Album price change.

It’s August 15th, so the day has come to put the price up on the digital downloads of Hour Of The Wolf. You can now download the album for $8USD or for $1USD per track. You can still pay us whatever price you want, just that the figure has to be at least $1 per track.

But wait there’s more!

One more track in fact. If you download the album you will also get a bonus 9th track for your hard earned $8. Or you can download the bonus track by itself for $1.

Pian Xin Ze An revisited.

The bonus track is called Pian Xin Ze An – Zen. It is an extended version of the opening track of the Mind Estate EP from 2007. We recorded it during the Hour Of the Wolf sessions, so this version has Stefan on drums instead of Tim who you hear on the original version. It has a different bass line in the middle section, a different tempo and a completely new section near the end. And the feel is quite different with Stefan on the drums. We hope you enjoy the changes as much as we do.

And as with all of our recordings, you can listen to Pian Xin Ze An – Zen in it’s entirety on bandcamp. In fact, click play here and you can listen to it now.

Oh and I hope you like the plasma effect on the player. Neat yeah?

Stay tuned for more surprises!

Dan's musings album, bandcamp, bonus, Hour Of The Wolf, mind estate, pian xin ze an, pian xin ze an - zen, price, zen No comments

Working in a band can be like being in a polygamous relationship (not that I’ve ever been in one myself). Just like a polygamous relationship it takes a lot of emotional maturity to make sure the relationship functions in a healthy manner.

To successfully collaborate on anything requires good relationship skills. And the deeper you get into your art, the more important relationship becomes. Art is often about dragging the worst aspects of ourselves into the open and exposing them. This is a very vulnerable state to be in. As a collaborator you must be careful in how you relate to your cohorts. Here are some tips on how to make your polygamous relationship work in your bands and projects.

Think Win/Win

The collaborative process involves countless mutual agreements and group decisions. In order to make them work with everyone involved, all the players must be thinking Win/Win.  Otherwise, someone is going to lose. That inevitably leads to frustration and resentment.

Win/Win means that all parties look for a solution to a problem that benefits all parties.This is far more effective than the more common approach of Win/Lose where one person gains an advantage over others. The Win/Win approach takes integrity, maturity and a mentality that believes it is possible for everyone to benefit equally. It takes trust that has to be developed over time and with care. It takes courage and consideration.

When a member of Riverblind brings a musical idea to the rest of the group he exposes himself to the possibility of ridicule and humiliation. Releasing new ideas out onto the world is a difficult and vulnerable process for an artist. But we are able to express new ideas to each other because we have taken the time to nurture an environment of trust. In this environment we understand that everyone has the same principles behind their actions. The principle that the music must be served and not the ego. The principle that it doesn’t matter who wrote something as long as the song is made as rightly as it can be. But we also recognise the principle that what is “right” for one person may not be “right” for another. It is these creative differences that require the most trust and maturity. It is these moments that require courage and consideration to find a solution to a disagreement that becomes an agreement of benefit to all.

What does it mean to benefit everyone?

Everyone benefits when the results lie within everyone’s principles. If you all share the same principles – that the song be served rather than the individual for example – then you can all clearly see when the outcome best serves the principles. Then you can work together to achieve a goal that you all share.

It is possible to make agreements that benefit everyone when you have the emotional maturity to put aside your ego, your drive to be recognised, your desire for attention. You must be humble and realise that the best outcome is not the one that benefits you the most, but the one that benefits everyone equally.

How you can tackle your next difficult agreement:

1. Shared Principles

Start by thinking about the reasons why your project exists. If it is a band, think about the reasons why you are a musician in the first place. Are you here to make great music? Or are you here to attract women? Or are you here to just have fun with some mates on stage? Discuss this with the other members of the unit. Are you all in it for the same reasons? If not, then you have a problem on your hands that needs to be dealt with before you can even hope to collaborate effectively. The solution to this kind of problem is a whole other blog posting, so I hope you’re not in this situation. But if you can all agree on the reason why the band exists then move on to step two.

2. Listen

When you collaborate make sure you listen to everyone very carefully before you speak. When someone presents an idea, listen and really try and understand what they are trying to express before you start to respond. If you don’t understand them then ask for clarification – don’t jump to conclusions! Make sure you really understand where they are coming from before you do anything else.

