A late application

In 2002, my friend and vocal coach Wendy Adams was accepted as a finalist at the Tucson Folk Festival Songwriting Competition. I'd never heard of the contest before. I showed up because I wanted to hear Wendy.

And I was so happy I did. Wendy was fabulous, as expected, but I grooved on the entire event. Ten finalists, two hours, so much great music, such a great atmosphere.

I decided that one day, I wanted to be playing up there.

Just one problem. Supposedly only acoustic instruments were allowed. I kept forgetting to find out if they meant that literally, or if keyboards that sounded like pianos were kosher. I kept missing the application dates. (This is why Ron the Drummer handles our booking.) Next year I'll remember, I thought every time.

The question was finally put to rest last year, when I saw Amber Norgaard play in the competition ... with her keyboard. I swore to myself that I wouldn't let the date go by again for 2013. This time I would apply.

So I did.

And I'm in.

Save the date. The contest is Saturday, May 4th, from noon to 2 p.m. MST. It will be broadcast on KXCI (and streamed on kxci.org) 90 minutes later. Each participant plays two songs each. We won't know what order we're in until we're there, but that's OK. You'll seriously want to stay for the whole thing. I promise it will be a good time.

Whither the weather?

The rain, staying up in the sky where it belongs
and graciously not falling on our heads

"Hey, look, it's getting warmer outside," I said in my last message to the Cinder Bridge mailing list. "Just in time, too. We’re playing at La Encantada on Sunday, and the forecast says the high will be 72 degrees."

By the time Friday rolled around, an updated forecast was still predicting a high of 72. Unfortunately, it also said there'd be a 20 percent chance of rain. I had hoped we'd have a decent-sized audience in spite of the Superbowl. If it rained, we wouldn't even get to play.

I kept an eye on the great outdoors this morning and early afternoon. The skies were gray and somewhat foreboding, but no rain. I drove up to our gig in the Foothills without wearing a hat or using the windshield visor because clouds kept the sun out of my eyes, but no rain. Ron the Drummer and I set up, and it was chilly enough to make me wish I'd worn something a little warmer ... but no rain.

Just as we started to play, the sun came out. The glorious, glorious sun.

Days like this make me realize how far so many of us humans have removed ourselves from nature. Imagine living in a preindustrial world, where "work" meant hunting or gathering or farming. Whether or not it rained would mean the difference between life and death, or at the very least between comfort and discomfort. In that context, it's a little crazy that I only have to think about the weather on outdoor gig days.

Thanks to everyone who came out and basked in the sun with us.

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Photos by Neill Mills. Muchas gracias, Neill!

The perils of ignoring mainstream culture

A few weeks ago there was a call for musicians to perform at the La Encantada Fine Art Festival here in Tucson. The festival was to take place this weekend. Out of the many performance slots available on Saturday and Sunday, I picked Sunday, 3 to 4 p.m.

Oops. Turns out this is Superbowl Sunday. Who knew? I mean, besides every other person in America except me?

The slot could be worse. Pregame stuff, whatever that is, starts exactly when our set ends. Kickoff begins half an hour later. So, you know, theoretically people could come out to see us and be home in time for the game.

Still, I probably should've just chosen Saturday to play. I have to remember to pay more attention to things that don't interest me when it comes to scheduling.

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If you care as little about the Superbowl as I do (or you can drive really fast) and you live in Tucson, come see us! La Encantada is at 2905 E. Skyline Drive (NW corner of Campbell & Skyline). We play, as mentioned above, Sunday, Feb. 3, from 3 to 4 p.m.

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UPDATE: People totally came, you guys! Not only did we have a decent crowd, but everyone was really into the music. It was the kind of gig that puts you in a good mood for the whole day. I wish we could've played longer.

Their A&R app said "I don't hear a single"

When music lovers don't like a pop song, they often use the word "formula" to express their disdain. If you have artistic integrity, you'll write from the heart instead of painting by numbers, dammit!

Alas. The music world is about to get a whole lot more formulaic. Computer scientists from the University of Bristol have invented an algorithm that can predict whether a song will become a hit.

The researchers used musical features such as, tempo, time signature, song duration and loudness. They also computed more detailed summaries of the songs such as harmonic simplicity, how simple the chord sequence is, and non-harmonicity, how ‘noisy’ the song is.

A ‘hit potential equation’ that scores a song according to its audio features was devised. ... The team found they could classify a song into a ‘hit’ or ‘not hit’ based on its score, with an accuracy rate of 60 per cent as to whether a song will make it to top five, or if it will never reach above position 30 on the UK top 40 singles chart.

(h/t Cracked.com.)

So far this is just a bunch of academics who asked an interesting question ("What specific variables give a song mass appeal?") and found an interesting way to answer it. But it has implications beyond the scholarly realm. Potentially troubling implications.

