Music is The Magic

In the short time I've been on this planet I have listened to and absorbed over 500,000 songs by Artists from 4 decades of Pop Culture. I've made some headway in my quest to improve on guitar and completed enough music to consider myself active as a music maker. There is no trophy, no grammy, no oscar or other award on my mantel over the fireplace or next to the flat panel screen or iMac. There is just great memories.

I have vinyl and CD dreams because I know that some folks prefer that to downloads. In fact I even dream of collecting some new vinyl from Jack White's Record Shop in Nashville, Third Man Records. So who is the 3rd man? He must be the rhythm guitarist in the band.

Does the Third Man stand for all we have come to love about music like we do? I think so, but some may beg to differ. Just remember, every time you purchase a vinyl record or a t-shirt by your fave Artists you are making it so they can make more music for you. Music has a profound effect on all our lives.

There was once a saying I heard on the tube on a Sunday evening during a cold winter in February: "Music lifts us up, and washes the dust from our feet, in our everyday lives." It was Wynton Marsalis who said this and he first heard it from his father decades ago. Yet he also became aware that his dad "expected him and his brothers to make the world a better place." Music does just that.

If you can delegate most things in your life in the Musicians World you inhabit, and you are 100 percent confident about what your doing, then and only then you step it up. If you have it together all things will simply verify as legit. "If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, eats like a duck, then it is probably a duck " our Grandad said. Agreed.

Your music that you create serves a greater purpose of just being a song...it provides a source for happiness for fans, sometimes dispenses more learning with wisdom, provides a portal for commerce, and has a positive effect on students grades, and more. You actually use more of your brain if playing an instrument. Is it worth the money? Yes. I believe it is.

So where do we go from here? We keep going forward. We create, we learn music software, we give birth to the new songs we love to play. You should do this without money being a factor until you have recorded and fixed the song to a grid that makes it ready for mix and master. Our motto when playing music: Have A Good Time All The Time. We thank Bruce MacKnight of Knightlife band in Philadelphia for this. He and his drummer said this several years ago.

If it takes you all day to find the Magic in the Music that is truly ok. There are parts of writing that are intuitive and parts that are not so intuitive. I believe the organic part is where the magic happens, just when you collaborate with someone on writing a song. You are unique identifiers when writing. You each bring a certain something to the table the other doesn't have. We are painting on a canvas of sound - we pull opals of colors that are notes out of thin air! For a long time we felt music belonged to only sophisticated advanced players. Then one day Bono said "you only need 3 chords to play a song and make music" and he pulled a fan out of the crowd of 80,000 people and proved this. So, that is the real Magic. Music is the Magic you have been looking for.

James Walsh