Can We Have Good Without Bad?

The kids and I like to watch movies together. It’s just something fun we do when we get to spend a night at home. Recently we’ve watched a couple of “blockbuster” status movies with really strong, powerful female characters and heroes. I love that for many reasons. Selfishly, the main reason is that I’m watching these movies with my 7 year old daughter! She is already full of spunk and confidence and I love that she gets to see these heroes and my hope is that they inspire her to keep that powerful self-image.

Sadly, the creators of these movies decided to make the male characters incompetent buffoons. I was upset by this, again for many reasons, but mainly because I’m also watching these movies with our son. And at 11, he’s in that pre-teen phase of life that can start to get a bit awkward. He already doesn’t show the same “take-on-the-world” mentality that our daughter has, so it might be nice if was exposed to good, positive role-model characters too.

Now, this was so blatant that I’m very sure the creators of these movies were pushing an agenda of some sort but that aside, couldn’t they have made the choice to have both the female and male characters be “good?” (I’m not talking about good vs. evil or heroes vs. villains.) Did they need to show one group as “bad” in order for us to see the other as “good?” I sure think it would have been nice to show good, strong females AND males working harmoniously together but lately, our society seems to love to create an “us against them” atmosphere over everything. That’s for another day though.

What this all really got me thinking about was our mentality around improvement. And is it human nature to only view good if it is sharply contrasted with bad? Can good just be good?

I’m am very critical of myself. I have been for as long as I remember. I think this comes from my dad’s attempt to teach us a good work ethic. He used to point out everything that was wrong with what we had done in an effort to motivate us to do a better job. I suppose that is good in theory but it sure didn’t workout well for my confidence level! I remember learning multiplication in grade school and we did a weekly test of our times tables, 1-12. I made it all the way to my 12’s without missing any. I got one wrong on my test of the 12’s and cried in the coatroom over missing one math problem. Trust me, it’s not a super fun way to go through life! Even today, at 45 years old, if you see me out doing something: playing music, curling, training, even just socializing, I can guarantee you that I’m not thinking of just doing my best but instead I’m focused on not screwing up! There’s a big difference! So sadly, my motivation to improve, or do a good job comes much more from trying to avoid “bad” vs. being “good.”

It’s pretty easy to see how this happens. Improvement is usually seen as an act of contrast. Something is “bad” and we want to make it “good,” or “better.” Home improvement is an enormous industry and it’s all about taking something we don’t like, improving it and turning it into something we do like. Turning bad into good. People will say they hate their job and they are going to look for a better one. Same with their car, their living situation, their body, and so on. This makes sense. Humans are wired to avoid pain and seek pleasure so if we view something as bad and thus painful, we are all the more motivated to improve the situation. In this way, the “bad” can cause us to strive for “good.”

This can create a problem though depending on how we are wired and what we are trying to improve. Sometimes, going from “bad” to “good” happens quickly, we make the change and then we are done thinking about it. The room is painted, the garage is cleaned up, our closet is organized and we move on. The bad motivated us to seek the good, we took action and made it happen. That’s great!

Other times, the trip from bad to good is a much longer journey. We may have declared that where we are is “bad” and where we are going is “good,” but by the time we get there, the good isn’t good enough anymore. What we once thought of as good is now the new bad and the new good exists out there in the future as something to chase after. When we reach that new good, guess what? I’m sure you see where this is going and while this might keep us motivated and always improving, if we always see the “bad” as painful, it also keeps us from ever being happy!

Many of the big categories of life: our work, relationships, health and wellness, etc. are lifelong pursuits. Hopefully we will make the choice to always be learning, growing, moving forward and improving but if we fall into the trap of always thinking that where we are is “bad” and where we will be after our improvement as “good,” we will never get to that “good!”

