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Diary Entries:
My Web site manager, Dani Hoke and I were recently talking about which pages on my site were read the most by visitors, and to our surprise we discovered that many people were clicking to my "Musical Notes" essays: stories about songwriting, singers, image, interviews with other singers...
Over the past year I had also received many e-mails asking me about a songwriter's life: How did I start a song? How did I remain inspired? What did certain lyrics really mean?
Dani and I decided that instead of continuing with "Musical Notes," I would begin a "diary" - where I would write generally about what it is like to be a songwriter in these crazy times. It will be a very personal exploration, freewheeling and unedited. I hope you will enjoy it and return often.
The question I am asked most often about songwriting is, "Where do you start?"I like the composer, John Cage's reply to this question. He said, "Start anywhere. Only start."
Here's how I start.
I look at what I know about the song I need or want to write. I start a new page in my songwriting book (a book with blank pages). I ask myself a few questions and write down the answers.
Is this song based on a feeling? On a place? On an experience? I may have one line of verse that feels promising, so I'll start with that. Writing down those few words can unleash a lot of ideas. And more questions.
Is this a story? Where does the story take me? What do I want a listener to feel? Is this story worth the effort of a song? Do I believe in this story?
At other times a melody may come into my head. (For some reason, this often happens to me at awkward moments!) Later, I will play it on the keyboard and listen to it evolve. At some point, I will sing it over and over to see how it holds up. Melodies have to endure a lot of listenings.
Gradually, my song page will fill up with bits and pieces of information. And, if I am lucky, I will also have a solid melody. Then I begin to build the structure. (But that is for another diary entry.)
Now and then, (rarely for me), a song will simply come to life."Light," from the CD, Freedom happened this way.
I was on vacation on a sunny, quiet island off the coast of Florida, after spending a difficult winter in New York City. It was hot when I arrived. Late afternoon sun drenched the deserted beach. I stood in the warm water, toes sunk deep in sand, and felt the long, dark winter months flow out of me.
The next morning, looking out at the ocean, I sat at my computer and wrote down a line of verse that had come to me during the night: "the sun will fill the air, and light is everywhere." I knew these words would be my chorus. I chanted them until I heard a melody that matched the light spirit of the song. The rest came very quickly. "Light" was finished a day later.
Some listeners have told me that of all my songs, this is one their favorites. I like to think they are responding to "Light's" easy birth. But it could also be the great clarinet and guitar work of my fellow Canadians, Chet Doxas and Michael Berard.
No matter. The song was a gift.
I am awed by the power of a few words and a melody. How we fragile humans can be putty in the hands of a song.I heard a song yesterday that I haven't listened to for years. It's about freedom - or rather the song used to represent a powerful sense of freedom to my husband and me.
The night we set off on our first trip to a new home in the country, we heard this song as we drove down a deserted highway at twilight. We felt the power of the moment... taking a chance on building something new... on leaving known things behind.... on realizing some long-held dream to live a life of adventure. In just a few words and a few notes, the song said it all on that evening drive.
When I heard it again yesterday, ten years later, I was standing in a coffee shop in New York City. Without warning, my body was flooded with the feelings of that great escape. I could smell the piney autumn air. I felt again the tremendous jubilance of sailing into a new life, of continuing to live the dream.
Songs have power. We take their words to heart.
And sometimes we rethink our lives or we take even greater pleasure in our chosen paths, after hearing a beloved song. I think about this often when I am writing music.
Musical inspiration can come from strange places. As a kid, numbers had a strong effect on my creativity.
In grade 9, I was not good in math. And not very interested in learning about it. My math teacher thought I might fall behind without a tutor, so she sent me to Kathryn, a girl about my age who was both a math whiz and a fine cellist. Her love for mathematics was as intense as my love for music.
I recall that we spent hours talking together about math, music and the universe. We were both 15 years old. We had lots of time.
She introduced to me a way of looking at the world of numbers that was so creative and compelling that not only did I pass my math tests that school year, but my pleasure in and technical ability for music also noticeably improved.
Kathryn paid me a memorable compliment during one of our last tutoring sessions when she told me she would trade her math skills for my creativity in music. I hope I told her how much she had enhanced those abilities.
I am not stellar in math today, though I still love to ponder the universe. And I find futuristic architecture oddly inspiring.
People often ask me where my song ideas come from. Here are a few of my personal reminders:
Sometimes criticism can be a compliment.
An artist friend who has been very supportive of my music recently told me that some of my songs troubled him. He said he would just get relaxed - begin to let the sounds wash over him, when along would come these profound lyrics that made him think.
