Author: Luke

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I’m a big fan of interludes and in between moments. I’m a fan of the album vs. the single, and I think these snippets create a glue to hold the other songs together. It’s a fine line and you can kill the momentum of an album pretty easily… But I can’t help myself.

It’s also a way for me to include snippets of musical ideas that maybe don’t ever make it into a song, and the why bother there is that for me albums are more about a certain period of time being captured, rather than a bunch of songs. And those little snippets tend to coincide pretty well with the feeling of the rest of the music.

ANYWAYS.

This one is called “Forge” and it’s a throwback to my ukelele addiction I suffered through last year. I listen to a lot of EDM and somehow someday I want to marry the pulse of that music’s kick drum to an acoustic instrument. For fun and amusement. For justice and glory. And stuff.

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Interludes & In Betweens: Forge
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Working on a thing, you have this moment before it’s finished where it’s time to take stock. Same with building a bookshelf as it is making an album as it is planning an event, there’s a moment where you can begin to visualize how it all will turn out, and whether some serious reconsidering needs to be done. Is it a ton of things? Just a few details? Was something fundamentally wrong with the inception? That’s the time, and unfortunately you only get to that point after you put in that much work.

This is definitely where I’m at with my latest group of recordings/album. It’s all laid out and I’m got my hands on my hips just kind of nodding my head up and down trying to decipher it, like a crime tv detective looking at the pins on a map.

And it’s either discouraging or re-invigorating.

And I guess my point of bothering to write this moment down is that I realized just now that whether it is discouraging OR re-invigorating is YOUR choice at that point. It’s a choice.

Your bookshelf is a mess all wrong angles the screws are poking through, the shelves aren’t level. That could be it… forget it, other f it, get mad, burn the scrap wood and move on. OR recognize that fixing the fundamental flaws is not only necessary but maybe… (I’m definitely inserting my own optimism here) just maybe this is the most important part. Not the work you’ve already done. But the evaluation of it.

That’s what I’m going to tell myself at this point. And ideally make the most of this moment. Or just burn it as scrap wood. No. I don’t think I’ll do that.

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I’m not entirely sure from whence, but this track has been getting a ton of plays on soundcloud lately. Is it possible people think it’s a cover of an Arcade Fire song? No way! I prefer to believe they are into the quoting of Saint-Saens in a rock song turned classical turned rock quartet.

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Thought I’d gather all the pieces I composed for Shar, Nisha and Brad’s film “You Follow”. It’s my first official soundtrack! I’ll be unrolling them in rapid succession here on the site, via the podcast. Hope you enjoy…

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"You Follow" Soundtrack - 'To Be Is To Do'
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Here’s the second part of the album I made for making things to. Make whatever you want! Again what we want is ambience and a lack of drama, without aspiring to New Age.

I had a friend who had a ranch out in the hidden part of Mendocino County, and one of our past-times during an amazing Summer visit there became “rock-hopping”, where you hop down a mostly dried up creek bed, ideally reaching a state where you don’t think between leaps. For some reason this song reminded me of that.

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Music For Painting To, Part 2 - Rock Hopping
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Seeing a film with my music in it for the first time #hellarad #egotrip

Last night joined Shar and Nisha and the whole workings of You Follow to watch the first public screening of their documentary.

The story, of an adopted woman looking for her birth mother in India, is moving, and making a few pieces for it was a really amazing experience. Especially seeing it, and hearing it, all together last night.

One of my favorite moments was running into one of the women interviewed for the film… I created some music to go with her very emotional story about finding her mom, and so I had spent hours watching her face and cue-ing musical moments to her words… It was surreal to see her in person.

Great times, great group of people, makes me realize how much I love the endless energy of Los Angeles.

And makes me realize how very much I want to continue to make music for moving pictures…

Here’s some of the music writ for it…

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I had the honor of working on the soundtrack for “You Follow”, a story about a woman who goes to find out about her past in India. The main character does a lot of searching and I composed this piece to be her (Nisha) theme. It was a fun and interesting project and I’m excited to go see the opening screening tonight(!)…

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Film Music: Nisha's Theme
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For a long while my blog re-routed to the subdomain /word… I’m putting this up to let you know that if you followed one of those older links to get to the blog, you can now just go on ahead here: lukejanela.net

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Had a good rehearsal yesterday. Me and Tripp played at Bedrock Studios over in Echo Park. A big room, horror movie posters on the wall, huge amps, and a little time. We haven’t had time to play lately and so it was good.