3. Think before speaking

Once you have understood their idea and position the next step is to think. Not to respond, but to think about your response. This gives your emotional maturity enough time to catch up with your impulsive ego and put it in its proper place. Think about what the idea means to the other person and think about what it means in terms of the principles your group strives for. Then think about how you can best express what it is you have to say about the idea.

4. Communicate clearly

When you express your point of view, express it as clearly and effectively as you can. To do this you have to think about it first (see step 3!). Use small words and short sentences. Not because your band members are too stupid to understand you, but because we all understand things more quickly and effectively when the communication is simple.

5. Form an agreement that benefits everyone

The final step is to make an agreement that puts principles first and leaves your ego at the door. Use your integrity, emotional maturity, courage and consideration to come up with a solution that lets everyone win.

Follow-up

After an agreement is implemented, you and your group need to examine its consequences. Do the results provide the mutual benefit that you all sought? Do the results reflect the principles you are all striving for? If the results fall short, then you need to learn from the mistake and find a new, better solution.

In song-writing, this whole process happens very quickly and repetitively. And there are many failures. It is more common for an idea to fall short of what everyone is after than otherwise. But you must persevere. Don’t give up and just use an idea when it benefits yourself and not others. Likewise, don’t settle on something that you cannot agree with. Come up with a better idea that benefits everyone and serves the principles that you work by. In the long term you will see the difference that this care and consideration makes. Trust grows and ideas flow more freely. Mutual solutions to problems are more easily worked out and benefit the group to an even higher degree than before. The music improves because it is being driven upon one path by a unit working together rather than being run off the road by self-serving individuals.

How well do your collaborative efforts function?

Do you struggle to come to agreements?

Or have you got the emotional maturity to make your polygamous relationship work for everyone?

If you want to learn more about the Win/Win strategy then I suggest you read Stephen Covey‘s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Dan's musings 7 habits, agreements, collaboration, communication, creativity, polygamy, principle, stephen covey, team work, win win 6 comments

I think of a song as having two main stages: Process and Product. The Process stage is when the song is being written and the Product stage is when its completed form has been recorded and set in stone (sort of).

Right now Riverblind is in a writing phase. It has been a year since we released a record and it will be another year before we are likely to release another one. We are smack bang in the middle of a serious writing phase. This is a time to focus on Process rather than Product. Anything goes during this stage, outlandish ideas are welcome – even if ultimately we decide to reject them.

Having said that, we are “finishing” songs all the time. We want to play any new song we can at gigs so we decide on when a song is finished enough to gig. But this almost never means the writing process has actually ended for the song. We are constantly tweaking material right up until we record. And then with some songs we even continue to change them after they have been recorded.

So, the Process never really ends. Riverblind is a laboratory within which we experiment and invent new sound art. And we continually adapt the sounds as we evolve as people. Every new sound we make exists because our collective sub-conscious demanded that it be created. And every song that we finish is open to be changed because our minds evolve and demand that our creations change too. Put simply: we are expressing ourselves and our expression changes as we change.

Sometimes songs die and don’t get played again. Usually we explain this as us being no longer satisfied with them. We say that we don’t like the song anymore. But I think it is more a case of our sub-conscious moving too far from the song for us to even want to re-write the material. Instead we just leave it behind and start new songs. It has lost its meaning for us. Or sometimes old songs do have some connection left, but we have to change them in a major way to be properly connected to them again.

This happened with Pian Xin Ze An, the opening track of our 2007 EP Mind Estate. The song had a very certain feel and structure for years – until all of a sudden it had to change. Now, the song is longer and has a different feel than the recording on Mind Estate. Different enough, we decided, to record it again. So we did. While we were recording Hour Of The Wolf we used the opportunity to get a recording of the new version of Pian Xin Ze An. We’ve had the recording floating around ever since. We do intend on releasing it one day, but I cannot tell you when that will be.

I can describe the Process as this:

Silence gets filled with new sound, new sound becomes old sound and old sound evolves into new sound again.

What is your song writing process like?

Do you re-write old material continually?

Or do you like to draw a line on when a song is finished and keep it that way?

