datamusicata

Okay, today I would like you to try a little experiment. Think about all the music that you have heard through the years; all of the albums that you have bought, borrowed or stolen. Now I don’t want you to list your favorite ten albums, I want you to think about which albums you have actually played more than, say, 100 times.

The first recording that comes to mind for me, because I know I’ve heard it a thousand times, is Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. The list would also have to include Sgt Pepper, Revolver, Rubber Soul, and Abbey Road, all obviously by the Beatles. But that’s an easy reference, as they were the most popular pop group in the world. What else is there stored up there in my little grey cells?

Dave Brubeck’s Time Out; Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd’s Jazz Samba; Katy Lied, Royal Scam, Aja, and Gaucho have all spent days and weeks on my players, as has Dixie Chicken by Little Feat and At Large by the Kingston Trio; Talking Book and Innervisions by Stevie Wonder; Listen To The Music by the Doobie Brothers; and Fleetwood Mac (the first Buckingham /Nicks permutation) and the follow up, Rumours. Stravinksy’s Firebird Suite and lastly the single by Tommy Edwards of It’s All In The Game.

All the other CD’s, LP’s, cassettes, and 45’s I listened to I didn’t listen to as many times as I did that listing above. What that means is that of all the influences that I have had in my music, my composition, my producing, my recording, those recordings listed above had the most resonance and probably the most impact on the music that I do. It’s true that all you hear will influence you, but those listed had to have more impact.

What I have come to identify as “my” music is an amalgam of everything that I have ever heard, coupled with the repetition of those recordings. What gives me joy is making music that comes out of that pool.

As we practice and perform and record, all those influences are filtered through our own experience, expertise and chops. And what comes out of you is what evolves into your own personal style; your own artistic approach and impact on the material you present.

Now if you want to grow as an artist, you must listen to everything, and that must include music that doesn’t work or resonate for you. My friend, Satchel Camplin, made me a copy of the two biggest Radiohead CD’s; Derek Sutton gave me Beck’s Odelay. I listened to these CD’s as much as I could, and after a while I got some ideas and some new perspectives out of them. They still aren’t recordings that I put on just to hear them again, but I most definitely learned something from them.

I am suggesting to all of you, that you make a list of these most impactful recordings (or if you are an actor, the most impactful films) that you have experienced hundreds of times and then go find something that is different from all those things you normally embrace. By making that list you can see what kind of styles you usually listen to and you can, for the sake of this experiment, avoid those styles.

The goal here is to listen to things that you don’t understand or resonate to until you, at least, understand what these other folks are doing and you can appreciate what it is that they are doing.

There are monumentally successful people out that that I simply do not get. Depeche Mode; Coldplay, Eddie Vetter, most of U2; virtually all of the Hiphop that I’ve heard; all hugely popular recording artists. What are they doing that is so very resonant to so very many people?

As an artist, it won’t hurt you to figure that out. I’m not saying to prostitute yourself to gain a larger acceptance. You just owe it to yourself as an artist to understand what other artists are doing. And you are free to give up on any of them when you think you’ve spent enough time.

But if you don’t understand what their appeal is, I suggest to you that you haven’t listened to them enough.