Old Photos, New Life

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Heinz Maier's Droplets

water + food coloring + good timing =

"The New Way" by Heinz Maier

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Would you or someone you know like to go on a songwriting retreat with industry professionals? Visit SongbirdCamp.com for more details!

Melodic Ammo

In a recent issue of Time Magazine, I came across this remarkable photo:




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Would you or someone you know like to go on a songwriting retreat with industry professionals? Visit SongbirdCamp.com for more details!

Pair of Boots

In case you're dreaming about moving to Nashville, rest assured there's a pair of boots waiting for you.



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Would you or someone you know like to go on a songwriting retreat with industry professionals? Visit SongbirdCamp.com for more details!

The First Time Around

"If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?" asked legendary NCAA men's basketball coach John Wooden. 

When creating, our tendency is to want to call a song or painting finished before it may actually be a complete piece of art.

"We'll fix it in mixing," says the hurried producer in the studio.

"We'll Photoshop that right out," says the impatient photographer.

"All great achievements require time," says Maya Angelou.

In my limited experience, things never quite get fixed like we hope they will. 

I continually come back to tension between quantity and quality. My human productive side says to finish the song so I can start a new one. My creative soul says be patient. The ironic thing is that sometimes the best songs don't take very long to write, but only naturally flow out of a patient perspective. Of course, all of this is only possible if we are cautious of our expectations. With the best of intentions, we can miss out on the heart of creating art: enjoyment.

Keep writing (patiently),

Ben

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Would you or someone you know like to go on a songwriting retreat with industry professionals? Visit SongbirdCamp.com for more details!

Song = Fire

I love staring at a flame, especially when camping. It's mysterious. It seems like you should be able to capture it somehow to experience it more thoroughly. But it's always moving and changing and a photo doesn't quite do it justice.

In a wonderful documentary I found on Netflix (Music Instinct: Science and Song), pianist and conductor Daniel Borenboim observes, "Every note is a lifetime for itself."

Music is bittersweet because it is so beautiful yet impossible to capture. It is only experienced through passing time. And doesn't life feel that way sometimes? We can never truly hit the "pause" button and sit in any moment, good or bad.

Sheet music is to a song what a photograph of a flame is to a fire. The experience is passing, fleeting. But as songwriters, sometimes a song comes along that makes time feel like it stops. And for those moments, life feels a little more sweet than bitter.

Keep writing,

Ben

The Sartorialist

Scott Schuman has an eye for finding beauty in everyday life. He's got some great things to say about capturing and sharing that beauty through his blog, The Sartorialist. Welcome to his "digital park bench."

Keep writing (and people watching),

Ben

Timeless Art in a Fast World

There is a fun app on my phone that allows me to take professional-looking pictures in almost no time. I can make the most menial object look epic, without having to pay a professional photographer. That's a blessing and also a possible hazard.

We live in a fast world, and we want high-quality things, quickly. A picture program like this is appealing because it cuts out cost and time. But that also means that a tool like this could potentially take away work from photographers.

What does this look like when it comes to writing songs? With professional-quality microphones and recording equipment cheaper than ever, anyone and their mom is able to get an album onto iTunes. The real issue when it comes to such available technology is that we are tempted and able to hit the recording button too soon. Instead of carving on and reshaping a lyric or melody, we attempt to make up for any deficiencies in the song by making a sparkly and shiny recording. But a great recording of a mediocre song is still only a mediocre song. Few will remember hearing it.

When more people have access to create timeless-looking art, the challenge is to encourage all to participate, while still preserving and passing on the integrity of the craft. The reality is that with everyone taking photos on their phones, we are potentially only adding more noise to the craft of photography. It becomes easier to be average, and more difficult to be exceptional.

In the end, time is what separates the good from the mediocre – in a photographer's photos and in a songwriter's songs. If we create something true and good, it will stand up ten years from now. But if we only write something that sounds like what’s currently on the radio, then it’ll just sound like that "other" song. And who just wants to blend in?

Keep writing,

Ben

Vivian Maier, Street Photographer

A helpful reminder that we are all capable of creating great work.

Read more about Vivian Maier and see more of her photos here.

Physics Meets Photography

Though on the surface physics and photography don't have much to do specifically with songwriting, inspiration to write songs can be drawn directly from them.

Here's something I found inspiring: photographer Caleb Charland looked at a common thing like a houseplant and used his imagination to show us that plant in a new and exciting way. And isn't that what we try to do as songwriters? We try to see daily occurrences with a fresh perspective.

Photo by Caleb Charland.

Here's the explanation of how the artist managed to create this image of a growing plant (as quoted in Wired Magazine):

The initial spark of a match. A nail as it jitters toward a magnet. A bud on a plant that’s poised to grow into a branch. These moments of inception are often ephemeral to the point of being undetectable, but Caleb Charland manages to capture them, turning those flashes in the mind’s eye into thought-provoking photographs. 

His latest endeavor (working title: Node Project) focuses on those points on a plant from which leaves and branches sprout. “Each of the little nodes—they just felt like they could be an armature for an image,” he says. To create the effect shown here, Charland spray-painted a shrub black, then highlighted each node with glow-in-the-dark paint. Next, he stuck the plant in a ceramic pot and rotated it under a black light, exposing a sheet of 4 x 5 film to an illuminated pattern of potential growth. As Charland puts it, “I like the idea of taking something simple and ordinary and making it mesmerizing.”

Keep writing,

Ben