Jeremy Larson

Unconventional

Darren refuses to get sounds in a conventional way.  Most of the sounds that you hear on the album, will have come from a process of trial and error.  He may bring in 10 objects that he found in storage, and audition them all as percussive instruments.  Anyone could do this, but bringing in a catering tray and turning it into something musical- that's a rare talent.  Well done Darren.

We are trying to work at a different studio tonight.  This studio has timpanis, a harpsichord, and pretty much any instrument you could ask for.  I'm going to have Elsie come along and take real pictures so I can stop posting cell phone pics.  Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

God Shined Down

It's been a great week so far here with Darren and Stacy.  Looks like we may have finally come up with a name for this project, but I will wait until it's official to announce.  They got here on my birthday (best gift ever!) but as the first day of working went on, my ever so slight ear-itation turned into a full fledged ear infection.  Mostly better now!  As always, I've been taking lots of pictures of our process.  Here are a few from yesterday:

Darren put some coins onto some dangling tape.  As you strike the keys, it sounds very much like a harpsichord.  When doubled with the Crumar DP-50, glorious things happen.

Stacy spend most of the day working on lyrics.  As you can see in the picture, God was shining down on the paper, dictating the words for her.  This never happens when I write...

Back to work!  By the way, I'm posting lots of this stuff in my Instagram as well.  Thanks for reading!

Jeremy

Melancholia

It's about time I put some color back into this blog.  I had been wanting to see this movie (Melancholia) for the past year or so, and I finally gave up on waiting for it to come to Springfield.  I found a place to watch it online.  (I was not supposed to watch this without Elsie.  I suppose we will see if she's paying attention)  This was nearly a week ago, and the movie still seems to be with me.  In my humble opinion, it was a brilliant movie, and one that's hard to forget.  These are some stills from the movie.  Anyone see it?   And is it just my foggy memory, or was Wagner's Tristan and Isolde the only music in the film?

Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

 

Some Notes On Collaboration

Last week when I was in Memphis, I heard some new music that I got really excited about.  I bought the _____ album and immediately started getting new ideas for how to process/record drums, harp, strings etc.  As soon as I got home I started putting these new ideas into practice by starting a new song for my project with Stacy and Darren.  I spent an entire day tracking drums and bass.  The next day I recorded 70 tracks of strings, then piano.  This idea was carrying all of my momentum forward and I had impressed myself with how much I was getting done in such a short time-span.  I bounced a copy of it down, and emailed it to Darren and Stacy.  Then I went through my usual routine of refreshing my inbox every few minutes to see if they loved it.

I know that they could tell that I had worked hard on this idea.  I know they could tell that I had just gone through a marathon of tracking to get it to them.  But the reality was this- It was all wrong.  It sounded nothing like the rest of the songs on the album.  It had abandoned all of the principles we laid out in the beginning.  Darren was very gentle in letting me down, but he was firm.  This is one of the most important parts of collaboration- the proper letdown.

That was a long winded intro, so I'll try to keep this next part straight to the point.

Bad:

The most frustrating part of collaboration with someone, is not the example above- that example is your saving grace.  The worst, is when you work on an idea that's no good, but everyone tells you it's "good" and "it just needs a little work".  When this happens, it's all hands on deck working on an idea that's a 2 out of 10, trying to bring it up to a 5 out of 10.  In the end, the idea's gonna get thrown away anyway.  Get tough (but kind) with yourself and your peers.  Letting someone take a wrong turn while driving is not "polite", it prolongs and increases conflict.

Good:

On the other hand, the BEST part of collaboration in my experience, is when you have checks and balances.  Left to my own devices, I will record layer after layer of instruments, until the vocal disappears.  A big part of my process working with other people, is having them chop through all the weeds.  I may write an idea with 10 things going on during the chorus.  It usually becomes the duty of my peers to narrow that down to a simple two or three, and improve on those ideas.  

Most bands are a collaboration of some kind.  It's a big part of growing up to learn to speak honestly and gently with each other.  Musicians can be emotional people, and it's easy to respond emotionally to criticism.  When someone says, "that drum part is too busy for that section" your brain will run it through a filter, and it gets interpreted as "that drum part is too busy, and you're looking chubby".  Be mindful of this emotional filter.  Learn to be the one that looks to his/her peers for improvement, not just validation.

Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

PS. I know I've been talking about this project with Darren and Stacy for quite a while now.  It may even seem as though it's simply a "hobby" that will never be completed.  But we are close!  We WILL finish this, and we WILL release something in the near future!

They Reappear on iTunes and Other News

I now have confirmation that "They Reappear" will officially be released on iTunes on November 15th.  Along with it, there will be an instrumental version of the album, and an instrumental version of my previous album "Salvation Club".  A few days before the release, I will be launching a new website.  The site will have streaming versions of all of these, a place where you can watch BOTH live DVD's, view all of my lyrics, plus tons of other fun stuff.  I'm SO excited to share this with all of you!

In other news, it looks like Darren and Stacy will be spending some time in Springfield in the coming months to work on more music.  I won't go into details at this point, but I will say that we have high hopes for the progress of this project.  Possibly even the release of a name for this project... We will see.  Hope your week is off to a great start.  Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

Not What It Was Meant To Be

I was reading an article recently where James Blake was talking about the current state of things with dubstep.  He basically said there was too much testosterone in it, and women would probably have a hard time relating to it.  He went on to say that this is not what dubstep was supposed to be about; it had much different origins.  

I must first of all say, I bought the James Blake album, and love it.  But I don't share this opinion.  Here's why.

