Obsessed, Or Just Plain Stubborn?

You Belong Among Them...

Last week’s Bonus Round: “Cold Weather Blues” is the first track on side two of Muddy Water’s 1964 album “Folk Singer”.

“Folk Singer is the fourth studio album by Muddy Waters, released in January 1964 by Chess Records. The album features Waters on acoustic guitar, backed by Willie Dixon on string bass, Clifton James on drums, and Buddy Guy on acoustic guitar. It is Waters's only all-acoustic album. Numerous reissues of Folk Singer include bonus tracks from two subsequent sessions, in April 1964 and October 1964.

Despite not charting in any country, Folk Singer received critical acclaim; most reviewers praised its high-quality sound, especially on remastered versions, as well as the instrumentation. In 2003, the album was ranked number 280 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time….

…Folk Singer is an "unplugged" recording and differs from his earlier albums, which featured an electric blues sound. The title of the album was chosen by Chess Records because it was recorded during the time when folk music was popular. In order to appeal to fans of folk music, Chess recorded a more acoustic album with two acoustic guitarists. Buddy Guy was hired as the second guitarist. Other guitarists played on bonus tracks.[5] Guy played on all original songs, except the last song, "Feel Like Going Home", together with Waters.[6]

The recording took place at the Ter Mar Recording Studios, in Chicago, in September 1963, and was produced by Willie Dixon.[7] The original vinyl release includes nine songs, most of which are performed at a slower tempo, with the exception of the uptempo "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl". During recording, Waters emphasized his singing with hums and sighs.[8].” Credit: Wikipedia

---

Yesterday’s “links” post included this link to what I think is a really important concept: Momentum. The article is specifically about songwriting, but I think it resonates across a lot of what we do as musicians, not specifically to the habits we form as guitarists, vocalists, or songwriters. When life, or the weather, or any of dozens of other things, all equally important to our musician lives, intrude on our practice time, rehearsal, recording or promoting our own music it’s easy to just say “tomorrow, imma be all over that”. I’m not offering solutions, but some insights from the article may be good reminders of how to prioritize, and I readily admit that music isn’t always the most important thing that absolutely has to happen in that moment.

---

Nonetheless, here we go (quoting the article first):

“Don't spend too long on any one idea. Get it to a certain place and then either scrap it or publish it — or harvest part of it for something else. But tweaking it 1000 times is often counter-productive. 

Be willing to throw out ideas you love.Watching Kimbra work on a demo from scratch was interesting because she would come up with so many great melodic ideas — and then throw them out a minute later. She had faith that more good ideas would come. 

Don't obsess over any one song. If a song isn't working, put it on the shelf and come back to it. For RJD2, that means if he spends longer than 15 min working on it without progress, he'll move on. For Kiefer, making an album means making 40 tracks and picking 8 of them. 

Be flexible about what finished looks like."Finished" can look like a lot of different things depending on what stage you're at in your journey. Maybe it's a single-take, maybe it's got a live feel, maybe it's more of a demo, maybe it's not quite where you want it yet but on the path, etc. 

Trust the process. The best way to get better is to make a lot of stuff, so it's OK to pause or publish something with the idea that your next release will be even better. The only dead end is getting stuck” Credit: Soundfly

---

Next, my thoughts on the above:

First: “Don't spend too long on any one idea.” - sometimes you need to, though. I’ll have an idea for a hook, maybe some lyrics to go along with it, maybe a bit of a chord progression suggests itself and I can’t let it go until I get something on paper (or at least into a word processing chord chart template I keep on my computer and phone), or start playing it, get frustrated and stubbornly keep at it until it bends itself to my will (tho, admittedly it doesn’t always do that…stupid song). I think family, friends, paying the bills and whatever else comes up that day need equal attention, but I also get pretty much “in the zone” when I just need to get it right. Always a balancing act.

Next: “Be willing to throw out ideas you love.” - I’d significantly modify this to: “don’t fail to capture on paper or in a note ideas that you love that may not work for a particular project, but may end up being useful in themselves or as inspiration for something else in the future” - that said, I agree with the concept that especially when you are “in the zone”, more good ideas will come to you - capture all of them somehow!

And: “Don't obsess over any one song.” - I wholeheartedly agree with this. It’s kind of like the first idea of not spending too long on any one thing, but in my experience, I kinda know when staleness and diminishing returns begin to set in when I’m working on something. That’s probably time to shelve obsession for the day or even longer and move on to something else. I do periodically review unfinished projects, hooks I’ve captured in the moment, partially written lyrics, and such - even the settings on my recording gear (almost always room for improvement there, but also easy to make things worse, too…sigh…). Sometimes when I review things I’ll catch an insight and continue with whatever I’m reviewing, modify it, or just plain wonder why I ever thought it was a good idea in the first place. Your mileage may vary.

This, so much this: “Be flexible about what finished looks like” - I constantly revise and rearrange songs I’ve written, even the ones I’ve already recorded to the point of thinking of them as being finished, and even ones I’ve copyrighted (copyrighted songwriters own the arrangement, but it’s also important to copyright the Master Recording of your songs - that’s evidence of a musical “arrangement” of your song). A funny saying one of my bosses in a previous career used to move things along in interminable staff meetings just popped into my head while I was writing that: “While there’s no horse too dead to beat, maybe it’s time to move on here” - yep, and good advice for staff meetings, but in songwriting and arranging, there’s also no song too finished to preclude coming back to and working on later.

Finally: “Trust the process” - the “process” should be everything above and whatever other routines and good luck charms and superstitions work for you. If it’s not working today, it’s possibly a dead horse that requires further beating. Or today might be the day to rethink it, or just go away and come back a little later. I’ve certainly tried all of those things, and I’m not so driven that I think a little time spent on something completely different can’t help get things back on track. Maybe.

Enough to think about for now - we all have songs waitin’…

An eclectic “What I’m Listening To”:

Bonus Round: (Remember - another clue is in the subtitle above…) They grow wild…

Cheers and keep playing!!

Michael Acoustic