There are more independent guitar makers than ever before, it appears, by all accounts making fantastic sounding and looking instruments. Finely crafted, indeed. I even have one made specially for me in 1987 by my old friend Chris Eccleshall.

Now these fine instruments have to be superior in every sense from anything that comes out of a factory, don’t they? A guitar, whose woods have been carefully selected and assembled with all the love and care of a master craftsman, has to be intrinsically more musical and more valuable than any “production-line” guitar. Doesn’t it?

Yes, I wonder.

When I consider the history and usage of the steel string acoustic guitar, it occurs that it’s genius is to be found in its ability to be replicated ad infinitum, with consistent high quality, so that it’s available to “the masses” reasonably cheaply. Affordable inherently. It is the modern folk instrument par excellence. Add a little bit of QA/QC and you get instruments of exceptional quality at a price within the reach of the working man or woman.

Another thought: steel string acoustic guitars like to start their public life as part of a well-drilled platoon standing (or hanging) to attention on the wall of a store and regimented neatly on stands on the floor below. Thus arranged, they promise joys and dreams of fame and fortune to patrons young and old (mostly young) whose musical fulfillment may be only a few major and a couple of minor strummed chords away. And sometimes is.

In contrast, the luthier sits in a different world and crafts his instruments for a different animal. His customer is one who appreciates an instrument made exclusively for herself and to her exact specifications. She has graduated from her old “mass production” guitars and now has an ear for, and the playing ability to demonstrate, the better sound of her unique guitar. Made from the best grade woods from the oldest trees from the deepest forests inhabited by the most secretive of elves. “If only more guitar players would see the light!”, the luthiers cry.

Why? They would need to set up a factory to cope with the demand.

You can’t say that about orchestral instruments. I still remember recoiling in horror when I was browsing a stringed instrument store in Edinburgh. I say “store” when in fact is was more like a museum with ticket prices on the exhibits. Or without, I should say. Prices hanging from the necks of these instruments would, I think, have been considered a tad vulgar.

But back to acoustic guitars. It seems as if luthiers (as they like to be called) would like to bestow a refinement and almost an exclusivity to these instruments that is against the grain of their true nature.

        

I hope you have time to wander over and take a listen:

Uneasy Listening CD and MP3 downloads.

Thank you!

      Uneasy Listening Released Today!&bodytext=&media=&topic=" target="_blank" onclick="javascript:urchinTracker('/outbound/digg.com/submit?url=http_//www.dave-keir.com/wordpress/?p=224_amp_title=_em_Uneasy_Listening_/em_Released_Today_amp_bodytext=_amp_media=_amp_topic=');">  Uneasy Listening Released Today!" target="_blank" onclick="javascript:urchinTracker('/outbound/delicious.com/save?v=5_amp_noui_amp_jump=close_amp_url=http_//www.dave-keir.com/wordpress/?p=224_amp_title=_em_Uneasy_Listening_/em_Released_Today');">

It’s played on my Martin OM-18V.

I have a class of song that use I as catharsis in response to certain challenges I face in life. I call this class of songs my Catharsis Song Class . The challenge met by this particular example is the vicious circle of insomnia caused by a bum day job which renders the day job less endurable which causes me to lose even more sleep. I commend the song to anybody requiring something soporific in the wee small hours. As ever from me this is a filigree of fingerstyle underpinning a wine befuddled vocal.

Soon to be on my Uneasy Listening CD, I hope you have time to have a listen.

Can be streamed from here:

Living Is Easy

And downloaded here:

Soundclick Music Page

Zee lyrics:

Living Is Easy

Living is easy
Without any sub-plots
I’m just happy joining up the dots

I hope you enjoy it!

      Living Is Easy&bodytext=&media=&topic=" target="_blank" onclick="javascript:urchinTracker('/outbound/digg.com/submit?url=http_//www.dave-keir.com/wordpress/?p=223_amp_title=New_song_-_em_Living_Is_Easy_/em_amp_bodytext=_amp_media=_amp_topic=');">  Living Is Easy" target="_blank" onclick="javascript:urchinTracker('/outbound/delicious.com/save?v=5_amp_noui_amp_jump=close_amp_url=http_//www.dave-keir.com/wordpress/?p=223_amp_title=New_song_-_em_Living_Is_Easy_/em');">

Or: “The Year Of The Sheep”

“But [the Scottish] hills are empty. In all of Britain only among them can one find real solitude, and if their history is known there is no satisfaction to be got from the experience.”
(John Prebble. From the introduction to his “The Highland Clearances”, Penguin Books, 1963.)

“Since you have preferred sheep to men, let sheep defend you!”
(Quotation from the same book.)

This is a song from the forthcoming CD which I’m lurching towards. I’m sure you all know that Bliadhna nan Caorach (The Year Of The Sheep) refers to the year 1792 during which all the flocks of sheep in Scotland formed an army and evicted the human population from the hills and the glens. (Eek!)

This has reached the stage where I would welcome critique on the sonics which you think I should maybe attend to before I commit to mastering. My own ears have thrown in the towel.
Some might say it’s another one of my attempts at shoe-horning some lyrics into something that wants to be an acoustic fingerstyle guitar piece!

