Have you ever experienced tension between your physical experience and your mental state? How about your ideas and your reality?   

If you stop to think about it, music can be understood as an interplay between opposing, yet complimentary energies: the electrical charge that comes from the ether and the grounding support that comes from the material world. If you have ever experienced the challenges that come from trying to manage these poles of the human experience, join this SOS podcast as JP explores ways to balance the artistic with the practical, the intangible with the material, and the emotional with the physical in the arts of songwriting and performance. 

 

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Do you have something to say? Are you able to say it effectively? 

If you are a songwriter or recording artist with a unique vision or message and you want to be able to get it across more reliably and deeply, you will want to get clear on your specific message and find your distinct WAY of putting it into musical form.

Understanding the variety of options available to you in crafting your musical expression and the predictable stages that your creative work must go through can help you immensely. Integrating this information can help you to follow your calling with greater ease, align with your music more fully, and become much more prolific in the process. 

Join JP as he tackles the topic of creative callings and offers some suggestions to help you clarify your unique path.

 

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Which side of the Great Divide do you make music on? Are you a messenger or an entertainer? A timeless teller of tales or a cutting-edge groundbreaker? What can we learn from the songsmiths of the first half of the twentieth century that might be missing from the provocative musical pioneers of the second half?  

In these complex times, the need for songwriters and performers to function as messengers, as opposed to pure entertainers, is greater than ever. While a pure entertainer works to divert an audience’s attention from “everyday life” and worldly matters, a messenger works to shine a spotlight on issues of personal and social purpose and relevance. But without delivering a message through an entertaining, user-friendly format, a song’s deeper meanings may be lost. Ideally, an artist functions as both an entertaining storyteller AND a provocative truth-teller.  

Join in part two of this conversation where JP addresses the gifts and the hazards of following the traditions and trends in pre- and post-rock-and-roll popular music.

 

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Something really big and really important happened to popular songwriting between the years of 1950 and 1969. Many things, actually. And we are still reeling–socially, creatively, psychologically, and politically. Come take a journey back in time and then forward and back again as we mine the fields of recent history looking for musical gems and touchstones that can be put into immediate use in our songs, performances, and understanding of what we hear. This is part one of a two part conversation.

 

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