One of my favorite lines from several singers, songwriters, and musicians is “Music is the notes you do not play.” That goes along with the theme of our Friday Newsletter. Does It Serve The Song? Often times in creative work the genius is in the edit and the edit is code for delete, remove, cut, you know poof! Getting to a place where less is more takes maturity, at least in my personal experience. It seems that when I was young, it took all my effort to create I didn’t want any of it to go to waste.

What helps me get up and over the hump of the creative invention to great work is “Does it serve?” That’s a tough question, but one we all have to ask if we want our work to rise above.

This is an “Indie Spirit” newsletter and its publisher has been a Registered Independent his entire life. It is impossible not to have a newsletter that doesn’t ask a few challenging questions and I have so many questions. Today I’m going to include part of a graphic that I pulled from an article in The Wall Street Journal. I am not going to include any information about it, I would love to know what this image says to you or makes you think about. So many questions…

Add your thoughts to the comments and if you are interested in the link to the article, send me an email.

I read another article today about the challenge of charging for podcasts and the platforms that also have trouble trying to figure out how to charge for podcasts. I find this interesting. I probably split my time evenly between reading and listening to podcasts every day. I’ve never paid for a podcast, I pay for news and newsletter all the time, but never for a podcast. Some of my podcasts I sort of paid for because they came attached to the news subscription I purchased. I’ll post more about podcasts as I dig deeper into them.

Today’s rewrite is a quote from Dante’s Inferno.

“And I - my head oppressed by horror - said:
”Master, what is it that I hear? Who are”
those people so defeated by their pain?”
And he to me: “This miserable way
is taken by the sorry souls of those
who lived without disgrace and without praise.
They now commingle with the coward angels,
the company of those who were not rebels
nor faithful to their God, but stood apart.
The heavens, that their beauty not be lessened,
have cast them out, nor will deep Hell receive them -
even the wicked cannot glory in them.”

I first read Dante’s Inferno in high school, it was a challenging read, and I enjoyed how descriptive Dante was about what hell could be like. Hell can be such a generalized concept it’s easier to ignore than push yourself to think about it. Similar to Love, also generalized and meaning can be diluted due to the generalizations.

Day 23 of publishing every day and today I had to dig to find content and things I think are interesting to write about and comment on. On the upside, I look forward to putting the newsletter together each day more than any other work I do. That is promising!

As the leaves begin to change at least here in the midwest and the days get shorter, it’s a good time to think about some of your own routines and creations. Ask yourself, does it serve your song?

I have been a fan of electronic music since the 90s. I went to raves in the early ’90s when I was in college. I had a subscription to one of the first electronic music streaming services called Spinner. It was bought by AOL in 1999. Fat Boy Slim is an electronic artist and I just read an article about him and the use of the Roland TB-303 Synthesizer. The article talks about the difference between using a synthesizer and a hardware clone. There is a lot of talk and debate these days about live music with and without the use of backing tracks.

I was at the DIY Musicians Conference this summer in Austin, TX and there were plenty of sessions on the use of backing tracks.

This is a song, with a pulsating tone that gets me moving like the theme from Rocky. Happy Friday!

Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.

“…And these children
that you spit on
as they try to change their worlds
are immune to your consultations.
They’re quite aware
of what they’re going through…”

Be Good,

Johnny