Just as I wanted from the portrayal of those characters in the movies, I think we need a “good, and also good” mentality. We can make the choice to seek improvement not because where we are is bad but because it’s fun and exciting to learn, grow and improve. It’s sounds cliche but we have to make it about the journey and not the destination. Otherwise we run the risk of never being happy with who/where we are. I know personally, I need to stop running from where I am thinking that when things get better, it will be good and I will be happy. I need to abandon the idea that good can only exist in contrast to bad and move toward a “good and also good” mentality. It won’t make my lazy and I won’t stop trying to improve, I just stand a much better chance of enjoying where I am AND where I’m going.

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Curling: the search for that missing piece!

The 2019 Brier starts tonight with the play-in game so I thought it might be a good time for a curling post. And I write this not because I know something that I want to share but because I’m seeking more information. So I’d love to hear from any of my curling friends about this!

When I first started curling (October 2010) my entire goal with my slide and delivery was to not fall over. Easier said than done! And I think most new curlers go through a progression of sorts as they learn the delivery. First it’s getting the footwork down so you can at least push out of the hack and slide a bit. Once you can do that, it’s all about balance and trying not to fall over. New curlers tend to put some of their body weight on the stone as they slide so the next step is figuring out how to let go of that stone without tipping over. While you are learning all of this, hopefully someone is teaching you about the line of delivery and how nice it would be if you could sort of slide out in the general direction of the skip’s broom (the target we use for aiming.) And then we have the last piece: the release.

That last part, the release, is what I’m calling the missing piece!

(Before I go on, let me tell you that the above explanation of learning the curling slide and delivery is a very simplified, general description. When you watch good curlers throw the rock, they make it look easy. It’s not! The curling slide is like a golf swing from the standpoint that there are a million little micro-movements that those good curlers have tweaked and mastered over years of practice. I’m just giving a quick explanation to get to that last part.)

When we teach learn-to-curls we get people sliding with two stones so they can focus on their footwork and feel the slide without worrying much about balance. Then we take away one stone so balance becomes part of the equation. After that we have the new curlers let go of the stone and then we get to the release. I was taught (and taught to teach) what we call a 10 to noon/2 to noon release. We start with the handle at what would be either 10 or 2 o’clock if the stone was a clock and then gently rotate the handle to noon as we let go of the stone, reaching out as if you were going to shake hands with someone. Doing this properly should put 2-3 rotations on the stone as it travels down the sheet. It’s been a long time since I did my level 1 instructor training but it seems like this is still the “proper” way to teach new curlers the release and it does seem to work. Meaning that if new curlers follow those guidelines, they will put a decent turn on the stone.

Here’s the thing though: when I watch top curlers, none (ok, very few) of them are only doing what I just described above. They are of course putting a good turn on the stone but there’s much more to their releases than the simple 10 to noon/2 to noon we teach beginners. That makes total sense. They are playing at a much higher level, on really good ice and have mastered all of the parts of the slide and the delivery. New curlers have enough to worry about (not falling over!) and would be overwhelmed by complicating things further. But how do those of us who have played for a while get to what might be the next step beyond that 10 to noon/2 to noon delivery we learn when we are new? And do we want to? I think so!

I play on arena (hockey/figure skating ice that we turn into curling ice) ice now and it’s dreadful. Our sheets are full of “moguls” and “speed bumps” from drips off of the ceiling. We have Zamboni lines and chunks out of the ice in various places. Most league nights we will only have one or two playable paths into the house, usually taking negative ice, and our first end draw weight is “throw it as hard as you can and add some more.”

The point of all of that isn’t to gripe about our ice. It’s to explain that our ice doesn’t force our curlers to have a good, solid, consistent release. In fact, people can benefit from having a bad release! A poorly released rock can lose its handle and drift into a place in the house that is un-hittable! So while we are teaching the 10 to noon/2 to noon I mentioned above and talking about putting a good turn on the stone, because our ice is so bad, the results of a poor release aren’t glaringly obvious.

In contrast, the last couple of years I curled in Duluth, the ice was great and they were sanding the rocks a bit periodically to get even more curl for the big events that happen at that club. If you showed up to league night during that time and didn’t put a good turn (at least 3 rotations) on the rock, it could curl like 8 feet! Or lose the handle all together and just drift around out there! So that ice and those stones forced a good turn and release and we saw very quickly the results of a bad release.

