peter j stein - oh, america -: LATEST ALBUM NEWS

As described in my previous song-writing experiences, this song, "oh, loch ada", began as a fragment of a melody, about one week ago, in early March, 2011.  I had last written a song, 2 months prior, expressing feelings of isolation, during a relatively harsh winter in New York. The initial theme of the current lyrics was completely unknown to me, and the words first began to lead me to a patriotic, but somewhat cynical, song, about "America". The ideational theme continued to develop, as I softened up in an optimistic way, to describe America (i.e., the U.S)., as a country of great purpose and destiny, that needed to stay on course and continue to mature, as a very special country, that would ultimately guide the world to lasting peace, to preserve the environment, reduce poverty, raise the economic and educational status of everyone, keep population growth under control, end the nuclear threat, and end bigotry. I was enthused about the song thus far, with feelings of exuberance emerging, but not fully comfortable with my idealistic vision; suddenly, 2 days ago, about March 10, there was a shift in my thinking, and a sense of a song far more personal emerged; a song about my finding ultimate peace, in a place where my soul would finally stop wandering.

PUT TOGETHER A FEW WORDS AND CHORDS AND INSTRUMENTS, AND NOW I HAVE A SOMETIMES SWEET, SOMETIMES GUTTURAL EXPRESSION OF HOW I FEEL, AFTER DIGGING OUT OF THE LATEST SNOWSTORM.

"Always Tomorrow (for Cara & David)" will be available on CDBaby and iTunes this week. How do I come up with these tunes? Glad you asked! Experience forges the birth of songs. Vibrations erupt from the heartstrings, in the form of musical strains, which then resonate with primal human sadness and joy, pleasure and pain, in all their gradations. Harmonies bridge the gap between the present and eternity. Songs are discovered, not created. For a song to be written, arranged, performed, and recorded, there must be a willingness and capacity to lift the gates of unconscious emotional repression. Several intellectual and emotional processes converge and coalesce. The elements of the song, i.e., rhythm, timing, melody, harmony, lyrics, intonation, expressiveness, and instrumentation, are then subject to a trillion random variations of the recording process.  Some of this artist's songs are well-crafted and produced, others with rough edges.  What you hear is what you get - one small voice echoing his brief presence among the countless stars, within the wilderness of time. As for Cara and David, this much I know: it is truly their time in the sun, and the time of their lives; they will always have each other, and they will together share all of their tomorrows...pjs

from peter j stein's

eastcoastproject album

"New York City (will always be home)"

The completion of a song comes at a price - a difficult emotional and time-consuming struggle, with the blending of lyrics and melody and technology, such that, together, they merge to form an heretofore unknown creation. In my struggles to create coherent and satisfying musical meanings, a melody emerges first, then a search for lyrics, and both are gradually forged into a song, sometimes initially resembling the awkwardness of an arranged marriage; but with hard work, the pair begin to form a loving relationship. The thematic content of a song often remains unknown, almost to the end of the creative process, for which even the songwriter, himself, is unaware of what manner of creature he is gestating. Interestingly, a simple adjustment of volume or reverb, or the addition or deletion of a few intruding measures, or a panning of an instrument or vocal, may sometimes turn a mediocre tune into a beloved one, for the songwriter. New York City is a great city. I will even venture to say that New York City is the greatest of cities, a dynamic forward-moving amalgam of places and people, with strata of complexity that one can ever know. At times, especially within the vastness of New York City's disparate cultures and neighborhoods, one can feel very alone here. But it's always my home here...pjs

today is a day of remembrance, a day of mixed feelings of sadness, horror, anger, grief, and loss, in response to those irreversible and unspeakable actions and events that occurred in downtown manhattan, on 9/11/2001. The psychological trauma remains vivid in the minds of those still grieving from their losses, in those who survived in the immediate vicinity of the devastation, in those who had the tireless strength to help in the months of the aftermath in the clean-up process, and in those who are now ill from the toxic exposures to the particulate matter in the air of the ghastly environment. I dreamt on that Tuesday night of 9/11 that I emerged from a downtown subway, that the city air was black, that there was a fiery furnace of desolate destruction; and I awoke realizing that the dream was true. I completed the song "Somebody's Lover" 7 years after 9/11, and, though my family was spared any personal loss, it took me 7 years to express musically, what I had not been able to verbalize.......pjs

