Now, because most don’t set an alarm to get up just before dawn to capture the beauty of a sunrise, it stands to reason sunsets are the prevalent shot between the two scenes. And I got to thinking, what do my senses tune to just before sunrise, and what would I observe if I couldn’t see a sunrise?

To that question I’d say it depends on where I’m at… the city, the country, the suburbs? What about the time of year? Is it winter or summer, spring or fall?

We’ve become such a tactile-visual society, with everything needing to be now. So, at least for me, my awakening is that I’m missing the beauty of scents and sounds one only perceives in quiet solitude, observing the revile of dawn with eyes wide shut.

Just as each day’s dawn offers a fresh start, each year Easter offers a new beginning, too. One for fresh hope and rekindled faith. Exactly what I need to satisfy my soul’s hunger. Perhaps I’ll start with the fact there’s more to a sunrise than what’s visible.

I had no idea Scott had just recorded his second CD in the last three years and he generously offered to mail me a copy… no brainer, I said, bring it on! The title of the project is “Far From Close Enough”, and it was recorded/produced in Asheville, NC at Chris Rosser’s Hollow Reed Arts Recording Studio, same as Scott’s first CD.

This isn’t a review of Scott’s project, more a shout out to encourage anyone that happens by to check out this record. It’s simple, tight and full of tasty musical and lyrical nuggets that go just as well with some Tennessee whiskey or a 30 year old bottle of Pinot Noir.

I asked Scott to share a few words about himself and his new record:

“With my song writing, I refrain from genre and just write what comes. I am from Nashville, love Dylan, Hiatt, Earle, and Lovett, and played jazz upright bass in grad school-so there you have the major influences. When I find the intersection between lyrics and melody I try to find something to do with the song that stretches me – even if is just the arrangement.

Favorite song [on the new record]? Wow tough question! I like them all, but will give the nod to Bad Day in Bucharest and the Tofu band! I love the folk stuff, but still like to boogie.”

Hope you get a chance to hop over to Scott’s site and check out his material, please leave a comment here so I know you did!

Recent adds to my studio capabilities are Toontrack’s EZ Mix (2) and a different way of stringing an acoustic guitar known as Nashville Tuning.

To setup one of my guitars to Nashville Tuning, I picked up a set of D’Addario EJ38H strings, followed the instructions found HERE, and was up and running in no more time than a normal string change. The tuning is the same except the strings 3-6 are roughly the same gauge as strings 1-4 are normally, and tuned an octave higher.

Later in the day, I fired up my MXL V69 through ART/TCS compressor. After toggling different settings in EZ Mix till I got one to my liking, I tracked an acoustic part on a sort of pop sounding song I’m producing and love the contrast! There are no low notes on the acoustic (low E is roughly the same gauge as a normal D-string), and the tonality brightened the overall sound of the piece.

One note about EZ Mix, it’s a good addition to my other effects/processors, but I’ve just started playing with all the combinations. While I don’t see it being exclusive to what I might do production-wise, it provides a quick way to preview setting for specific scenarios. One cool thing I found right away is I can combine Logic’s Amps with EZ Mix effects, reverb, etc., and get some rich, full tones very quickly. There are also extended preset packages by pro-producers I may look into down the road.

So it was a great week of listening, on a few different fronts, including getting a CD in the mail from an artist friend who just cut his second full length record. More on that project in the next week or two. That’s all for this week, hope any of it helps!

But every now and then I’ll be on the road or a party and throw caution to the wind and go for those wings or big burger or baby backs with a side of onion rings. I’m chowing, thinking, eureka, two hours later I’m thinking, it’s yogurt and fruit the next two days for lunch.

It’s kinda like this of late with productivity. So, I write, track a part, mix some tracks, post work tapes for evaluation, network, go to workshops… all the stuff I’m supposed to be doing to keep scuffing my baby shoes and feel good about any semblance of progress. And like I said in last week’s post, when my brain is out of gas, I do busy work to better organize the catalog, call a co-writer just to see how they are doing, listen to a podcast or watch a web cast, learn more about my DAW and tools, Mac system maintenance, the list is endless!

Then there are times when, much like “happy eating”, I go for a drive to a small town within an hours’ distance just to say I did. Or, go out on a work night to catch a set or two at a local venue and still be home for Nightline, or watch a movie, stare at the bird feeder, cook a pot of chile, or take a long hot shower in the middle of the afternoon.

Point is, when things get sterile, the routine needs to be shocked, the system jolted, ideas refreshed. Sometimes this will happen serendipitously, more often than not, I have to make it happen, as I did this past week.

Ready, set… go.

One might compare songwriting to fishing. How often is it I don’t get a bite, no ideas seem to pan out, half finished songs stay half finished, confidence wains, motivation sputters, and I feel like packing it in, why bother?

I’ve found when all else fails, it’s time to get busy with other aspects of being an indie musician and wanna be artist. There’s writing blog posts, learning more about Logic, practicing already written songs, learning covers, on and on. There is no shortage of worthwhile activities that stimulate creativity and positively impact productivity, which I’m also tracking summarily once a week.

This weekend alone was productive because I took this approach and got a new co-writing relationship started, cleaned and organized my workspaces, upgraded OS on the laptop, hooked up with an old college buddy who still makes a good portion of his living playing music, plus some reading, recording and still had time to workout and get some R&R!

A post a week isn’t much, but it’s what I committed to and done 7-weeks in a row! At some point, I’ll get a bite, maybe even catch a fish, until then, I’ll keep my hook in the water and enjoy the breeze.

Since this may be the first and only post of mine you read, let’s level set. I’m very much a part-time artist/writer and have realistic expectations for myself. That doesn’t mean I just go with the flow and call it good enough. I need to be weird and express my art my way, end of story.