What I’ve found though is that it can be very difficult to focus on putting a good turn on the stone using the 10 to noon/2 to noon method without adding some lateral movement to the shot as you let go of the stone. When we talk about this in curling, we talk about dumping the turn in or flicking it out. This seems to be especially true on hits. You can tell if you are doing this by your skip’s reaction. If you dump it in, the skip will instantly start screaming and if you flick it out the skip will say, “whoa, never” and you’ll most likely watch your shot sail right by the stone you wanted to hit, especially on straight ice. We did a spiel on dedicated ice a couple of weeks ago and struggled a lot with this. Everyone was sliding well, pretty much on line and then missing a lot of shots on the release.

Is there a solution? I think so! It’s the mysterious “positive release!” I say “mysterious” because I feel like I’ve heard many different things from many different people. I’ve had people tell me that they are making a motion like they are throwing a dart as they let the rock go. I’ve had people show me a little “pop” at the release. I could never get the hang of any of those!

Here’s the best definition I’ve found from The Curling School by CurlTech: “It (positive release) means making a move slightly toward the skip’s broom by extending the arm from the flexed position and rotating the rock at a certain rate to ensure a 2-3 revolution spin.”

I really like that explanation and lately it’s been working for me! By making that motion toward the broom (on the line of delivery) as I put the turn on the stone, I’m able to get a good turn on the stone without the lateral movement! But it’s not always easy!

A couple of years ago at the Lupus Spiel (an awesome event that every curlers should do BTW) I got to do a mini-camp with Kevin Martin. He showed us exactly what I described above in the CurlTech definition. You slide out and “soften” the elbow of your throwing arm so you have a nice bend in the elbow. As you get set to release the rock, you gently extend your arm (toward the skip’s broom, on the line of delivery) as you put the turn on the stone.

This all felt good at the mini-camp but that spiel happens in May so I didn’t have a chance to practice any of this and by the time I got back on the ice, it was a train wreck! Mostly on hits. Instead of softening my elbow to get that nice bend, I was pulling the stone back toward me and my “gentle extension” was basically a shove forward. It was a mess so I quit doing it. But about a month ago, I realized that I was back to flicking out my in-turn (lefty) so I decided to revisit what I learned at the KM mini-camp.

For whatever reason, this time I’ve been able to soften the elbow instead of pulling the stone back and I’m able to keep the extension gentle as opposed to shoving the rock. All good things! The upside is that I feel like I’m finally able to put a good turn on the stone while keeping the stone on the line of delivery without any lateral movement. The only challenge is that this does add another variable to the delivery. Instead of having all of the weight of the shot coming from my leg drive, I need to account for that subtle extension when I kick out of the hack.

If you want a good visual of what I’m taking about with the bend in the elbow and the extension, Jamie explains it well toward the end of her video on grip and release.

In watching the Scottie’s again this year, I noticed that many, even most of the curlers released the rock like this. I’ll be curious to see if I notice the same in the Brier.

Anyway, this got a bit long. Sorry! But this has been a topic of interest to me for a long time and I feel like it’s a part of the slide and delivery that has been a bit hard to pin down. I do think this could be helpful thing to start exploring with curlers who have a decent slide and are generally on the line of delivery. Maybe it could help solve some of that flicking out or dumping in on the release. It could perhaps be the “missing piece” for us wannabes who would like to shoot just a little bit more like the pros!

I’d love to hear from other curlers on this! Especially if you feel like you’ve discovered any keys to a solid, consistent release.

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Reframing Responsibilities

I was having a stressful morning today trying to get the kids organized so we could get out the door on time for school. As my wife was leaving for work she was telling me to relax and that it would all work out. I had to explain to her that, yes, it would work out because I will tell the kids 35 times that it’s time to get out the door and because of that, we’d probably make it on time. This got me thinking. There has to be a better way!

We are raising our kids the way I think most people raise their kids. We started off doing absolutely everything for them as babies. We had to of course; and as they’ve gotten older, we have given them more and more responsibility. This seems to make sense. The older they get, the more they can and should handle. This does mean that we, as parents, have to spend more time reminding them of their responsibilities until they reach the point of taking full ownership of those new duties. This is where the wheels might be falling off of our plan.

