Arthurthefourth.com

The Song that Just Won’t Quit

Apr 19, 2005 myMusic

So the illustrious Mec Zilla has finally graced the blank space carved out for her some years ago in If We Were with an incredibly dope vocal! Thanks, Mec!

If We Were

And! This very track was just featured in “Success,” a short film by Alex DeMille and Geoffrey Sledge, along with some other bits and pieces of mine. If you have the patience and the luck, check it out in the Tribeca Short Film Competition on Amazon.

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Freestyle Love Supreme

Oct 18, 2004 myMusic

the official press release:

Imagine a spontaneous fusion of live music, comedy and hip-hop. Six performers create a whirlwind of musicality as they riff off audience suggestions in a show that is never the same twice.

Freestyle Love Supreme is a joyful, high energy, one-of-a-kind event. This exclusive New York engagement will run at Ars Nova (511 W. 54th Street) from October 22nd through December 18th with an official opening scheduled for November 10th.

Freestyle Love Supreme chose its name as an homage to John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme”, a nod to both its musical influences, which include jazz, soul, blues and hip-hop, and the expressive nature of Coltrane’s sound. The cast is comprised of six ethnically diverse performers: three vocalists/actors and three musicians. Two-Touch and Lin-Man trade rhymes while Mister Wright brings in melody and harmony. Arthur the Geniuses plays the piano and sings, King Sherman plays the sax, flute and piano, and Shockwave, a human beatbox, adds the percussion.

Freestyle Love Supreme is directed by Thomas Kail. It features set design by Beowulf Boritt (The Last Five Years) and costume design by Lisa Zinni. The lighting design is by Jeff Croiter (Matt and Ben) and sound design by Jorge Muelle.

Freestyle Love Supreme runs Friday, October 22nd through Saturday, December 18th. Performance times are Thursdays at 8 PM, Fridays at 8 PM & 10:30 PM and Saturdays at 8 PM. Tickets are $20. To purchase, call SmartTix at 212-868-4444 or go to SmartTix.com. Ars Nova is located at 511 West 54th Street, just west of 10th Ave. Subway: C, E, to 50th Street, N, R, Q, W to 57th Street, or 1, 9 to Columbus Circle. Beer, wine and refreshments are available at the bar.

The Mijor Triad

Sep 30, 2004 myMusic

When I used to play the guitar (in my teenage years), I was intrigued by the psychological perception of pitch. If I play a C, and I tune the E string a little flat, it still sounds like a major third. But if I keep turning the peg, eventually it’s no longer a flat E, it’s a sharp E-flat, and it sounds like a minor third. So what happens perceptually in a listener trained on an equal-tempered scale (basically, anyone in the Western hemisphere at this point) when the note is right smack on the middle?

Picture me sitting in my room, head cocked to one side, trying to turn this peg back and forth as minutely as possible until it was exactly precisely in the middle. Clearly a fool’s errand.

But 10 years later, Csound has shown me the way. So for anyone who has ever wondered what happens to such the listener in such a case?

It just makes you nauseous.

Behold, The Mijor Triad.

Am I Doomed?

Sep 10, 2004 myMusic

About four days ago, I started learning Csound, basically a programming language for sound synthesis. Two days ago, I ordered Producing In The Home Studio with Pro Tools on half.com. Later in the day, I put in a call to a guitarist I found on Craigslist who was supposed to give me guitar lessons in exchange for piano. This morning, I picked up Grout and Palisca’s A History of Western Music and thunked it into my backpack.

I’m not trying to pat myself on the back here – far from it. I’m taking a look at what underlies this behavior. Now, some of you may know that I fancy myself a musician of some sort. I sang in choirs all my life, I majored in music in college, I play piano in Freestyle Love Supreme, I put down some hip-hop classics with Lin-Manuel, I try to play jazz, I try to write songs, sometimes I try to make drum and bass, I gush about the musical flavor of the season (it’s Prince right now, in case you hadn’t noticed), I sing R&B style nonsense hooks, I identify with pretty much everyone and everybody.

And what the hell do you do with that? The first time I played with Freestyle Love Supreme, I had to be coerced because I said, You know Lin, I’m not really a piano player. But I went down there, and I did it, and you know what, 9 months later, I’m still not a piano player. But I’m getting pretty decent at whatever it is I do down there.

That first night, before I walked onto the stage, Two-Touch took one look at me and said “Arthur the Geniuses,” a name that has stuck with me ever since. But I tend to view it as a sort of ironic name. As a sort of mockery of itself. Not that it was by any means intended this way, but to me it signifies my status as a musical jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none.