Please take a listen or download (320kbps MP3, 10.61Mb):

hi-fi URL: http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=6964534&q=hi
lo-fi URL: http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=6964534&q=lo

Free download for limited time from here:

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=6964534

Cheers!

The Year Of The Sheep

Now the hills are kept empty for sophisticated eyes
The picture on the postcard is the consolation prize
Oh my, look at the view!
The hills are kept empty for me and for you

        

My musings on musical invention earlier have led me on, by way of consideration of the randomness of the creative process, to wondering whether chaos, in it’s scientific sense, might have some part to play.

As difficult as it is for me to imagine a cause for the truly random event, I can think of organisation arising out of a certain class of random events, to whit; evolution from genetic mutation. Is it a quality of random events that they are chaotic? It strikes me as amusing that creative folks are caricatured as living somewhat “chaotic” lives. That all their organisational talent is expended in one discrete area, ie., bringing coherence out of the chaos and randomness of their inspiration. In consideration of the totality of their lives, It is almost as if they were swimming against some sort of turbulent tide - if that’s not a contradiction in terms.

        

Yes it’s time to move on. I no longer need a 16:8:2 mixing console. This Allen & Heath desk has served me well and I’ve reciprocated by giving lots of tender and loving care.

I’ll be sad to see it go. It’s up on Ebay.

[Update: it's gone. I hope it has a productive life - in Vienna!]

        

There are a lot of resources and advice available online to independent musicians to assist in marketing their music. One challenge is that the sheer quantity of this makes it a part-time job just to read it. And another to execute it - presuming you can differentiate the worthwhile from the ineffective. There are even folks, of course, who market their marketing skills whose services I could employ.

What to do? I should perhaps consult with a consultant knowledgeable about consultants in marketing to help decide which marketing consultant I should consult.

It’s been that kind of day.

        

What is the nature of the faculty for inventing music?

When I think about “inspiration” - that white heat of spontaneous creativity - which may last moments only, I realise that there is no analytic thought involved. It comes as a priori knowledge of what is musically right and fitting as it is being played and leads instinctively or intuitively to further musical utterances. This process is in contrast to that involved in the consideration of the musical materials thus arrived at for the purpose of organising them into a coherent piece of music, or song. So I see two dissimilar process at work; one a priori and the other analytic. (I’m used to the latter; I’ve heard about the former.)

The only qualification I would make is that the quality and frequency of the “inspiration” appears to be proportional to the frequency with which it is provided the means to occur and then exploited. This might not explain genius, but then; what does?

Is the nature of the faculty for making music similar to that of creating any other form of art, or even the achievement of original thinking in the sciences? I’ve read (or heard) about the facility for lateral thinking, or more specifically the ability to connect apparently non-related phenomena or ideas to arrive at new knowledge as an essential quality of the inventive mind. Maybe creativity is all of a piece, irrespective of the field in which it is engaged. But there is something apparently random in this lateral thought. Maybe that’s what gives it its a proiri appearance. The alleged something-from-nothing quality of inspiration bothers me. I think it’s a fallacy. But it reminds me of the randomness of mutation that underpins evolution. There is a randomness about creative thought that begets art and science.

        

Hi folks!

The pre-production of my forthcoming CD Uneasy Listening is nearing completion! But there is still some work to do. If you would like to be kept up to date with the progress and be pointed to a place where you can download free pre-mastered mixes of the songs as they progress, please complete the form below:

At this time a few things remain undecided: song order, booklet artwork and blurb, inclusion of lyrics… maybe you will have some ideas!

Thank you for your interest - and support!

Dave

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Sometimes I’m asked at gigs and catches me off guard. It’s always a difficult question to answer succinctly to a stranger, and causes me to stutter and stammer incoherently. “I’ve always done it”, is as lame a reason as it is true.

But to me it’s all rather obvious since it’s an internal life that gets externalised through the act of songwriting. More accurately, its expression is stimulated by the act of simply noodling on my guitar without the intent of writing a song being present at all. But once the gears are engaged, so to speak, then whatever store of resource that resides within seeps up like some osmosis into my consciousness.

What does crop up which is caused by the stimulation affected by simply improvising (say) on chords and / or melodies based on scales will depend on a multitude of unrelated events in my life – contemporary and historically. These “events” can be superficially trivial or deeply personal or even completely impersonal. I’ve written a song about a cowboy after watching western TV shows.

The extent to which they are autobiographical spans the whole spectrum from not at all to almost journalistic.

Some songs are borne out of empathy and portraiture as distinct from being vehicles for self-expression. Other songs are more concerned with the sound and expressiveness of the language used than with the meaning it conveys. Yet others are a means of catharsis. Others still are long-winded and overblown ways to tell a joke. Whatever kind of song comes about is caused, not intentioned.

What is an anathema to me is to go into the studio for the purpose of writing a new song. I don’t do that. Sometimes I will go into the studio for the purpose of trying to finish a song that is already underway – in fact, without that discipline no song would ever get completed! Coming up with new “stuff” – they can’t be called “songs” – is unconscious in the first instance.

To a future stranger, who asks, I may well shrug and say that I can’t remember: I’ve been writing songs since I was a kid and that’s a long time ago. It’s a habit - no more; no less.