Let’s face it, everyone is busy, especially in the morning! So in our heads, when we pictured ourselves gently reminding the kids of the things they need to be doing, we didn’t take into account how that would really go. Breakfast time is fun and calm but then the morning turns into a Tasmanian devil-esque swirl of chaos! Our “gentle reminders” are usually just bellowed out as we walk briskly by their bathroom or their bedrooms on our way to handle some other task. I’m guessing we aren’t the only parents facing mornings like this! I think what this does is set up a conflict that might follow us around for years, maybe forever!

It seems very difficult to get kids to understand that in almost every case, they are the direct beneficiaries of meeting their own responsibilities. I think they often see the things that we are telling them (nagging them?) to do as “boring parent stuff,” that exists in direct conflict with the “fun kid stuff” they would rather be doing. So instead of appreciating the clean, healthy, cavity-free mouth that comes from brushing their teeth, they instead think of it as time wasted when they could have been playing. (This is more our 11 year old son. Our 7 year old daughter brushes and flosses without being asked!)

This carries over to other responsibilities as well. We tell them to clean their rooms, put dishes away, fold their laundry, take care of this and that all because they, ” have to” and because it’s “their responsibility.” They gripe and complain about it and we insist and it keeps reenforcing the same pattern. It’s adults vs. kids. Maybe nothing new there! But here are the scary ones: it’s also setting up “work” vs. “fun” and “responsibilities” vs. “recreation.”

Why are those scary? They’re scary because I have a theory that those same battles follow us into adulthood and we end up with very clear distinctions between these “good” things and these “bad” things; the things that we want to do and the things we have to do; “work” vs. “fun.” And then we lump all of the bad/have to/work things into a category we label as painful. After all, many (most?) of us grew up with people nagging us about these things. Telling us it was time to do these things or similar things when we most definitely wanted to be doing other things, “fun” things!

The trouble here is, as I mentioned in my article on discomfort, is that humans seek to avoid pain and if my theory is true, we have now just lumped a whole mess of our responsibilities into a category we call pain that we will work hard to avoid. Even though, like the kids brushing their teeth, we are the direct, and often sole beneficiaries of meeting those responsibilities! By seeking to avoid those “painful” responsibilities, we are only hurting/cheating ourselves. And if we don’t find a way to change our associations to those responsibilities, we will either continue to avoid them or be miserable doing them.

So how do we changes these associations or reframe these responsibilities? I think we need to shift our focus. We need to stop looking at the “what” we do and focus on the “why” we do it. Any responsibility we handle, we do so because we want the benefit that comes from having handled the responsibility. (I’m talking here about those things where we may not just love the process but want the outcome. We could, over time, learn to love the doing AND enjoy the benefit but that’s for another day. This is more about those things we tend to avoid.)

Here’s a fun example: we were watching Marie Kondo on Netflix with the kids and I worked with Eric (11) to Marie Kondo his dresser. It looked great! We got rid of a ton of clothes and made it all neat and tidy. The next day he came and thanked me for helping him with that because it made it so easy for him to pick out his clothes for the day. And I said:


Well, I didn’t say that, but that’s exactly what I thought! I was so happy that he realized the benefits that came from taking the time to do what we did.

And I think it has to be about enjoying the benefits. We cram our lives so full of responsibilities that I know personally, I rarely take the time to enjoy any of the benefits. I feel like all I do is take care of one thing and move on to the next thing that I “have” to do. In reality, I don’t “have” to do anything…..unless of course I want the benefit that comes from having met the responsibility! I’m going to see if I can make that shift, focus on why I do what I do and maybe turn some of these “have” to’s into “get” to’s. (Maybe help the kids do the same!)

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Can We Be Comfortable With Discomfort?

I’ve been thinking and writing a lot lately about discipline and specifically about discomfort. Humans seek pleasure and avoid pain. Avoiding pain seems like a good thing but I think too often we end up lumping discomfort in with pain. Then we start avoiding discomfort.

