We conventionally place a high value on originality in music. But it’s been my experience that the desire for originality gets in the way of making music that’s actually good. The closer you are to your influences, the more definite and truthful your work is. The key to quality music is to blend together an …
Monthly Archives: November 2010
Hawaii, part five
See the photos First stop yesterday was Kipuka Puaulu, a rainforest bird park on the lower slopes of Mauna Loa. We heard more birds than we saw, aside from the many pheasants crisscrossing the trail. Hawaii is absolutely infested with pheasants. There’s a phrase I don’t find myself typing very often.
Hawaii, part four
See the photos After the better part of a day taking care of urgent internet business, and the not-so-urgent business of finding me something to read on the plane home, we finally made it outside to do something Hawaii-y: a trip to Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park, on Snorkel Bob’s list of recommended snorkeling locations. While …
Hawaii, part three
See the photos We took our first trip off the Kona coast and went to check out the more rugged and rural north coast of the Big Island. A lot of the drive took us up the seemingly endless lava plain that makes up the northwest quarter of the island. It looks a lot like …
Hawaii, part two
See the photos Lovely as it is here in Kona, it does have kind of a Disneyland quality. Anna did a great job of getting us out of the tourist rut for our second day here. She was poking around food web sites looking for interesting places to eat. That led her to a discussion …
Hawaii, part one
See the photos First of all, what are we even doing here? Anna’s dad had been sitting on a timeshare for years, and he finally concluded that he was never going to use it. So he offered it to us, and we thought, great, Hawaii. Anna’s been before, but I haven’t been anywhere remotely tropical, …
The mystical tritone
I’ve picked up some new guitar students lately, so I’m once again doing a lot of explaining what a tritone is and why people should care. Whenever I find myself explaining something a lot, I like to encapsulate it as a blog post. So here we go. A tritone is the interval between the notes …
Capturing sound
I was doing a frivolous Google search for the Simpsons episode where Bart, Nelson, Milhouse and Ralph form a boy band. They’re in the studio singing, and they sound terrible, until the producer pushes a huge button labeled “studio magic.” Then suddenly they sound like the Backstreet Boys. While I was digging through the Google …