "Impossibilities" that you've told yourself.  See you tomorrow!

The Morning Show - Creativity and Limits

The Morning Show is an blog companion to the podcast audio

Hey there, and welcome to the morning show!  Wanted to share an idea about creativity that will hopefully help you, regardless of your field of expertise.  As you may know, I'm a musician, and musicians like to buy gear.  We often make the mistake of thinking that we need more gear to create new things.  I was searching for a good keyboard sound the other day.  My first thought was "MORE SOFTWARE!"  I almost dropped $350 on an upgrade.  I wisely decided to think about it.  Sometimes having a limited budget is the best thing for creativity.  Rummaging around in my studio, I hooked up a weird guitar effect that sounds like a keyboard, and recorded that onto an old reel-to-reel tape recorder a friend had given men.  I sampled THAT into my software, and boom, had the coolest old school sound you'd ever want to hear.  Not only did I have it already, and not only did I save myself $350, but I created a custom sound that nobody else has, and learned more about sampling and recording in the process.  Bottom line:  I was able to use limitations to create something unique. PLEASE remind me of this next time I start whining that I need more gear.  And let me know what you cook up!

Free Market Entertaining

The Morning Show is a blog companion to the podcast audio


Good morning, and welcome to the Signalman show!  MAN what a blast at career day last week!  I had the honor of speaking with three 4th grade classes at Berry Elementary in Waldorf, MD.  We had FUN!  As a matter of fact, I'd like to dedicate this week's podcast series to some of the themes illustrated from this event.

  We've heard of Free Market Economics, but when it comes to speakers and entertainers, most of us are communists.  We demand attention, and make the "government" (the teachers in this case) corral the market (the students) into giving it to us.  I heard guys saying sternly to 9 year olds "Hey, voices off."  Dude, you're lucky they didn't throw things at you.  Here's the thing about that:  sure, they'll be quiet, but man, they'll hate you.  As a musician, I see this happen when artists bemoan the fact that people "just don't appreciate good music anymore" or "the room is too noisy."  Man, we've gotta EARN this!  I went up to some poor kid, got right up in his face, and started yelling drill-sergeant style "WHO'S THE BOSS HERE?  WHO'S THE BOSS HERE?"  Startled, he kept saying back "YOU ARE!  YOU ARE"  "No" I said in a normal voice.  "you are!  Tricked ya!"

The Morning Show - Bizarro Metaphors

The Morning Show is a blog companion to the podcast audio.

Happy FRIIIIDAY!  Yo, let's check out some bizarro chords, so you too can be driving north on I-95 saying "well, this strikes me more as a sharp eleven chord."  Argue my metaphors, man!  If you're just tuning in, we've been looking at music for non-musicians this week, and how certain scenes in life can be related to with the color of music.  Hopefully this will not only help you add a dimension to your poetic outlook, but also give you a closer look at the music you love.

  We learned that if we take 7 of the 12 notes and play a scale, we get this sound.  Then, if we take certain notes of that scale, and play them all at once, we get a chord.  Selecting different notes, or modifying them, alters the chord.  Yesterday we looked at three note chords, or triads.  But, what if we play more than three notes?  If we start off with the first note of a scale, the third, the fifth...what if we add the seventh?  Sounds like this!  How about the ninth?  Like this!  By the way, when I say the ninth, I mean nine scale tones, or degrees, above where I started.  You'll notice that the triads are akin to primary colors, and the more sonic information we add, the more subtlety we invoke, and more dissonance we involve.  We can really start to mess with things and play these big fancy jazz chords like so...And here, ladies and gentleman, is that chord I was referring to driving north out of Richmond on that beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon last week.  The thirteenth chord in all it's glory.

Have a great weekend!  And see what chords you see!

The Morning Show - Pugs not Drugs

The Morning Show is a blog companion to the podcast audio.

Good morning, and welcome to the Signalman show!  It's 420...but pugs not drugs, bro! OK, so yesterday, in our quest to understand music for non-musicians, we looked at notes, and a major scale.  Now, let's build some chords - combinations of notes- from that scale.  On it's own, a note doesn't really tell us much.  It's just sitting there, minding it's own business.  But when we put it in a context of other notes, then we start getting these beautiful colors.  I'm going to take the do-re-mi scale I did yesterday (plays scale) and then select certain notes to combine.  The most common is the first, or root note, the third note, and the fifth note.  This gives me a major chord.  Note how it sounds happy or warm.  If I slide the third back one notch, listen to how it's suddenly sad, as if a cloud has gone over the sun at the picnic.  If I slide the fifth back one notch too, now it's raining at the picnic.  If I put the notes back, but raise the fifth one notch, now it's a flashback to a picnic in 1979.  Technically speaking, these are major, minor, diminished, and augmented triads, or three note chords.  Now we're getting some color, and a few new ways to relate to the world.  Tomorrow we'll look at those weird chords.

The Morning Show - Building metaphors (and scales)

The Morning Show is a blog companion to the podcast audio.

Yesterday I was going on about some nonsense about how a northbound road trip on a beautiful spring afternoon felt like I was driving through a thirteenth chord.  What does that even mean?  Musicians might nod knowingly, but I'd like to introduce the rest of you to the beautiful language of chords...and to give you a new way of seeing the world!  To understand chords, we have to understand scales, but don't worry, it's easy.  Western music is based on a system called the even tempered tuning system, which breaks sound up into 12 blocks.  I can start with this note, A, and play up 12 blocks, and then it repeats again as a multiple.  So, if A is ringing at 110 cycles per second, or Hertz, once I play through all 12, I arrive again at A, ringing at 220 cycles per second.  From A to A is called an octave.  If I take 7 of these 12 notes, and arrange them in a particular recipe or formula, I arrive at a major scale.  This is the do-re-mi we've heard about.  FYI, the formula is WWHWWWH, with a whole step being two "blocks", frets on the guitar, or keys on the piano, and a half step being one.  So, there you have it.  One step closer to understanding a metaphor, and using it yourself!