Avoiding discomfort might sound good in theory but the trouble is, much of what we want (and even need) in life exists on the other side of some discomfort. The exercise we need to do to keep our bodies healthy might cause us some discomfort. Saying “no” to ourselves about a needless purchase in order to save some money might cause some discomfort. Reaching out to repair a broken relationship might cause some discomfort. Many (most?) things that are ultimately good for us exist on the other side of some discomfort. So if we lump pain and discomfort together and seek to avoid discomfort, we are only hurting ourselves in the long run.

One of the reasons this has been on my mind lately is I accidentally learned to be comfortable with discomfort! About 15 months ago I started training in Krav Maga (which I highly recommend for everyone BTW!) I’ve dabbled in martial arts a time or two in my life so I was pretty comfortable with most of what I was learning early on in Krav Maga except the grappling and ground fighting! I hated everything about it and wanted nothing to do with it. It was WAY out of my comfort zone!

Luckily, I have some really good instructors and I was committed to at least learning just the bare minimum amount of grappling and ground fighting that I needed to get by. To do that, I begrudgingly started showing up to a Thursday night class completely devoted to ground fighting. I may not be explaining this perfectly but the grappling and ground fighting portion of Krav Maga takes many aspects of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) and tweaks them for self defense and street fighting. So much of what I was learning in that class was Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. And after a few classes I discovered that I really liked it!

I always looked at wrestling as just brute force, hard work and while it can be very hard work, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is quite cerebral and strategic! Once I got used to what at first seemed like people trying to smoosh my face into the mat, I really started to enjoy the thinking and the strategy! One of the most important things our instructor told us is that there is a huge difference between pain and discomfort. If you are in real, physical pain you have to do something about it but if what you are experiencing is just discomfort you can chill out and learn how to exist in that discomfort. That’s big! Not just in ground fighting and BJJ but in life!

About a month ago I stepped further out of my comfort zone and joined a BJJ studio. What I learned in the Krav classes has certainly helped but the people who have been doing BJJ for a while are SO good at it! Needless to say, I spend a lot of time there trying to be ok with and trying to relax in extreme discomfort. Basically, I’m learning to be comfortable with discomfort…and it’s really fun!

I never would have imagined enjoying something like this so this is definitely another good reminder about staying openminded and being willing to try new things. It has also been a great lesson for me in the difference between pain and discomfort. I’ve since noticed that there are things in other areas of my life that I’ve been avoiding, thinking they would be painful. I now know that what I’ve been avoiding isn’t pain, it’s only discomfort and there’s a big difference!

I encourage anyone reading this to explore anything they have been avoiding thinking it might be painful. Could it just be discomfort that you have been avoiding and could you be comfortable with some discomfort if it meant making some big changes?!

(And if you are in/near the Knoxville area and are interested in Krav Maga and BJJ, I highly recommend Bullman’s Kickboxing and Krav Maga and Lucas Lepri Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. These are great places full of really good people!)

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Leave a Little Room

Matt Wahl – Leave a Little Room from mattwahl on Vimeo.

I was having a conversation with my kids the other day about human energy. I was telling them that when we wake up in the morning we each have a certain amount of energy to take care of the things we need to take care of each day. I think I made up something like we each have 10 units of energy for each day. 

I was using this to explain to them how each time I have to do something for them that they could do themselves, I use up some of my energy. So, when I have to find their shoes, tell them 5 times that it’s time to go, referee a couple of stupid fights, etc. I use up energy that could be spent on doing fun things or taking care of some of the things I need to do each day.

I never know what they take away from these kinds of talks but it got me thinking about how it feels when I use up all of my energy (which I do a lot.) It feels overwhelming. I end up crabby with a short fuse, like I’ve been pushed to the point where I can’t handle one more simple thing and I’m going to holler at the next person who asks me for a glass of milk! 

A simplified version of this feeling is that I ran out of room.

