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a cappella, improvised, multitrack recordings

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my three favorite songs
1993c.mp3 1mb
1993f.mp3 1mb
1994b.mp3 2mb
 

I've been teaching myself to improvise music for over thirty years now, My original training was as a classical pianist and I was very influenced by Bach's music, especially his counterpoint and fugue styles of composing.

My second influence was Dixieland Jazz, which added improvisation and polyrhythms to the counterpoint style. As I began improvising as a teen I switched to singing because it was more portable (I was often most inspired while riding my bicycle). Additionally singing was easier to improvise than piano playing because the visual and language centers of my brain were not needed.

After college I devoted a few years to songwriting. My influences were English and American pop/rock music—mostly top 40—with very memorable melodies (Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Elton John, Billy Joel). I learned to create lyric-based songs with a traditional verse/chorus structure, but I soon realized I preferred improvisation.

In the early '80s I heard Bobby McFerrin singing scat. He was using his voice as an instrument and had developed an incredible six-octave range. I had been pushing my voice beyond it's original range because I was accustomed to composing on a keyboard and I liked octave-spanning melodies (like many of the pop singer/composers who influenced me). Hearing Bobby sing inspired me to push further in that direction.

After I moved to Colorado I began to work with computers as a profession rather than just a hobby. In my early years in desktop publishing I met Roger Powell from Todd Rundgren's band Utopia. He encouraged me to buy a small four-track tape recorder and a good microphone. The feedback loop of singing along with previously recorded tracks had two important affects on my music: first, I started to develop a better sense of relative pitch and harmony; and second, my rhythms stabilized.

I'm not a born musician who can remember anything I hear and repeat it perfectly. I only remember really strong melodic hooks. So, when I compose songs, I simply noodle around until I accidentally sing a memorable line, then I begin repeating it. I start the recorder and sing the repeating phrase until I get bored, or out of breath, or forget what I'm singing. Then I rewind and sing along with that track until I come up with something that fits.

Over the last decade of practicing this I've come to the point where I just sing music without much trial and error. My mind has stored enough musical patterns that I can just express how I'm feeling and trust my singing to self-organize the actual notes. Music is a language for communicating the totality of a physical experience, and once the grammar and vocabulary have become unconscious, it is no different than being a very fluid extemporaneous speaker. Except, of course, that you speak at the same time as other musicians, so there is an agreed rhythmic and harmonic structure to keep the conversation coherent.

A few years back I began singing in public—first as part of a class in performance skills, then in a public singing circle I started with a friend, Angelique Espinoza. I quickly found that like any conversation the quality of the experience is dependent on the participants. Angelique and I decided to build a stronger core for our singing circle by recruiting Glenn Short and Dawn Larson to form our "a cappella" nucleus. While we ultimately abandoned the larger public singing circle, we spent many happy evenings spontaneously creating music, as well as singing old favorites and even composing our own songs.

My singing voice has improved through the application of Therapeutic Voicework principles learned from Paul Newham and studied with Eve Maison-Pierre. The principle in a nutshell is that we all have the physical capacity to sing with a six octave range in any vocal color. Our psychological habits of defining ourselves in terms of "characters" (like actors do) create limits to our vocal expression. We can regain our full vocal range by expanding our definition of our character and by practicing various physical exercises and vocal stretches. If my singing isn't always pretty, it is fluid and expressive, as well as true to the totality of who I am.

Ultimately what I value most is the experience of creating music in the moment. There is a breakdown of my sense of time and of the boundaries between myself and everything else. I often find I can't tell what I'm currently singing and what I've already sung; I don't know how long I've been singing, my sense of beginning and end has been replaced by an unending now.

I'm not sure you can get the same effect from listening to my music, but just in case, this page presents my three favorite songs from my years of recording (yes all those voices are me). Feel free to pass them on or refer others to this page.

 

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