A little preview of my new song entitled, Slow Burn. I hope you all find it in life. It’s a most beautiful treasure.
Slow burn,
That’s where true love is.
Where the heart glows,
In the hottest coals.
A Slow burn,
That’s what true love is.
Slow burn.
Three songs are on the write table at the moment. One is a love song about how true love is a slow burn. Another song is about someone who steals our tears… what does that mean? The third one is about how the things very familiar and close to us, our favorite things in life, are the lifeline for our souls. They are bedrock, and anchor, and give us insight to what is truth. When reality comes a callin’, these things will not fail us – unless they are sinking sand, and most people know that story.
Had a cool email today. Now I can link my blogposts to Anchor and turn it into a podcast. This post will be a test and I can fancy it up in a couple of days.
Also, I started on a speed songwriting course from Graham English. It’s a different way of songwriting for sure. Always good to be learning and trying out new things. We’ll see what comes of it all.
Last night, I also warmed up a new set of tubes in my Lil Red Blues Jr amp. They will sound great on recordings. Looking forward to tracking some Telecaster soon.
Finished up the mix and master for Let It the other day. I started tracking a new Easter song called, I Will Arise, that was written with some friends.
Had an interesting discussion about whether to force a song to be what was intended or to let it come about organically, naturally, out of collaborative workings with others. Do I quantifying tight to the grid or do I let the rhythm float close to the grid, in a more natural form. I think we’ll let this one float a bit and be more like live music. What will fuse with the Americana Roots style guitar?
Let It, my current song in the studio is getting there. It’s good to have friends with the skills to push one forward in the making of a song. The writing is only the beginning of the imagination train. It takes time, though hopefully not as long as wine takes to age. As cool and efficient as good studios are, I do enjoy a long fermentation process for a song.
A lot of stuff in life becomes more satisfying and enjoyable when it takes time to do it. I find myself in too much of a hurry sometimes. A song forces you to slow down. A beach does that too!
Hope to start on tracking a new song tomorrow with friends and family. It’s called, I Will Arise.
I added a new page on the site today. Titled, “In the Studio”, it will hold a continuing narrative as songs are coming to be. It will include the stories behind the creative process that births new music. You’ll get the inside scoop and and insider’s look at the struggle to create music. I have one song, “Let It” that is approaching release time and several others that are somewhere in the continuum of something from nothing to a finished song that speaks in the place where words alone fail. Come on the journey with me…
Today is a good day to choose a master for an original song. Last week I ran four versions of a master, each one a little different. They went into a playlist so I could compare the versions. I use LANDR, which is an AI based mastering service. Three of the versions are at medium intensity and has good dynamic range (soft to loud). The remaining master is at a higher intensity, more compressed and vivid, and of course louder. I will load the mastered file back into my computer and check the waveform and levels. If the high intensity is too smashed and loud, the streaming services will just compress and limit it more, resulting in a loss of dynamic range. Hope to submit it this week after getting some feedback from friends. In the meantime, I’m working on a another new tune, currently named “Stealing my Tears”.
Yesterday, I spent a couple of fun hours tracking some guitar parts, with my B- Bender Telecaster, for a song written and recorded by Grady, a new friend from North Carolina. A nice song with interesting lyrics! We used the LANDR Sessions plugin to talk over the song in a virtual session. Grady and Brad were in Brevard, NC, at Falling Waters Studio, and myself in my studio in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. Pretty amazing we can do such things these days.
Creating a song out of nothing but ideas and inside your head melodies is what songwriters do. It takes creative work and perseverance for the song to even make it to paper. Creating something from nothing is hard!
Then there is this iterative process of taking what’s inside your head and tracking or recording those parts. Sometimes I will put the recorder in loop mode for a section and play or sing, over and over, until new parts and melodies comes to mind. I believe all the parts are now tracked and so the attention turns to mixing and production. It takes a lot of time and energy to turn an idea into a distributable piece of music people can listen to.
This song, called “Let It”, is finally taking form. The initial inspiration was from getting lost in music when I’m listening or playing. As a worship musician, I try to be attentive to the whispers that come and also to pray into the song, asking what it’s really about. As in my other post, I imagine that sounds strange to most people.
So here is what the Spirit whispered to me. “Let it” is about much more than getting lost in music. I’ve felt this all my musician life and didn’t know who was calling me to get lost, until I worshiped God with my music. Go to Psalm 42 and read about the waves or breakers, depending on your Bible translation.
There’s still work to do on the song but hopefully I will be releasing it within the next month.
Over the past few days, I’ve started to move my digital social network footprint off the standard social networks. I believe there are better options where people and their art are not hideously exploited. It’s hard as an artist seeking some publicity to drop the bemoths like Amazon and Twitter and Facebook. To cut the cords and look for other ways to move forward as an artist is not easy. For a hundredth of a cent, musicians have become way too dependent on Big Tech. We’ve sold ourselves way too cheap.
As Big Tech tightens the screws on freedom of speech and ideas, what can artists do but sell themselves and their craft for next to nothing, while the big companies make obscene profits. We are like grasshoppers in their eyes, is scripture that comes to mind. I believe there are other options and other ways to share our art in the public space, and not be ripped off. ASCAP and BMI have pursued these freeloading companies for years and those companies have been protected by political buddies. Songwriters and musicians have been ripped off for far too long.
There is encrypted mail (Protonmail.com) and messaging (Signal and Telegraph), Facebook replacements (MeWe), along with encrypted browsers, Hooktube instead of Youtube, and private search engines, so you are not constantly tracked and harassed. I certainly don’t need my package in 2 days, don’t need the monstrous warehouses and trucks polluting the air. As an artist, I am finding far better options, like Bandcamp, for paid streams that encourage artist and fan interaction, no matter what your reach is.
Honestly, didn’t we all do this to actually play for people? Big Tech is like the worst artist management ever. Support companies that give artists a fair shake and don’t suppress the fair and free exchange of ideas. None of the protest songs of the 60’s would have flown the airwaves with the current state of oppression.
Mark Grosz Music 