This doesn’t just happen with tasks, I’ve done it with money too. I know we’ve been at the point where we’ve packed our life full of expenses: mortgage, cars, kid stuff, cell phone plans, cable, etc. and it feels like there is no money left over for anything that feels like fun or recreation. Again, we ran out of “room.” 

It’s super easy to do this with our schedule! Running around so much that even if there’s something on the calendar that was supposed to be fun when we planned it, it now feels like a burden.  Our schedule is so full and hectic that all we want to do is stay home. We just want a little room! 

We all have a finite amount of resources: time, money, focus, energy, etc. and if we don’t make a conscious effort to leave just a little cushion, a tiny bit of room, it’s easy to burn out in one, two or all of these areas. 

I like to think about it like this: I don’t ever want to be the guy walking down the shoulder of a busy interstate carrying a gas can. To avoid that, I keep an eye the gas gauge in my car and make sure I leave myself a little cushion. Now I’ll sometimes let it go until my fuel warning light comes on but at that point I’m getting pretty uneasy. I know I’m running out of room.Obviously, we don’t have warning lights in all the different areas of our lives where we run ourselves down to empty but I’ll bet most of us know how it feels. It doesn’t feel good! I’m trying to be a bit more deliberate, selfish I guess, about safeguarding my little bit of room in these different areas. I know if I leave a little room and don’t run myself down to empty, I can show up better in every area of life! 


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The Time Is Now CD!

I’m so happy to announce the arrival of my brand new CD, The Time Is Now! This is my 7th CD of original music and only the 2nd one that I’ve recorded entirely at home!

(If you want to hear it, visit the CD/Music page in the main menu bar.)

Why record at home? For those who know me a bit, I’m sort of a perfectionist! The trouble with studios is that they charge by the hour. That’s not really trouble, it’s just a fact. I’ve loved the people I’ve worked with over the years but I’ve always felt like I had to settle for things because the clock is running! Recording at home takes a lot longer but if I’m not happy with something, I can redo it until I’m satisfied. That’s not to say that this new CD is perfect but at least I got everything to the point of feeling like it was the best I could do at the time. Plus I got some great help!

IMG_2969This is our son Eric helping me with some background vocals on the last song on the CD, Somewhere In The Sun. He loves singing and plays the drums and likes to pound on the piano. He has an ukulele too that he occasionally picks up. I was so happy that he agreed to do this and I think he had a great time. As part of the recording/mixing process, I have played these songs around the house over and over again and he always gets a little twinkle in his eye when he hears his voice. Maybe next time around he can handle the percussion for me too! I keep telling him I’d love to have him take drums lessons. He always says, “but dad, I already know how to play the drums!”

I also leaned on Eric for the cover art!

time cd coverI guess I didn’t really have to lean on him. We’ve had this painting in a frame over our dining room table for quite a while now. It’s a couple of years old and I thought it would be a great cover! As some of you might know, my mom used to do some wonderful watercolor work and she did the covers of my first 5 CDs. Her health hasn’t been the best lately and she hasn’t painted in a couple of years. I’m glad to have another great source for artwork and I’m pretty sure my mom would be OK passing that job on to Eric!

That’s the fun stuff. I love recording but even for a perfectionist like me, it can get downright tedious! There are parts I bet I played 50 times before I got them right!

I’m a long way from recording perfection but all in all I’m quite happy with the results. I’m sure those with better ears will hear things I missed or changes I could have/should have made but I did all of this in a small room in our home, much of it during nap times, late at night etc. with nothing more than one mic, an audio interface, a laptop and a pair of studio monitors (and no room treatment!) I’d like to think I got a lot done with a pretty limited set up. None of the stuff I use is very expensive. The bulk of the investment was time, trial and error (heavy on the error! )

If you’re at all curious about the set up, here is some nerd stuff for my fellow pro audio/home recording geeks:

Equipment:

Mic: I have a RODE NTK Vacuum Tube Condenser Mic. I bought this a few years ago. It was recommended by a friend as a great mic for the price. I haven’t had the opportunity to compare it to much of anything else but it has sure gotten the job done for me. Getting used to the mic and learning how it handles my voice, different guitars, etc. has helped a lot!

