The early spark
One of my earliest memories of music is the wedding of one of my uncles. I was all of 4 years old, and the wedding was held at the house of my great aunt in Belmont, a district in Trinidad’s capital of Port-Of-Spain. Apart from the usual celebration of the event, there was a live band, featuring a vibraphonist that would grow to be legendary in music circles in my country. His name was Andre Tanker, and listening to his music and voice that evening left me with an imprint on my spirit that would set me on a course of searching and seeking to tame a savage beast within…………………the hunger for music.
Through the years, I have been everything from avid listener, musician, composer, arranger, musical director, teacher, and producer. To this day, I remain a student of music, always learning and searching for elements of beauty in what I hear.
The term “think outside the box” created a mental picture of limitation. Boxes are for storage, not people!
“When I was your age, we used to…..”
I was working in recording studios when edits were made with razor blades and marker pencils. Analog recording machines had to undergo a complete alignment process daily. Remixes were done by recording the same section several times and changing volume levels, effects or muting instruments or groups of instruments to achieve the different sections’ desired effect. I fondly remember one particular session where we had 78 strips of ¼” tape (Ampex 456) hanging from a board waiting to be assembled into the perfect remix. Can you say…………. long day?
A sleeping lion
I am blessed to have witnessed the emergence of technology that makes it possible to take a musical idea from conception to a final master on a single DAW platform. The conversation on technology in music will be left for another day, but there is no doubt that we live in exciting times, where the internet has served as the instrument of liberation for independent artists globally.
The recording industry is in a paradigm shift and the old ideas of marketing are being slowly obliterated. Independent artists have found a vehicle with a credible pathway to the masses through websites such as YouTube and MySpace, to name just a couple of many.
This revolution will be televised
Our society is in a slow but subtle movement away from most conventions that have stood for several generations. The notion that our educational system is not much more than an elaborate machine designed to crank out people with the “worker” mentality is becoming pervasive. There is an increasing unwillingness by citizens worldwide to silently accept the political status quo. The global economy is under siege at the hands of regimes built on greed and insatiable appetites for power.
Institutes of “higher learning” are producing an alarming percentage of graduates with no place to go, while an entire generation is being crushed under the growing realization that we’re approaching the tipping point for this planet and its people in terms of our survival. All of this is, fortunately, being witnessed, and shared by a global community armed with a technology that may yet prove to be the one thing that unites and saves us. Nothing happens anymore that isn’t digitally recorded and posted for the world to see……………and eventually understand.
Where’s the damned box? – The silver lining
Many of us grew up hearing that familiar term “think outside of the box”. The mere statement creates a mental picture of limitation. Being inside a box means your opportunity to grow and the level to which you can do so will be proportionate to the size of this “box”. THERE IS NO BOX!!!!!!!!!! The world was never flat, and the moon is not made of cheese. And, sad to say, Santa Claus is just great marketing coupled with indoctrination.
The good news is that access to information is no longer state or government-controlled and will never be manipulated in the manner it has been for many decades. Never before have we had a tool of such potentially unifying force such as the internet. It’s there………………. let’s hope future generations can unlock more of the positive powers it possesses. So…………….maybe we should start visualizing life beyond the box. Maybe we should understand that we are collectively Me Inc……………………free to dream of economic autonomy and a business of our own…………to really challenge ourselves as the architects of our future…………..as individuals, and………….as one people. Finally…………… a global community.
Coming up
My next blog will feature 5 success stories of people who built their businesses through the internet. We will also feature 5 “websites that matter”.
Thank you for reading.
– Greg Lassalle
