Eclectopia Blog

Ask any composer about the times when ideas dry up and the music just isn't flowing and I'll bet their stories are all the same.

Change to topic to when the music starts flowing like a facet, and the descriptive terms will be the same.

No one can answer why suddenly the heavens open and music falls like rain, but one thing is certain: the composer (or musicians) must be ready to receive this pouring out through experience, study, innate talent or a combination of all these. The other certainty: the more you look for or try to force it, the less likely it will come.

Other considerations: the intellect must be abandoned, the ego has to be surrendered and the mind must be open to the "now."

Eno talk about this very thing in the below video. I think the lyrics speak volumes about this phenomenon:

I tied myself with wire
To let the horses run free
Playing with the fire
Until the fire played with me

Sound quality versus convenience. That seems to be the paradigm in the world of downloadable music.

For myself, MP3s are so convenient. Bowie remaster? Why, yes. Click and soon my library on my Mac has Ziggy Stardust goodness.

But for every gain, there is loss. MP3s sound a little thin to my ears. Apple, as much as I like their products, gets very proprietary about all its media. Want to load a non-Apple TV show into your iPod? Well, good luck. Funny how something which would seem so easy is so tricky.

The there's the lingo: lossless, lossy, AAC, FLAC, and the ubiquitous MP3.

NPR has a great info on what "Mastering for iTunes Really Means."

Guitarists are a funny lot.

We display obsessive behavior at every turn. First, comes the guitar. Every detail about a guitar can spark an endless discussion: the neck, the body, the pickups, the top, et al ad infinitum.

Then there are the accessories: the amp, the picks, the strings, the cables-all subjects worthy of endless debate, discussion and comparison.

Then the effects processors which can be racks or in their simpler form, floor pedals, AKA "stomp boxes." These can range from a very simple tuner to a pedal that enable you to play things you couldn't play or even imagine.

While you and I might get some plausible, useful sounds out of floor pedals, Adrian has a natural affinity to find out not only what a pedal can do, but can coax sounds that seem to originate from another world.

Read the blog entry.

"I Like the idea of a piece of music that continues making itself whether I'm there or not."

"Being an artist is a philosophical position."

~Brian Eno

No one interview or documentary can give you the richest portrait of a complex artist like Brian Eno. You have to view many sources. Here's a German doc on the master.

Good insight on his working process.

California-laid-back-surf vibe music is not something I easily embrace. To be perfectly honest, I detest Jack Johnson's music (and his ilk)whom I affirm is this generation's James Taylor-an artist who has been unfairly lauded and one I find tedious.

Why then would Cali-surf-vibe Tristan Prettyman's music draw my attention?

When I saw Tristan Prettyman's video on YouTube, I have to say that it was her usual voice that caught my attention. Was she British or was she using some dialect that was unknown to me? Plus, these were not songs about banana pancakes and catching waves, but ones that seemed to be written from unmitigated honesty. Honesty? In the era of the CMAs?

Turns out, Tristan Prettyman is an artist (and a Cali surfer) who does not analyze her music and "doesn't know where her voice or the songs comes from." She is a natural: music just comes knocking on her creative door and she invites it in.

She did the club tour circuit for years, promoting her first two albums, and life as an artist seemed good. But then, something started happening: she lost her sense of purpose or "her anchor" and started feeling burned out. Vocal polyps and a painful breakup followed. The misery she found herself immersed in lead to writing a new album, Cedar and Gold, but she found songs were coming out without the usual emotional filters.

I interviewed the artist on April 2, 2013.

You'll find these songs running around in your mind the first time you hear them, so purchase the album here.