Interface: I use the first Apogee Duet. Before this I used a Lexicon Omega. During the middle of some recording a while back I had some compatibility issues with the Lexicon when I upgraded my computer’s operating system so I went with the Duet as it is supposed to get long well with Macs. It’s worked well. Every once in a while GarageBand won’t recognize it so I’ll have to restart my computer and then it’s fine. Kind of annoying but otherwise no complaints about the Duet.

Computer: I have a MacBook Pro that is a few years old. I still use GarageBand. If you’re not familiar with GarageBand it comes free with a Mac so nothing fancy at all! I upgraded to Logic Pro a while back and have done some recording in Logic Pro but I’ve worked so much in GarageBand that I still feel the most comfortable there and what I’m doing is simple enough to make it work.

Monitors: Dynaudio BM5A MKII. The monitors probably represented the biggest learning curve for me. These are still fairly new and this is the first record I’ve mixed on them. I’d track with headphones (Sony MDR-7506) and do some light mixing on the headphones if the kids were asleep and then do the rest on the Dynaudios later on. I would then burn the mixes to CD and check them on several different systems. The main two were my car stereo and our home stereo. It took a while to figure out how the sound from the studio monitors translated to the other systems and what adjustments I needed to make to try to get the best sound I could on all the different stereos I used.

I played all the instruments/parts myself which is probably why it took as long as it did! Here is what I used:

Vocals: Recorded all with the RODE NTK

Guitar: Taylor 514ce-n (nylon string.) I recorded all the guitar parts with the NTK about 8″ to a foot or so away from about the 14th fret of the guitar.

Ukulele: Collings UC1K miced with the NTK more or less like the guitar.

Piano: Yamaha Clavinova with a mono 1/4″ out to the Apogee Duet.

Bass: American Fender P Bass through either an Avalon U5 or through my Bose T1 with the P Bass EQ preset. But after struggling to get the bass parts to sound right, I cheated and redid all the parts using a midi keyboard with an electric bass setting! Apologies to the purists but eventually, I had to do something to try to get a bass sound I liked. I don’t think equipment was the problem. I narrowed it down to some shortcomings with the skills of the bass player, the recording engineer or the mixing engineer. One or more of those guys had no idea what they were doing when I came to playing, recording and mixing bass! 

Harmonicas: Either Hohner Special 20 or Lee Oskar recorded with the RODE NTK.

Percussion: A Pearl cajon and a Remo pear-shaped fruit shaker

I added a couple of other things here and there with the midi keyboard.

I followed the same basic pattern for every song. I would open up a new track in GarageBand and do a rough recording of me playing and singing the song into the RODE NTK mic. This next part is probably the strangest part of my whole process: I would plug in my old Alesis SR-16 drum machine. It has a tap tempo function. So while I’m listening to what I just recorded, I would tap the tap tempo button on the drum machine. This would tell me my tempo in beats per minute. I would then use this tempo as my starting point for the click track of the song. This way I’m basing the tempo on a free form performance of the song. The result (I think) is a much natural tempo for each of the songs if that makes any sense.

Once I’d have the tempo established, I’d plug in a midi keyboard and create a one measure drum track, usually rim shot and kick drum using that tempo. Then I could loop that drum track and make it my click track. (a click track is a rhythm track you listen to on headphones while you record the other parts to make sure you are playing everything at the same tempo.) I’d play along with my click track a couple of times to make sure the tempo felt right and make any adjustments if it didn’t.

Once I had the tempo established and the click track laid down, I would do a scratch track of guitar and vocals. (The scratch track is just a reference track that will not be part of the final recorded song.) I’d just put the mic somewhere in the middle and play the whole song. This sets up the basic skeleton of the song. It give me the intro, the verses, the chorus, solo break(s) and the outro. This part is always a bit tricky for me because the song will usually be a bit different from the way I play it live. Even if it’s not different, I have to make a “final” decision as to the structure of the song. When I play live I just play whatever feels right at the time. But with recording I need to decide on an intro, what kind of solos, breaks, etc.