The steinstudio is in full gear, poised to publish a 3rd album, UneASy PiEcEs, punctuated by a classical guitar duet. This version of the song is what I originally intended, i.e., a quiet ballad related to a young boy's memories and longings from over 1/2 century ago. These vivid past emotional experiences, the feelings of which can be captured by musical expression, are eventually lost through aging and death. Despite one's wishes, there is the bitter truth that, along with ignorance, one must eventually let go of everything, and give oneself up to whatever one becomes, in the nameless cosmos.  This song was performed using 2 acoustic classical guitar tracks, (acoustically mic'd with my steinstudio RODE NT 1-A), a guitar that I had hidden away, and just found in my basement, a 6 string nylon classical, that I bought in Brooklyn, about 40 years ago. The Story, itself, reflects an experience when I was 6 years old, when a pretty, young girl, a neighbor from 2 houses down, who had moved away, had returned to visit her Brooklyn home; we played tag together in a friend's driveway; she seemed to like me, and touched my hand lightly...and then she was gone, again.

Metro Noire was born this month, a new musical genre embodied by pjsteinsong's latest original, "Running From Time". Combining Disco, Nouveau, Sub-Saharan Percussion, Salsa, Do-Op, Hip-Hop, and Flat-Top, this new musical style is uniquely characterized by its evolution into newer musical genres, as the song progresses towards its final measures.  Metro Rouge and Metro Bleu are to follow shortly.............

Bypassing the cost and complexity inherent in hiring a private recording studio, and using software on an iMac, pjsteinsongs, inc., has wasted no time in recording a tune dedicated to the marriage of an extraordinary couple, and several more tunes are soon to follow. Using an M-Audio Axiom 61 workstation, an Apogee interface, a pair of BX monitors, a RODE NT studio mic, and his Taylor acoustic & Gretsch White Falcon, Stein has begun layering dozens of tracks for several new melodies in the acoustic pipeline fermenting in his fecund imagination.  It Won't Be Long, yeh!...............pjs

"FLYING TO THE SUN", A 9 MINUTE 26 SECOND MARATHON BALLAD, HAS FINALLY BEEN POSTED FOR DOWNLOAD PURCHASE ON THE 'PETER J STEIN' ARTIST'S PAGE OF CDBABY, WITH THE SINGLES "THE VESSEL", AND "MORE EACH DAY", AS WELL AS ACCOMPANYING STEIN'S 2 ALBUMS, BROKEN MAN - TRAPPED IN TIME, AND UNDER AN OPEN SKY.

WITHIN JUST A FEW HOURS (OR DAYS) "FLYING TO THE SUN", A 9 MINUTE BALLAD OF LIFE, LOVE AND DEATH, WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR IPOD DOWNLOADS ON CDBABY, AND SOON ALSO ON AT LEAST 9 ADDITIONAL E-STORES, MUSICAL WEB OUTLETS, ONLINE SONG SERVICES, AND FRUIT MARKETS.  GIVE IT A WHIRL; FLY TO THE SUN!.............pjsteinsongs

It looks like we have about 30 diverse tracks for "Flying To The Sun", and there remains the challenge of finding the best, acceptable mix, trying to include various elements that will not drown each other out, placing the vocals and instruments in various proportions, positions, volume,EQ,effects,etc.The process is challenging, and the choices are often made by a 'feel', simple reflections of one's personal tastes, with some basic acoustic rules.

IT TAKES AWHILE, MAYBE EVEN A COUPLE OF LIFETIMES, TO APPRECIATE AND SAVOR THE THOUSANDS OF ACOUSTIC AND DIGITAL NUANCES, THAT CAN DELIBERATELY, YET OFTEN SURPRISINGLY AND UNPREDICTABLY, CREATE  THE PENETRATING SEQUENCES OF SOUNDS THAT COMPRISE A SONG.  I AM WORKING ON A 9 MINUTE EPIC TUNE, "FLYING TO THE SUN", WHICH I CAN, ONLY WITH GREAT HUMILITY, ASSERT THAT MY STYLE HAS BEEN INFLUENCED BY DYLAN'S "QUEEN JANE APRROXIMATELY", "VISIONS OF JOHANNA", "DESOLATION ROW", AND "LIKE A ROLLING STONE", THE GREAT, GREAT DYLAN BALLADS THAT EMERGED IN THE 1960'S...

