Tag: Music

creativity · Me · Music

“What you don’t know, you can feel it somehow.” 🎤

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I always liked the song Beautiful Day for its optimism and presence.

It’s a beautiful day. Don’t let it get away.

Sure, that’s the obvious takeaway and a great reminder that every day counts.

But the last part of the song has been inspiring me even more as I dig into a scary new skill, which I hope is the right kind of difficult for me: playing, singing, and eventually writing my own songs. 😱

I do not have a good track record here so far.

I have spent most of my life as the kind of guy who could play Stairway to Heaven on guitar and be done with it. “I’m a guitarist.” 🤷🏻‍♂️ Then I recorded a cover with a friend and built up some confidence.

What I really want is to do find my own voice. Literally.

Despite never considering myself a singer (and consistently receiving negative feedback whenever I have tried 😆) I am jumping into singing with the help of an expert music teacher who always sees the best possibilities.

And that’s half the journey.

Touch me, take me to that other place
Reach me, I know I’m not a hopeless case

Which brings me to the best part of Beautiful Day: the last bit, the part about forgetting what you don’t have now and feeling your way, somehow, into the new.

What you don’t have, you don’t need it now
What you don’t know, you can feel it somehow

Stay tuned. 🎤

What a beautiful day.

Quotes · The World

“I don’t understand the purpose of war.”

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I talk about the news sometimes with my daughter, who is in middle school.

Today I told her that Israel was attacked, and hundreds are dead. I played the The Daily for her in the car. It described unarmed people being indiscriminately mowed down by gunmen, people being abducted, families being intentionally ripped apart.

And that’s just day one.

It was a hard thing to have to play for my daughter, but I want her to know what people are capable of at their worst.

She listened silently for about 20 minutes. When we stopped the car, you could tell she was moved and deeply saddened. She pretty well boiled it down in a few words.

That’s a sad story. I don’t understand the purpose of war.

Well said, my friend.

She asked why this happened, and I tried to explain it: all the history and terrible conditions and politics and religion and blah blah blah blah blah. Here eyes glazed over.

Because it didn’t make sense to her.

Because, it really just doesn’t make any fucking sense. Nobody wins this thing.

Intentionally killing scores of unarmed people at a music festival is not a military operation and can never be justified no matter how twisted your logic is, Hamas, you idiots. By now most of the people who did killing are dead too, certainly burning in hell if there is such a thing.

Sometimes a war is necessary, but this one seems to have gotten off to a really shitty start even with that framing.

Good luck, everyone in Israel and Gaza.

I really hope there is a Good Friday Agreement somewhere in your future so you can one day make some sweet tunes with your family instead of cutting off the water supply and burying bodies.

Songs

From a barber shop to an AirBnb to a kitchen table to a “metro gnome”, we made a song 🎧

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It took us a few months, but my barber Emily and I made a real song, and now it’s out on all the streaming services!

After picking a song tother, I recorded the initial backing track at an AirBnb in Miami. Then came recording her initial vocals at my house, her adding more vocals on her iPhone in her car, a spreadsheet picking the best vocal parts from 14 takes, figuring out when (and when not) to use left-and-right vocal tracks, and most of all, learning when to call it done.

At Emily’s wise insistence, our first song is a cover (let’s start slowly), of Sir Chloe’s song Animal. This is our first toe in the water of making music, published as the band CRIMELESS.

Here is Sir Chloe’s original version.

And finally, there was also the metronome, aka “metro gnome”, that came up in a late night chat.

God now I gotta find a fuckin garden gnome and paint it as the GNOME OF TIME

Or… a well-dressed, sexually ambiguous gnome.

Our expectations are grounded; this is just a hobby. We are not expecting to get rich off of this, or even make a dime. We just wanted to see what we can do musically and make something real happen. ✅

Songs

Coming soon: Animal worldwide

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With our cover of Sir Chloe’s song Animal in the bag, it’s time to make it official. Cover rights are being secured (thanks to DistroKid) , and then it’s headed to streaming services worldwide.

Did you really think we’d just say, “Oh that’s cool, we did a cover.” and that would be the end of it? Nah, we want you to be able to just casually look us up on Spotify, Apple Music. We want you to be able to play this song using Siri.

We’re releasing Animal under the band name CRIMELESS.

Picking a band name was a fun but involved process. We came up with 90 good band name ideas (still under secret file), eventually narrowed it down to three finalists that we both liked, and then I told Emily, “If you have a fav of these, I’m down with it!” She liked Crimeless, adding:

Ok do all caps. SO ITS IN YOUR FACE. LOLOL

Go big or go home. 💪