Tuesday
Apr102007
finding my voice, part 2
Tuesday, April 10, 2007 at 10:34PM
Jeremy Casella has long been an inspirition to me. We’ve been good friends for years and so he’s encouraged me in that way. Specifically, though, he has often said things in conversation that have resonated with me and changed the way I have gone about doing what I do.
He’s in the final stages of a great new record, one that’s been in process for a couple years. Jeremy has incorporated strings, brass and woodwinds, as well as a generous portion of piano and electronica. He’s honed in on the acoustic guitar, versus the electric, and is newly favoring playing finger-style. He’s been more excited about this project than I’ve ever seen him.
We were talking the other day and he was telling me why he’s made the choices he’s made on this project. He’s a genius with melody and it seems that string arrangement is very well-suited for his gift. And I don’t mean that his gift is well-suited for string arrangement. I mean that I think God has created the crafting of melodies with strings just so people like Jeremy can paint on that palette.
I digress…
Like so many things, making music relies heavily on vocabulary. You can only play the notes and chords you know. You can only think within the limits of the words that you understand. I’ve heard that’s one of the reasons the Nazis burned so many books. They were wanting to erase vocabulary. You can only paint with the colors you have or write with the words you know.
Our culture has made an idol of youth and loves to feed the idea of the artist who was born with a perfect understanding of their art. That’s a myth, though. Like anything else you work for years and years, you learn new ways of understanding and approaching what you do and you expand your vocabulary. I am seeing more and more how it takes all this to find your voice: the things you want to say and the music you want to make.
Jeremy has made a few different records, all sounding very different. He told me that other night that, even though he likes things about them all, none of them has yet achieved the sound that he hears in his heart. Until now.
I can not wait to hear the record in its finished glory. I know Jeremy’s heart and I have no doubt that the closer his music gets to that heart, the more amazing it will be.
I also know that I feel a few years behind him. I wrote a few days ago about finding the voice to use when I sing with Caedmon’s. I feel like every record I’ve made has been a step closer to what I really want it to be. I know I’ve still got further to go, though, before I find my true voice.
In the past two years or so I feel like I’ve been learning to speak with my guitar, to move beyond chords and colors and really sing with it. I have miles to go before I can do what I want with it, but I feel it in my gut: The sound of my heart is literally in the palm of my hands when I’m playing guitar. I just don’t have the vocabulary yet, whether musically or sonically or life/wisdom-wise or whatever. But it’s coming. I can feel it. I see it in Jeremy and I know it happens.
I watch Ella learn language from Alison and I talking to her and around her. I feel that way when I listen to the music of Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon and Pink Floyd (the Great P’s). They create space, these sonic landscapes that are almost films they have so much depth. It almost feels like they’re pioneers on a great open plain. Each has headed in their own direction, and I see the trails they’ve made. I’m keeping my eyes on theirs until I see the thing none of them saw. The new land I’m made for, or that has been made for me. It’s a longing deep and wide. God puts it in our hearts and blesses us with the opportunity to spend years finding it.
Does this resonate with you? If so, in what context? How do you pursue it further? Do you have any ideas of how I should pursue it further? Can you think of an artist (or anyone else) you’ve seen find their voice?
He’s in the final stages of a great new record, one that’s been in process for a couple years. Jeremy has incorporated strings, brass and woodwinds, as well as a generous portion of piano and electronica. He’s honed in on the acoustic guitar, versus the electric, and is newly favoring playing finger-style. He’s been more excited about this project than I’ve ever seen him.
We were talking the other day and he was telling me why he’s made the choices he’s made on this project. He’s a genius with melody and it seems that string arrangement is very well-suited for his gift. And I don’t mean that his gift is well-suited for string arrangement. I mean that I think God has created the crafting of melodies with strings just so people like Jeremy can paint on that palette.
I digress…
Like so many things, making music relies heavily on vocabulary. You can only play the notes and chords you know. You can only think within the limits of the words that you understand. I’ve heard that’s one of the reasons the Nazis burned so many books. They were wanting to erase vocabulary. You can only paint with the colors you have or write with the words you know.
Our culture has made an idol of youth and loves to feed the idea of the artist who was born with a perfect understanding of their art. That’s a myth, though. Like anything else you work for years and years, you learn new ways of understanding and approaching what you do and you expand your vocabulary. I am seeing more and more how it takes all this to find your voice: the things you want to say and the music you want to make.
Jeremy has made a few different records, all sounding very different. He told me that other night that, even though he likes things about them all, none of them has yet achieved the sound that he hears in his heart. Until now.