HOW GOOD IT FEELS TO CORRECT A COUPLE OF INCORRECT NOTES, AND TO ADD SOME UNEXPECTED EFFECTS! HOPING TO ENLIST A SURPRISE GUEST KEYBOARD/ORGAN TRACK IN A WEEK OR TWO THAT WILL TIGHTEN THIS SONG INTO A FOOT-STOMPING, HEART-BENDING BALLAD. ONCE COMPLETED, THERE MAY BE A LIVE RENDITION. STAY TUNED!

ONE NEVER KNOWS WHERE INSPIRATION WILL COME FROM, SO DON'T BOTHER LOOKING.  WHILE TRYING TO PUT TOGETHER A SONG EARLIER THIS WEEK, A COUPLE OF TINY MUSICAL PHRASES SLIPPED IN, THAT MYSTERIOUSLY BLENDED WITH A FEW ACHING MEMORIES FROM MY EARLY LIFE IN BROOKLYN, BACK IN THE MID-1950'S.  JUST 2 DOORS DOWN FROM US, THERE LIVED A GIRL...OH, NEVER MIND - BETTER NOT GET TOO DETAILED. MEANWHILE, AS THIS SONG WAS DEVELOPING, AND AS I WAS SEARCHING FOR A MIDDLE PART, TO BRIDGE THE VERSES, I HAD JUST FINISHED READING A FRIEND'S POEM - REGARDLESS OF THE CONTENT OF THE POEM, THE FORM OF THE POEM STRUCK ME AS REPRESENTING 'IMMEDIACY', 'MOMENTARINESS', AND 'TRANSIENCE', AS THE POEM DEPICTED VIVID, DRAMATIC INSTANCES OF SMELLS, SOUNDS, IMAGES, AND SNAPSHOTS OF TIME, THAT WERE SUDDENLY GONE; AND SUDDENLY. THE PHRASE CAME INTO MY MIND, PERHAPS FROM ANOTHER SONG: "CAPTURING THE MOMENT AND THE MOMENT'S GONE"; AND I HAD MY BRIDGE, AND 3 INTERESTING CHORDS TO GO WITH IT...PJS

Based on stories only recently emerging from small talk on the streetcorners of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, somewhere near Lundy's, there is evidence that Stein is emerging from his listless stupor and beginning to contemplate a third record album.  Listen to a minute of a clip of "Cloudy World", a rough segment of disparate lyrics thrown together and captured on his iPhone.

YOU CAN NOW VIEW AND DOWNLOAD "THE VESSEL" AND "MORE EACH DAY" ON CD BABY: 

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/peterjstein4

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/peterjstein3

Stein's 13th song in 13 months, The Vessel, was launched to iTunes  yesterday, and represents the culmination of a 13 month period of intense, creative energy.  There will be a latency period beginning today for an undetermined length of time before a new song emerges, but the listener will be notified promptly, once Stein returns from a brief voyage into a recently discovered, hitherto unexplored realm of unconscious terrain.

As you can hear from the audio stream, The Vessel is safely home, and now I can rest.

Listen to the latest edit of The Vessel, which will stream by as the website opens, as the song approaches the final studio mix.

In case you are free on April 26, May 21st, and July 15, you can check out Central Beat Live, performing vintage classic rock!

It was a grand session, with fellow musician Marshall O. spending several hours in the studio on3/28/2009, creating a beautiful piano and organ accompaniment for The Vessel, as well as a trumpet track, which will bring the Vessel to a dramatic ending. You can sample the rough edit as it streams by at the #1, 2, or 3 spot on this website's new Streaming Audio feature. More vocal back-ups were added on 3/31/2009, and the work on a final mix has begun!

With the recent addition of backup vocals audible on today's new clip, The Vessel will soon complete its trip, once keyboard and final backup vocals are added within the week.

The production of "The Vessel" takes a new turn into the horizon, with the introduction of drums, bass, and vocal chorus tracks. There's a brief sighting of this song in production on "My Music Clips"