Dan's musings creating, creativity, mind estate, pian xin ze an, process, product, recording, renewal, song writing, writing No comments

Shoki Kamishima 1984-2010

Today, as I was practicing a new song, I realised that key sections of the bass part only existed because of a young Japanese bassist named Shoki Kamishima. Tragically, Shoki died last month at the age of 25.

I had only met him once at a gig in 2008 when he was still playing for Cripple Mr Onion. I watched the band play after opening for them with Riverblind. I was fixated on Shoki’s hands the whole set. I was particularly interested in how he was using finger tapping because it sounded amazing.

He would tap three-note chords with his right hand while playing a bass line with his left. I had previously heard recordings of other players tapping chords on bass, but I’d never seen anyone do it live and in a context where it inspired me to do it myself. When I got home that night I tried to do similar things to what Shoki had played. I found it quite hard but managed to stumble through the basics. Since then I have worked the technique into several Riverblind songs including the end section of Unsettled Scenes. That bass line and others simply wouldn’t have existed had I not seen Shoki play that night two years ago.

Rest in peace Shoki Kamishima, I met you only once, but your inspiration has helped me evolve as a player and I thank you sincerely for that.

Daniel Simpson Beck

Dan's musings, News bass, bass player, bassist, cripple mr onion, shoki, shoki kamishima, tapping, unsettled scenes No comments

Happy Guy Fawkes!

This concept of teaching you our new songs before they are even finished comes from a brilliant move by Deerhoof.

They gave out sheet music of a song not yet released and had fans record their own versions before even hearing the song.

I’m gonna do it a bit differently though as you’ll see below. But first, an important announcement.

Gig Line Up Change:

Big Flip The Massive will not be playing at the Friday 13th Happy gig coming up. Instead Big Flip’s drummer Reece will be playing with another of his many ensembles: West Coast Bullies. (No, Big Flip did not pull out because I took the piss out of their name in my robot video…. I hope…).

How to play Riverblind’s new material.

Dave, Stefan and I have been having much fun writing new material at recent practices. If you want to hear what the new songs sound like you’ll have to wait a bit though as they’re not done yet. But this isn’t going to stop me from trying to teach you how to play them. The first one is easy:

Play a 3:4 groove for the first 3 beats of a 5/4 bar (for the last 2 beats of the bar just play the first 2 beats of the 3:4, but don’t play the last beat of the 4). While this is going on play 4 beats in the space of the 5/4 bar over top (that’s 5:4), then, just when you start to think “oh, this maths might actually be musical” break into a heavy Soundgarden-like riff that takes off out of nowhere. Done. Call the song something like: “Numbers Are Special” or you can call it something better.

Got the idea?

I’ll post instructions for the other song if requested, but first I’ll have to figure out what the hell Stefan got Dave to do on the guitar. It’s something like: loop 3/4 then loop 5 over that then play some fancy solo. It’s actually really groovy – honest!

That should keep you busy. See you on Friday the 13th!

Photo by d3 Dan

Dan's musings, News big flip the massive, deerhoof, math, mathematics, maths, new songs, numbers, west coast bullies 3 comments

Process

When you create something, a song, a painting, a character, you involve yourself in a process. This may be structured or not, explainable or not, simple or complex, it doesn’t matter. The fact is you create through a series of internal and external movements. Your hand plays chords you know will work or moves to create new ones. You take the paint brush from one point to another, drawing a line that works (or doesn’t). Creation is an act. It is a process.

The Riverblind Whiteboard has many a story to tell...

Product

Once you have put the frame around your painting or recorded your song, you can call it finished. It is now a product. You have produced it. And in this society you will likely go out and try to sell it. Creation is a process and at its completion is a product.

Problem…

You probably have an issue with this. You may not be able to put your finger on it, but there’s something wrong with that statement. Creation is a process and then it is ended, thus turning it into a product. The problem here is that the act of creation never actually ends. There is no real conclusion to it, it is ongoing from one movement in life to the next. You can put a frame around your painting and call it art, but the frame is arbitrary. Your next painting is a continuation from your last. Your next song is the result of the process employed in your last one. And even the life you live between making “art” is the process too, just in a different context. The creative process is endless. Calling something a product isn’t for art’s sake it is for people’s sake. You divide your art into little bits that are easily consumable as units. Frank Zappa said that the frame is the most important thing in art, because without it “you can’t know where The Art stops and The Real World begins”.

