My personal thoughts on making music

 

 

1) Music to me is by definition emotion. A song is an island filled with deep emotions and feelings and a song must be able to touch the listener in the heart and soul.
2) I don’t believe in simply copying the original. Try to change a song into your own version of it. For instance in the way you play an instrument and/or sing or change tempo or add different musical arrangements, etc, etc.
3) I don’t mind playing covers of songs. In the classical music world almost everything exists of covers. The music-pieces of composers are often centuries old. In popular music it is no problem playing songs written and recorded by others. Just add what is specifically your own.
4) Music is always subject to people’s personal taste. Your background, culture , the country you live in, your environment, etc, are factors that may influence your musical taste. But all human beings have emotions and feelings. With music you can touch someone in the heart and soul and arouse emotions and feelings.
5) Pure technical skills don’t necessarily mean that a music-piece is conceived as beautiful.
6) It are the listeners who will judge your songs and music. Not you as the musician or other people in the music-business.

 

Music is Feelings

 

Dare to feel emotions again!
That’s my personal motto!
It is what is lacking in most contemporary musical expressions.
 
To me music is emotions
A feeling you get when you listen to music.
A feeling you are left with when the music has finished.
A beautiful feeling, a sad feeling, a melancholic feeling, a feeling of being homesick, a feeling of desire, a feeling of passion, a feeling of infinity, a floating etheric feeling.
 
Feelings and emotions are just simply very important for human beings.
Emotions you keep inside of yourself or you express them in different ways.
One of those ways is making music.
Through the music you can express yourself and your emotions very well.

 

 

Musical Balance

 

I am a mediocre guitarist or in other words my play is of an average level.
With mediocre I mean that I don’t have the skills and techniques of genuine guitar hero’s from the pop- , rock-, or classical-guitar music scene who have my utmost admiration .
I shall mention some examples and names later on.
I don’t think that it matters in my case, because I am not a classical concert-guitarist or otherwise.
I use the guitar only to accompany myself while singing.
That’s what it aims at, it serves to play the instrumental melody I create when making a song.
I’m a singer-songwriter and no more than that.
But I do try to develop and maintain a certain quality in my guitar-play.

 

I am also not a real well trained singer as Andrea Bocelli  or Placido Domingo  and in Il Divo I will not really fit.
But I do try to develop and maintain a certain quality in my voice and singing.
And I do watch my breathing when I’m singing because breathe-control means you control your voice better.
You can control the volume of your voice better and the steadiness of your voice and tone when singing long notes.
It prevents you from singing false.
But I always try to create in my guitar-play and singing an as best as possible synthesis.
A balance that I hope will appeal to the listener.
Balance is important to me.

 

I believe in the concept of balance.
I wear a yin-yang symbol around my neck.
Because it symbolizes to me the sense and concept of balance.
It reminds me that everything in nature must be in balance .
Not only in the physics of the universe and nature and the natural world around us but also in the human mind and the way human beings relate to each other and behave and react to one another.
Nature will always restore the balance if balance has been disrupted.
The same counts for us human beings and in our daily social interaction.
If we disrupt balance we must restore balance otherwise it will be done for us.

 

 

Sometimes an untrained voice might be nicer to listen to.

 

Although I am humbly jealous of someone like the fabulous Sarah Brightman  who in one and the same song can switch from a head-voice to singing from the diaphragm.
I admire her deeply. 

And yes I try to sing in tune as much as possible and to lay a lot of feelings in my singing.
As I said: emotions are important to me.
When people hear me sing it must genuinely appeal to them.
They must think: that’s nice to listen to.
Otherwise it is not good enough to me.

 

But then again: musical tastes differ so very much.
Some people only like well-trained classical singers such as opera-singers.
Some people only like dark raw scraping voices that seem to come straight from the depths of the earth like Leonard Cohen.

Some people only like black R&B or black soul singers .
Some people only like the uncontrolled screaming of singers from  Heavy Metal Bands.
Some people only like the singing of ethnic folk singers from the inlands of Africa , or from the high mountains of the Andes  or the gypsies from the Balkan countries ,etc.
There are so many different styles of music.
Like I said, musical tastes do differ and there’s nothing wrong with that.

 

Besides that, one must always accept the musical preferences and tastes of others.
It’s called RESPECT!
I miss that a lot in this era.
Too many people show too little or no respect at all for the musical taste and preferences of other people.
That bothers me.
The lack of respect.

 

 

My own musical preferences
I like to play acoustic guitars.
I like the tone and sound of a good acoustic guitar.
I like to play 12-string guitars because I simply like the way they sound.
I prefer 12-strings above 6-strings, but that’s personal.
I play both and I must say that nowadays I play the 6-string guitars more often than the 12-string guitars.
 
