New Creative Perspectives

Let's be honest.  On some level the Singer-Songwriter paradigm has been successfully, and fully mined by some of the world's greatest musical artists.  That is not to say the art form is dead or irrelevant - far from it, there are countless amazing songs being turned out even today - but the fact is that the notion of innovation in the genre is a good bit less present.  The sense of "Wow! I never expected that." Is not really all the common.  There are certainly great shows and amazing performances and all that, but that is not really what I am referring to.  I am looking more at the notion of approach to the craft.

So, as I am completing the writing of my next CD, I have decided to conduct a little musical experiment on myself.  Worse case, I will have some great teaching opportunities with my students with regard to technology and how it relates to the creative process; but my real hope is to push my own musical perceptions to such a further point that while the sonic end result sounds "normal" the creative/performance process of the individual tracks is new, unique, and inspiring.

Here's one example: The Matrix Piano.  Now there are lots of far better musicians than I, using devices like the Monome, or the new Launchpad,  and others to interface with sound; but, with respect to their work, the results generally seem somewhat musically counter intuitive, and many times I am - granted cinically - left with the thought, "OK, but where is the song?"

(Forgive the overly jargon based next bit, by the way...) What I am working with right now is developing a viable matrix on an 8x8 grid MIDI controller that will allow for diatonic based musical thoughts processed through a vastly different perspective that the standard piano keyboard.  To be fair, I am also working with the same 8x8 matrix in a more guitar fingerboard based context just to cover another base.  We'll see.

The point is that if I am very lucky the end result will be music that is still considered viable and appealing to the listener, but the content more compelling due to the shift in creative process priorities - or more to the point my perspective on the creation/performance of the songs.  As I said, if nothing else, this should provide some pretty cool teaching moments, which is no small benefit in and of itself.

Oh, for those few of you who have been emailing and such about the new CD's progress, I promise, even with this new creative approach, it is very much in the works, the music is something pretty special, and I'd like to think worth the wait; but, in the end, all that I suppose is up to you.