Process and product are at odds with each other. Process wants to continue and product tells it to stop. And if you make the mistake of thinking about the end result while making your art then it is shaped by those thoughts. If you intend to sell your art then you start changing the way you approach it in order to make it more accessible or mainstream. Even if you don’t want to sell anything, if you think about how others will view your art, this changes how you create.

Thinking about product when you are creating spoils innovation. This is concentrating on extrinsic rather than intrinsic rewards. Extrinsic rewards are external, such as money and fame. Intrinsic rewards are internal – the joy of making art for it’s own sake. Watch this video of Dan Pink at TED to learn more about the different results intrinsic vs extrinsic rewards bring.

Solutions

So how can you stop yourself from getting distracted by the end outcome? Johnny Depp doesn’t watch his own films. Read Lateral Action’s post on this. Depp: “I like the process, I like doing the work… I don’t like to see the thing become the product”. But are you in a position to be able to do that? If you are like me then you are involved in it all every step of the way. You have to choose what the finished product actually is and then even market it and sell it. So what can we do to not get caught up in expectation?

Perhaps you don’t think about the product at all. Then you are probably inspired and passionate when you create, and so you should be. But if your motivation to work is to make ends meet by selling your art then creativity can be stifled. One way to stop focussing on the need to sell is to concentrate on the origin of the process itself. Examine it and watch it as it changes. I find that the reason for creating something is often that I need to explore something about myself. For example I might have an emotional issue that needs resolving. If you look inside yourself and see what needs fixing and then use the art for that purpose then the product can be forgotten.

Is this an issue for you when you make your art? How do you deal it?

Dan's musings art, creativity, dan pink, depp, lateral action, process, product, results, success, ted, zappa 5 comments

Me with my new birth certificate - they come with art now - neat!

A very common question to me over the last week: “Why the name change?”

If we had a FAQ, this would now be top of the list. (Not really, top of the list would be: “Why does your bass have 6 strings? Doesn’t that make it a guitar?”)

No, I didn’t add Beck to my name because I love Jeff Beck‘s playing (I do). And I didn’t do it because I agree with Glenn Beck (I really really don’t).

Here, for you so curious, is the real reason, the long, self-indulgent explanation:

From Baby Simpson to Daniel Simpson to Daniel Simpson Beck

Nearly 30 years ago I was born to Rhonda and Rob Simpson. My very first name was “Baby Simpson” according to a birth card filled out at the hospital which I still have. This is because my parents thought they should get to know me before naming me. Being the 70s they were tossing around some hippy names like Peace, but common sense won out and they arrived at Daniel. I wasn’t given a middle name so my full name was simply Daniel Simpson. And it has been the same ever since. That is until it was officially changed the other week to Daniel Simpson Beck.

So, are you gonna tell me why already?

When I was four years old my parents broke up. I lived with my Mum and she decided to return to using her maiden name, Beck. I can hardly remember anything before the age of 3 or 4 so I can’t recall her ever being called Simpson. Actually I probably didn’t even know she was called anything but Mum until after I began primary school.

So, the first reason I started to think about going by Beck was that it’s the name of the primary person to bring me up. And I didn’t want to drop Simpson because my Dad also contributed to my upbringing and influenced me in very important ways. In fact, my Dad was a bassist before I was born and bought me my first Stanley Clarke album School Days (if you play bass and haven’t heard this album then stop reading and go get it, now!)

I have been thinking about changing my name for years, tossing up between Daniel Beck Simpson and Daniel Simpson Beck. I would forget about it for a while then come back to the idea, then forget about it again.

In the last few years I have undergone personal changes that have been of great importance to how I view my life and what I want to do with it. I realised again the importance of my mother in shaping who I am and decided that I really did want to reflect that in my name. Because, surely, that’s what surnames are for right? Acknowledging the huge part of you that is shaped by your family, the people who influence you the most.