I like nice melodies and prefer ballads and melodic songs and tunes but I do also like up-tempo songs and music-pieces.
When I play and sing I like to put some of my own emotions and feelings into that song.
I don’t think that’s bad.
Good lyrics are nice too.
Could even be a poem.
Writing my own songs
I do think that it is nicer to write, create, in any sense, your own songs instead of only playing covers.
Though I have no problem whatsoever playing covers.
Or make it a mix if you want.
Combine original songs with covers.
But to write an original song yields so much more satisfaction.
It’s like giving birth to your own musical child.
Create the music, the melody.
Search for the words, the lyrics, make it poetic or story-telling or contemplative.
Make it understandable.
Combine words and music together.
Make the instrumental melody in balance with the vocal melody.
The music and words become one, in harmony, in balance.
Theoretically it sounds almost poetic.
In practice it’s sometimes a disaster and a tiresome process.

When I write my own songs  I mostly write the lyrics first and only when I finished the lyrics I search for a fitting melody, one that suits the lyrics.
And while doing that I do try to create a certain balance between lyrics and music.
Or sometimes I first search for a melody on the guitar, looking for a musical theme I can use to create and build an instrumental melody around.
Or sometimes I hear the tune already in my head before I start playing the guitar.
A guitar however is a very limited instrument as far as using long notes is concerned.
You can’t hold the tone as long as you can do with a violin or cello or even a flute.
A good flute-player who has a well-developed breathing technique can hold on to a note for quite some time.
But nevertheless one can make nice tunes with a guitar though.
I like long notes.
I like melodious music, carrying melodies that can carry the entire weight of one’s deepest emotions!
You can’t do that with fast up-tempo tunes and songs.
Those are just nice to listen to or to start dancing.
What I also like, ha,ha,ha!

I am always trying to figure out what would be the recipe for making a successful song.
I still haven’t got a clue.
I think that the melody must appeal to the listener and of course nice lyrics would help.
But then again, some songs have really stupid lyrics or even total nonsense or made-up fantasy lyrics but they have a catchy melody and for some reason they become world hits.
And of course the performer is an important factor.
A good playing-technique would help, but some tunes are really so simple to play so you don’t need to be a real good guitarist to play them.
Bob Dylan   wrote simple 3 or 4 chord songs and the whole world still plays and sings those songs.
A good voice would help.
But then again, if you hear Joe Cocker sing , not everyone would say that he has a nice-sounding voice.
Or Leonard Cohen  who says of himself that he simply can’t keep tune.
Anyway, Leonard Cohen wrote some really fantastic songs.

And then again: people’s personal musical tastes also matters!
Songs must have a deeper meaning or message to me
I like to write songs that have something to say or have a meaning or reflect the hardness of everyday life.
Just plain  and clear straightforward  down-to-earth lyrics and a good melody.
I wrote a song I named “Father I never thought of you a hero”.
Which tells the story of prisoners of war during World War II working in the coalmines on the island of Kyushu in Japan.
But it is really meant in honour of and in remembrance of all prisoners of war from the past, present and future.

I wrote a song I named “Song for Milly” about a 12-year old girl called Milly Boele who was raped, murdered by a 26-year old neighbour, a policeman, who buried the girl in his backyard, just a stone-throw from her elderly home where her parents still lived.
I actually sang the song for her parents and brother and sister. It’s really about saying goodbye to someone who is dear to you and keeping that person in your mind and memory.

I wrote a song I named “Motherless child” about artist/painter LaReinaWilleke, who as a young child was sexually abused and got into some very bad relationships with wife-beaters (and I don’t mean the sleeveless t-shirts) when she was a young woman.
When she was in her early thirties she found out that her 12-year old daughter was sexually abused ( raped) by a man and something snapped in her mind.
She killed the man and was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment.
She’s currently working as an artist.
See www.lareinawilleke.com if you’re interested in her work.
I wrote a song I named “War child, soldier child”, about children who are forced by grown-ups to fight in their rebel militia groups or army’s in Africa, Asia and Latin-America or wherever and are turned into killers and murderers.
But writing songs about one of the primary and deepest emotions of human beings also appeals to me.
I mean of course: love!
There’s nothing wrong with writing love-songs.
Love is what really makes the world go round.
Love and not money.
You can have all the money in the world and no love at all and die lonely.