Here’s what it boils down to for me: common wisdom dictates that when you have a natural talent for something that you really enjoy doing, you should do it. I’m on board so far. Doin’ the music thing, somehow someway. But what happens when that thing forks off into a thousand different roads? How the hell do you know which way to go? If on Monday, I want to be Keith Jarrett, Tuesday I want to be Squarepusher, Wednesday I want to be Prince, Thursday Rufus Wainwright, and Friday Gustav fucking Mahler, when I get up in the morning on Saturday and sit down to make music, where on earth do I start? When in the afternoon I decide it’s time to practice, well, what the hell do I practice? Where does one begin?

How do you make these decisions? How do people know, when faced with many viable options, which one to choose? Or do you just take them all?

I mentioned to Carlos the other day that, at the rate I’m going, it would have to be at least a good 5 years before I’d have enough of an understanding of all the things I’d like to understand musically to be truly proud of the music I’m making. Rationally, I suppose I can accept that. Emotionally, I absolutely cannot. So what does a person do? Choose one – pigeonhole oneself into an instrument or a category and focus on that to the exclusion of all else? Continue spidering and just never really feel ownership of anything? I just find it hard to envision a day when someone says “So what kind of music do you make?,” and I’ll actually be able to give them an answer. I suppose I’d prefer to give them a CD. But how will I know what to put on it?

Now before you all say, just quit your whining and do it, whatever needs to comes out will come out, or other such stuff, I have to say that it’s just not that easy. Sometimes what wants to come out is a string quartet – once I hit a musical wall, I’ve got to work on my string-writing; or if I hit a technical wall, I’ve got to learn more about my sampler. Sometimes it’s a series of beeps, drum noises, and whistling sounds. Gotta figure out how to make those. More and more often recently, it’s been very guitar-oriented stuff – gotta learn to play the guitar better, at least well enough to play the lines I want to get down. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Something is clearly wrong-headed in my thinking here. But what? Anyone have brilliant advice to tear down everything I’ve just said? Anyone?

Harpo the Geniuses?

May 29, 2004 myMusic

If you’ve ever been to a Freestyle Love Supreme show, you’ve probably had occasion to compare me to Harpo Marx. (And if you haven’t, get your ass out there – we’ve only got one left until we break for the summer…)

The one who never talks. The one who finds joy in playing beautiful lilting melodies. The curly-headed musical foil to his more verbal brethren. The one who, sometime around age 23, changed his name to Arthur.

Whoa.

The Art of Song

May 9, 2004 myMusic

So I went to this party last night thrown by this keyboard player. Dope pad, nice keyboards everywhere, and a beautiful home studio where we had a nice little late-night jam session.

And the thing I kept hearing, when I first got to the party and started introducing myself to people, and later on, after the other singer-types and I had sung our drunken dry-throated asses off, was “Oh, where do you sing?” And its corollary, “What kind of stuff do you sing?”

My answers: “Um, I don’t really” and “Well, uh, I don’t really sing anything anymore.”

THIS IS A PROBLEM.

It’s time to get serious again about singing. I gave up on the open mic circuit cause I didn’t have any songs, due largely to my continual defeat in the ongoing struggle against lyric-writing. Singing covers doesn’t really appeal to me, so I must venture once more into the fray.

I’m considering taking a songwriting class at the New School this summer: either Songwriting or Lyric Writing. Now, you know I’m normally very skeptical of classes in non-academic subjects and their effectiveness, but anything that forces me to write lyrics on a regular basis has to be good for me, right?

Anyway, just fishing for opinions, cause, seriously, some changes have to be made around here. If I take one of these classes, which one should it be? Should I just take voice lessons instead? Decisions, decisions. And if you have any other ideas for how to get me back on the stage, don’t keep them to yourselves…

Tuesday Morning Update #15

Dec 2, 2003 myMusic

It’s been a long time since I did one of these. And I’m sick today, so the best I can do is hope this comes out more than just garbled nonsense. Or maybe that would be apropos.

The first thing to mention is The Nonsense Album. I’ve probably told some of you about it, but for those that I haven’t, here’s the scoop. You may have noticed that I have a hell of time writing lyrics. If We Were was the first set of lyrics that I completed in literally 10 years. And the ones before that were crap that I threw out a long time ago.

But I write music all the time, and sometimes I do even “finish” things. And sometimes I’ll write vocal parts over them, and I’ll just sort of sing syllables over them which turn into words, just cause they sound right, not cause they mean anything.

So I figured, why spend another 10 years trying to write lyrics just so I can fit into the singer/songwriter mold? They’d clearly just be frosting anyway.

