10 February 2009

Dikkii re-enters the blogosphere?


I've been a bit quiet of late. A bit of work. And, for some reason, I've started studying again.

Plus I'm doing some more stuff on the music front - I recently joined another band, and apparently I'm going to get more work with another one that I haven't played with for a while.

The new band is relying on me to write arrangements which is quite a lot more time consuming than I remembered. Some might ask, "Well why don't you just do that the jazz way where you just write a 'head' and then let the music form around that?"

Sorry, my mind doesn't work like that.

Songs to me are little planets all of their own and need to be fleshed out with their own little microcosms before you let the natives trample all over them. I find it really unfulfilling when you leave a tune as a kinda 'Argo City' thing and expect it to add its own surrounds. Particularly when you have dreamed up a great intro or ending. Or even a good middle 8.

I don't even write my own stuff: Imagine how time consuming this would be if I did? All I do is arrange other tunes - although I think that I have a pretty good ear for what works and what doesn't.

Summer is hectic down here, and I'm finding that I simply don't have even the time to read the blogs I love reading. So sorry all you folks who write great stuff - you know who you are. Eventually, I will come back to the blogosphere with a passion.

We've had heatwave after heatwave here as well as particularly nasty bushfires, and I work with someone who lost their house to the fires. It's goddamned nasty that the fire authorities believe that most of them appear to have been deliberately lit.

I have a bit of travel for work lined up in the next few weeks, and I know that this will keep me from blogging as well.

But do stay tuned - I will be back out there, eventually. I just have to try to find some kinda space.

Party on, y'all.

10 comments:

Michael Bains said...

Hekk, Dikkii, sounds like you're in for totally kickin' time. enjoy!

Ain't like I've writ much lately. Think I'm down to a post a week, if that.

Dikkii said...

Well, you're at least writing, MB. I'm just lurching from one day to the next.

Don said...

Good to have you back, if even in a limited capacity. Been missing your comments around my place as well as your posts here.

Good luck with the band. Sound like you've got a lot going on.

Dikkii said...

Thanks Akusai, nice of you to say. Yes I do have a lot on - part of it's my own silly fault for being unable to say no.

Anonymous said...

Some might ask, "Well why don't you just do that the jazz way where you just write a 'head' and then let the music form around that?"

Sorry, my mind doesn't work like that.


Also, the jazz approach is really fucking hard, even if you have got a bunch of supernaturally talented musicians who are so tight they're practically telepathic. And even then, they usually all had a pretty good shared idea of how the arrangement was supposed to hang together.

Dikkii said...

Amen to that Dunc. And it's usually the case that most jazz outfits spend so much time working out what works and what doesn't that they might have just as well written it out.

Personally, I consider it to be planning. I suppose that I should declare my allegiance to the non-jazz way of doing things.

You speak like a musician yourself, Dunc.

Anonymous said...

I play a bit, yes... ;) Folk mainly. I've played guitar most of my life, and I've been working on the tin-whistle for a year or two. Haven't played in a band for many years though, and I don't actually perform - I simply play for my own pleasure. At the moment I'm working on a couple of my own tunes and some arrangements of traditional Scottish folk tunes.

If I had a buck for every time I've been at a party with other musicians and some twat's said "can't you just jam something?" I could probably quit my job. No, we effing can't - we don't even work in the same idiom. Even a straight twelve-bar blues in E requires some prior agreement and understanding.

Dikkii said...

I think that there's this misunderstanding outside the music-sphere that's permeated its way in that musicians can just magically jam stuff together.

I've found this to be almost entirely without substance, and whenever I hear, "can't you just jam something?" I nearly cry.

In fact, I'd like to put this on the record right now: It's freeform jazz that's created this impression: I do not like, condone, encourage nor do freeform jazz.

I wonder what Ryan would make of this discussion?

Verification word: barfight

Anonymous said...

Look this is all very well but do we have to come to Melbourne to hear something you've put together?

Dikkii said...

Yes but I'd leave it a few weeks, Taj. We still don't have a drummer yet.