It's done!

    I have divided up the Summer Sessions 2018, recordings.  For some reason I feel better now.  This is only on the Bandcamp site.  I haven't even looked Soundcloud.  I probably won't bother.

    Even when I first published the album I had a feeling like it was maybe just a bit too much.  Now this seems like a proper "bite size" apportioning.

    I realize that this is really important to nobody but me, but then that's what this has always been about.

There are still about 40 CD copies or the original album out there.  I kind of like that.

    I think that this process has allowed me to be a bit more selective about the line up of the fort coming albums.  I have already made some cuts to "Garden of Love" and I am pretty sure I will lose one track from "Heart at Sea".

    Now, to just get on with those albums.

    

 

Volume 1 & 2 ?

I was just listening to the iTunes playlists of the albums that I have so far.  It made me think that “Summer Sessions, 2018” really should have been a two volume project.

I think I remember hearing Joe Pug say in his podcast, “The Working Songwriter”, that when performing new music 45 minutes is about all people can really hear before being overwhelmed or zoning out.  After a certain point people seem to have a hard time taking in and enjoying the new material.

In light of the trends away from albums and more towards people making and selling individual tracks of music, I think this idea of a limited capacity to enjoy new music, at any one exposure, must be true.

If you were presented with a new piece of music that was two and a half minutes long you’d probably be much more inclined to listen to the entire piece, than if you were presented with and hours worth of new music on an album.

Given this probability, I think that 10 songs, or about 30 minutes of new music on an album, is about the most of what one might consider putting out, if an album format is going to be considered. Maybe albums have just become obsolete.

An interesting feature of the current state of tech and media is that I suppose I could easily reissue my first album as a 2 volume set, and with very little effort. It does seem to becoming more and more of an adventure in creative anachronisms.

So, what would the the changes in that album result in, as it is divided into 2 volumes.  Will all the original tracks make the cut?  Will the order of the tracks be the same, but just cut in half?

    The first edit I think I would like to make is taking out the 2 tracks that are now a part of the later album “Heart at Sea”.  That would take the set list down to 13 songs and remove about (4:57 + 3:20) = 8:17 in time, making the total time about 48:43. 

    Now, to cut it into two volumes.

It used to be that albums were the standard of publishing in the music industry.  Albums were curated, the play back order and length of play, the artwork and layout were all considered.  

    I think about a painter, or photographer having a gallery showing.  The pieces shown are specifically chosen. The arrangement of the gallery where they will be presented will be considered.  The curator of the show will decide which piece will be at the entrance to the show, and seen first, and then next.  An album is for the singer-songwriter, what a gallery showing is to the graphic artist.

At first glance I think these 13 tracks could just be cut after track 7 and then having the second volume just continues as it exists.  But I quickly decided to swap the track order just a little.

Summer Sessions, Volume 1

1. Sleepy Head

2. You and Me

3. Take, a climber's song

4. Missing Parts

5. Around Town

6. Dreaming of Yesterday

7.  Second hand heart

Summer Sessions, Volume 2

1. Going My Way

2. Sweet Retribution

3. MoonFlower Waltz

4. Another Season

5. The Moments

6. Casting Shadows, song for Gretel

    After looking into it it seems that with little effort I could actually do this, at least at Bandcamp.  I may just do it.  It is kind of a organizational itch that I may have to scratch.

 December 2022, an EP

In December I stumbled into a creative moment.

I was tuning a guitar that had been in it's case for a while, but I was to lazy to go find a tuner, so I tuned it by ear.  I don't have perfect pitch, that's a whole story unto itself.  It turns out that I tuned the whole guitar a half step down.  This led me to hearing the relationship of the strings in an entirely different way and that led me to a new musical idea.  That idea became the guitar part for "Ducks and Drakes", a new song.

    For 2 weeks in December, as I was marking the seasonal events, Solstice, Christmas, New Year's, and so on, I created four new songs.  I hope to publish them as an EP titled, "December 2022".  Quite a catchy title, I know, but sometimes you just got to go with the obvious and simplest.

    2 tracks were made public already but I will package them with the other 2 and put it out on Bandcamp and Soundcloud as part of the EP.  They all go together.

    There is a musical theme, thru all the pieces.  There is also a thematic connection.  I often make demo recordings of my songs and then arrange them in a playlist on iTunes so that I can listen to and evaluate them, and figure out where they should fall in an album order.  Now I realize that people don't buy albums anymore, but I grew up in an era when the creation of an album was a real considered process.  Artists choose which of their works they want to display when they have a showing and then they arrange the gallery, to curate what the viewer experiences and in what order.  In these days of commodities and consumption that has mostly been left behind.  Well screw that.  I have no delusions of any popular or financial facets of my work.  It's art, it's music, it's an offering, it's a smile for me, and maybe, just maybe, for some other soul.

