Morning musings

(I try to write about a page worth of rhyming lines every morning, without worrying about structure or content, just to exercise the muscle of rhyming. Usually it’s complete nonsense, but sometimes something interesting takes shape. Here’s one example:)

The wonder of the sanity I cherished
The crude, unwelcome livery of doom
Has led us to a place where we will perish
And no one will be left to hear the boom

The reason for my tired and lonely scribblings
That lean so hard on oft-repeated words
And never find their lovers, friends, or siblings
And breathe their echoes silent and absurd

The wounded heart, the breathless gasp of nothing
That left its bitter footsteps in my mind
To smile at demons, though they know I’m bluffing
And in their energy I feel more kind

The curtains hanging lonely in the balance
Have left my lonely room bereft of light
And echoed in the slow loss of my talents
Like broken eggs that never tasted flight

The summer sun brings new life to my garden
Where all the children never come to play
But each passing season leaves the ground more hardened
For I never know just who I’ll be today

And my effervescent sense of inspiration
That flew off on the winds behind your plane
Has left behind a long-bemused frustration
Of sun-dried hearts still longing for the rain

While the scratching cries of anguish fill my eardrums
And the green, ecstatic nonsense bides its time
How I wish your lust could save me from these doldrums
While I sit here trying to come up with a rhyme

The moments that were stretched out in my memory
And filled my heart with so much more than love
Are the ones that haunt my broken-hearted reverie
Giving space to all the words I’m thinking of

It Gets Easier – A Tale of Two Trips to San Miguel

When I was in San Miguel last month, after I had been there for a few days, I was hanging out with some new friends at a bar, and a lady asked me:
“How long have you been in town?”
“Since Monday”, I replied
“You’ve only been here since Monday?! How do you know all these people?”
And I answered with a sheepish grin “I guess I have good social skills”

And then I thought back to the last time I visited San Miguel, almost two years before. I had just quit drinking, and I was shy and awkward, isolated in a little shell of insecurity. I think during the entire week I was there I talked to about two people. For years, I had relied on alcohol to overcome my natural introversion and make it easier to socialize. And every time I quit, that feeling of isolation led me to start again.

Now, I’m not trying to convince anyone not to drink. If you’ve got it under control, and it’s a positive thing in your life that helps you de-stress and makes it easier for you to make friends, I’m happy for you. Maybe even a little envious, because I could never keep my drinking under control for very long.

But I know a lot of people who are unhappy with their drinking, but are afraid that if they quit, they’ll lose contact with the world of human beings. To them, I just want to say: It gets easier. It takes a while to get comfortable in your own skin, but once you do, you can enjoy all the benefits of going out and socializing and still get to bed at a reasonable hour and not feel like shit the next day.

How do you get to that point? The same way you get better at anything: Practice. Just do a little bit every day. The more you do it, the easier it gets. I promise.

You Don’t Belong to Me

(From time to time, I like to share different steps of my creative process. Here is a song where the lyrics came to me before I had any music, so I decided to flesh them out completely.)

In the soft subtle breezes that rustled your hair
I heard every word to this song
And each time we touched I felt something so right,
I knew that it couldn’t be wrong
But you’ve got a man who thinks he can command,
All your love, your time, and your soul
But I know the truth, that a goddess like you
Can never be tamed or controlled

‘Cause you don’t belong to him

You belong to the fiery red sunsets I see
Every time I look into your eyes
You belong to the thunderstorms raging inside me
The moment that we say goodbye
You belong to the moon, to the goddess of June,
To the birds that have always been free,
But you don’t belong to him, my love
And you don’t belong to me

I would not be so vain as to try to put chains
On the waves of your violent desire
That have crashed on my life all these cold restless nights,
While I’ve burned for one glimpse of your fire
But if I could fly free on your wild summer breeze
I don’t know if I’d ever come down
But I’d never think to try clipping your wings
Just to keep you with me on the ground