And I do, just not enough. I’m sure if I get one new song a month out to anyone who will listen, I’ll keep the small base I’ve got and grow it incrementally. But listeners want new, it’s just the way society rolls today. New styles and new stuff from those whose sound or voice or lyrics once generated intrigue.

The only way I’m going to qualify as weird is to keep it all me. So the influences and mindset and emotions of the time I’m in come out “me”, not targeting any one specific pool of listeners, but getting my songs out to the broadest mass of listeners possible to find where my weirdness fits. So many wonderful musicians and artists, all over the world, I likely should stop trying and put my time, energy and resources into something else. Maybe I will, maybe the weirdness will soon make it clear what that path might be.

Sound weird? I hope so.

Fuse the piles, I get stones. The stones together create a foundation, something to build on. Each song a stone, part of a catalog, a record or EP.

When I look up a mountain, I see boulders and stones protruding the earth, I wonder, will I be able to scale to the top? But do I need to scale the top? Or simply take another path with upward steps toward the horizon, where I can get a better view of the top?

My working to do list includes:

1. A rewrite of a sort-of-country song for a second evaluation
2. Tracking a song I’m rewriting as I go to present at a feedback session in a couple of weeks, one of 3-4 songs for a homegrown EP to share with fans by mid-year (another list in itself)
3. A scratch track of chords/melody for an idea to send to a new co-writer who is a lyricist

I might view each of these efforts as a mountain. If I stand at the base of any of these mountains, pondering the climb, I’ll likely see the top of neither. This week I started walking up alternate pathways, stopping but briefly enjoy a glimpse of each peak, then pressing on up the steady incline.

So instead of pushing to say I’m doing something when I’m exhausted, I go still. Let the body have what it needs, and work the odd, late hours to scratch out a verse or develop a character or refine a melody and chord progression. The key for me is to keep at it, building “widgets” that someday come together into song or story.

I’ve also made a point over the last couple of Sundays to take in a message, whether at church or TV, words and ideas that challenge me to simplify and get back to the foundational faith that helps me keep focus. And though the 3-4 messages were not the same, I’ve got a single theme resonating in my head: be ready for what’s next, which I’m tagging as “aggressively waiting.”

Not much is as I would “like” it to be right now. But in review of even the last 12 months I can honestly say I’ve been taking the right approach to use of the thin slices of time I can allocate to moving my writing and music ahead. I was overloaded, so I reduced the scope of what I was involved with. Spent some weeks reviewing 101-level courses and materials and got more material out for feedback and pitch opportunities.

Yesterday, I met with a song plugger and go some candid insight as to what a song plugger looks for and how they go about their day to day business. Got some not so favorable feedback on a song I thought was ready to pitch.

One area that in need of immediate attention is getting ideas recorded. Not sure why this is such a struggle, but it’s likely the number one issue with my writing at this point in time. Not to sound too geeky, but this baby just got top priority in the grand scheme of my little world.

Being roughly two weeks behind on outputs and commitments is a bit discouraging, but I go back to point one, don’t over extend physically, but adapt and recover. This isn’t a race. I’m not building a skyscraper, I’m trying to be an artist, writer and musician. And be the best I can be while being a husband, father and work a mentally draining day gig.

There’s no way of telling how far my efforts will take me, or if any real opportunities will come from these efforts, it’s a waiting game. Whether I’ll be prepared when/if opportunity knocks it TOTALLY up to me.

First, determine if what I’ve written as verse one should really be first two? If I’m stumped writing verse two, maybe it’s because I didn’t do a good job at setting up the who, what, when, where and why. Further, it could be the information in verse two is more supporting the hook than setting up said hook.

A simple example might be, if the title/hook is “Up”, and my first verse is about what I see from the vantage of being up, is perhaps to make this point of view verse two and write verse one the portray what it’s like to be down and how I get or got to the “up” vantage point.

Another approach to clean up in verse two is how the time sequence or scenario moves ahead. I don’t want too big a gap in time, like going from childhood to deathbed, the listener will likely get lost and tune out. Conversely, I don’t want the second verse to be stagnant and go nowhere. Just as verse one must naturally progress to the chorus, verse two needs to move the idea forward to a new place or time and either maintain or [better yet] increase emotionally intensity.

This week I attended a great couple of online workshops on commercial writing that can be applied to any type of writing. One that I feel is going to help me write verses, at least I’ve interpreted, is to not make hooks too specific, which could lead to limiting how broad the brush strokes I’ll have for the verse. The key to verses is the singer’s relationship to other characters and how emotion is woven throughout. Most listeners don’t care about clever hooks if the verses are sterile and don’t take them on an emotional journey.

Verse one and chorus have to generate the intrigue. If the listener isn’t “in” by then, I won’t have to worry about how messy verse two might be, the listener won’t be there to care.

One of these is a weekly blog post, begging the question, “what for?” Unsure anyone reads a letter of a word I write, it’s easy to dismiss the effort, except that my goal (singular) for 2012 is to become a better writer. Not just songwriter, writer, period.

Not that this hasn’t been the goal for some eight years running now, but it feels as though I just learned to walk and it’s time to venture and discover where writing will take me. Ideas, like bubbles in the wind blow away, most often never heard from again. Vivid dreams, a thousand different shaped light bulbs illuminating the path, turning dark when I wake, ideas yet for the taking.

So it’s week two of the “blog post a week” regimen, here it is. Ideas, emanate onto paper off the pencil, onto the monitor off the keyboard. Another couple of regimens feed an objective to encapsulate fragments into songs, short stories, poems and the like.

Fireflies in mason jars, captured but alive; then, released, for all the see and hear.