Once I get the bare bones of the song established, it’s time to start recording! I always start with the main acoustic guitar part and work from there. Some songs have several layers of different guitar parts. Then I’d add what I think each song called for. Every song has at least acoustic guitar, bass and vocals. Some have every instrument listed above! It would all just depend on the song and what I thought each one needed at the time. Sometimes I’d have a cold so I couldn’t sing so I’d just add some more guitar!

This is getting pretty long! Is anyone still reading this?

Anyway, that is the basic process that I used for all the songs. I recorded a handful of songs that didn’t make it onto the CD so I repeated this process for probably 18 different songs! It took a long time and there were days when I felt like giving up. I’m glad I didn’t and hope the final result was worth it! I know I learned a TON and that I’ll be further ahead when the next project comes along.

Thanks for reading and if you made it over to the CD page and heard a sample or two, thanks for listening!

-Matt

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Northern Spirit Radio

I want to share an interview with you. I had a super fun time chatting with Mark Helpsmeet at Northern Spirit Radio. The interview features 7 newly recorded songs. Some are new songs and some are some new versions of songs that have been around a while. You can listen to the interview on-line and leave comments if you’d like.

You can find the interview here:

Northern Spirit Radio – Matt Wahl Interview

Enjoy the day!
Matt

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Joshua’s Camp Song

I want to share a new song with you. It’s one of only two songs that I’ve co-written.

Almost a year ago, John Finney introduced himself to me and told me of Joshua’s Camp. Joshua’s Camp is a camp for families who have a child being treated for cancer. You can read all about it here:

Joshua’s Camp Website

John asked me if I would play at the next Joshua’s Camp scheduled for 5/31/12 – 6/3/12 and I’m thrilled to be a part of it! John also asked me if I would take a look at some lyrics he had written and see if I could put them in to a “Joshua’s Camp song.” I told him that I would certainly look at the lyrics but that I couldn’t promise anything songwriting-wise but I would do my best.

John’s lyrics were great and I got lucky and came up with a chorus and adapted his words as the verses and the bridge and played the song for the first time at the Festival In The Pines in Eau Claire in August where John and other volunteers were doing a fund raiser for Joshua’s Camp.

I asked John if he could share with me (so I could share with you) his inspiration for the lyrics:

“When I watched the children, that were attending our Cancer Camp, one thing always seemed to be the same. No matter how sick they were from all the treatment side effects and the disease they were fighting, they would try so hard to join in with the other healthy children. They desperately wanted to sing, dance, play the game or just sit on the floor and play with the toys. More than anything else…they just wanted to be a kid again.”

You can hear our song called, “I Just Want To Be A Kid Again” on the music player:

I Just Want To Be A Kid Again.mp3

Thanks for listening. Enjoy the day!
Matt

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Just Look At The Lake Slideshow!

I got the final, mastered version of the song back yesterday and put together a little slide show to go with the tune. It features photos of Lake Superior taken from all over the city of Duluth!

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When The Long Horn Blows….

Now I know that no song deserves three separate posts but I’ve been having a ton of fun with my Duluth song called, “Just Look At The Lake.”

When a ship passes underneath the aerial lift bridge in Duluth, they do something called a Captains Salute. The captain of the ship blows the ship’s horn and then the tender of the bridge answers back with a long blast and two short blasts. It’s really neat and we can hear it from our house.

I wanted to find a way to include the bridge’s horn in the song. So this morning I checked the harbor schedule and saw that there was a ship coming in at 1pm. At about 20 minutes to one, I looked out the window and saw the ship steaming in. I grabbed my camera and my trusty digital recorder and headed out the door. About 5 minutes later I was parked down in Canal Park and I headed for the bridge just as the ship was entering the canal. I turned on the recorder and recorded the ship’s horn and the bridge’s response.

If you listen to the updated version of “Just Look At The Lake,” on either .mp3 player you can hear the bridge at the end of the second verse where it talks about the bridge and the long horn blowing! Pretty fun!

I’m working on getting enough lake photos together for a slide show too.

Enjoy the day!
Matt

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