‘Cause you don’t belong to me

You belong to the fiery red sunsets I see
Every time I look into your eyes
You belong to the thunderstorms raging inside me
The moment that we say goodbye
You belong to the moon, to the goddess of June,
To the birds that have always been free,
But you don’t belong to him, my love
And you don’t belong to me

Then you go back to him and those warm summer winds
Take to howling a cold angry song
And your memory still haunts me like clouds that are taunting
A desert that’s thirsted so long
But I still see those sunsets behind the dark clouds,
And I know that it wasn’t in vain
Because sooner or later those clouds have to break
And we’ll dance in the cool summer rain

‘Cause you don’t belong to him

You belong to the fiery red sunsets I see
Every time I look into your eyes
You belong to the thunderstorms raging inside me
The moment that we say goodbye
You belong to the moon, to the goddess of June,
To the birds that have always been free,
But you don’t belong to him, my love
And you’ll never belong to me

Announcing The Slow Tour

Dear friends and family,

A lot has happened since I last wrote to you. I spent a lot of time meditating and clearing my head. I stopped reading, stopped going on Facebook, stopped watching TV shows, even stopped chasing girls. And it turns out that when you clear your head of all the internal chatter of the thousands of unimportant things that we focus on every day, you’re able to hear the still small voice telling you what’s important. I don’t know if it’s God, or the Universe, or just the innermost subconscious, but the principle applies – you can’t hear if you don’t listen.

And what I heard was that my software work enables me to live anywhere in the world, so I don’t need to be stuck in one place. So, I’m going to go on tour. It won’t be a tour in the traditional sense of jetting from one city to the next and playing at sold-out arenas. I’ve never really liked going to those kinds of shows, and I don’t think they’re a good fit for my style of music.

Instead, it’ll be what I call the Slow Tour: moving from one city to the next, spending a month or two to settle in and take the time to get to know people and make real connections, playing small intimate gigs that allow people to really feel the music and hear what I’m trying to say. And because I have my software work, it doesn’t need to pay for itself. It can be entirely focused on my purpose, which is to share music with the world.

I plan to tour 5 continents in the next 5 years, starting with the Americas, since I’m already here and I speak the three major languages of this side of the world (although my Portuguese is pretty rusty).

So right now, I’m in Minneapolis recording an album with a very talented producer that I met in Puerto Vallarta. The way I met him was pure fate – he happened to be staying at a hotel where I was playing with a classic rock band called The Black Sheep, and he came up to me afterwards and said “I bet you’re a songwriter aren’t you?” When the songwriter is ready, the producer will appear. We’ve recorded three songs already, and I’m excited to share them with you as soon as they’re mixed and mastered.

So it looks like the tour will be starting in Minneapolis. I don’t have dates set for any other cities – I’m just taking things one step at a time and seeing where the universe leads me. I’m doing all the planning and promoting myself at this point, but if you have a gig you’d like me to play, or you know someone in your city who wants to set one up, please get in touch.

As always, I thank you for your love and support

I Believe In Love

Yesterday, I got hired to sing for a guy who was asking his girlfriend to marry him. I was rolling my eyes and joking that I would write them a special song called “It’s all downhill from here” (which might not be a bad idea, actually). But when the big moment came and he got down on one knee and tears filled her eyes, I was fighting back tears, too.

And at that moment, I knew that despite everything it’s done to me over the years, every time it’s chewed me up and spit me out, I still believe wholeheartedly in love. Maybe I approach it with more caution these days. Maybe I’m a little wary about how quickly I give my heart away, or maybe I’m just extremely picky about who I give it to. But I’ll never stop believing in love.

Because the only thing sadder than a broken heart is a songwriter who doesn’t believe in love.

Wishing you love and success in the New Year.

Joseph Dane

The Lies We Tell On Facebook

Recent studies have shown that browsing Facebook often makes people feel depressed because they see all the fabulous things other people are doing and their own lives seem boring by comparison.