    So far the EP seems to want to shape up like this,

track#                title

    1.         Letting Go of Dreaming

    2.         Return, D&D, a solstice song

    3.         Festivus Stroll

    4.         Ducks & Drakes (instrumental)

    

    This EP now goes on the list of albums, written, demo recorded, but not yet published.  This is now the third.  I have yet to do the final recordings and publishing of "Heart at Sea" and "Garden of Love", but like "December 2022" they are complete and I listen to them on my playlist.  Maybe I have a thing about completion, I don't know.

    

The new market banner!  Now who is that fella with the guitar?  I wonder? 

    I received my weekly email newsletter from the Nyack Farmer's Market this week and was pleasantly surprised to see the new banner, with a shot of 'yours truly' playing and singing at the market.  What a warm fuzzy feeling it was.

    It feels like ages since that last time I played at the market.  I guess it's been about 4 months.  I do miss it a bit.

    I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to play at that market.  I have heard of other artists having bars, or coffee houses or clubs, with open mic nights or some such regular event that they took part in early on.  These places often became where performing, was discovered, developed and informed.  These places were safe places as well, places one could be oneself or what ever version of themselves they wanted to present.  I suppose the Nyack market has been that kind of place for me.

    Farmers markets are kind of funny places to perform at in a way.  People don't come there to hear music, or very few people do.  The "audience" is there to do something else and the job of the performer is to add some ambience.  It is very different than an open mic at a bar or cafe, where people sit and face you and actively listen.  Most people playing at farmers markets are playing well established music, traditional tunes or covers, these both can established a desired mood, partly because they are familiar and partly because of the selection of music being generally upbeat.

    I took a chance and played only my own original material, and not all of it was sunshine and daisies.  I remember one day when a woman, maybe in her 60's came up and dropped a bill in the guitar case, smiled and then said, "that wasn't really a happy song was it?"  as if to say that she is listening.  I got the impression that like a sweet older woman, she'd appreciate happy songs more but that she would allow it.  She did after all give me a smile and a tip.

    I daydream about the coming Spring and Summer and the possibility of singing some of the new songs at the market, if they will have me back.

Return, D&D, a Solstice Song

This is a mash up, if you will, of an old song and a new one.  I'll write more about it later.

 Ducks & Drake

Just released for the holiday season.  This is what I am referring to as a fantasia, a bit of a romp around a musical idea, or in this case, more from an inspirational event, in the form of some ducks in a pond.

Last week I picked up a guitar that I have been ignoring for a while, my La Patrie nylon concert acoustic and tuned it to itself and started improvising.  The guitar usually sounds of a different personality from the daily driver I play, a Yamaha NTX, which has a bit of a parlor guitar sound, when it is not amplified.  I hit on some chord progressions that put me very much in mind of the sound of the great Nick Drake.  I love his music, the warm natural sounds that come with stringed instruments playing with other stringed instruments.

Turns out that I had tuned the guitar a half step down from standard but that made it sound so new to me.  I just played for a while and ended up with what I thought was some fun and interesting musical ideas .  I had enough there that I thought I should build a piece on it.

Lately, especially in the mornings, I can hear the ducks down the road in my neighbors pond.  They talk a lot and always sound like they are laughing, maybe telling jokes or busting on each other, or passer's by.  They make me pretty happy.  Their pond was dry for a lot of the summer and Fall this year and they got jailed in a pen to keep them from leaving for wetter territories.  They usually stay here year round.  They didn't sound as happy while the pond was dry, understandable.

Some how the idea of Nick Drake, and ducks and drakes kind of seemed like a good foundation for a new musical piece.

At first I added piano with the idea of creating a fuller sounding seasonal offering, but the piano line soon took over, and with inspiration from Vince Giraldi and Liz Story, and George Winston, and even Bruce Hornsby.  I wouldn't expect anybody else to hear them in this piece but I know I was trying to channel all the great music I have enjoyed from them into what I could awkwardly pound out of the keys.

This time of year used to be very challenging for me what with the short daylight hours and the cold, and more cold to come, but eventually I got to recognize the cheery reality that the Solstice means the sun is on it's way back to the north, back to us here, bringing with it all the promises of Spring and Summer and renewal.  Besides, snow looks so lovely.

