Writing/Recording

This was supposed to just be one blog, about gigging- that is, playing musical engagements, hopefully for money. Gigging, as it stands, is really one of three threads making up my musical personality, the other two being Teaching and Writing/Recording. A little blog mitosis going on I guess, with one blog becoming two and then three.

Writing/recording is hands-down my favorite of the three basic things I do as musician. I got the writing bug fairly early, around Senior Year of High School, when I tried my hand at some quasi-Baroque things on piano. Haven't stopped writing since.

Like I said earlier, we all start out wanting to be players, and I've always been very performance-oriented, playing guitar and bass and piano myself. But the urge, the burning desire to be a composer definitely came into play around age 17. My major in school was pretty much always music composition, and that's where the bulk of my formal training as musician lies, having had 3 different teachers for musical composition. As a guitarist, I had a few years of lessons in High School, then 2 at SIU Edwardsville, 1 in New York, and that's been it.

Over the years(about 30 of 'em at this point!), I've turned out a goodly number of compositions and recordings. Well, okay, an insane number of compositions- and a lot of recordings. In the previous two blogs I talk about 30 years worth of gigging and teaching, which, if tended regularly year after year is gonna yield an astronomical number of both gigs and students. So it is with writing.

As a musician-with-a-dayjob, I remember looking at Charles Ives( American composer, 1874-1954) as a bit of a mentor in this respect, and remember reading someplace a comment he'd made about how his business and musical sides helped one another. He did reportedly make some innovations in the area of Estate Planning through his Insurance Company(Ives &Myrick, not to be confused with Currier & Ives) as well as- of course- some innovative musical compositions . For me, my dayjob and musical pursuits together have been anything but symbiotic(even though my daygig has helped fund my musical pursuits).They've clashed, to a large extent, but I do find a parallel between my "musical" personality and that at my workplace.

In both instances, I'm a basically backline individual: back in the office away from the front lines; back in the 'music laboratory', away from the crowds at a club; but one who can(under duress) do frontline work: play gigs, meet and greet the public there and at the office(Roger U Roundly- damn glad t' meet'cha!). I love people but am not necessarily a people person, as I need to get the hell away from them after awhile. So I'll get out and play for awhile, and then hide in my laboratory for awhile.

These two things, the playing out and staying in, are symbiotic for me. They seem to be mutually beneficial as far as keeping me in tune. But for the most part, I tend to favor the quiet peaceful atmosphere of my music room for my activities, hopefully coming up with new "discoveries" therein to share with you the listener. Almost a Shamanistic process, tapping into the creative unconscious and bringing back whatever you find.

I love playing, and teaching, but writing I'm probably most in the Zone.