The truth is that no one’s life is as awesome as it appears to be on Facebook. We curate our public profiles carefully. We don’t post pictures of the mundane things we spend the vast majority of our time doing. Some people post status updates when something goes wrong and they want sympathy, but when does anyone ever post the truth: “I’m bored and lonely and I’m browsing Facebook because I need human contact”?

Take my life, for example. Looking at my Facebook profile, you might think it’s all rock and roll and hot chicks 24/7. I wish. The reality is that I spend most of my time alone practicing, working, and yes, looking at Facebook. I’m a sad, lonely man. Ok, I’m not that sad. I love my life, but it does get lonely sometimes. The stuff you see on Facebook is mostly an illusion.

Those pictures of me on the beach posing with models? I only met those girls because I got hired to do a modeling job because Mexico has very Euro-centric notions of beauty, and there aren’t a lot of light-skinned blue-eyed guys here in Puerto Vallarta. And the fact that those girls posed for a picture with me proves nothing – I haven’t been involved with any of them. But like most people, I only post photos of the fun stuff I do, because I like you and I want you to think I’m cool.

And we stretch the truth, too. A couple of weeks ago, when I tweeted “When hot girls drop by unexpected to bring you chocolate, the universe is telling you you’re on the right path”, that was a slight exaggeration. There was only one hot girl, chocolate was the only thing she came over to give me, and if the universe was telling me anything it was that I had gotten involved with someone I shouldn’t have, someone whose feelings I wasn’t ready to reciprocate.

So, when you’re looking with envy at someone else’s fabulous life, remember that you’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg, and that the tip has been carefully carved and polished to look pretty. You’re seeing a beautiful duck sitting gracefully on the surface of the water, and you can’t see its pathetic little feet paddling furiously underneath the water to stay afloat.

And then when you’re done imagining icebergs and ducks, you should get off of Facebook and go for a walk. Or call up a friend and hang out with them in person. Because Facebook is a very poor substitute for human contact.

To the drunk guy who insisted on taking the mic away from me the other night

I know that you’re obviously doing very well in your life if you can afford to stay at a hotel this nice, and I congratulate you. When the show’s over, you’ll go upstairs to your luxury suite and get in bed next to your hot girlfriend, then wake up tomorrow and do whatever the fuck you want. In a couple days, you’ll jet back to your mansion and go back to making tons and tons of money. Good for you.

When the show’s over for me, on the other hand, I have to pack up all my equipment, squeeze into a pickup with three other guys and drive two hours back to an apartment in the ghetto (that I can barely afford), pick the meat off of a chicken carcass, and then go to bed, alone. You see, I sacrificed everything I had in order to devote my life to music. I left my 6-figure job, my house, my friends, my family, everything.

Being able to rock out on stage once or twice a week with my band is one of the few luxuries I have left. So, you understand why I’m a little reluctant to share it with you.

If, on the other hand, you had been willing to share a little bit of your wealth with me and the band, like by maybe, I don’t know, tipping, that might change my mind.

Keep calm and continue practicing

Sometimes, as a musician, you have setbacks. Maybe your equipment has trouble. Maybe business slows down and you lose all your gigs in one week. The solution: keep calm and continue practicing. A musician is someone who plays music every day, so as long as I’m playing music, I’m fulfilling my life’s purpose. I don’t need anyone else’s permission or approval to be a musician.

Other times, things are going really well. You meet people who promise you the world, tell you you’re amazing, and that they’re going to open doors for you. What should you do in that situation? Keep calm and continue practicing. I’ve heard a lot of wild promises that never amounted to anything, but you know what always pays off? The time you spend practicing.

Because success is something shallow people chase after, but greatness comes from within you, and the only way to achieve it is to cultivate it a little bit at a time, every day. There are no lucky breaks that lead to greatness, no personal connections, no secret handshakes.

And if you don’t have the discipline to develop your craft now, when you have lots of free time, do you think you’ll magically acquire it when you start to become successful, and you have a million other distractions and obligations? I doubt it. Better develop good habits now.

