What Did Rhymes Ever Do?
Is it just me or has it become ‘cool’ these days for songwriters to go out of their way not to rhyme? I’ve never been terribly pro-rhyme, necessarily, but obviously there are both good and bad examples of very rhymy songs and very non-rhymy songs. I’m for a certain looseness and naturalness when it comes to these things.
But for those in the “It’s Way Cool Not To Rhyme”‘ camp, or anyone considering joining, just hold on a second. Just cool out! I bet you never thought of it this way before:
[the Tim said this in a recent email and I totally agree!]
“…That’s one of the things I took away from Kimya [Dawson]: periodic rhymes help push stories forward, create spaces and provide navigational anchors on the part of the listener who is being exposed to this massive stream of words.”
Three very important things mentioned in that one sentence that rhymes do. Think about it. If you’re averse to rhyming in your songs, maybe you’ve just been doing it badly?… Songwriting is a subtle art, after all. Don’t give up and don’t blame the rhymes.
Okay, I think we all know some Bruce Lee is in order:
” When one has reached maturity in the art, one will have a formless form. It is like ice dissolving in water. When one has no form, one can be all forms; when one has no style, he can fit in with any style.”
“In primary freedom, one utilizes all ways and is bound by none.”
Keeping Your Spark Lit
A wee niblet of good advice from Mr. Handy:
Little reminder about how to keep your spark lit without feeling overwhelmed, even though I’ve pontificated on this at greater length in my big ol’ SERIES: Forget that you have “work to do”. Just turn on the freaking software that you use, load something in, and listen to it. That’s your only requirement. It’s as easy as sitting around listening to iTunes, only instead of clicking on the iTunes icon, you click on the Tracktion icon. Or the Audacity icon. Or Logic, or Audition, or Pro Tools, or whatever you use. Don’t worry about getting work done; just go in like you’re there to listen. Be curious about it. The initiative to start monkeying with it will come on its own, and even if it doesn’t come immediately, that’s fine. You’re visiting that realm — that’s the most important thing!
Music Strategy Guru of the Day :: Bruce Warila
I’ve been devouring the “unsprung wisdom” of newly discovered (by me) Bruce Warila this morning. I was impressed by his comments on the following post by Andrew Dubber, and happy was I to find that he has his own blog. He seems to know his shit and provides some good counter-insights to those of Andrew, who also seems to know his shit in these areas, so the plot has just thickened. The fact that they both make excellent arguments while disagreeing on several points is a great thing. I’m really thinking now. I’m reminded anew to stay on my toes and keep questioning when in comes to all these theories going around about the direction of music and the music industry.
It’s important that we as artists pay close attention to this stuff (that’s why I’m excited about this Bruce guy and passing it on to you), but also that, above all else, we trust our own instincts and rely on our own creativity. Nomatter how informed or expert someone may be in these areas, they don’t know it all, and there are other pieces to the puzzle.
But, that said, I’ve been “tumblr-quoting” the hell out of Bruce’s stuff, my non-bullshit detector (the oppposite of my bullshit detector) going off like crazy, and that’s a good sign that he’s onto some important things. He’s certainly sparking a lot of creative thought for me, even getting me re-excited about business strategies (a wave I need to ride when it’s high, so I’m going to wrap this up with some quotes now). Most significant to me is what he’s getting at in this post:
“A MySpace page dotted with fancy graphics, YouTube videos, slide shows and images, and a shitty music player was great in 2005, but this is 2007! A page of stuff is no longer compelling. We need something that really blows the socks off people.”
“Advice: Time to pick up the pace people. You need to learn how to be entertaining on the Internet. You may want to go out and buy the TV (yourband.tv) domain for your band. You need to start looking at your band like a television network. Have a filmmaker and a writer join your band, choose a theme, write a story, lash in your music, create episodes, write notes about your story on your blog, engage fans, develop characters, have a storyline, create a soundtrack, etc. Stop using your Internet presence to be INFORMATIVE, use it to be ENTERTAINING!”
“Nobody is going to make money selling $.99 cent downloads. Sell your music to some and give it away to everyone else that refuses to pay for music. Use your music as the bait that brings people into your shows and onto your new ENTERTAINING website/blog. If you make great music and you are entertaining, you will make money. By the time you learn how to incorporate story, basic film making, blogging, and how to be episodic - into your repertoire, the industry will have the tools you need to profit from all of your efforts - and your registered fans.”
Indie Syndrome: Humility Overkill
Returning to the topic of self-image and public perception (and glamour!), remember what I said in this post?
“Get yourself some bling and unabashedly pose it up for some cameras. We’re all too cool these days … You’re the star of your own show, why not act like it?”
Another way of putting that, which is the subject of today’s episode is, don’t be so sickeningly humble. I’m working on kicking this one in the ass myself. In related news, I’m starting to get the sneaking suspicion my album is going to be amazing. No, let me rephrase that better: it totally is going to be amazing. But more on that later.
My point: ‘indie kids’ need to venture outside the quaint little picket-fenced psychological suburbs of indie pop/rock and start learning more from hip-hop artists. The mentality is very very different.
Keith Handy has asked that the following plea to performing songwriters be passed along for the sake of the greater good. I was going to anyway because it’s pretty spot-on:
“…stop using the phrases ’shameless plug’ and/or ’shameless self-promotion’. They were self-effacingly funny the first few times, but now that they’re commonplace, they come off like a desperate, passive aggressive sales pitch … Just say what needs to be said — ‘we’re blahblahblah, we’re at blahblahblah.com, our CD is over there… thanks for coming’ — and trim off the fat.
“Trust that your music has value of its own, independent of your salesmanship. It’s okay to be polite and show appreciation to your listeners, but there’s no need to reinforce the notion that your music is on a “lower rung” by repeatedly reminding the audience that you really really hope they’ll go to your website, and oh gosh you’d be so grateful if they’d please consider buying a CD because it’s so cheap.
“Let’s all stop acting like wussies and present our music with the simple confidence it deserves.”
“Commercially successful artists like to thank their audience for supposedly ‘making them what they are’, but the fact is, the audience didn’t pick out the chords or fuss over the lyrics. That has to be done alone, by the artist, in a void where he has no immediate feedback from anywhere but his gut…”
“…stop playing up your ‘indieness’ and just focus on being kickass.“
‘nough said. I trust you’ll do the right thing.
Gyrus On Glamour
In response to my recent post about Glamour!, fellow godstar and friend of the show Gyrus had this little brilliant snippet to add to the conversation (in an email, but quoted here with permission) :
“I guess we who critique Western civilization have a tendency to react to the whole surface artifice thing, and being more “natural” ends up being associated with being plain and a bit grubby! But how many indigenous people spend ages adorning and beautifying themselves? And hey, if you want natural, check out all those birds with stupendous plumage! We really do need to rediscover that natural parading and glorifying, without getting sucked too far into the mass-media gloss that parasitizes that sort of stuff … It seems like a strange issue to get involved with as we teeter on the brink of ecological catastrophe… but oddly it seems important. Maybe it’s important to us people who’ve invested so much energy in suppressing that natural strutting about… Now’s the time when people with ideas like ours need to get noticed more!”