Haunted

Haunted

This is more than I can handle

This is more than I can take

This is more than I bargained for

I still hear your voice - still see your face

Now the shadows are closing in

And the light’s fading from your eyes

And as time stands still

You've held on for me for one more night

All I needed

All I wanted

All dreamed of 

Now I’m haunted - haunted

So much I still need to say

So much I still need to do

So much I still need to explain

So much I still need from you

The walls are closing in on me

(And) I’m lost inside my head

But I guess that's were I need to be

Right now instead

All I needed

All I wanted

All dreamed of 

Now I’m haunted - haunted

All I believe 

All I know

I'm holding on

Cuz I can't let go 

There is no silver lining

I'm too empty too consumed 

There's no such thing as a better place 

Not without you 

All I needed

All I wanted

All dreamed of 

Now I’m haunted - haunted

All I believe 

All I know

I'm holding on

Cuz I can't let go 

© 2014 by Richard Maxwell
any unauthorized use,  duplication, distribution, or broadcast is a violation of applicable laws

*meant to perform this last Friday but my voice gave out.  :(  Recording it soon...

You Cannot Be A Finalist For Grammy™ Educator Of The Year Without Having Had Your Own Amazing Teachers

I am not going to pretend that this list is comprehensive, but the events of Friday, for which I am truly honored and humbled, make me feel more than just a little bit compelled to share this list of my own teachers who impacted me and my practice.  Each one deserves a detailed recounting of their specific influence on me (I will try to add that over time) and I know I will leave off many who deserve to be here. Please forgive me, and I will update this as time goes on to remedy that.


Sycamore Schools (Cincinnati, OH):
Mr. Metzger
Mr. Beeler
Mr. Wagner
Mr. Ronfeldt

Bradley University:
Dr. Heinemann
Dr. Vroman
Dr. Kaizer
Prof. Kaizer
Dr. Sanders
Dr. Jost
Prof. Slotter

Youngstown State University:
Dr. Gage
Dr. Rollin
Dr. Largent

The University Of Arizona:
Prof.  Hanson
Dr. Billups
Dr. Fergison


My sincere apologies for any errors in spelling or omissions.  There are others too who should be on the list.  Like Mr. Fricke - my first private drum teacher.  Or my very first piano teacher who sadly I cannot remember her name but recall vividly my Mom telling me how this teacher, when I was just maybe 6, was so impressed not that I had written a "song" but that I had actually played the notes exactly as I had put them down on the manuscript paper.  Or my elementary school general music teacher, whose name I also, regrettably cannot recall, but still carry with me the true Joy of music that she very much instilled in me at so young an age.   And I cannot forget about Dr. Anne Marie Woolsey, Arcadia's then principal, and Dr. Mitch Simmons, SUSD's director CTE, without either of their support for my original concept for CMAS it would all still just be an idea in my head.  And there are others.  So many others.  So very many musicians and colleagues and students and friends and family from who I have learned so much and who have influenced all I do.

My point is exactly as the title of this post implies.  Nothing happens in a vacuum.  No matter the result of the Grammy™ selection, from the bottom of my heart, thank you all!

The Rhythm Of (Beat) One

I don't know that this will make sense until I start posting some audio/video of me performing some of my new songs (or older songs with new arrangements) but lately I have been really trying to get my head, musically, around the idea of ultra minimalist percussion as a way to control a song's momentum.

Like so many others, in recent years I've been quite taken with Mumford and Sons, and particularly Marcus's way of controlling a song with just a bass drum and occasionally some additional tambourine.   It's not that he's doing anything that has not been done before musically, but his execution is quite another story.

He's fronting the band, playing guitar, and ALSO playing these percussion parts with his feet.  The songs are amazing, but as a musician there is also an entire other level of brilliance to behold. And I have found that his take on percussion to control momentum has really been influencing me.

The trouble is that - and here is where the audio/video are kinda needed to make sense of things - my performance rig doesn't allow me quit the same level of rhythmic flexibility as Marcus.  I'm creating many layers all at once, but I;m not looping anything, and so, quite frankly, my feet are already rather occupied with other tasks most of the time to make all the layers happen.  FYI, in simplest terms, I ma playing the main riff on guitar, with a bass line, with some percussion, with some strings underneath if I want, with a solo line on either the guitar and/or a piano, all at the same time.  No looping. Yes, I know that sounds absurd, but that's my rig.  Really.  Yeah, I'll post video soon.

In any case, at this point, my ability to play the rig means that I cannot create too elaborate percussion lines.  Lots of 4-on-the-floor kinda things right now.  But I also have been finding that I need some kind of percussion variations beyond just playing or not to make the songs really work.

Enter the 1/8 note.  Such a simple and easily accessible variation, but yet I could not see it for a long time.  Could not hear it in context.  Yet now there is a great sense of variation in momentum at my disposal.

I know this all has made little or no sense, and I know that I need to post video of the rig in action for that to be resolved, but I have just bee so overcome by the simple musical elegance of this that I wanted to quickly post something.  Much more coming very soon....

Some Quick Thoughts On Neil Young's New Music System, Pono, Designed To "Bring Back...The Goosebumps"

No, have not heard for myself Neal Young's new Pono audio player, but I like the idea behind it.  For the sake of time (or rather my limited available right now) I won't go in to too much, but I did wanna just quickly make some comments.  (Likely complete with typos and grammatical errors.)

Forgetting the cost of Pono (about $100 more than an iPod Touch) and the comparatively smaller number of tracks currently available (only about 600K) the notion of better fidelity has been haunting the digital age pretty much since its inception.

There's a lot of talk for studio folks about recording higher resolutions, but the final products always seem wind up as far lower res mp3s.  And in some ways that's ok.  If nothing else the mp3 has increased accessibility to a far larger library of music than before.  And piggy backing on to that is the reality that in many ways, in today's world, being heard at all, even at lower res, is far better than no one hearing you at all.  It's a trade off.  I'll leave the philosophical discussion for another time as to if it's worth it or not.  (It's an important discussion, but not one there is time for just now...)  Anyway....

I remember the birth of the CD.  The loss of "warmth" and "depth" of sound.  The loss of full sized album covers.  The "sterility."  And so on...

And things have changed.  Compression has gotten better.  And our eases have gotten worse in some ways.  We now tolerate the lower fidelity to the point of many of us not even really aware of what it's lower than, not even aware of the original baseline, yet we cannot handle the slightest "pitchy-ness."  The irony of the loss of art in the whole matter is both ironic and sad.  But also for another discussion.

My point is simply that weather Pono succeeds in the market or not, it's a step in the right direction.  It's attempting to restore the feel of the listening experience to what it once was.  How can that possibly be bad.  And, if it does work, as Neal claims, then it's totally worth the extra money.

Now if we could just get people to actually buy albums again in full instead of almost always ala cart.  Now that would really be something amazing for us to return to.

Here the origin lost i just saw today about Pono:
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/neil-youngs-pono-music-system-almost-ready-to-rock-in-100182858224.html