WMV Music Web Log

Posted some Bach mp3s. These are challenging - beyond the obvious reasons, I learned them wrong, and have to go back and re-think everything. Recording is helpful - I listened back, and immediately said no, no, no, that is all wrong. The Corrente had always bothered me anyway - what the heck was he thinking? So, number one, I was playing it too fast - the 16th note is the step, not the quarter. Two, it was wildly uneven - I'm no fan of evenness for the sake of being mechanical, but there was no sense of beat. So I set Dr. Beat (a fancy metronome) to quarter = 76 with all the sixteenths filled in, and played it over and over with every 16th on a click. When I am done, it will be like salsa.

Can't finish this week though - we are leaving town. But I have to admit this is fun, recording solo piano music. I am compiling a list.

("Heavenly Treble" encaustic painting on wood 8"x8" by Marilyn Banner)

I have posted new recordings on the website: Brahms Variations on an Original Theme in D Major Op. 21#1, and Stravinsky Piano Sonata (minus the third movement, which hopefully I will record today). It seems I record only when Marilyn is out of town and I have the house to myself for an extended period of time. Well, this makes sense, I guess - my studio is the living room, after all!

It started with a dream: I was in a recording studio, supposedly to record the Schumann Piano Concerto. I thought, gee, I haven't played it in a while, but it might work. But I was not sure I had the score with me. And there was a young couple there hanging around. The man proudly reported that the young Asian woman had just won another piano competition, her fourth or fifth in recent months. She was standing near the piano, too near. Suddenly I started shouting at her, "Get the fuck out of here!" I woke up, got out of bed, and spent the day recording.

The way I record is probably unconventional, but it works for me. I turn on the DAT, play through once, listen, record again, and then maybe repeat parts once or twice more until just about everything seems to have been played right at least once. Then I go to the computer and choose the best takes, cutting out the mistakes (most of them, but not all of them), and splicing in a better version here and there. I am pretty casual, like Marilyn when she is making a collage. No fancy splices, no perfect performances - if I like it and it sounds OK, I go with it. Then I make mp3s, and post them on the web, all in an 8 hour day.

It's kind of wonderful to not know exactly what one is doing or where one is going musically. I want to go back and look at all the solo repertoire I spent so many years with, my first loves. It seems that approaching 60 has its own psychological processes of looking backward, reassessing, and cataloging.

I spent the last couple of days making a database for Marilyn's art. The hardest thing about it was the incredible beauty of every piece, hundreds of these works that speak louder with every year passing. There is one in our living room, which has a long history with us. At some point, Marilyn decided that a private person should not own this piece, that it belonged in a public place. Apparently, she has finally arranged for this to happen - we will see. But there are a lot of works like this, and they are stuffed into her studio, and even in our closets. 40 years of Marilyn Banner's art. It is scary - she is beginning to talk about her estate, and her ashes.

We know how good we are, but the world does not, and we do not have time any more to really change this. Interestingly, success looks rather different at our age - as Marilyn says, quoting Betsy Damon, success for a middle aged woman artist is simply survival as an artist. Success to me means time to practice, a piano to perform on, and an audience.

People occasionally ask me what I listen to, and are usually shocked when I say "nothing". I try to listen to rain and traffic and birds. But why should I listen to music coming out of a box, when I can create it myself? At this stage in my life I do not listen to music for pleasure. I do listen to recordings as a tool to learn new music, but even then I am usually playing along.

But I have been listening to Dylan's Modern Times in the car. This is different - Dylan remains moving and transformative for me. It shakes me to my core. What is Thunder on the Mountain about? It is about everything.

Nothing inspires my work so much as Dylan's, and yet it is so different. The musical elements are so fundamental and simple. I have performed Dylan songs on my programs, but I have to sing them - there is no point in just playing them as instrumentals. Whenever I do them, though, I think I need a band, and then I feel strangely helpless.

The Chaise Lounge/Marilyn Older/Charlie Barnett videos are up on YouTube (thanks to David Cheng!); it is fascinating that the Louis Prima "I Wanna Be Like You" cover has about 2600 hits, whereas "Bom" has only 45. But Bom is just as good, and I am very proud to be a part of this band. These guys are so good it hurts: Marilyn Older, Charlie Barnett, John Jensen, Ben Redwine, Greg Watkins, Mark Carson, and me.