If you are a musician out there trying to get better, let me tell you, if you can book a gig, any gig, that is the key. Basically you are forced to get your act together, literally, and it will speed up the process of developing your material exponentially.

Also: rehearsal studios = good. Never thought I’d be a fan, but now I kind of am. It’s nice, for one thing, to get away from the house to play. It’s nice to have all the equipment set up and ready to go, and then to walk away from it. And it’s also nice to see and occasionally meet all the other musicians in your peer group coming and going from their rehearsals. You can hear them through the walls and get a feel for where other bands are at.

Opened up the book of songs we’ve been playing. Six or seven tracks off of “Tomorrow Was” that are manageable live and that are propulsive. Good to play those but wow they take a lot of energy. Playing a super fast song for three minutes is one thing. Playing a string of fast six minute songs is different. So we kind of played around with new “material”, improvised is why it’s in quotes, and it was exhilarating.

I feel certain that if we work together on a new album, making material from rehearsals and live shows, that we will be onto something really cohesive and cool.  Recorded part of it too. I’m not sure that it warrants sharing per se, but you know that I’m always down to share stuff that is borderline fit to listen to. I like raw. So I’m ok with it.  So yes, a show Tuesday night near downtown LA at The Airliner. Midnight Door plays at 9ish. Cover is $5. I think it will be a really fun night out, given that there are DJs and other rad bands and live painting. I’m looking forward to it.

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MIDNIGHT DOOR (Shooting scenes for what could be a music video…).

So, yesterday I went out with the sharp eyed keen minded Ramon Garcia to shoot some scenes. He originally had the idea of shooting potentially illegally (we don’t really know) down in the subway and we did it guerilla style and his shots turned out great. So yesterday we did more of the same, a little bit of filming at the caves up in Griffith Park. It was funny, another film crew, much more professional and moneyed was already there. We just acted like we knew what we were doing and, oddly, had the cave to ourselves for a good 20 minutes. We shall see how the shots turn out, but it’s refreshing and fun to just come up with ideas on the fly and make them happen like that. And it’s nice to work with Ramon. He’s cool.

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Just as I started getting busy with writing blog posts it all fell off a cliff. Not sure why, but I feel a conflict about it.

Mostly the conflict would just be that I want to have things to share with the ethereal internet, new shows and rad news and all that cool making stuff. Honestly I just don’t right now. Have that much. To say.

I’ve been in a period of transition. I’ve become accustomed to not expecting too much. I’ve been not enthralled with the music world in general. It all has added up.

Transition just being more work. Time less cloudy.

Accustomed to not expecting too much meaning that well, I haven’t been super involved or am not receiving a ton of feedback/awesome news on the music front so like, ok. If what they say about successful people dealing with many many failures than I am sure to be super successful soon! Music blogs ignore me, venues don’t write me back, and festival submissions rejected. It’s been rough, if I’m honest. But (thankfully?) it’s to the point where I’m a bit numb about it. I am too stubborn or full of belief to really accept or believe that it means the music isn’t GOOD per se. It’s just not landing smoothly. Um. I don’t know. Whatever the reason, be it that I don’t jive well with the contemporary indie-music thing, be it that it is not produced well enough, be it that it hella sucks, there’s a whole lotta nothing going on. So I’ll just admit that. Yes it bums me out. Yes it leads to a bit of a personal crisis. No I don’t feel sorry for myself.

Not enthralled with music world in general. I just don’t love where music is at right now. It’s all so major key and irreverent. It’s all so brightly colored raybans and skinny jeans. It all feels like it would fit well in a gap commercial. Not all. But so much of it. There are cracks in its armor. But it’s hard to be doing really passionate wild loud music right now.

When we play out though it’s not hard at all. People respond. I’m glad to have found a drummer to play shows with, Tripp Beam. I feel that when we play it is awesome.

I’ve been attempting to record some video takes of songs real raw. But man it’s hard. The second the record button is pressed my brain can’t process words and then, sadly, I have control over the edit and I decide I look dumb and no-one will ever see these takes. But soon I will get it all straight. And I’ll be recording live raw takes of old and new songs and putting them out on the fly.

