BPM: Better Practice, Munro
Jul 10, 2020
Hi. Munro here. It looks like, going forward, I'm going to be in charge of BPM. Ichabod is having an existence crisis. That's fine, nobody liked him anyway.
This site is a good source for links to music I've recorded over the last 30 years, including the work I did with Broccoli & the Purple Sky. I'm hoping to do more with the reviews, interviews, and other material and artists besides myself.
We are, in fact, making changes here in the studio. After many years of spreading myself thin, I'm going to try to focus my attention on a specific goal. I've been studying music and working on my playing and reading abilities, and I'm going to try my hand as a for-hire studio musician. What I need to learn up front is how to get into the business. From there I will need to fine-tune my knowledge base to include the expectations of a professional working environment. I don't know why I'm telling you all of this.
I will continue to work on my personal music, mainly to help develop my flexibility and technique. I've never been one to play with a lot of pedals and effects; you can tell from many of my recordings that I tend to play "clean" and straight, without using signal processors. For a peek into my thinking, I do that because, like with alternate tunings, I don't want to become reliant on things that won't necessarily be readily available to me. For instance, if I write a song that uses a certain sound effect, then I need to play it acoustically, or on a rig that doesn't have "my" effects, I might not be able to pull it off. So I keep it simple, so that playing it on a nylon string in a park it will sound basically as good as it did in the studio, because nothing will be missing. There's also an element of the fact that I do write a lot of my material on a nylon string acoustic, so converting it to a rock song doesn't need added processing. That said, I've decided that adding effects could make it more interesting, even if I don't rely on them. I play with this one guy, James (he's the most recent example, not the only or best example) who uses a lot of effects. He's a fine guitar player, but when he turns off all the pedals, the guitar just sounds so thin and boring. So I figure, if I'm a good guitar player and I sound fine without effects, maybe I'll sound fantastically better with them. So I've started investing in a small collection of pedals. I started with four, two of which have arrived already. Even with just an overdrive and a flanger I can make the guitar sound so much cooler. When I add an analog delay and a wah pedal to it, I will vastly increase the possibilities of what I can make the guitar sound like. So, besides figuring out how to break into the studio musician gig, I need to work on my pedal usage so I can utilize that aspect in my professional dealings.
If I do get a chance to work on some other people's recordings, I will share whatever I'm allowed to on bestpolicymusic.com.
Thanks for checking in.