The ideas crystallized when I went to see Susan Marshall’s dance troupe at BAM about a month ago. In both the pieces they did, the dancers did an amazing job of not quite telling a story, but evoking the same sorts of feelings, abstractly, as if they had been explicitly acting out understandable scenarios. The pieces sort of hinted at broader ideas of human interaction, but through, especially in the second piece, Other Stories, these nonsensical little vignettes. It was brilliant.

With that in mind, I’ve begun work on The Nonsense Album. Evan aptly described the concept as “neo-soul Sigur Ros.” I like to look at it as giving Bobby McFerrin a much-needed dose of Sturm und Drang stirred up with some of that old boom-bip. Or some equally ridiculous The-Claws-meet-Soul-Academy-meet-Edgar-Allan-Blow sort of nonsense. I’ve got a bunch of ideas for it, but it’s all still in research and development right now.

The Monday night open mic at the Village Underground has closed. It’s really too bad – it was an amazing and really supportive place. I’ve been talking about checking out Groove, and I may even do so this week, if my scratchy, painful throat returns to normal some time soon.

I’m trying to start a regimen of practicing piano half an hour a day, because my skills have fallen to shit. Seems to be working pretty well, not necessarily for my skills, but for stimulating new ideas and whatnot, and helping provide some kind of structure to daily life. External structure is one of the key points to ADD treatment.

Of course, so is actually seeing a psychiatrist and getting a diagnoisis. Mbee.

Tuesday Morning Update #13 / #14

Oct 7, 2003 myMusic

So I got all caught up with this AD/HD thing and I missed last week’s update. It’s OK though, cause shit is exactly the same now as it would have been then. The Village Underground HAS in fact reopened, but I haven’t been back. I’ve skipped the jazz open mic at Cleopatra’s Needle every Sunday for weeks now. I even missed the drum circle I was going to go to on Sunday. But I’ve ben working on tracks, beats, music, whatever you want to call it. And Sunday night, If We Were (yeah, you remember, that song I always used to talk about) got firmly embedded in my subconscious, so I guess this means I have to start on the new recording. Fuck, I don’t think I can handle it.

Gonna get my sister singing on some of our shit. When the Lewis twins attack, you won’t know what hit you…

That’s all for now. Time for bed.

Taking Up The Gauntlet

Sep 25, 2003 myMusic

About a year ago, the people at my place of work got together and did a pretty cool thing: they put together a CD of artists who work there, had it professionally mastered and produced, and gave them away for free by the bushload. Today, I have found out that they’re doing it again.

I have until October 31st to submit the hottest track, the most beautiful song, the most spaced-out shit known to mankind. If We Were is too long, the hip-hop I’ve been doing recently is too offensive – perhaps I’ll have to start from scratch.

I find myself wondering if I am up to the challenge. But I cannot pass up the chance to have my track distributed for free to thousands of hip connected New Yorkers. So I guess I’m gonna have to be…

Tuesday Morning Update #12

Sep 23, 2003 myMusic

To start off, please forgive me if the delirium of my raging fever has rendered this post incoherent or merely annoying….

So I’ve been producing and singing on this hip-hop track with rhymes by my friend Lin all week. It’s been a great antidote to my whininess about not getting shit done, because I AM, in fact, getting shit done! I’ve gotten reacquainted with Logic Audio and the whole recording/mixing process, which I had previoulsy decided I hated. And it turns out I’m actually pretty good at it! But it turns out I am also VERY VERY picky.

Especialy when it comes to my own singing, I cannot suffer a bad example to live. I’ll do a take over and over and over again and I will still never like it. However, I’ve come to realize that if I pile a couple of vocals on top of each other, they all start to sound better. Ooh, and it makes me sound like a white D’Angelo. Sweet…

I skipped out on a couple of shows and open mics and what-have-you because apparently the consequences of not resting your sprained ankle enough are inexplicable pains and stiffnesses from your foot all the way up your side, down your arm, and up to the base of your neck two whole weeks later. Bollocks. Throw into the mix the aforementioned delirious fever, and you have a perfect recipe for staying home. It’s too bad too – I was supposed to meet a drummer last night that I found on Craigslist, but I got to 125th St. and I had to get off the subway and turn back.

Finally, I discovered The Love Below, the Andre 3000 side of the new Outkast album, which I have been listening to incessantly ever since I discovered mtv.com’s free preview. Basically, Andre 3000 is absolutely insane and this album is totally mind-boggling. A couple of years ago, I discovered that my constant quest for new music was rooted in a desire to hear the album that I myself would be making if I could get my shit together. Well, thus far, I think The Love Below wins the prize for closest match. I may even have to write (gasp!) a full review of it once I’ve actually got a CD-quality copy…