When I was in highschool, I was in a punk band. (Yep)  I remember this topic was a regular conversation piece at that time.  There were the "real" punk bands, and then there was bands like us- who just loved punk music, and also sometimes dressed like one a little bit.  There was always lots of talk about the REAL meaning of punk music and it's roots.  We were often told that spoiled suburban white kids couldn't really grasp the meaning.  But my feeling was always, "We just play music that we like" and tried not to get hung up in the politics of the punk world.

While I certainly can respect a good story about where a genre came from, I respectfully disagree with Mr. Blake.  And though I used something he said in passing, I'm trying to illustrate a larger point here.  And that is this.  Almost nothing we do creatively, is completely mindful or respectful of it's roots.  Music right now is not what it was supposed to be.  We base our system of music on a series of notes within a scale.  This scale was created by men- not God.  There were hundreds of years spent studying melody and harmony.  You may not know this, but for a long time there were rules for which chords you could use in a piece.  Rules for which chord must follow another, and how chords resolved.  Rules for intervals that the melody line was allowed to jump.  It's also important to note that music was not intended to be quantized, and snapped to a grid.  It was meant to speed up and slow down, get louder and softer.

I will freely admit that I give little or no thought to the traditional rules of harmonic practice while I am writing.  But I write music that I like.  And oddly enough, the thought of the composers before me taking offense to my music doesn't hinder me in the slightest.  

Just a thought.  Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

Eagles, Diapers, Wolves, Wigs, Monsters, Bling, Charlie Blacksmoke, MuteMath

I've been completely MIA for almost a week.  As you saw in my last post, I was in Memphis.  Upon arriving, my computer completely crashed, and I was without a computer for the whole trip.  To make matters worse, my phone is on it's last leg and was having difficulty even making phone calls.

I probably failed to mention that I was in Memphis to play guitar for Charlie Blacksmoke as the opening act for MuteMath.  It was probably the most fun I've ever had at a show (or at least in the top 3).  It involved grown men in diapers, girls in eagle costumes, monsters, wigs, and bling.  Whether I like it or not, I'm certain pictures will circulate soon enough...  Here's one I took during the MM set.  Very blurry, just like the entire evening.

It was my first time getting to see my good friend Todd perform as their new guitar player.  He did amazing, just as I knew he would.  

My computer seems to be up and running again, so I will resume posting on here again Monday.  Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

(Just found a video clip.  I'm right behind the female eagle.)

 

Memphis in photos

Elsie and I are in Memphis for the week. It's a great city! I'll share more stories soon. Back to practice for now... Jeremy

Popular Music

As I was leaving a restraunt the other night, I saw a group of college girls jump into a car, roll the windows down, and crank up a song I'd never heard.  Though the song wasn't familiar to me, I knew that it was probably a very popular one.  Catchy melody, auto-tuned to hell, and lyrics that seemed to be written on the spot.  As some of my friends scowled at the sound, I had just one thought,

This song was written with a purpose, and we are seeing that purpose here in front of us.

Now, before you assume that you know what I mean, let me say that you probably don't.  These girls were out to have fun.  I'm assuming that they weren't turning on the music for an introspective dialogue with themselves, they wanted to forget about work, school, etc. and just have fun.  This kind of music easily facilitates this need, and in my opinion, is a good thing for us to have.  It fufills a need that I will never be able to meet, and neither will any the music that I listen to.

People will be angry at me for saying all of this.  But think about it.  After a full day of work, maybe you don't want to watch a documentary on the sinking of the Titanic or the Holocaust.  Maybe you want to watch an episode of Seinfeld or The Office instead.  It's not Shakespear, and the script was probably written in a day for many of the episodes.  But you need to turn off your brain for a bit and just laugh a little before you go to sleep.

Is it really so bad that there is music that is just for fun?

I often get accused of being a music snob, because I don't like 99% of the music that I hear.  But if you got to know me, you'd be surprised how much I respect music- even music that I can't stand to listen to.   Just had to get this off my chest.  Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

Technical Pieces

About every other month or so I get the urge to try and conquer (or re-conquer) a classical piano piece.  As I've been practicing more and more these last few weeks,  I wanted to revisit some things I've touched on in the past.  Here's a segment from an older post about practicing:

When I started working on this piece, I told myself that I had to keep one truth in my head at all times.  That truth is that any time your hands are on the keys, you are teaching your brain something.  Simple right?  The reason this has become so important to my practicing, is that it reminds me that when I am going over a series of notes- and I hit a wrong note- I have just "rehearsed" the passage with a bad note.  If I play that passage 10 times in a row, and hit that same wrong note 5 or 6 times, I have gained nothing by rehearsing it.  In fact, I will probably have to practice it twice as many times correctly to try to retrain my muscle memory to hit the correct one.  Every key that I hit, is a lesson learned by my brain, regardless of if it's correct or incorrect.  I try to spend at least 85% of my practice time playing at speeds where I am able to clear every measure flawlessly.  This usually means that at the start of my practice (for the Hindemith sonata) I will set the metronome for 90.  I will keep it there for the first two hours, then bump it up about five beats per minute every 30 minutes.  This helps to ensure that I am keeping perfect "performances" even in practice. 

You can read the entire post here.

I'd like to add one little gem of information that I realized this week.  Spend time working out the fingerings for difficult passages!  I spent an entire week working 6 hours a day on an 8-bar passage this year.  One day, I looked on youtube to watch some other people performing the piece and noticed that Glenn Gould had used a different fingering than me on these measures.  So, I ran to my piano and tried out this alternate fingering.  I perfected it that afternoon.  Initially, I probably tried the fingering that seemed most intuitive, and just ran with it.  I could have saved myself a LOT of time, had I just spent 30 minutes trying out different variations.  

Thanks for reading.

Jeremy