Less innovation

Big record labels will jump on this technology if it works. Why wouldn't they? Historically, they've chosen new acts based on what they think will sell, and what they think will sell sounds like what has sold before. Nothing new about that.

But every now and again, somebody bucks the trend. Bob Dylan and Nirvana weren't putting out what the labels considered commercial music, but they got their shot because an A&R guy sensed that there was something special about them and convinced the higher-ups to give them a chance.

The algorithm can't do that. One of its limitations is that it only makes correct predictions within a given era—a hit from the early '80s isn't the same as a hit today. So if a new sound comes along, something with the potential to catch fire with a large audience, the program has no way of knowing that.

In an ideal world, there could be A&R people who do their own research when a new musical trend sets off their Spidey sense, and then feed their software new data when they're right. Maybe that will happen. Or maybe the big labels, eager for short-term rewards, will just replace their expensive expert humans with software.

I'll leave you to ponder which option is more likely.

Songwriting software

With the ability to predict what songs will be popular, how long will it be until software is actually writing the songs? How long before my fellow songwriters and I are replaced by a machine?

This sounds like the stuff of science fiction, I know. Still, artificial intelligence is getting better and better. And it's not an either/or proposition—there are intermediate steps. Before we have AI that can compose music and lyrics unaided, we may have ...

• Hit-predicting software as an editing tool. Songwriters will create their own first drafts, then run them through a program to see what they need to change. This isn't the most attractive alternative if you want to express yourself and create something new, but it's highly useful if you're just trying to churn out a hit.
• Songwriting AI that creates the first draft. Early software won't be able to produce a radio hit on its own. The lyrics will probably sound like a bad Babelfish translation. However, it might hash together something a human songwriter can tweak and build upon.

Wild, handwringing speculation, you say? Well, yes. And it's important to remember that the music industry doesn't control all the music. Thanks to the internet and cheaper recording equipment, it's easier than ever for new bands to gain an audience without the help of a label.

But as far as radio play goes, I really do believe this is something to keep an eye on. Technology gets better, and all sorts of things that once sounded like sci fi have become possible. Someday we may have computer programs writing our greatest hits ... and we won't be able to tell the difference.

Hell, the article I linked to is over a year old.

Maybe it's already happened.

Resolutions unresolved

On New Year's day, I thought about the things I planned to accomplish in 2013 and felt pretty good about them. Right up until the moment I realized that they were exactly the same as the goals I'd failed to achieve in 2012.

To be fair to myself, I made a tiny bit of progress. I didn't spend the entire year standing still. But wow, I'm not nearly as far along as I thought I'd be.

The good news is that a few days ago, I remembered a song I'd started last year. One about New Year's resolutions unresolved. With fresh motivation, I dug it up and quickly fixed the lyrical issue I'd been stuck on, the one that prevented me from taking it any further. Now it's almost done.

Once I've finished it, I'd better get started on those other goals. I can make the same resolution twice, but I can't write a song about it twice.

The ghost of songs past

I really felt like writing this afternoon. I even had a nice little stretch of time to do it, while I was chopping up vegetables and meat for lunch. The problem? No ideas had taken hold. Usually I want to write because I've thought of a phrase or a rhyme or something else to build on. Today, what I mostly had was an urge to create.

I gave it a go anyway. Played around. And maybe one of my vague, half-formed ideas could've stuck and evolved. Instead, I let previous songs I'd written creep into my head. Lyrics I was particularly proud of.

My vague ideas fled as the ghost of songs past settled in. "How can we ever live up to those," they cried.

Intellectually I understand that songs are the result of so much work, so many discarded words, over such a long period of time. I remember what it took to assemble them, how much grunt work was involved. So why would I expect a new song to fall out of the sky, fully formed? I know better.

And yet, the songs I've already written can intimidate me. Too much distance between them and whatever new thing I'm thinking about.

At my next little stretch of free time, I'll have to try again. Remind myself that I don't need to produce a finished work of art in one sitting. All I need is to develop one tiny idea that is interesting enough to take root. One tiny idea that refuses to let go.

I'd tell you, but ...

Our band website has needed updating for longer than I'd like to admit. A while ago I'd tinkered with a new design in Photoshop, but it didn't look quite right. Finally this week, I started tinkering again until I had something good enough to show Ron the Drummer.

Before sending him the file today, I realized that the bit of text I'd put in the "News" section on the home page was out of date. I didn't feel like spending a lot of time coming up with something different, so I went with: "We've got all kinds of cool plans in the works, but if we told you, we’d have to kill you."

Later, at rehearsal, Ron said he thought the new design was fine, but could I take out the "kill" part? Given everything that's happened?

I didn't argue. For me, it was placeholder text, to be used only if I couldn't think of anything better. But damn, that's sad.

Can we please go long enough without another evil, pointless mass shooting that we can make stupid "then I'd have to kill you" jokes without anybody thinking twice about the deeper meaning?