Ludwig Schooled Me

I’m sitting in my bed on a quiet night finally getting some time to shut everything else down and focus on preparing for a little recording project it looks like I’ll be doing in September.

I feel a little spoiled sitting here with the tools around me…each serving a different purpose for me. I also feel overwhelmingly grateful to have them available to help accomplish the goals I’m setting for this project. (Each of these “gadgets” has been given to me one way or another. It’s a little unfair, and I realize that fully. I am thankful.)

I have snippets of song ideas on my iPhone. There are chord charts and some licks and riffs that I’ve recorded on a couple of instrument apps on my iPad. And my MacBook Pro is loaded up with recording software that helps me pull together scratch tracks and sequences that will help my producer shape the ideas into reality.

Lately I’ve been taking some time during my lunch breaks at the Apple Store here in downtown Charleston to shoot some photos. I guess it’s the Architect side of me that gets a kick out of shoot buildings. And when I start looking at architecture, I kind of snap into this very cultured, classical mindset.

Maybe it’s the repetition in the columns or windows, or the steady pace of walking through the city streets that puts me into a rhythm. I’m not sure. But a few days ago, I started playing Beethoven tunes in my head to the meter of my steps. So I fired up Pandora on the ol’ iPhone to get a fix.

With my own music welling up in my soul lately in preparation for the record, I started feeling a little inferior. Weird, I know. But seriously…take a listen to a Beethoven tune. Any of them. And imagine what this guy had to do to pen his music. I’m walking up and down the street humming a tune into a box that can connect me to nearly any human on the planet within seconds. Then I tap a piece of glass to have it tell me the chords I’m playing. All I really have to know is a little about the Circle of Fifths to throw down my song idea. But old Ludwig had to sit down with a stinkin’ feather and ink and painstakingly write out his ideas note for note…for every instrument on the stage.

I got a C in Music Theory at Georgia Tech.

Something tells me Ludwig might have done a little better than that.