I can not wait to hear the record in its finished glory. I know Jeremy’s heart and I have no doubt that the closer his music gets to that heart, the more amazing it will be.
I also know that I feel a few years behind him. I wrote a few days ago about finding the voice to use when I sing with Caedmon’s. I feel like every record I’ve made has been a step closer to what I really want it to be. I know I’ve still got further to go, though, before I find my true voice.
In the past two years or so I feel like I’ve been learning to speak with my guitar, to move beyond chords and colors and really sing with it. I have miles to go before I can do what I want with it, but I feel it in my gut: The sound of my heart is literally in the palm of my hands when I’m playing guitar. I just don’t have the vocabulary yet, whether musically or sonically or life/wisdom-wise or whatever. But it’s coming. I can feel it. I see it in Jeremy and I know it happens.
I watch Ella learn language from Alison and I talking to her and around her. I feel that way when I listen to the music of Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon and Pink Floyd (the Great P’s). They create space, these sonic landscapes that are almost films they have so much depth. It almost feels like they’re pioneers on a great open plain. Each has headed in their own direction, and I see the trails they’ve made. I’m keeping my eyes on theirs until I see the thing none of them saw. The new land I’m made for, or that has been made for me. It’s a longing deep and wide. God puts it in our hearts and blesses us with the opportunity to spend years finding it.
Does this resonate with you? If so, in what context? How do you pursue it further? Do you have any ideas of how I should pursue it further? Can you think of an artist (or anyone else) you’ve seen find their voice?
Reader Comments (17)
I think that there are a lot of folks who have done and are doing this. All of Derek Webb's albums show a growth that inspires me tremedously. Today, I have been listening to a lot of Bob Dylan and considering all the ground he has covered over the years. He keeps reinventing himself, but he is still himself. Oh my gosh, things like this make me want to shout! It inspires me to hear people making the music of their hearts and striving to express what their soul is saying.
Does it resonate? Yea. Makes a lot of sense. I have tried and am still trying to find my voice. I wish it were the music star gonna-sing-a-song-to-change-your-life voice but it isnt. Dont got the talent. I have been writing a lot for newspapers and I dont know if that is quite my voice, though I have been told a few times that I am a good writer. I used to make attempts at writing song lyrics or creative writing (I still sometimes do) but some things I dont know if words can express the right voice. Maybe someday we will find our voice. Maybe we will only truly find our voice when we are with God. And then we can use that voice to do what we were created for, which is to praise him.
This totally resonates with me in my relationship with my wife. During our first year of marriage I thought I had made a huge mistake. We fought like crazy, didn't like each other much. I began to slowly learn her "chords and colors" in a very mechanical way and that helped us to not dislike each other as much. It wasn't until we were in the full swing of child-bearing that I was able to begin communicating my love for her through service, provision, and even words when necessary. In other words I found a voice that I could speak with and that she could hear and respond to. We now have four kids and I am at a place where my wife and I are truly of one accord. Hard to explain in words the connection we have. To the point that we really function as a single person in two bodies, created to be together.
I think John Mayers Continuum is his "voice finding" album. He really captured the thoughts of the nation on that album and really captured sonic beauty with his guitar lines.
Phil Keaggy
Ok, so I'm not a musician. I am honored to make art of a different type. I get to create illustrations and design things for folks. Finding "my voice" artistically is something I think about a lot.
Sometimes, it comes easy and I feel like I'm close and other times, it feels a mile away (and I usually walk away for a while). I agree about the idea of youth. There's something great about the eagerness of youth and jumping in, but also something great about building on who you are as an artist where you feel like you might be doing something truly unique and powerful.
I think pursuing your voice is the way you get there, learning as much as you can by doing... I also think that there has to be a reverence for God as Creator and an understanding of how small we are. (Humble.)
Anyways - great post, got me thinking.
"Chasemonkey Says:
April 11th, 2007 at 7:59 am
I think John Mayers Continuum is his “voice finding� album. He really captured the thoughts of the nation on that album and really captured sonic beauty with his guitar lines."
Not only yes, but wholeheartedly heck yes.
Wow, this is a great post and it really got me thinking. It reminded me of how we live in such dignity and tragedy at the same time. All of us are broken beings who yearn for being put together again and completion- like yearning for "our voice"- we are all reaching. And some of us are closer than others, but even those who might seem like they are there- there's always going to be a higher place to get to this side of heaven (unless you're Phil Keaggy).