I just mean to say that I like to write songs about sensible subjects or things that have a broader or deeper inner meaning or have a broader social content.
Anyway, I just try.
You can write songs about almost everything.
About the birds and the bees, about the fat lady from across the street who likes to gossip, about your lovers toes, about how you like to eat hamburgers, about a horny cow in the meadow.
You can write a thousand songs about a thousand different subjects.
Just write some simple lyrics and paste a simple tune under the words and there’s another song.
But it’s not how many songs you can write; they must also be good songs.
Maybe it’s better to write a few good songs instead of dozens of below the average songs
I also just mean to say, that I preferably like to write songs that do not answer to the mainstream in the contemporary music-business.
If you write a song and add a nice musical arrangement to it with the emphasis on making it “beautiful” you will always find your own public.
Beauty and aesthetics in music and art will always appeal to many people from all over the world.
Don’t limit yourself to a specific region or town or country or continent.
Don’t limit yourself to a specific age-determined group or to a specific ethnical or cultural or language-determined group.
Focus on the whole planet, the entire earth.
In every country, region, town there will be people who will be drawn to
beautiful music.
The beauty and aesthetics in music will win in the end.
I have something against what is called the “mainstream” music.
If you play a certain type of music over a lot of the radio stations over and over again, day in and day out, then after a while the people will simply become conditioned to “like” that type of music.
Like the dog of the Russian psychologist Pavlov who conditioned his dog to physically react when being fed after a bell rang.
After a while he just rang the bell but didn’t feed the dog and still the dog reacted physically by producing stomach fluids.
It’s called conditional response and it happens everywhere on a daily basis all over the world with human beings who are trained like  Pavlov’s dog.
They simply don’t realize that it happens to them.
The same happens in the contemporary music-business.
People are conditioned to “like” the music they are drowned in by the music-industry.
It’s conditional response theory in practice.

Having songs written by others
If you can’t write songs yourself you can always have a song written by someone else. I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with that. A lot of famous artists/singers/instrumentalists became famous by singing/playing/performing songs or music written by others.
 
Katie Melua  became world-famous with a song called “Nine Million Bicycles” that was written by the British producer/composer/ songwriter Mike Batt.   
 The Eagles had a world-hit with the song “Take
it easy” that was co-written by the American songwriter and performer Jackson Browne. 
Anne Murray  had a world-hit with the song “You needed me” which at first she just didn’t like.
She got it sent to her and listened a couple of times to it but at first she thought it was nothing.
After she had recorded it became one of her most well-known world-hits.

But yes, you have to run into somebody who then is also capable of writing beautiful songs and which songs then also fit to your own style and voice and/or style of playing your instrument.
When the beauty is gone
Extremely skilful musicians there are many on our planet earth. 
But a fabulous technique doesn’t necessarily mean that the sort of music you make will appeal to a lot of people.
Some musicians are sometimes so deep into improving their own playing-technique that the aesthetic, the beauty is gone and has disappeared and the play has become a show off of their own abilities and talent.
They’re busy with themselves and not with making music for the people.
But sometimes there are among instrumentalists people who compose their own work among of which there are sometimes nice pieces, of which I then think I would like to write lyrics for and turn them into a nice  song.

 
Types of music I like
My preference and interest for music in general is also very broad.
From classical music to popular music, I like both and everything in between!

I give you some examples of music-pieces I like.
 
The “Gymnopedie ” by the French composer Erik Satie  I find very beautiful.
The melancholy of it.
Except for the original piano-version there is also an arrangement written for orchestra by Claude Debussy .
I have heard it one time but I am still trying to obtain a copy somewhere from a record or cd on which the piece is recorded.
The same counts for “A Serenade to Music” by the English composer Ralph Vaughan-Williams . 
It appeals to me very much personally.
I just think it’s very beautiful.
It holds all voices from tenor to soprano and the libretto is a part from one of the plays from Shakespeare .I love that piece.
Fugues I like. For instance by Bach .
These are just a few examples but I like so many classical pieces.
Frankly I don’t want to be and seem very pretentious.
I’m just a simple singer-songwriter.
So it doesn’t fit to appear pretentious.
I also have something against artists who present themselves as so very special.
Or who have gotten an attitude.
So artificial and fake.
Then I think to myself: “What can you really do? You can sing a bit and/or play an instrument. So What? Are you so important”
In short I can say, that I can appreciate all artists/musicians who have something original and true and real and specifically their own and above all BEAUTIFUL in their songs and music.
 