Secondly, I realised that a name change can help reflect that I have changed as a person. And it can give me an identity to model as I see fit. Daniel Simpson has a whole lot of history and habits, good and bad, but Daniel Simpson Beck is brand new. He can start from scratch and build on the best that is available to him. Of course it is just a psychological trick. I’m still me, and I’m sure the new me will repeat the same mistakes the old me made, just hopefully less so. And it helps when choosing my own destiny to have a name that I have chosen too.

Also, Daniel Simpson Beck resonates well with me. It just sounds good when spoken. Daniel Beck Simpson didn’t flow when I said it out loud and luckily Daniel Simpson Beck did. Oh dear, just imagine if my mother’s maiden name was Homer? Or worse, OJ!

Finally, this name is completely unique to the Google search engine which is pretty handy for marketing purposes

So, what do you think? Do you like my new name? Do you think my reasons for changing are justified or a bit over the top?

And what would you change your name to if you so desired?

Dan's musings beck, birth certificate, change, dad, daniel, family, identity, mum, name, simpson 4 comments

Today I was on the kindness bus – literally. My bus ride back from town provided three random acts of kindness towards strangers.

The good karma bus

The first was when I was still waiting at the bus stop. I noticed a nice young lady was helping direct a blind man to the door of his bus. She carefully lead him around the tree, past the false hope of the sound of the backdoor, and into the front door of the bus.

Then she stood back on the footpath and watched through the windows as the bus pulled away, checking all the while that her man was safely seated for his journey. I could see in her face that she was, quite rightly, pleased with herself.

Then, when my bus arrived, she went to get on it too. She got on only to find that her Snapper card had a zero balance. She rushed off so quickly that I didn’t have a chance to pay for her fare. I wish I had paid more attention and thought quicker. Perhaps she is saving up her karma for a day when she needs a real boost.

Once I was on the bus I saw another two kind acts that made me smile. One lady dropped a coin under the seats as she was getting off – she tried to find it, but thought she was holding everyone up so got off without it. Another passenger did find it and quickly made sure the driver re-opened the door so she could give it to the stranger.

The last act was merely a statement and an attitude. It was one you don’t get often from Wellington bus drivers. An old lady was getting off the bus and had to carefully lower herself down to the footpath very slowly. The driver, an older lady herself, said “You ok dear? Just take your time.”

Take your time?? I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Wellington bus driver say that. It’s always rush, hurry up, grumpy grump grump…

But there was one other random act of kindness that I witnessed today and this one was directed to me.

Chris Brogan thinks we’re cool!

I had been on twitter (I’m @riverblindmusic) and noticed a particular tweet from @chrisbrogan. Chris Brogan is President of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency. He works with large and mid-sized companies to improve online business communications. His tweet was about a complaint he had with some of Facebook’s functionality. I replied with my own complaint to do with Facebook fan pages. He agreed and I then told him about a band opportunity that was lost because of the way fan pages work (the full story can be read in my comment on his blog).

He then tweeted back that I had inspired a blog post. Cool! I thought – will be interesting to read what he says about Facebook. I didn’t for a moment expect to read his it and see Riverblind mentioned with a link to this site. He used us as an example for one of his Facebook complaints, siting how the problem had affected “a cool band”.

Here are some numbers that might make this more interesting for you:

chrisbrogan.com has 26,952 subscribers to his blog.

@chrisbrogan has 87,921 followers on twitter.

Do you now have an idea of how I reacted to his blog? Being a relatively new band with our first full-length album coming out soon and this new blog-style website only a few months old – you can see why we would be stoked with the mention.

Thanks Chris, I love your work (I’m not just saying that – your work is the reason I was reading your tweets).

And thanks to all who give random acts of kindness – the lady with the blind man, the woman who saved someone a dollar, the bus driver with patience – and you.

What stories do you have to share about random acts of kindness?

Dan's musings blind, bus, Chris Brogan, facebook, karma, kindness, snapper, strangers, twitter 11 comments

When a group of individuals from different backgrounds come together to work on the same task the results are often either very good or very bad. When that group has worked together for a long time on many tasks then the chances of things going great increase.

Dave and I have been working in music together for well over 4 years now. And both of us have been working with Stefan for a year. Although it is still early days and we are always learning new things about each other, we are starting to get a groove on when it comes to writing songs together. Take a recent jam session for example.