He argued that, in some cases, the words should go with the music better. And wasn't I sending a double message?
I believe I surprised him with my response. I told him that, in just that way, the music was a pretty true reflection of who I am.
I was brought up by a very loving mother. Now in her 80's, she was and is one of those rare individuals --- a truly kind person. I think my great desire for harmony and beauty in music is, in part, due to her glowing influence.
But, unlike my mother, I am also very critical of our culture. And sometimes, what drives me to write a song comes from a deep desire to express that dismay.
I believe that if you continually strive to remain true to your complex, evolving self - to say through your art what you feel and believe deeply - that eventually an individual style will emerge. And it may not follow the rules.
After a performance in Montreal, a member of the audience greeted me backstage and told me he found my style unusal. He observed that while I obviously had stong opinions, "you tapped me on the shoulder with them rather than punched me in the nose."
That's my style right now. When pressed to describe it, I call it "music to move your mind and soothe your spirit."
Three of my favorite singer/songwriters are Canadians: Joni Mitchell, Jane Siberry and Loreena McKennitt.
No, it's not nationalistic favoritism. (Though I am Canadian, too) I think nationalism has done and is doing great damage to the possibilities for peace on this planet.
No, I like these three because they have created thoughtful, exciting, high quality work, each in a very unique way. And while all three have had commercial success, they continued to follow their chosen creative paths even when it was a not a commerically wise thing to do.
These women often choose to write about ideas and feelings that fall outside the most common themes found these days in "popular" music. They also have allowed themselves to write in music styles that sometimes suit artistic ends rather than the narrow-format needs of the "market:"
- For many years, after her enormous early success, Joni Mitchell incorporated into her songs other musical styles than the "true folk" sound that made her famous in the 70's. Because of that, she didn't get much radio airplay for over a decade.
- One song called "My, my" on Jane Siberry's jazz-influenced CD, Maria, is a whopping 20 minutes long. Many of her songs tend to be rather long. So she too seldom gets radio play. Her songs don't fit the format.
- Loreena McKennitt creates music that is often inspired by literary works and exotic travel. Certainly not mass-market art.
I don't know these three women. I don't like all their music. But in interviews they come across as intelligent, strong-minded, ambitious in a focussed way, and well-rounded human beings.
For the past week or so, I've been writing lyrics for new songs. I don't seem to have the energy to write anything else when I'm working on lyrics - thus the lack of a diary entry.
But, I do like to read the words of great writers when I am searching for words myself.
Today I saw an older book by Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm (1977), sitting on the bookshelf. The cover spoke to me, so I took it to my cozy workroom and read the whole thing through, once again. It's a short book - 76 pages.
Dillard writes prose with the spare, haunting style of a fine poet. And while I don't share her somewhat religious outlook, her writing always feeds my soul. She wrote the book about her 2-year stay on an island in Puget Sound where she lived in a one-room wood-built house with her cat named, "Small," and a spider...
For my lyrics, I'm looking for a way to say that moment to moment, we each possess the power to change our lives. The song is about hope. So, what Dillard writes about "mornings" struck a chord with me.
Dillard was not a young woman when she wrote this passage, yet she continued to find transformative joy in the power of mornings:
"Mornings, when light spreads over the pastures like wings, and fans a secret color into everything, and beats the trees senseless with beauty, so that you can't tell whether the beauty is in the trees----dazzling in cells like yellow sparks or green flashing waters----or on them---transfiguring silver air charged with the wings' invisible motion; mornings, you won't be able to walk for the power of it: earth's too round."
I love the recording process. I do some of my recording in New York City, but most of it is done in my home-town, Montreal. I was there this week.
Back in 1996 when I started my own music production company, Cutting Edge Productions, I decided that I would develop a process of producing music that would give me control over the end-product and be highly professional. I also wanted the process to be enjoyable; no teeth-knashing watching-of-the-clock; no hired musicians with "attitude" problems; no rushing just to get the job done; no rigid rules to impede the creative moment.
I also wanted the freedom to evolve.
A friend of mine (the producer of several of my early CDs), Mark Corwin, put me in touch with George Doxas, who owns and runs the Boutique de Son recording studio in Montreal. George is a gifted musician/composer in his own right and a wonderful engineer. But he is also hilarious - a man who can easily sustain a 10 minute joke that leaves you bent over laughing. He sets an open tone in the studio. It's fun and creative to be there. And over time I have become more and more in control of my own song production.
I have always used a computer to write music. But until just a few months ago, I went to a rehearsal with only chord charts in my hands. The music was on the page. I had no way of playing the finished song for musicians so that they could hear what I really intended. And since my song-writing style is an unusual blend of world, folk and jazz, it is not easy to convey with mere musical notes.