When I started teaching myself to play guitar I chose to begin in the DADGAD tuning, for a few reasons.  One, I couldn't make the shapes with my fingers of most of the chords in standard tuning.  Even bar chords where hard, my fingers are made up if digits, not bars.  In this alternate tuning I could play fewer strings and still make sounds that really pleased me.  Secondly, I wanted to compose my own songs rather than play poor covers of songs I knew and loved.  Hearing myself play a cover badly was more discouraging than inspiring to become a better player.  I think I liked the instant gratification of making up a phrase, or entire piece, using fewer strings, and not having it judged against the original, or against people who are technical wizards on the instrument.

Turns out that this inspired me to play often, I mean a lot, I mean all the time, I mean ALL THE TIME! I composed and played and got some facility in my hands.  After a few years and some gained confidence that comes from creating music that I liked, I tuned up to standard and tried to learn the way most people do.

Piano is a bit of a similar story for me.  It is my first favorite musical friend.  I have spent countless hours improvising on about 2 or 3 themes, over decades.  It was enough to keep my interest, but not really enough to play for others.  Eventually simply because of time playing I got better, even played for others occasionally.

This song, this seasonal offering, this celebration of the brightness of the sun on snow, and a half frozen pond and some ducks, can be heard on Youtube, at Bandcamp and on Soundcloud, (links below).  Peace and Happy Solstice and New Year (soon)

BoatShopMusicStudio, Youtube

R A Maldonado on Youtube

richardamaldonado.bandcamp.com/track/ducks-drake

soundcloud.com/ramaldonadobsms-4986569/ducks-and-drake

The actual ducks that inspired the piece are in the artwork. 

artwork, R A Maldonado

original photo image, Elizabeth M Rodgers

The T.O.

(the Titanic Orchestra) 

Above: The brave members of the Titanic orchestra (Top row L-R: Clarke, Taylor. Middle row L-R: Krins, Hartley, Brailey. Bottom row L-R: Hume, Woodward), from The Illustrated London News, May 1912. Bricoux is not shown.

Titanic Musicians

Theodore Ronald Brailey – Pianist (aged 24)

Roger Marie Bricoux – Cellist (aged 20)

John Frederick Preston Clarke – Bassist (aged 30)

Wallace Hartley – Bandmaster, Violinist (aged 33)

John Law Hume – Violinist (aged 21)

Georges Alexandre Krins – Violinist (aged 23)

Percy Cornelius Taylor – Cellist (aged 32)

John Wesley Woodward – Cellist (aged 32)

    Many brave things were done that night, but none were more brave than those done by men playing minute after minute as the ship settled quietly lower and lower in the sea. -Lawrence Beesley, Titanic survivor

100% – the number of these musicians who perished. Showing great courage, and looking to soothe the nerves of others, all 8 are believed to have continued playing as the crew loaded the lifeboats.

1 shilling – the monthly salary of a Titanic band member.

352 – the number of songs contained within a book of music given out to First Class passengers. The musicians were expected to know them all, in case passengers made requests.

*All data for this topic was gathered from only one source, and thusly has not been verified, but it does serve the intentions of my use of it here.  https://titanicfacts.net/titanic-orchestra/

I think that given the reality of the situation only a few options seem worth considering.  After having given it some consideration, about a decade of mindful consideration, I came to the position that the example set by this small group of musicians would be a good model for how I might proceed as I come face to face with what we have sown, and what we are in the midst of.  So onward I go, trying to provoke smiles, and lightness of heart.  Yesterday I watched a grown woman dancing thru a farmer's market to my music and giving me a big thumbs up, smile beaming from her face.  I saw little kids, nervously approach my guitar case and drop in a dollar that their mother's had provided, make eye contact with me, and then scamper off with a grin.

    What else is there to do, given the reality of the situation?

From: https://guymcpherson.com/only-love-remains/

After all, as I’ve known for a long time, birth is lethal. Nobody gets out alive, a notion that applies to cultures and species as well as individuals. My perceived lack of empathy led some to conclude I was a sociopath. Or a psychopath. My two-sizes-too-small brain can’t customarily distinguish the two. Those insulting me cannot distinguish between sociopathy and psychopathy, either.

Long familiar with his talent as a guitarist, I didn’t think the words of Jimi Hendrix applied to my world: “When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.” Recently I’ve begun to question my earlier sentiments.

    I suppose if I ever had a band I might have called it "The STO" the acronym for "The Sinking of the Titanic Orchestra".

I'll keep playing as long as it's fun, and then I might do an encore.

Peace