We started off with no set plan, but soon found ourselves in the midst of a strikingly beautiful sonic experience. Then, after letting that idea develop as far as it could for the time being, we set it aside to work on an almost complete song that’s been a bit of a struggle to finish off.

The main complaint with the song as it was had to do with the chorus sections “just not feeling right”. We had already come up with a series of dynamic shifts that appeared to solve the problem, but we were frustratingly unable to pull off what we had envisioned. We knew it should work, it just never quite did.

So, I suggested that we actually decide very precisely on what it is we intend to do with each dynamic. Make it as explicit as a classical score. Dave, using his extensive classical experience, wrote out the section with the dynamics as he was imagining them. I immediately said “That’s great, because I definitely wasn’t doing exactly that!” Suddenly we were all on the same page. Then we played it as written and everything came together perfectly for the first time.

This made me reflect on the various disciplines each of us brings to the band. Dave has a vast knowledge of the classical world, I have largely learnt organically in the world of rock and metal and Stefan has jazz training. Of course we each have many more sources of influence and been trained in other areas. I have also studied some classical composition and jazz, Stefan was playing in a metal band before joining Riverblind and Dave is now studying jazz, to name but a few. But we clearly have different strengths in different areas. When these are used together we can move into some pretty exciting areas.

What kinds of experiences have you had working in teams of different kinds of people? Do you find it easier to work with people who have similar backgrounds to your own? Or do you find that the best results come from working with a diverse group?

Dan's musings, Uncategorized classical, dan, dave, jam, jazz, metal, rock, song writing, stefan, team No comments

As I lay awake the other night eating watermelon and trying to read one of the new Dune books I realised that I have a really hard time doing two things at once. It was surprisingly difficult for me to read the book while enjoying the watermelon. I think I would have done okay if it was a sandwich or a banana or something else that I eat often, but watermelon is a treat for me. I seldom buy it, so I wanted to enjoy it and I couldn’t do that while reading. It was either one or the other. When it comes to tasks that require any decent amount of attention, I am terrible at multitasking.

Take listening to music for example. For me, most of my music collection cannot be heard as mere background noise. I have to sit (or lay down or dance) and really listen to it, experience it. I do sometimes put music on to help make household chores more enjoyable, but it often turns into a distraction as I find myself lost in the moment of the sound and off task. Some albums work better than others for this though and my favourite albums definitely don’t help. If I had music on right now I wouldn’t be able to write this blog.

When it comes to playing music in a band it would appear that I can multitask well. The fingers on my left hand make very different movements from those on my right and I do this while listening to the drums and guitar, making sure that I am in time. But I don’t see these things as true multitasking. My fingers only do what they do because they are trained to do it. It is muscle memory from hours of hard work. To call it multitasking would be like calling the simultaneous processes of my organs multitasking. Okay, so that’s a bit different since it’s in the genes and while I can forget my bass lines from time to time, luckily for me, my heart doesn’t forget how to beat.

Playing music live is not as simple as physically playing the parts. A connection to the truth of the music is vital to playing it with honesty. This comes naturally in Riverblind because the players are also the composers. Just like listening to my favourite albums, I find it very hard to play music that I am passionate about without concentrating fully on its sound. This brings me to the dilemma of trying to engage the audience while engaging the music.

Whenever I decide to view the audience I have to shift my attention. If I open my eyes and look at the crowd with attention rather than a possessed stare then I lose my attention to the music. This could lead to disaster, the worst outcome being that I play the wrong thing and let the music crash and burn. In most cases muscle memory lets me continue as long as the part isn’t too hard or is practiced enough, but even if the part continues to roll around under my fingers, my attention to the whole is lost. A song is a fully formed creature and on stage it is a living thing that is revealed as honestly as possible. With the music being the truth of the composers captured in a piece of art, that honest revelation is a window into the energies, emotions and thoughts of the composers. So if I were to stop paying attention to the revealing of the song then that window would become frosted, the honesty would be lost.

I see my inability to focus equally on both the audience and my music as a failing. My intention is to overcome this failing. Perhaps this is the next big challenge I face as an artist. I welcome your input into this. This subject is not just for musicians or artists, many areas of life require good multitasking. How do you deal with these?

Dan's musings attention, multitasking No comments