So my husband & business partner, Nicholas, and I recently invested in some new equipment that would give us (Nicholas is my co-producer) greater creative control.For this recording sesssion, I prepared songs in the computer drawing from a remarkable variety of sounds (for ex :"real" instruments like a guitar or a full-sized orchestra; or uniquely synthesized sounds like a moonscape or the dark and scratchy "goblin." )
When the arrangements were complete, I transfered them to a machine that allows me to sing my vocal part into the "mix." Then I downloaded these full-fledged songs into another machine that burns a real CD, which I brought with me to the studio this week.
I wondered how the new process would work. I had not gone thru the usual pre-recording rehearsals with musicians. Was there a down side to this appealing route that seemed to put me more in charge of my material?
So far, I think not. The musicians listened and still gave me their suggestions. The CD was taken as an advanced starting point, not as the finished product. But it served as a much more reliable starting point than just the notes on the page.
And I believe in the long run, we will waste less studio time exploring musical avenues that will not work in the end.There was a show on TV recently called, "Three Tenors." I'm not a devotee of the "Three Tenors" extravaganzas, but I kept the program on in the background to see what overblown hype would be thrown at viewers this time.
I was working in the back of the house when I heard a remarkable voice that pulled me into the living room. The man's singing was simple and powerful. The song lyrics were meaningful and current. His delivery had great energy and focus. The effect was stunning. I sat down.
My husband, Nicholas, a vicious critic of bad singing, was also provoked into a living room chair by the sound. We sat for a long time watching this singer and two other black singers perform live in a concert.
It was not exactly an operatic style of singing, more "poperatic." Each singer in his own way had an extraordinarily versatile voice. Each sang some carefully chosen classical songs as well as blues, cabaret, gospel... I don't often hear singing that inspires me. This was a rare treat.
At their best, singers have a mysterious power to move and rally deep emotions in listeners. Some instrumentalists have this power. But I think great singing still has the edge. When I was in university, instrumentalists used to tell me they hated being on the same concert as a really good singer. They always stole the show.
The novelist Salman Rushdie has some profound words to say about the mystic effects of the voice. I can't say it better than he does. Here is the quote from his book; "The Ground Beneath Our Feet."
"Why do we care about singers? Wherein lies the power of songs? Maybe it derives from the strangeness of there being singing in this world. The note, the scale, the chord; melodies, harmonies, arrangements; symphonies, ragas... Maybe the birds taught us. Maybe not. Maybe we are just creatures in search of exaltation. We don't have much of it. Our lives are not what we deserve; they are, let us agree, in many painful ways, deficient. Song turns them into something else. Song shows us a world that is worthy of our yearning and it shows us our selves as they might be if we were worthy of the world.
Five mysteries hold the keys to the unseen: the act of love, and the birth of a baby, and the contemplation of great art, and being in the presence of death or disaster and hearing the human voice lifted in song. These are the occasions when the bolts of the universe fly open and we are given a glimpse of what is hidden; an eff of the ineffable."
From: "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" - by Salman Rushdie
NOVEMBER 18TH, 2001
LIVE MUSIC
Last night, I went to a small club in Vieux Montreal (Old Montreal) to hear the group called Quartango perform with the jazz/blues singer, Terez Montcalm.The event was also a two-hour live radio broadcast to promote a new film called Macadam Tango. Between songs there were short interviews (in French) with all the performers.
Quartango (www.quartango.com) is made up four classical and jazz trained musicians on piano, violin, bass, and bandoneon. They play hot tango music with passion and great theatricality. The pianist, Richard Hunt also arranges most of the music. And it's wild. A fusion of all sorts of styles (one was a celtic/tango) filtered thru tango rhythms. His arrangements are beautiful, clever and funny.
The singer, Terez Montcalm, has a gutsy style of singing. She also plays stand-up bass - not an easy thing to do when you are also singing. She wrapped her body around the instrument in a way that looked a bit like she was making love it. A dynamic singer who is fun to watch in a small space.
It was one of those occasions that gives live performance a good name; wonderful players in a tiny club - there weren't more than 100 of us seated around tables; a casual atmosphere; lots of laughter during the interviews; we got to know the players through what they had to say about playing as well as through their performance.
It was unusual music performed with style and joy. And the audience, of all ages, and mostly French Canadians, was filled with the kind of joie-de-vivre they are famous for.
My only complaint is that the air was filled with smoke! Come on you guys!
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BEGINNING JUNE 15/2004
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