So like… that’s it. I guess you could say that more is to come. I guess you could probably bet on it. Hope this post isn’t a downer. It’s just honest. I say onward. I say on to more and better and music and thank you. Thank YOU for reading. I will talk with you soon, I hope.

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Oh blog of mine, which hath been updated irregularly and regularly since 2004. I’m glad you exist my sweet blog. Although you make me nostalgic too.

But yeah, I’m reminded that documenting moments of time has a purpose, perhaps a hell of narcissistic purpose, but purpose nonetheless. It’s a night like this, last night of March 2012, where I am sipping cheap whiskey on my roof deck, lamenting that Kate is out working for the evening, teaching painting to a group class which must be terrifying. I am listening to Thao and the whosiwhatsits, which isn’t a common choice lately but it fits for now. It was really too quiet in this sweet orange ish apartment. Cinco is sitting on the orange chair making the scene all the more orange.

Life has been really kind of brutal in a non complainy way the last six months or actually year. No breaks man. No big hearty moments of smiley ness. A bit of confusion stew with generous sprinklings of self-doubt and repetition. What a weird time. Ugh. I don’t know that I could have lived it better, in fact I’m willing to bet I couldn’t have. But yeah. Aimless, hopeful and heartbroken.

Well, I mean I finished those albums about this time last year. After endless silly revisions. And then… wha happend? Weird mastering issues, time just passing in such an uncomfortable way, expectations built, and then shattered. Then reality set in.

Thank god for walks and brothers and family, lovely girls and dogs. Thank god for cheap whiskey and a night where I have the balls to write a journal entry that could be read by someone wondering who I think I am. I don’t know. I would love to personify the super cool musician to you, and seduce you with imagery from the special mind of a special musician. But that’s all obviously a bunch of scaredy cat bullshit. There aren’t any musicians out there that are really better than you, in your quiet apartment. They may have the perfect hairstyle in their press pictures, and they may tweet cleverly, and on stage they seem invincible, but they aren’t invincible, and they certainly aren’t cooler than YOU, who, incidentally, are the coolest ever. Music has a purpose, but it oughtn’t be to maintain the egos of its makers. So sayeth I.

Whatever.

So yeah. Turned a corner. Thank god for April. I am starting a new job on Monday. That’s right, a job. Well, yeah, I know. I hoped to break through with the new album enough to not worry about such trifles as “money” and “groceries” but it didn’t happen that way. It’s ok. I like work. I hope to be able to work as a musician and I think this job will give me breathing room. Maybe it will remind me how imperative it is to play music as the thing. I am really really really not interested in giving up. Even though at times, scary sad times in the past year I have actually thought that perhaps I ought to. Give up. Let’s face it. If you are reading this, you are the few and the proud. Unless I have indeed “made it” and this blog becomes a hysterically stupid piece of the legend dispelled of this music. Or what. This music. This… life.

I miss my friends. Gonna say it. Getting older you miss everything. And it’s important to realize the utter and complete sweetness of each phase. I would say “of each day” or “of each moment” but really I can’t keep up. I would just say that each phase of life is insanely sweet and poignant in its own lonely lovely way. Not that you are lonely, but that those phases are lonely. They want you to appreciate them. Remember first break up phase? Remember first apartment phase? Yeah. Those phases are lonely/lovely.

Ok. that’s my check in. Thanks for reading. You are rather patient.

Thanks life. This evening is cool. On to the greatest raddest most fantastic adventure yet!

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Today I recorded some cello tracks for an indie film. They were nice, and lovely parts.

Sat in a recording room with the director and the composer watching over me and listening to every note. Thankfully I’ve been through this before, and know to take deep breaths, that every take isn’t going to be perfect, and to push through.

What you are going for is nothing less than the perfect take. That little bit of emotion that pushes the movie to the next level. And getting that is not going to be easy, even under the ideal circumstances (which may or may not ever be the case).

I don’t have much wisdom to pass along re: the perfect take. What I will say is that taking control of the situation on some level is essential. If your take wasn’t perfect, be the one to say it first, even if their ears hear it as alright. Go back and record it again. And again. It’s not like tape is being bought for each take. In the digital realm, re-do’s are a blessing for the perfectionist.

It won’t be perfect. But it will be yours. It will be personal, and honest. And that will give the recording you make something special, which is why you are there and not a synthesizer.

via CELLO. LESSONS! – Always press record.