But this is what I love about creating music- the attempt to create something, anything, even if the attempt is to create something that is not beautiful, still transcends ourselves in some way. No matter how much we have marred the image of God, we cannot completely erase it.
I have been thinking about "finding the space that was made for me" when it comes to preaching. Only recently have I realized how much of an art of imagination biblical exegesis and homiletics are. As a rookie preacher I'm thinking a lot about what it is that my "3 great P's" have put their finger on, and I'm trying to follow in their blazed trails while looking for that plot of land I was made for along the way.
Andrew: Anyone who makes a career of creation finds their expressive vision over time. You're certainly right that we're led to believe that some people come out of the womb with the talent to do awesome creative work, and that they roll out of bed every morning and just knock something awesome out before most people have even made their way into the office. Ha.
The best way to find your voice is to keep trying. Think of it like, say, archery. If someone hands you a bow and an arrow and says to you, "Okay, nine-toed wonderboy, hit that target," your first few tries are going to be laughable. [Well, unless you end up severing another toe and becoming the eight-toed wonderboy. That's not really funny; it's more tragic, really, at least until Gullahorn takes the time to make it funny with yet another funny-and-uncomfortable song about your feet. Anyway.] But eventually, you'll figure out what works and what doesn't. Sometimes, a wind gust is going to come along and take what should be a perfect shot and throw it way the hell off course.
Now, how does this relate to you? Well, I guess the key is to write early and often with an eye towards writing well. The motto in computer science is "release early, release often". In rocket design, it's "test, adjust, test again". [Not that I know first-hand, since I don't get to do anything nearly that fun, unless you consider budgets fun.] In a way, I think that the writing you've done this past year---Andy O writing, Caedmon's writing, commercial writing---is probably the best thing that you could have done for yourself. You're writing in so many areas and ways that you'll be able to take pieces from all of them and truly make them your own.
You will have achieved when the sum of the parts is consistently greater than the whole. I believe that you're getting there, and it's not because you comp me tickets to shows. ;)
I agree with the Mayer comments. I found one of his first albums this morning and thought how much his sound has been defined in the last year.
however my first thought to the question was: johnny cash
In the realm of 'Andys', I've felt like the past two or three albums have really captured the essence of what's in his heart, and that the listeners have been led along with him in that journey (especially since L&T leads right into BTLoG, without even a keychange; was that planned???). It makes me excited to see what he'll turn out next, given the lyrical direction that he's been going.
It's always a relief and a blessing to find out that you have questions and miles to go before you sleep Andy. I can't tell you the times that I sit down with a guitar and play someone else's song or attempt to play something new and come up with something that sucks. But, the whole conversation about palette is a good one. In listening to other artists (especially at concerts for some reason), I always find that my palette has increased or changed or refocused. Sometimes it frustrates me, though, to find that I've written a new song, and that I'm singing and playing it just like a song off someone else's record that I just heard for the first time. I guess that's my immaturity. But it's good to know that people do 'find their voices' and that even seasoned folks like you feel like you haven't found it yet.
Sorry. In that last comment, I meant Andrew Peterson in the first paragraph. We have to specify these days...
"...Does this resonate with you? If so, in what context? How do you pursue it further? Do you have any ideas of how I should pursue it further? Can you think of an artist (or anyone else) you’ve seen find their voice?"
Absolutely. You mentioned Pink Floyd. David Gilmour's guitar playing just strikes a chord with me. It's nothing flashy. But it communicates so much.
I agree with you that our voice is dependent on what we've learned, and, I might add, our direct influences (other players). Sometimes, though, in my life, some of those influences get a bit too prominent.
As far as finding "my voice" - which, for me, has more to do with my guitar than my throat - I think I know where it lives, but am having trouble finding it consistently these days. So much of the worship music we are playing these days at church just ends up feeling like a bad U2 ripoff. My voice sounds a lot like a half-witted Edge imitation these days.
Yeah, Geof, unless you're in the aviation business like I am, in which case the CS motto is "test the crap out of it and when you think you're ready to deliver, test it again." :-)
But seriously, yeah, Geof has a point. But now I'm gonna go the other way.
I have at times felt with my piano playing like you have talked about with the guitar, Andy - that I'm extremely conversant within my "vocabulary", but that the vocabulary really needs to be expanded. It's taken me some time to back up, get away from the worship leading for a little while, and learn to hear things differently. But slowly it's happening, and I just have to keep exploring and see what I find. It's pretty cool, actually.
Yeah, Chris, you have the worst of both the worlds I mentioned. :lol:
Having the album, I am learning just a small bit of what you wrote about Jeremy.