I also listen to really all kinds and sorts of music.
From ethnic music to world-music, from classical music to hard-rock to jazz, from movie-tracks to blues to acoustic music of singer-songwriters, from vocal to instrumental.
It doesn’t make any difference to me.
I just select on what personally appeals to me or attracts my attention because of it’s originality or just simply because it sounds “nice” .
Like I said I like and play and listen to all sorts of music.
From acoustic pop-songs to sturdy electric guitar-bands, from the”Concerto de Aranjuez” by the Spanish composer Joaquin Rodrigoup to and including Jimi Hendrix  
And the last one preferably blaring loud: “Purple Haze”….Yeah!  
Recognizability
Some soloists and instrumentalists and vocalists are distinctly recognizable.
They have an own way of playing and a specifically own playing-technique and an entirely own style.
Nicolo Paganini was a recognizable violin-player.
Nigel Kennedy also has an own recognizable style.
If you hear Nigel Kennedy play the “Four Seasons” of Vivaldi that is recognizable.

Mstislaw Rostropowitsch was a recognizable cellist.
Maurice André  was a recognizable trumpet-player.
Comparably there are numerous examples of musicians that are recognizable by their own style and specific way of playing.

The same counts for conductors.
The way in which a conductor interprets a music-score of a composition of a maybe already centuries ago diseased composer yields him own insights and makes of his performance of an existing composition something entirely specifically his own and characteristic for that specific conductor.
Another conductor would perhaps interpret the same piece differently and give another performance of it.
There is nothing wrong with that.
The interpretation of Beethoven’s symphonies by Herbert von Karajan  is recognizable.

Vocal soloists are also recognizable.
That one voice which you recognize out of a thousand!
 
Covers
I used to play a lot of covers and sometimes I still do.
But I must confess that nowadays I prefer to play mainly my own original songs.
You often hear that making covers of existing songs would be inferior.
I don’t think so.
In the classical music-world often only covers are recorded and performed.
Composers who have composed the music-pieces are often already dead for centuries.
Symphonic orchestras are really the biggest “cover-bands” in the world to express it a bit disrespectful.
Besides that it also is that over the centuries composers have always copied from each other, imitated each other, taken things over, etc.
The musicians who play the pieces now  also give their own interpretation of a music-piece.
With that interpretation the musicians also give something specifically their own to a music-piece.
A music-piece is only a piece of paper with music-notes.
The way in which you interpret that written music also leaves your personal mark on it.
The interpretation of a music-piece could imply among others, where you play louder or softer so crescendo or decrescendo, insert pauses, how certain instruments must sound in some passages, how you translate emotions in the music that is played, etc, etc.

What it is about in music is the own interpretation.

And according to me there is totally nothing wrong with that.
There is only the matter of personal taste.
You may like or dislike a certain version of an existing song.

If a song rises far above other songs, then it is worth to make an own version of it.
After all it is not only about the song.
It is also about the way an artist creates his own version of it.
Sometimes another arrangement can make a clear difference.
 
On May 21 2006 a newsbulletin appeared on the internet about Jazz artist Jamie Cullum-
 Quote – “Jamie Cullum  has enough of all critics who stamp him as a coverartist. The jazzsinger lets to know that it takes him a lot of bother and creativity to blow new life into old songs. Jamie says he likes rewriting classic songs.
“It costs as much passion and energy to write a new song or to understand an old song” tells the young jazzhero. “People think that it is easy to just replay a song. But if you want to understand the song, you need weeks or months to put something of your own in it”.
According to Jamie there are too many artists that rape old songs or just produce it in the same manner “. unquote
Now I am not Jamie Cullum, and I really don’t need weeks to play and sing an old song in my own way but there is a sense of truth in what is said here.   
It’s nice rewriting classic songs.
If you’re good in doing that is a different matter and it may also depend on what kind of musical style or version you wish to rewrite it in.
And I can understand, that if he really gets into a song it will take him some time to put something of himself into that song.
And there he makes a correct point: it’s all about putting something specifically your own in a song!
It’s like using your own creative process to recreate something which has already been created.
It’s like what the ancient Roman sculptors did when they reinvented figurative sculpturing after seeing sculptures made by the ancient Greeks sculptured long before their day and age.
And many centuries later Italian renaissance artists like Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci again reinvented figurative sculpturing, copying and improving figurative sculpturing like the ancient Romans and Greeks did centuries before .
 
For me personally counts as the most important criterion, that I must be able to put and lay feelings into a song.
That there will also flow feelings out of the song.
Flow into the hearts of the listeners.

Whether you make or create your own songs as a singer-songwriter or whether you recreate covers in your own style and add to old songs or music-pieces what is specifically your own, it all boils down to the same thing!

Feelings and emotions are very important when it comes to making music!
It is the essence, the heart, the core of making music!
A song is really just a song.
But it is just the way how you play and sing that song that could make it rise above the average.
Turn it into something “new”.
And that personal way must appeal to, attract listeners.
They must be touched by it.
They must like it.
Music is emotion!