Because like Aristotle said: “We are what we do repeatedly. Greatness, therefore, is not an act, but a habit”. Make it a habit to be great, and let success take care of itself.

What is Timbre?

(Note: My name is Joseph Dane and I live in Puerto Vallarta. I wrote this blog post for assignment #1 of the Intro to Music Production Course on Coursera)

I’ve played classical, nylon-string guitars since I was 11 years old. About a year ago, I bought a steel-string guitar for the first time, and I’m still having trouble getting used to the difference in sound. I have an electronic tuner so I’m sure that they’re both in tune. So, why does the steel-string guitar sound so different? So ringing, so bright, almost twangy, when compared to the warm smooth tones of my classical guitar?

Isn’t sound simply vibrations in the air? And if I tune both sets of strings to the same frequencies, shouldn’t the sounds they produce be identical? Why is this not the case?

The term timbre is used to describe the characteristics of a sound that distinguish it from other sounds of the same pitch and volume. The terms tone quality, tone color, and texture, are also used.

But what causes these differences in timbre? If sound is produced by vibrations in the air, how is it possible for us to distinguish two pitches that are played at the exact same pitch?

The answer is that “pitch” is a lot more complicated than we sometimes make it seem. We tend to equate certain pitches or notes to specific frequencies. For example, when I tune my guitar, I tune the A string to 440Hz.

In real life, however, almost no instruments are capable of producing a pitch that consists of only one frequency. The actual sound produced is a combination of pitches. The lowest, called the fundamental frequency, is the one that we identify as the pitch. But the other pitches above it, called partials or harmonics, play a very significant role in coloring the sound. Harmonics are frequencies that are whole number multiples of the fundamental frequency. So, when we hear a guitar string playing A, we’re hearing 440Hz, but we’re also hearing 880Hz, 1760Hz. And there are also other frequencies present called partials, which are not whole number multiples of the fundamental frequency.

How is it possible for one string to produce multiple pitches at the same time? The answer might blow your mind a little bit. You see, the string isn’t just vibrating along it’s entire length. It’s also vibrating along various different lengths at the same time. Sometimes you can see this with the naked eye, and sometimes the camera captures it pretty well, like in the first 30 seconds of this music video filmed by friend Richaud Valls:

If you need further proof, take a look at this spectrum analysis of the sound produced by the high E string on each of my guitars. Frequency is depicted on the x-axis, so each of the spikes in the graph represents a frequency of sound that is being emitted by the string at a given moment in time:

Notice that the one on the top, the steel-string, produces many more harmonics in the upper range. This is what causes my steel string guitar to sound so much brighter.

For a more extreme timbre contrast, consider the difference between whistling and singing. Below is a spectrum analysis of me whistling a C4 note, and below that is me singing it.

I think this demonstrates one reason why singing is way more popular than whistling: it produces a much richer, more complex tone. The natural harmonics present in the human voice create a sense of warmth and texture.

Another important factor in timbre, that’s related to harmonics, is something called inharmonicity. Going back to the example of the guitar string, we can theorize that the string will vibrate along different lengths, each of which is a whole number division of the overall length of the strength. In real life, however, the string is stiff and resists vibration. Some frequencies are resisted more than others, and this causes certain harmonics to be slightly out of key from what the “perfect” mathematical harmonic would be. However, in many cases, we are accustomed to this, so much so that makers of digital pianos have found that they have to reproduce the inharmonicity created by piano strings in order for listeners to perceive the sound as warm and natural.

This factor of inharmonicity also explains why the steel-string guitar sounds slightly out of key to me, especially on the higher strings – the steel strings are stiffer and more resistant, so they produce more inharmonicity. Most people who play steel-string guitars are completely accustomed to this. To them, my classical guitar sounds soft and dull, lacking the complex upper harmonics of steel strings.

One more factor in timbre is attack and decay. Attack refers to how quickly the sound reaches its peak volume and decay refers to how long it takes the sound to fade out.