Timothy's Blog

Timothy's blog on dulcimers, music, nature and life!
MAY
29

Thoughts about a great song, Phil Keaggy's 'Our Lives'

Thoughts about a great song, Phil Keaggy's 'Our Lives'

Last week as I played my iPod’s 22,000 tracks on random, a song came up that I hadn’t heard in quite some time, and it confronted me powerfully: ‘Our Lives’ by Phil Keaggy, one of the foremost guitarists of our time, and a profoundly distinctive singer-songwriter at times, too.  (See the video of it below.  But how about reading what I have to say about it first?)

When he was thirty years old, in 1980, he recorded this piece on the album Town to Town, and we got a copy at the time.  I remember our daughter Karen a couple of years later, as a baby, hearing this song as we drove in the car in the Jamestown area, and breaking out into excited singing and dancing in her car seat!

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5924 Hits
MAR
05

A new idea every day!

A new idea every day!

Recently I ran across an article that mentioned that Jerry Seinfeld has for several decades kept a custom of coming up with a new humorous idea every single day, and that he’s never let it lapse --- a continuous line of red x’s marked in his calendar as he has concocted a fresh gag every day.  Impressive!

Then coincidentally --- or providentially --- the same day as I was reading elsewhere I found that Dolly Parton has had that same practice since she was a child: dreaming up a new song idea every single day for her entire life.  Wow!

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4679 Hits
SEP
04

The making of our album Here on this Ridge

The making of our album Here on this Ridge

This will be my longest post about my albums --- and it’s perhaps the most trimmed-back!  Here on this Ridge was clearly the big turning point in my music-making.

In 1994 the holiday album Incarnation showed me I could successfully produce recordings of my own music, so I moved right into production of a general-themed CD called Wayfaring Stranger .  The instruments and the Celtic and hiking material could sort of be called themes, but it was mostly just a music CD for listening.

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14482 Hits
AUG
07

A special focal point in some musical pieces

A special focal point in some musical pieces

Have you noticed that sometimes there’s a particular moment that really grabs you in a piece of music?  It may be a chord change or a certain leap in a melody or a swell in the volume at just the right time; and its effect may be more than just something that gets your attention --- it may be truly a view into the sublime!

I actually crave those times and keep on the lookout for them, because that special moment that lifts my spirits or stirs my soul or grants a glimpse of the transcendent… is unutterably significant!

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8013 Hits
MAY
13

You can compose music from special groups of notes!

You can compose music from special groups of notes!

In music the French word motif’ simply means a group of notes that you use to start a musical composition and to refer to throughout the composition for unity.  That’s all!

Maybe the most famous example of a motif is the set of theme notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony:  ‘Di-di-di-dah’ (used in the Second World War as Morse Code for ‘V’ for victory) --- and if you listen to that matchless symphony you can hear Beethoven developing an entire movement --- with references throughout the rest of the whole work --- from that simple set of three notes, G-G-G-Eb (in the key of C minor).

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17621 Hits

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